Monday Down South: Bobby Petrino is back, baby. What could possibly go wrong?
By Matt Hinton
Published:
Takeaways, trends and technicalities from Week 5 in the SEC.
The Petrino Trap
So it was foretold, so it has come to pass: Bobby Petrino is, for the time being, Head Hog again.
Arkansas mercifully fired Sam Pittman on Sunday in the wake of a 56-13 humiliation against Notre Dame in Fayetteville, ending a long, depressing fadeout that began roughly the moment the ink dried on the contract extension Pittman signed in the summer of 2022.
At that point, the Razorbacks were satisfied with the trajectory of the program coming off a 9-4 campaign in ’21 — a dramatic turnaround from the smoking crater of a program Pittman took over just 18 months earlier. They opened the following season at No. 19 in the AP poll, and rose as high as No. 10 that September on the strength of a 3-0 start. It was downhill from there.
Since the start of the ’22 season, the Hogs are 7-18 in SEC play, and increasingly noncompetitive outside it. Pittman only narrowly survived the hot seat last year, and was already being fitted for the gallows on the heels of a brutal, 32-31 loss at Memphis in Week 3. Saturday’s debacle against the Irish, a game Arkansas entered as a mere 5.5-point underdog, was the anvil that broke the camel’s back. Defensively, the Hogs were not just bad, but listless in a way that was all too familiar: Missed tackles, gaping running lanes, drives extended by penalties, receivers running (jogging) wide open through the secondary with impunity, facing barely a trace of resistance.
In the first half alone, Notre Dame scored 6 touchdowns on 6 possessions, amassing 42 points, 420 yards and 20 first downs on 10.2 yards per play. The surrender was so complete the crowd couldn’t even be bothered with a halfhearted chorus of boos as the Razorbacks limped to the locker room, and it wasn’t an overreaction to realize their head coach’s fate all but sealed. The 43-point margin of defeat was the largest of Pittman’s tenure.
That tenure is now kaput, officially. What next?
Dismal as it is, the immediate state of affairs is not quite as dire as the one Pittman inherited from the Chad Morris administration in December 2019, if only due to the presence of a legitimate talent behind center, Taylen Green, for the remainder of the season. (Green still leads the nation in total offense despite a subdued outing against the Irish, and still has draft stock to consider.) Enter the well-traveled Petrino, who assumes the interim role after serving as offensive coordinator since the start of last season. From pretty much the moment he was hired, the specter of “Interim Head Coach Bobby Petrino” at the same school where he was canned in disgrace 13 years ago has been both a punchline and a looming inevitability. Sunday morning, it became a reality. By Monday morning, he’d already fired 3 defensive coaches, including coordinator Travis Williams.
The question now is for how long. Given 7 games, a talented quarterback and zero expectations, it’s not impossible that Petrino could make a legitimate run at the permanent job. Shortsighted, ill-advised, improbable? Yes. But impossible? Not by a long shot.
It’s not that hard to talk yourself into the guy. Petrino has a history of seeming like a good idea, right up until the bottom falls out. Before he was fired from Arkansas the first time around for gross misconduct involving a much younger athletic department staffer — and before the image of his bloodied visage in a neck brace became an enduring meme — Petrino had a reputation as a winner at the college level, with a stellar record as head coach at Louisville and Arkansas. He presided over arguably the 2 best seasons in Louisville history, top-10 finishes in 2004 and ’06. In 2010, he led Arkansas to its only appearance to date in a BCS/CFP bowl; the following year, his last in Fayetteville, is still the Razorbacks’ best since joining the SEC, resulting in an 11-2 record and No. 5 ranking in the final AP poll. In Petrino’s second stint at Louisville (2014-18), he recruited Lamar freakin’ Jackson and oversaw his breakout Heisman campaign in 2016. Whatever else there is to say about the man, no one has ever accused him of not knowing how to put points on the board.
Sooner or later, though, the tab comes due. Virtually every notable stop in Petrino’s career has ended badly. He was entangled in the infamous “Jetgate” scandal at Auburn in 2003, when he was the choice of a handful of boosters to replace his former boss, Tommy Tuberville, in a failed coup. (At the time, Petrino was wrapping up his first season at Louisville, only a year removed from his lone season as Auburn’s offensive coordinator in 2002.) His brief, doomed stint with the Atlanta Falcons, in 2007, reliably ranks high on lists with headlines like “The Worst NFL Hires of the Century.” His subsequent tenure at Arkansas, a success on the field, ended in scandal. Round 2 at Louisville immediately collapsed after Jackson’s departure, resulting in Petrino getting the axe in the midst of a 2-10 disaster in 2018. He left his next job, as head coach at Missouri State, after 2 losing campaigns in 3 years. His lone season as Texas A&M’s offensive coordinator, in 2023, ended with his boss getting paid the GDP of a small island nation to hit the bricks.
Now, here he is again: A short-term fix with an opportunity to settle in for the long haul. Of course, if you asked them today, I doubt any of the stakeholders who’ll ultimately decide on Pittman’s replacement would express much enthusiasm about settling for a 64-year-old retread with more baggage than an international flight, for all the obvious reasons. Arkansas is a good job with the potential resources to compete in the SEC’s middle class, if the right people can be convinced to open their checkbooks. (Another reason Pittman, who never inspired the kind of investment that boosters have poured into men’s basketball and baseball, had to go.) There are plenty of viable candidates. But then, if they weren’t willing to at least consider Petrino, they wouldn’t be granting him what amounts to an extended audition for the job.
Weird things happen when coaches get fired midstream. Right now, the outlook is bleak: The Razorbacks are off this weekend, followed by a gauntlet of 7 conference games in 8 weeks, 5 of them against opponents ranked in the top 20 in the updated AP poll. As it stands, the Hogs are almost certain underdogs in all of those games, give or take a Nov. 1 visit from Mississippi State. What if they spring an upset or two along the way? What if, against all odds, they manage to eke out bowl eligibility? If that seems like a pointless question to ask about the team Arkansas fans just watched lay a massive egg on national TV, well, that’s the point. There is a track record of assistants promoted to the interim role in the first half of the season coaching their way into the full-time gig over the second half, including Spencer Danielson at Boise State, Brent Key at Georgia Tech, Ed Orgeron at LSU and Dabo Swinney at Clemson. Petrino is no less likely to pull it off than anyone on that list.
One thing we can say for certain: Shame will not factor into the decision. If it did, the speculation would already be moot, because Petrino never would have been allowed back on campus in the first place. Simply by handing him a badge to the building, athletic director Hunter Yurachek signaled loud and clear that the relevant criteria are wins and losses on one hand, dollars and cents on the other.
As well-liked as Pittman was locally, his throwback appeal was always an awkward fit for such an unabashedly mercenary era even when the team was holding its own. Mercenary happens to be a language that Petrino speaks fluently. It strains credulity on both sides to imagine his comeback wasn’t engineered with exactly this scenario in mind. Arkansas knew what it was getting when it agreed to facilitate his career rehab as a play-caller, and it knows what it’s getting now in a temporary-but-maybe-not CEO. Buyer beware.
Ty Simpson: No pressure, no problem
OK, so in retrospect maybe we should have waited more than one game before calling for an investigation by the Bust Police into Alabama’s Ty Simpson. Since the Tide’s opening-day nightmare at Florida State, Simpson has been arguably the best quarterback in the conference, and was borderline unconscious in the first half of Saturday’s 24-21 win at Georgia. By halftime, he’d already accounted for 192 yards, 6 3rd-down conversions and 3 touchdowns (2 passing, 1 rushing) en route to a 24-14 halftime lead. Not long ago, that would have been considered a respectable outing by the visiting QB in Sanford Stadium for a full 4 quarters — and that’s without factoring in a couple of flat-out drops on two of Simpson’s best throws. Dude was absolutely dealing.
Predictably, the going got tougher in the second half, when the offense failed to add to the lead even while continuing to move the ball in methodical fashion. (Despite the goose egg on the scoreboard, 4 of Bama’s 5 second-half possessions actually ended in Georgia territory, resulting in a comically errant field goal attempt; a turnover on downs at midfield; a very conservative punt from the UGA 40-yard line; and victory formation following a pair of clutch 3rd-down conversions, respectively.) Still, Simpson’s 90.1 QBR rating for the game was the 2nd-best by an opposing quarterback in Athens since the start of the 2021 season, eclipsed only by Haynes King’s 91.0 in an epic, 8-overtime upset bid by Georgia Tech last November. The loss marked the end of the Bulldogs’ 33-game home winning streak dating to 2019.
Few if any players in America are under more week-in, week-out scrutiny that QB1 at Alabama, and Simpson deserves credit for riding out the storm of negativity that followed the FSU game with his confidence intact. His Heisman odds are soaring. Take another look at the highlights, though, and pay attention to what you don’t see: A single rep disrupted by a Georgia pass rusher.
That was hardly cherry-picking for the sizzle reel, either. Per the film eaters at Pro Football Focus, Simpson enjoyed pristine pockets on Saturday night more or less from start to finish, facing pressure on just 5 of his 40 drop-backs. In fact, as a team, Georgia posted the worst single-game pass-rushing grade (51.5) by any UGA outfit in the entire PFF database dating back to 2014. Take that for what it’s worth, but the Bulldogs literally struggled to lay a hand on him, finishing with zero sacks and a single hit. (They were technically credited with a sack, but it came on a trick play that resulted in WR Germie Bernard getting dropped behind the line, not Simpson.) Quarterbacks always bear some responsibility for their own self-preservation, which for a pocket type like Simpson boils down to quick decision-making and an even quicker release. But his o-line, so much maligned after the opener, played about as well as it could play with the season on the line in one of the toughest environments in the sport.
Contrast that with the loss in Tallahassee, which was largely defined by Simpson’s struggles under duress. Florida State generated pressure on 19 of his 51 drop-backs, including 3 sacks and multiple hits; in real time, it felt significantly worse, especially as the game plan unraveled in comeback mode. The indelible image of the afternoon was of Simpson, under fire, scrambling wildly out of one would-be disaster and into another.
In 3 games since, he’s faced fewer total pressures (17) than he did against the ‘Noles on nearly twice as many attempts, and has only been sacked once. Surprise: Give a blue-chip quarterback time and space to operate, and suddenly, wow, he looks like a blue-chip quarterback. Amazing. Bama, national title odds are improving, but it still has some work to do to restore its full faith and credit; as long as Simpson is in his comfort zone, the Tide are contenders.
Holy Trinidad, Fading Nussmeier
Ole Miss’ 24-19 win over LSU was a tale of 2 quarterbacks passing each other on escalators going in opposite directions in the SEC title chase, Heisman race and more.
Going up: Ole Miss’ Trinidad Chambliss, the unlikely D-II transfer with the meme-able name, who continues to leave Lane Kiffin with no choice but to leave him on the field. Chambliss’ 3rd start as a Rebel was a little sloppier than his first 2, courtesy of a shaky start and a vastly improved LSU defense that had already put preseason Heisman favorites Cade Klubnik and DJ Lagway through hell over the first few weeks of the season. Once he found his rhythm, though, Chambliss made the Tigers look indistinguishable from Tulane. He accounted for 391 of the Rebels’ 484 total yards, recording his 3rd game in as many weeks with 300+ yards passing and 50+ yards rushing.
If Chambliss is actually 6-feet tall, as claimed in his official bio, I’ll eat my hat. (If you’ve been wondering “how did this guy ever wind up at Ferris State?” start there.) But aside from a couple of batted passes at the line, limitations on his skill set so far appear to be mostly in the eye of the beholder. Per PFF, Chambliss is 11-of-15 on attempts of 20+ air yards, including 3-of-5 against LSU. He can throw with touch, he can rip it into tight windows, he can make plays on the move. “Division II quarterback” makes for a fine narrative about the improbable trajectory of his career, but it has no bearing on his skill set.
Obviously, whatever lingering doubt there was before Saturday that Chambliss is the starter going forward, go ahead and put it to bed. Ole Miss is still invested in opening-day starter Austin Simmons, who is still the future. (Chambliss is a 5th-year senior in his final year of eligibility.) The Rebels should do whatever they have to do to make sure Simmons remains in the fold. But if they’re going to make good on the opportunity that slipped through their fingers in 2024, it’s going to be behind Chambliss, who woke up on Sunday morning as a legitimate Heisman candidate (+1800 odds at ESPNBet) on a team that just rocketed into the top 4 in the AP poll for the first time in a decade. If there’s still a risk he’ll suddenly turn into a pumpkin on road trips to Georgia and/or Oklahoma, it’s worth it.
Fading: Garrett Nussmeier, the erstwhile Heisman candidate who looked harried and juiceless in a game he couldn’t count on his defense to gift-wrap. Ole Miss’ defense routinely dropped 8 defenders into coverage, dared Nussmeier to make throws from the pocket, and reaped the benefits when he couldn’t. He struggled with accuracy, posed little threat downfield (1-for-7 on attempts of 20+ air yards) and served up a ghastly pick into double coverage.
LSU’s inability to get anything going on the ground certainly didn’t help. Even against light boxes that invited Nussmeier to hand off, the Tigers managed just 59 yards rushing on 2.8 per carry, with a long gain of 10 yards. In fact, the offense’s performance in Oxford was not much of a departure from its mediocre outings in low-scoring wins over Clemson and Florida, which is exactly what made LSU fans so uneasy about winning ugly in those games.
At the moment, Clemson and Florida don’t even look like particularly impressive skins to have on the wall — they’re a combined 1-4 against their other FBS opponents. What kind of marquee win plummets in value before October? To the extent the Tigers felt like either of those games (but especially the Week 1 win at Clemson) said anything about their Playoff prospects, Saturday was a wake-up call.
Dude of the Week: Alabama OL/WR Kadyn Proctor
I was as hard on Proctor as anybody after in the Tide’s loss at Florida State — OK, maybe not anybody, if you count irate Bama fans and disgruntled gamblers prone to venting spleen. But I did single him out in Week 1 as “Goat of the Week” for his no-show performance against the ‘Noles, a dismal effort from a veteran starter touted as a top-10 talent. So, credit where it’s due: Against Georgia, the biggest man on the field looked the part in one of the biggest games of the year, shutting out UGA pass rushers on a banner night for the Crimson Tide o-line across the board.
For a guy whose 1,714 career snaps to date have come almost exclusively at left tackle, Saturday night also served as a stage for the freak athleticism that has inspired tall tales since he set foot on campus. According to ESPN’s Holly Rowe during the broadcast, Proctor met a 9-week weight-loss goal in the days leading up the game, checking in at a sleek 359 pounds. Coaches duly rewarded him by dusting off an idea they’d reportedly shelved after flirting with it in the preseason: His first career touch.
An idea whose time has arrived, clearly. Because it was a backward pass, the play went into the books as an 11-yard run rather than a reception; either way, it worked. Officially, Proctor matched Alabama’s longest run of the night, and exceeded the longest gain by a running back; the next play, a 2-yard touchdown scramble by Simpson, extended the Tide’s lead to 24-14 just before halftime. But that’s merely what’s inscribed in the box score. The sheer spectacle of a mountain of a man gathering in the ball in space and proceeding to rumble through half of a stunned Georgia defense attempting to calculate on the fly whether their NIL deals amount to enough to cover their future medical bills? That’s inscribed in the memories of a generation.
Dud of the Week: Auburn’s Offense (Again)
In Week 4, Jackson Arnold dropped back to pass 49 times in a competitive, defensively-driven game at Oklahoma that Auburn led in the 4th quarter. In Week 5, Arnold dropped back to pass 43 times in a competitive, defensively-driven game at Texas A&M decided by 6 points. Both games ended the same way: With Auburn’s offensive line being overrun and Arnold being swarmed over for a game-clinching sack on his final snap of a long, brutal afternoon.
On one hand, that was “only” A&M’s 5th sack of the day, an improvement on the school-record 10 sacks Arnold absorbed in the Tigers’ loss in Norman. In every other respect, the loss in College Station was a regression from bad to worse.
Arnold averaged just 3.8 yards per attempt; finished 1-for-6 on attempts of 10+ air yards; and turned in ghastly ratings in terms of both efficiency (86.4) and QBR (35.1). His star receiver, Cam Coleman, caught 4 passes with a long gain of 5 yards. As a team, Auburn failed to convert a single 3rd or 4th down in any capacity (0-for-15 in all) and only managed to punch the ball in the end zone as a result of an interception return by the defense that set the offense up at the Aggies’ 2-yard line. On its own, the offense only managed one drive that penetrated deeper than the A&M 40-yard line, yielding a field goal. After the game, Arnold sat next to his head coach at the postgame press conference looking like he’d rather be anywhere else as Hugh Freeze extolled his effort and passion for the game.
I am not a multimillion-dollar play-caller, but I continue to believe Arnold’s effort and passion would be better served in an offense that makes at least a token effort to run the dang ball. Running backs Damari Alston and Jeremiah Cobb had just 8 combined carries against Texas A&M, a decline from the already-too-low 13 carries they logged against Oklahoma. They’ve averaged a perfectly healthy 5.9 yards a pop over that span, in a couple of close games that never dictated abandoning the run. Why is Jackson Arnold dropping back 40+ times on a weekly basis?
With each passing week, the Tigers’ 307-yard rushing performance at Baylor in the opener recedes a little further into the distance, and a little closer to the point of no return for Freeze. They’re running out of time to figure it out.
Week 5 SEC Notebook
1.) Unwatchable as Auburn’s offense was, it did produce the Catch of the Year of the Week, courtesy of Georgia Tech transfer Eric Singleton Jr. in the first half.
There’s no reason a passing game featuring Singleton and Cam Coleman should be this anemic, but the fact is that the offense right now consists almost exclusively of those guys attempting to generate viral highlights.
2.) Tennessee’s clock management at the end of regulation was a crime. The Vols were tied at Mississippi State, 34-34, in the final 2 minutes of a back-and-forth game that could still go either way. After forcing the Bulldogs to punt, Tennessee’s offense took over at its own 26-yard line with 1:23 remaining and all 3 timeouts at its disposal, needing only a field goal to escape with the win.
But the first play of the ensuing possession, a 3-yard run by DeSean Bishop, was a waste, and the Volunteers proceeded to waste even more precious time by allowing a full 30 seconds to tick away before snapping the ball again. The clock stopped briefly to move the chains following second down, a 13-yard completion from Joey Aguilar to TE Miles Kitselman, but again Josh Heupel elected not to spend a timeout, and by the end of the subsequent play — a 9-yard scramble by Aguilar on which he lingered in the pocket, passed up a chance to run out of bounds, and came up short of another first down — another 14 seconds had elapsed. By the time Heupel finally gave the TO signal, his offense had taken a full minute to run 3 plays.
Still, the Vols were in plausible position, at midfield with 24 seconds and 2 timeouts left. If only. Following an incomplete pass out of the timeout, they moved the chains on a 5-yard run on 3rd-and-1 … and then, inexplicably, declined again to use a timeout, rushing to the line instead while allowing the clock to tick down inside of 10 seconds in the process. An incomplete pass left 4 seconds, 2 timeouts unspent, and Aguilar with no choice but to heave a prayer into the end zone from the MSU 44-yard line. His Hail Mary didn’t even make it that far and had a better chance of being intercepted than caught, and would have been waved off due to a holding penalty if it had.
Of course, all of the above was rendered purely academic after Tennessee prevailed in overtime, 41-34. Ironically, if you had the Vols to cover a 7.5-point spread, you were rooting for overtime throughout this sequence, in the distant hope that they could still pull off an 8-point win due to the mandatory 2-point conversion rule in the event of a second overtime. That possibility went out the window after Bishop immediately scored the eventual game-winning touchdown on the first play of the extra session. Not that anybody on the field had the slightest inkling about any of that.
3.) Injuries on Georgia’s offensive line forced the Dawgs to play 2 true freshmen against Alabama on the majority of their offensive snaps. Dontrell Glover went the distance at right guard, while his massive classmate, Juan Gaston, split reps at right tackle in place of the sidelined Earnest Greene III. They held up fine in pass protection, allowing zero pressures between them, per PFF. (In general, Georgia QB Gunner Stockton was every bit as well protected on the night as his more productive Bama counterpart.) As run blockers, it was a mixed bag. Most notably, Glover (No. 63 below) and Gaston (73) shared the blame on possibly the single biggest swing play of the game: A failed 4th-and-1 conversion attempt inside the Alabama 10-yard line early in the 4th quarter, with the Tide clinging to a tenuous 24-21 lead.
The Bulldogs didn’t come close to scoring again, amplifying the scrutiny of what turned out to be their last best chance. For his part, Kirby Smart defended the call after the game, telling reporters, “I’d do that 10 times out of 10 in terms of going for it,” and noting that UGA had run the same play for conversions earlier in the night as well as in their Week 3 win at Tennessee. And as far as getting the look you want from the defense for a run off right tackle, this …
… well, that’s about as inviting as it gets. At the snap, Alabama didn’t have a soul in position to make the play if the right side of the line executes a couple of routine down blocks. Beyond that, it comes down to a foot race to the pylon between RB Cash Jones and Bama safety Keon Sabb. Instead, the freshmen picked the worst possible moment to look like freshmen, allowing 5th-year senior (and future pro) LT Overton to split the double team, trip up Jones for a 3-yard loss, and swing the pendulum decisively toward the Tide. If there was a moment when Greene was missed, this was it.
Georgia fans online grumbled about the decision to put such a pivotal play in the hands of Jones, a former walk-on whose role is usually limited to passing downs, and who hadn’t touched the ball in any capacity on Saturday night prior to this snap. The Bulldogs’ primary backs, Chauncey Bowens, Nate Frazier and Josh McCray, had all had their moments over the course of the game; unlike Jones, they also check in at well north of 200 pounds apiece with a disproportionate percentage of that mass concentrated in their thighs. Bowens was a revelation, already over 100 yards on the night for the first time in his career on more than 10 yards per carry. McCray, the resident short-yardage back, is listed at 240 and has generated 34 of his 37 rushing yards on the season after contact, per PFF. Why Jones? After coming up just short of the sticks on 3rd down, Georgia opted to go up-tempo on 4th down in an effort to catch Bama scrambling.
“(The) decision is, do you stop, slow down, think about it, let them set the cleats in the ground, let them do everything they want,” Smart said, “or do you try to hit them quickly.” The Dawgs were moving quickly; Jones at that point just happened to be the running back on the field.
But the fact is, any SEC back should easily convert this play if it’s blocked. It wasn’t. Chalk it up to the trenches.
4.) Another Alabama player who has redeemed himself since being singled out in the opener: Junior safety Bray Hubbard. A part-time starter in 2024 due to injury, Hubbard was one of the goats of the loss at Florida State due to missed tackles and a lackluster effort on a long FSU touchdown. In the meantime, he’s emerged as arguably the best player on the defense. In Week 3, he was SEC co-Defensive Player of the Week after coming down with 2 interceptions in a dominant defensive effort against Wisconsin. Against Georgia, he was inescapable, finishing with a team-high 9 tackles and accounting for the game’s only turnover, a forced fumble in the first half that set up a short Bama field goal. Later, he had an emphatic rep on which he evaporated a would-be blocker at the line of scrimmage and stuffed the runner for a minimal gain. At this rate, he’s going to have a decision to make about the next level well ahead of schedule.
5.) Georgia DB Ellis Robinson IV has earned a place on the lowlight reel in 2 straight games, albeit for different reasons. In Week 3, the former 5-star was on the wrong end of 2 touchdown receptions against Tennessee while also getting flagged twice for pass interference. (He actually managed the rare feat of drawing a DPI and giving up a touchdown on the same play.) Against Alabama, he held up much better in coverage but still found a way to make his presence felt in the capital-D Dumbest way possible with the game on the line:
The scrum Robinson needlessly vaulted himself into was the aftermath of an apparently successful QB sneak by Ty Simpson on 3rd-and-1 with a little more than 2 minutes remaining; I say “apparently” because the precise spot might have been up for debate if officials had actually gotten around to spotting it. Instead, Robinson settled the question for them by getting himself flagged 15 yards for unsportsmanlike conduct, at which point no one really cared from what point they started counting off. The penalty didn’t end the game — Bama still needed 1 more first down to put it on ice, which it did, and which it probably would have anyway based on Simpson’s sneak. Robinson simply did his part by eliminating any possible room for doubt.
6.) Two of Tennessee’s 4 regulation touchdowns against Mississippi State came via the defense, courtesy of a pick-6 in the first half and a strip sack in the second. The only other defensive touchdowns in SEC play in Week 5 also came in the same game — in fact, they came in a span of a little less than 2 minutes: South Carolina’s defense scored via pick-six and strip sack on consecutive possessions against Kentucky, breaking the game wide open en route to a 35-13 win. Obits to the Mark Stoops era in Lexington are already in the can.
7.) Alabama’s win over Georgia only raises the stakes for the Tide’s next big test: This weekend’s grudge match against 5-0 Vanderbilt in Tuscaloosa. The ‘Dores aren’t just winning — they’re winning big, with all 5 wins (including a 31-7 romp at then-No. 11 South Carolina in Week 3) coming by 20+ points. Vandy is up to No. 16 in the updated AP poll in the wake of a 55-35 beatdown of Utah State. Saturday’s collision will be the first Bama/Vandy meeting with both teams ranked since 1937, the second year of the poll’s existence.
Moment of Zen of the Week
Matt Hinton, author of 'Monday Down South' and our resident QB guru, has previously written for Dr. Saturday, CBS and Grantland.
