Let’s start with a comforting thought instead of a daunting thought.
The national championship is still more than 3 months away. How’s that for perspective? Three months from now is a lifetime away. Shoot, that’s basically a full season. Three months is basically like the time between the NFL Draft and the start of fall camp. That’ll take forever to get here.
OK, do you feel comforted? Good.
The not-so-comforting thought as Week 8 approaches is that we’re already halfway through the regular season. The coaching carousel is whipping around, key players are emerging, key players are fading and Bobby Petrino is an interim SEC coach.
Welcome to life at the halfway point of 2025. This season is already a drunken mess that needs to mix in a water.
In honor of that, I thought it’d be an ideal time to hand out some midseason superlatives. For those who haven’t read a senior yearbook, superlatives aren’t exactly awards. They can be, but they’re a touch cheekier than that.
So here are your 2025 SEC Midseason Superlatives:
My worst preseason take — Garrett Nussmeier is QB1 in college football and he’ll lead LSU to a national title
Let’s start this with an “L.” Technically, this is a premature take because LSU is a 5-1 team with 1 narrow loss. But I’d be lying if I told you that I was perfectly fine with that take, which could’ve have started better. The LSU offense is a rough watch in ways that I couldn’t have anticipated, even after preseason whispers that Nussmeier had suffered a serious knee injury. He doesn’t look right, and he knows it. It’s hard to imagine him getting healthier with the schedule that remains, and for a team that doesn’t look like it wants to run the ball, that’s troubling. Also troubling? LSU has the No. 86 scoring offense. Sure, LSU can lean on that defense to do the heavy lifting, but the only national champion in the last 20 years who failed to have a top-25 scoring offense was 2015 Alabama … who still had Heisman Trophy-winning RB Derrick Henry and the No. 30 scoring offense. Yeah, you get it. LSU lacks championship DNA with this version of Nussmeier.
My best preseason take — We needed to be talking more about Ahmad Hardy
He was a member of my annual All-Bang The Drum Team, but Hardy was also my answer to the broad preseason question “who in college football should we be talking about more in the preseason?” Hardy was the guy. Coming off a 1,300-yard season as a true freshman at Louisiana-Monroe, he was an ideal fit in the Eli Drinkwitz/Kirby Moore offense. All Hardy has done is sprint out to the SEC rushing lead by a whopping 195 yards. In fact, Hardy has more rushing yards after first contact (606) than any SEC running back has in total rushing yards, and he’s the Power Conference leader with 49 missed tackles forced (Cam Skattebo and Ashton Jeanty were the only running backs who had him beat in that area last year). He’s been as advertised, which is why his 12 carries in the 3-point Alabama loss was a source of frustration. Still, his 13-game pace is 1,694 rushing yards and all signs point to him running away with the SEC rushing title, perhaps en route to the Doak Walker Award.
My biggest team surprise — Tennessee has the No. 1 scoring offense in America
I wrote about how insane it is that Tennessee owns the nation’s top scoring offense after an offseason in which it lost its:
- A) QB1 Nico Iamaleava post-spring
- B) Top 3 leaders in receiving
- C) SEC Offensive Player of the Year Dylan Sampson
- D) 4 offensive line starters
- E) All the above
It’s “E.” It’s always “E.”
That’s wild. Even if you think the Vols haven’t had a gauntlet defensive schedule yet, it’s a shanked kick away from being 6-0 with a 41-point effort vs. Georgia under its belt. That’s remarkable for a team that basically hit the reset button on offense. It’s riding a 3-headed backfield attack and a prolific passing game with Joey Aguilar, who has found a true go-to guy in Chris Brazzell. Go figure that Mississippi State gave Tennessee’s offense the most trouble, but it’s still a unit that averaged 6.5 yards/play in every game so far. Whether the Vols have a Playoff future remains to be seen because of those defensive issues, but it’s hard not to appreciate the job that Josh Heupel has done to rebuild that offense.
My biggest individual surprise — Trinidad Chambliss
I could’ve easily listed “Austin Simmons is a dark-horse Heisman candidate” as my worst preseason take, but I wanted to instead praise the emergence of Chambliss. After all, his play is why Simmons didn’t get his job back after his injury. Well, a pair of first-quarter interceptions in his first starts of the season didn’t help, but watching Chambliss take over the Lane Kiffin offense has been a revelation. The Division II Ferris State transfer came out of nowhere and has since risen into the Heisman discussion. Why? He can do it all. In addition to his 10 touchdowns (7 passing, 3 rushing) with the 3rd-best adjusted completion percentage on throws 20 yards downfield among Power Conference quarterbacks, he’s been extremely successful with 33 gap-designed quarterback runs (Haynes King is the only Power Conference QB with more). Nothing about Chambliss suggests he was playing in front of hundreds of fans last year.
Biggest team bummer — The LaNorris Sellers surroundings
Here’s the best stat that I can show to illustrate the Sellers experience in 2025:
On top of that, he had 12 (!) missed tackles forced in that LSU game and only 19 rushing yards to show for it. Dude is running for his life far too often. He’s been pressured on 48.7% of his dropbacks, which is the highest among the 137 FBS quarterbacks with at least 30 pressured dropbacks. We already saw Sellers get knocked out of the Vanderbilt game because of a free rusher. On top of that, the Gamecocks are averaging 3.2 yards/carry, which ranks No. 125 in FBS. Consider all of that why South Carolina already fired its offensive line coach after 6 games this season. It doesn’t help that South Carolina’s pass catchers only have 7 contested catches, and the decorated Nyck Harbor has just 61 YAC yards on the season, which is No. 42 among SEC receivers. Shane Beamer vowed to get more help for Sellers in hopes that he wouldn’t have to be Superman every week. So far, that hasn’t been the case.
Biggest individual bummer — Besides unhealthy Garrett Nussmeier? Unhealthy DJ Lagway
Pick your poison. Watching those talented quarterbacks limp around the field with limited offenses has been a brutal hang. They’re clearly not right, but they’re both still out there in hopes that they can make enough plays in the intermediate passing game to prevent their respective teams from falling apart. When they faced off with one another in Week 3, it was a stomach-churning experience to watch both passing games look lost. Nussmeier got the last laugh, but it hasn’t exactly been good times for an LSU passing attack that ranks No. 82 in FBS in yards/attempt (7.1). Lagway has had moments in which he’s looked the part like the Texas win with Dallas Wilson’s debut, and facing 4 consecutive top-10 opponents was brutal, but we’re still talking about a preseason Heisman candidate who is leading the No. 96 offense in yards/play. It’s impossible to get excited about watching either banged-up quarterback.
The Week 1 thing that might as well have happened in a different life — Alabama getting pounded at Florida State
What if I told you after that game that one team would rip off 3 consecutive wins vs. AP Top 25 teams and another would lose 3 consecutive games in conference play. Who would you think that I was talking about? Yeah, that might as well have happened in 1995. But in 2025, it’s now Alabama who looks like the juggernaut who can’t be stopped while Florida State has the coach who could be receiving a hefty buyout in the near future. It’s been such a week-to-week season so far. This game threw out 8 months of takes about both programs, and the last 3 games then erased what happened in Week 1. Kalen DeBoer is now trying to accomplish something that Nick Saban never even got the opportunity to do. That is, win 4 consecutive games vs. AP Top 25 foes without any bye weeks. Meanwhile, Florida State is just trying to avoid its 4th consecutive loss when it travels to Stanford. Just as we all predicted.
“Man, I’m glad I called that guy” — Mario Craver & Mansoor Delane
Shoutout, Billy Madison. Also, I already shouted out Hardy, so we’ll diversify a touch here. This is the superlative for the most valuable transfers so far, which is why I don’t feel like it’s a cop-out to highlight 1 from each side of the ball. Craver came to Texas A&M after showing promise at Mississippi State, but nobody could’ve predicted that he’d have a commanding lead on the SEC receiving race at the midway point of the season. His ridiculous 86-yard catch and run against Notre Dame was one of the plays of the year of the first half of the season, and it fueled his FBS-best 391 YAC yards.
Delane has had plenty of big-time moments himself for a thriving LSU defense. The Virginia Tech transfer had that huge interception in the Clemson win, and he’s got just as many pass break-ups (6) as he has catches allowed on 22 targets in coverage. Quarterbacks have a 22.7 NFL QB rating when targeting him, which ranks No. 1 among SEC corners with 30 coverage snaps. Delane’s emergence has been monumental for the blitz-heavy Blake Baker defense, which needs outside corners who can handle their business in single coverage. Alongside fellow newcomer sensation DJ Pickett, LSU is finally getting back its “DBU” moniker.
The anti-Arch Manning storyline, AKA the thing we should be talking about more — Vandy still has a legitimate Playoff path
I realize that everyone was talking about Vandy going into the Alabama game, and if Diego Pavia had repeated last year’s feat, these conversations would be happening outside of Nashville. But nationally, not enough people seem to care that a ranked Vandy squad is favored vs. top-10 LSU. In other words, there’s a good chance that Vandy will have a 6-1 record with a pair of top-15 wins. Sure, South Carolina is now unranked, but too many people seem to be ignoring Vandy’s Playoff path with a win on Saturday. The latter half isn’t a picnic, but those 5 post-LSU opponents are currently 4-9 in conference play and only 2 road games remain. If the biggest knock is not winning in Tuscaloosa — a place where the Tide have only lost once in the 2020s — that’s hardly a deal-breaker on one’s Playoff chances. The No. 5 offense in FBS in yards/play isn’t just Diego Pavia. It’s an improved defense who can pressure the quarterback (18 sacks) and get takeaways (10). Stop sleeping on Vandy.
Class Clown — SEC Officiating
OK, I thought we’d end with at least 1 real superlative. It goes to SEC Officiating, which has had no shortage of blunders this year, including notable mistakes with:
- The TD catches that Barion Brown and Nyck Harbor had inexplicably wiped off the board in Week 1
- Oklahoma’s illegal non-substitution vs. Auburn … which led to an official correction from the SEC
- Jackson Arnold’s goal-line “fumble” vs. Georgia
- Officials stopping South Carolina plays late post-Sellers injury and during the fake punt attempt at LSU
- The offensive pass interference that wiped off a Chris Brazzell TD at Mississippi State
- Kirby Smart’s “clapping” even though he was clearly trying to call timeout at Auburn
Those are just a few of the officiating blunders that come to mind in the first half of the season, all of which were in crucial moments. Yet, as Josh Pate likes to say, were any officials subjected to post-game questioning? Nope because we still don’t believe in accountability for that all-important area. The SEC can’t even get on the ACC’s level with its replay center.
There’s absolutely zero reason that the SEC shouldn’t adopt the same policy next season. At the very least, there would be more transparency into what in the world is going on with some of these head-scratching officiating blunders.
Until then, SEC Officiating will continue to be clowned.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
