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I don’t like reaching the midway point of the season.
I realize that’s how time works, but it’s still not something I celebrate because it means that moving forward, we have fewer fall Saturdays remaining than fall Saturdays in the bank. I don’t like that, and neither should you. When I’m commissioner of college football, I’ll stop this unfair annual tradition of fall operating at 2X speed.
I do, however, like distracting myself from that reality by digging up interesting stats that help tell the story about the first half of the season. There is no shortage of those.
Here are my 10 favorite wild SEC stats as we acknowledge (begrudgingly) the midway point of the 2024 season:
1. Vanderbilt has a positive scoring margin in SEC play and it has as many SEC wins as preseason top-10 teams Ole Miss and Mizzou combined
To be fair, you could say the same thing for fellow non-bowl 2023 squad Arkansas, which like Vandy, also beat a top-5 team this season. But this is Vandy! Like, the team with 2 SEC wins in the 2020s decade until Diego Pavia and roughly half of the 2023 New Mexico State program showed up. This is the program that cleared its 2.5 regular-season over/under and ended an 0-60 start vs. AP Top-5 opponents by beating No. 1 Alabama. The fact that the ‘Dores doubled down on that by controlling the game at Kentucky, who was fresh off a bye and a win against No. 6 Ole Miss, was telling.
Go figure that Mizzou’s lone SEC win in 2 tries was a double-overtime thriller against Vandy. The Dores are incredibly close to being 3-0 in SEC play with 2 wins against top-10 teams. Even crazier? With a win against Ball State as a 4-touchdown favorite this weekend, Vandy could clinch bowl eligibility before November for the first time in program history. All it has to do is beat the No. 1 team in America for the second time this season.
In this Pavia universe that we’re living in, who can rule that out?
2. 2 of the SEC’s 3 remaining unbeatens in conference play have had multiple QBs start multiple games
That might not be “wild” to some, but think about how often an injury to a starting quarterback can derail a season. For A&M and Texas, both programs turned to redshirt freshmen who stepped in and stepped up. That’s nothing to scoff at. Marcel Reed and Arch Manning helped themselves and helped their teams by weathering the storm instead of turtling.
I say it over and over again. Even at a time when quarterback depth is so tough to come by with the fluid nature of the transfer portal, it’s often the overlooked ingredient for a successful team. At the very least, having depth at that position allows an offense to have a full playbook available instead of worrying about what can happen if the QB run game is overused or if the pass rush tees off on a quarterback as he attacks downfield. Texas and Texas A&M already checked that all-important box.
3. Auburn suffered 3 pre-October home losses for the first time in program history
It can be attributed to an FBS-worst -11 in turnover margin. By the way, I looked that pre-October loss stat up immediately after Auburn inexplicably blew a double-digit lead in the 4th quarter against Oklahoma. I went all the way back to the 1910s and realized that they didn’t play 3 pre-October games back then. You know what else they didn’t do back then? Play in the SEC.
But that’s the problem. It’d be one thing if Auburn lost to 3 juggernauts at home. It lost to Cal as a 2-touchdown favorite, it lost to an Arkansas team that won 4 games last year and it lost to an Oklahoma team without its top 5 receivers but with a true freshman in his first career start. Needless to say, the Jordan-Hare faithful probably didn’t mind a month-long break from the home slate.
4. Tre Harris has 411 more receiving yards than any other SEC receiver
This just in — Harris is putting up video game numbers. He has 987 receiving yards, and would’ve already cleared 1,000 had he held on to that long pass from Jaxson Dart in the LSU game. That and the Kentucky fumble are the only demerits for the Ole Miss receiver in 2024.
I limited this to the SEC, but if I didn’t want to do that, I’d point out that Harris has 245 more receiving yards than any “Core 4” player. Yes, he’s got the extra game because most teams have already had their bye and Ole Miss is entering its first bye week, but still. The gap between Harris and any other SEC receiver (411 yards) is a number that only 9 other SEC receivers have totaled this season.
5. 17-year-old Ryan Williams (in case you haven’t heard) has more 50-yard catches (5) than 13 SEC teams
By now, you know that the Alabama freshman is 17. You also know that he’s a home run play waiting to happen. Seven of his 23 catches have gone for at least 40 yards (only 23 FBS teams have that many 40-yard pass plays in 2024), which is why he’s averaging an FBS-best 25 yards/catch. Surely that’ll come down … right? The SEC record for yards/catch for an entire season is held by Mississippi State’s Danny Knight, who averaged 25.0 yards/catch in 1982.
If Williams broke that 42-year-old record before he could legally vote, that’d be an absurd feat, even by his own absurd standard.
6. Texas has only trailed for 3 minutes and 50 seconds (of a possible 360 minutes) and it allowed 1 TD pass
What’s even more impressive than Texas’ pass defense being so dominant while leading? That 1 touchdown pass allowed in 6 games was in the final 2 minutes of a 31-6 game at Michigan when Texas already pulled its first-stringers. That’ll play. Yes, there’s a decent chance that ends against Carson Beck this weekend. The Dawgs are the only top-70 scoring offense that Texas played in 2024. But these defensive numbers through 6 games are off the charts:
- No. 1 in FBS in scoring defense
- No. 1 in FBS in yards/play allowed
- No. 1 in FBS in yards/game allowed
- No. 1 in FBS in yards/pass allowed
- No. 1 in FBS in TD passes allowed
- No. 1 in FBS in opposing 10-yard scrimmage plays
- No. 1 in FBS in opposing 20-yard scrimmage plays
- T-No. 1 in FBS in opposing 30-yard scrimmage plays
- No. 2 in FBS in opposing QB rating allowed
- No. 2 in FBS in opposing red-zone scoring percentage
- No. 4 in FBS in rushing TDs allowed
- No. 7 in FBS in opposing 3rd down conversion percentage
Yeah, that’s why that field goal at the end of the first quarter against Oklahoma put Texas in the lone deficit it faced all season.
7. Dylan Sampson already has as many rushing TDs (15) as any SEC player in the entire 2023 season
Lost in the shuffle of Nico Iamaleava’s October regression is just how good Sampson has been in that featured-back role. He’s been finishing drives for a Tennessee offense that’s come back down to Earth in the past 10 quarters. In just 6 games, Sampson matched Quinshon Judkins’ SEC-best 15 rushing touchdowns in 2023. With 2 more rushing scores, Sampson will have more than any SEC player in the last 3 seasons.
Here are the SEC players who hit 20 rushing touchdowns in a season:
- 1. 2015 Derrick Henry, 28
- 2. 2020 Najee Harris, 26
- T3. 2013 Tre Mason, 23
- T3. 2007 Tim Tebow, 23
- 5. 2015 Leonard Fournette, 22
- T6. 2012 Johnny Manziel, 21
- T6. 2011 Trent Richardson, 21
- T8. 2015 Alex Collins, 20
- T8, 2010 Cam Newton, 20
As long as Sampson stays healthy, all signs point to him joining that list. Who knows? Maybe he’ll top it if Tennessee can make a run to the College Football Playoff.
8. Ole Miss is averaging 84.6 penalty yards/game
I know what you’re thinking. That seems high, but how high is it? Well, here are the highest penalty yards/game totals by SEC teams in the 21st century:
- 2001 Mississippi State — 89.7 penalty yards/game
- 2000 Mississippi State — 86.9 penalty yards/game
- 2002 Alabama — 78.8 penalty yards/game
- 2021 Ole Miss — 75.2 penalty yards/game
- 2003 Georgia — 73.7 penalty yards/game
- 2003 Mississippi State — 72.3 penalty yards/game
- 2008 Georgia — 72.2 penalty yards/game
- 2002 Arkansas — 71.6 penalty yards/game
- 2001 Georgia — 71.0 penalty yards/game
- 2021 Florida — 70.6 penalty yards/game
So yeah, Ole Miss is trying to avoid stealing that dubious title from those early 21st-century Mississippi State squads. Including 2021 Ole Miss, there’s a decent chance that Lane Kiffin will have 2 of the SEC’s 5 most penalized teams of the 21st century. I don’t think that’ll be going on his résumé anytime soon.
9. Oklahoma has converted just 26.8% on 3rd down …
… No SEC team has been that bad for a full season since the NCAA started tracking 3rd-down conversion percentage in 2005.
Woof. The 3rd-down woes that surfaced in the season opener against Temple haven’t been figured out, even with a quarterback change. Of course, when you’re without your top 5 receivers and your offensive line is banged up, it’s hard to convert on 3rd down at a successful rate. Still, though. That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement of Seth Littrell to keep his OC job at his alma mater.
The good news for Oklahoma is that the number to clear so that it doesn’t hold that dubious title by season’s end is only 26.9%, which was set by 2010 Vanderbilt. The bad news for Oklahoma is that 4 of the last 6 games are against AP Top 25 teams, and half of those 6 foes are among the top 25 nationally in opposing 3rd-down conversion percentage.
10. South Carolina leads FBS with the most tackles for loss in conference play (33)
As in, the team that already faced the likes of LSU, Ole Miss and Alabama. Kyle Kennard, Dylan Stewart, Tonka Hemingway and TJ Sanders have been phenomenal for Shane Beamer. Kennard, the Georgia Tech transfer and Stewart, the 5-star true freshman, are the newcomers, which perhaps explains why this group looks so different than last year when it totaled 38 TFLs in 8 conference games (No. 107 in FBS). If you can believe it, that total was actually the highest in the first 3 years of the Beamer era.
Needless to say, this group will smash that total, likely as soon as this weekend when it faces that aforementioned struggling Oklahoma offense.
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.
