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Alabama and Florida square off Saturday in Atlanta in the SEC Championship Game. An Alabama win practically assures the Crimson Tide their second College Football Playoff berth in as many years. For Florida, an SEC title would be the tiara on a Cinderella-type first season for head coach Jim McElwain in Gainesville.
Here is a look at several players that have a one-on-one matchup to boom in the SEC Championship Game, and a few that will go bust.
BOOMS
- DE Jonathan Allen – If your offensive line is suspect, Jonathan Allen will exploit it. Just ask Texas A&M, which coughed up four sacks to the Alabama defensive end. The junior leads the Tide with 11.5 tackles-for-loss and 9.0 sacks as an all-around menace in opponent’s backfields. Unfortunately for Florida, the Gators offensive line allowed the most sacks (3.08 per game) in the SEC (No. 116 nationally) this season. The equation adds up to a big day for Allen and a long one for Florida quarterback Treon Harris and the Gator offense.
- WR/PR Antonio Callaway – Antonio Callaway has a knack for stepping up in big moments this season en route to amassing a team-high 557 receiving yards and four touchdowns. The speedy freshman has also tallied 351 punt return yards, including a 72-yard scoring scamper against LSU that tied the game late. The Alabama secondary is vulnerable to big plays, while its special teams defense averages a middling 8.26 yards per return. It’s a matchup that Callaway can potentially exploit for big yardage.
- RB Derrick Henry – Derrick Henry makes this list because you can’t exclude a guy from a “boom” list who has rushed for more than 200 yard games in his last four contests. We’d be remiss to omit a player who is 95 yards shy of breaking Herschel Walker’s single-season SEC record for rushing yards (1,891 yards). Florida is stiff against the run, allowing 111.3 YPG, second only to Alabama in the SEC (No. 7 nationally). But 111 yards are the types of numbers that the Heisman hopefully has typically been posting in the first half of games. If the Gators can contain Henry like Arkansas did (95 yards on 27 carries) then the senior still breaks Walker’s record, but allows Florida to possibly have a fighting chance against the heavily-favored Crimson Tide. If Jim McElwain’s squad can’t bottle Henry up, then this game could be over before the halftime show.
BUSTS
- RB Kelvin Taylor – Kelvin Taylor closed out the regular season with three straight rushing performances of more than 100 yards, and reached the century mark in four of his final five games. Taylor needs 23 yards to reach 1,000 for the season to go along with his 13 touchdowns. But the junior running back goes up against the nation’s No. 1 run defense in Reggie Ragland (90 tackles, 6.5 TFL) and the Tide. Alabama gave up a stingy 78.9 yards per game on the ground during the regular season. Nick Saban’s defense has allowed just one running back all year (Georgia’s Nick Chubb, 146 yards) to break the 100-yard plateau.
- PR Cyrus Jones – Cyrus Jones is a threat every time he touches the ball. The senior punt returner has 406 yards and three touchdowns on the season, tops in the nation — ahead of the likes of Texas A&M’s Christian Kirk, Georgia’s Isaiah McKenzie and Cameron Sutton of Tennessee, who have two return touchdowns apiece. Jones runs into the teeth of the Florida special teams in the SEC Championship game, however. The Gators have one of the best punt return defenses in the nation (No. 10 nationally), yielding an average of 3.04 yards per return and no touchdowns.
- Jake Coker – How close are the Alabama and Florida passing games? The Crimson Tide ranks No. 73 in the nation with 215.2 YPG, followed by the No. 74 Gators at 214.9 YPG. Alabama quarterback Jake Coker has thrown for 2,285 yards and 15 touchdowns. The senior, however, hasn’t thrown for more than 300 yards in a game all season, and hasn’t gone above 200 yards since Week 8 against Tennessee. Florida brings a secondary that allows just 172.3 YPG to opponents and is one pick behind Alabama and Ole Miss for conference lead. Vernon Hargreaves III and Jalen Tabor each have four interceptions to pace the dangerous Gator secondary. The Crimson Tide defense is just as sturdy (185.7 passing YPG) as Florida’s, but the Gators are one of the best teams in the country at not turning the ball over through the air.
Chris Wuensch is a contributing writer for Saturday Down South. He covers South Carolina and Tennessee.
