Week 12 gave us a lot of things.
It gave us a couple of top-15 showdowns, it gave us an ironic Lane Kiffin showing and it gave us one of the wildest comebacks you’ll ever see. It was filled with all sorts of entertainment from start to finish.
But perhaps of equal significance on the entertainment front, it gave us an unclear SEC Championship Game picture. In fact, no SEC Championship Game berth will be clinched until the final weekend of the regular season. That’s the way we draw it up. After years of division races being over in early November, we’re getting a down-to-the-wire race to determine who gets trip to Atlanta.
Here’s what else we learned from Week 12 in the SEC:
It’s undeniable — Kirby Smart owns Steve Sarkisian
Don’t believe that? Did you see that onside kick?
Remarkable. It was the moment that turned a close game into a no-doubter. Georgia went from clinging to a 14-10 lead entering the 4th quarter to turning it into the most lopsided victory yet against the Longhorns. A 35-10 beatdown improved Smart’s record to 3-0 against Steve Sarkisian since he and the Longhorns came to the SEC last year.
This one, however, was arguably the most obvious sign that Kirby Smart owns Sarkisian. Between the onside kick, the multiple gutsy 4th-down calls and the unique pressure packages that Smart and Glenn Schumann dialed up, it was a masterclass.
Against a Texas team that showed it could overcome slow starts on the road, Georgia kept its foot on the gas by harassing Arch Manning all night. It didn’t help Texas’s cause that once again, it couldn’t run the ball and it was held to 23 rushing yards (it had 31 and 29 rushing yards in last year’s losses to UGA). Mind you, that UGA defensive showing came even though captain CJ Allen left the game. That just speaks to Smart always being 1 step ahead of Sarkisian and finding a way.
Last year, Gunner Stockton came into the SEC Championship Game and led a gritty comeback, albeit one that showed his inexperience. This year, he looked every bit like one of the best quarterbacks in the country. He tied a career-high with 5 touchdowns (4 passing, 1 rushing) against an elite Texas defense that was healthy after getting Michael Taaffe and Jelani McDonald back. It didn’t matter. Stockton was decisive, clutch and dare I say … Stetson Bennett IV-like?
Georgia is now shaping into the scariest team in the country while Texas likely will need chaos to keep its Playoff hopes alive after a blowout defeat for loss No. 3.
Brent Venables is better than you think he is at this
What do I mean by that? Let’s recap what Oklahoma just did on Saturday at Alabama without its best defensive player, R Mason Thomas. Venables and the Sooners:
- A) Scored 17 points off 3 Alabama turnovers after it had 6 all season
- B) Improved to 2-0 vs. Kalen DeBoer while handing him his first home loss since 2021 at Fresno State
- C) Handed Alabama its first SEC loss at Bryant-Denny Stadium since 2019
- D) Got arguably the most impressive true road win of the 2025 season
- E) All the above
It’s “E.” It’s always “E.”
Ty Simpson was overwhelmed by what the Sooners defense dialed up. It wasn’t just the turnovers. It was the 4 sacks and the constant pressure on Simpson that forced him into quick decisions. Taylor Wein and Kip Lewis played like All-Americans, Eli Bowen hauled in another interception against an Alabama quarterback and Peyton Bowen put the game away with a textbook pass breakup on 4th down.
In every way, it felt like exactly the type of win that Oklahoma signed up for it when it transitioned from Lincoln Riley to the defensive-minded Venables. After fooling Joey Aguilar into a sloppy performance with a statement win in Tennessee, Venables somehow one-upped that effort by winning in Tuscaloosa. Just for a little perspective, OU didn’t have a true road win vs. an AP Top 25 team in the 2020s. That is, until this 2-game stretch.
Oklahoma played like its Playoff life was on the line because, well, it was. Now at 8-2, Venables not only fended off preseason hot-seat talk, but the Sooners have a clear path to the Playoff with home games against Mizzou and LSU to close the season, both of whom have injured starting quarterbacks. With a gauntlet like what the Sooners have seen, that’s about all they could’ve asked for.
1-dimensional Alabama finally ran into the team it couldn’t fend off
Nobody said that 1-loss Alabama was a perfect team entering Saturday’s matchup vs. Oklahoma. We knew that as impressive as the 8-game winning streak was after the season-opening loss, the Tide had ground-game issues that perhaps prevented Kalen DeBoer’s squad from keeping its foot on the gas. This late into the season, it was unrealistic to expect a unit without a 4.0 yards per carry showing vs. Power Conference competition to turn things around without reinforcements.
But man, the Sooners exposed those issues in a major way.
Alabama’s pass protection broke down in part because Oklahoma didn’t respect the run. Those Sooner pass-rushers pinned their ears back and made Simpson look more overwhelmed than he’s been since the Week 1 game at Florida State. Alabama dominated time of possession, yet it couldn’t lean on the Sooners, and instead, Simpson was asked to make too many tight-window throws. Even on a day in which Alabama won the rushing battle 80-74 — that was the second time that Alabama did so in a Power Conference game — it was reminded that it might not have national championship DNA without that all-important element.
After all, nobody has won a national title with fewer than 122.8 rushing yards per game (1999 Florida State). Alabama entered the day at 111.9 and is going in the wrong direction.
Suddenly, that Iron Bowl just got a whole lot more interesting for the Tide’s Playoff chances.
Texas A&M … should we be worried or impressed? Or both?
Yes, it was worrying watching Texas A&M fall behind 30-3 at home to a 3-win South Carolina squad. Yes, it was impressive that A&M pulled off the biggest comeback in school history and become the first SEC team in the last 287 attempts to win a conference game after falling behind by 27 points.
Can both things be true?
It’s hard to play as bad as A&M did in the first half. Missed throws, drops, poor trenches play, bad kicking, brutal play calling … you name it, A&M did it. It was easily the lowest floor we’ve seen from the Aggies this year, and you could argue that it was the lowest floor we’ve seen from a potential championship contender. On the heels of news breaking of Mike Elko‘s extension, the timing couldn’t have been more awkward for A&M to lay a first-half egg like that.
But perhaps by somehow navigating that, an undefeated A&M learned a tough lesson without necessarily enduring its first loss. Marcel Reed hadn’t faced a deficit of more than 10 points all season, and it was up to him to flip the script. That’s not to discount what that A&M defense by pitching a second-half shutout against LaNorris Sellers and the Gamecock offense, which had legitimate life in the first half with interim OC Mike Furrey. At the same time, A&M would’ve been laughed off the field if not for Reed settling in, which he did after that 4th-and-12 conversion en route to a 371-76 yards advantage in the second half.
Some might want to write off A&M after it needed such a furious comeback to survive South Carolina. After all, the Aggies have their first 10-0 start since 1992 and they’re just trying to reach a conference title game for the first time in the 21st century.
At the very least, the Aggies are keeping everyone on their toes.
Finally, Lane Kiffin got the last laugh on Florida
It wasn’t easy. For a good chunk of Saturday night in Oxford, it felt like Florida could pull off one of the most stunning results of the season, and it was shades of the 2024 stunner in The Swamp when the Gators ultimately kept Kiffin’s squad from its first Playoff berth. So yeah, a year later with all the speculation about Florida’s desire to poach Kiffin, it would’ve been all sorts of ironic if it happened again.
Thankfully for Kiffin, he recruited Kewan Lacy out of the portal.
Unlike last year when Kiffin didn’t have a steady ground game for the first time at Ole Miss, he turned to Lacy to close things out. Well, there were a pair of failed 4th-and-goal attempts wherein he opted for passing plays that weren’t carries to Lacy. But other than that, Lacy got the rock all night. His 31 carries for 224 yards and 3 touchdowns set the tone for an Ole Miss squad that was up and down in seemingly every other area. Lacy allowed Trinidad Chambliss to shake off a rare subpar showing and ultimately, he allowed his head coach to avoid what would’ve been an awkward 2 weeks leading up to the Egg Bowl.
At 10-1, Ole Miss clinched its 3rd consecutive season with double-digit wins for the first time in program history. Saturday likely all but guaranteed Ole Miss a Playoff berth for the first time in program history.
What a difference a year makes.
Ahmad Hardy’s 300-yard game made perfect sense
I mean, there’s the obvious reason why we shouldn’t have been surprised to see Hardy hit the 300-yard mark and produced the 6th-best single-game rushing total in SEC history. The Mizzou running back leads the conference in rushing and Mississippi State had the second-most missed tackles (110) in the SEC entering the night, which was on the heels of allowing Georgia to rack up 303 rushing yards on 17 missed tackles.
Hardy’s brilliance all but locked in his SEC rushing title, so it made sense that he had a big night. Shoot, it even made sense that Eli Drinkwitz had him getting carries late in the blowout win, in hopes that he could get to the 300-yard mark.
But why else did it make sense? As we learned in Hardy’s postgame interview with Cole Cubelic on SEC Network, Hardy finally took the offensive line out to dinner for the first time this week. All it yielded was a 300-yard day at the office.
Needless to say, Hardy has some high-priced dinner tabs in his future.
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.
