It was a dream Week 3 slate.
I don’t say that lightly. There were ranked matchups, juicy conference matchups and everything in between in Week 3. It was the type of Saturday that one couldn’t help but daydream about this offseason.
Naturally, there were going to be some significant takeaways at the midway point of September.
Here were the top takeaways from Week 3 in the SEC:
Josh Heupel might not ever get over the Georgia hump, but his team can still be darn good
Tennessee found a new way to lose to Georgia, and this one was far more devastating than any of the previous 8 defeats. Joey Aguilar and the Vols were a field goal away from likely being the talk of college football. Instead, a shanked kick and a defensive letdown in overtime changed that discussion.
Still, though. I came away from that came being incredibly impressed with Aguilar. He’s been one of the stories of the year so far in college football, which continued on Saturday. It wasn’t just that he came out getting every blade of grass that he wanted. It was that he responded like someone who didn’t care about Tennessee’s post-first quarter woes against Georgia. He led Tennessee to 20 post first-quarter points, which matched the combined total from the previous 4 games vs. UGA.
That deep ball and confidence got the Vols back off the mat after Georgia scored 20 consecutive points. What started to feel like a runaway Georgia victory turned into the best game of the young season thanks to Aguilar and a bend-don’t-break Tennessee defense.
Yes, 44 points wouldn’t suggest it was “break, don’t bend.” I get that. Ultimately, the dam broke on the Josh McCray walk-off touchdown plunge in overtime. But there were key stands that Tennessee turned into UGA field goals instead of touchdowns, which was what allowed Aguilar to deliver a drive that felt like what Hendon Hooker did 3 years ago against Alabama. The only difference was Tennessee didn’t make the game-winning kick.
Not all should be lost for the Vols.
Texas A&M finally didn’t lose a game that would’ve been part of an 8-4 footnote
Did the officials miss a holding penalty on Marcel Reed’s go-ahead touchdown pass to Nate Boerkircher? Probably, but you know what? That’s the game that Texas A&M can never seem to win and it finally put itself in position to do just that. For the first time since 2014, the Aggies beat a ranked team on the road. It was going to need a break or 2 to make that happen (Tyler Buchner’s fumbled snap on the PAT proved costly). Taking down the defending national runner-up would’ve meant a bit more if the Irish had won at Miami in Week 1, but still.
Look at what we saw from A&M. The biggest question was the passing attack. Those transfer portal receivers earned a raise after the way they made plays all night. Mario Craver was lethal with 207 (!) receiving yards, and KC Concepcion looked like the guy who earned freshman All-America honors 2 years ago at NC State. And go figure that a Scott Frost-era Nebraska tight end like Boerkircher would deliver one of the biggest A&M touchdowns of the Playoff era.
Mike Elko has himself a team that can light up the scoreboard with a trio of 40-point performances to start the season. And while allowing 40 points wasn’t exactly what the defensive-minded coach probably had in mind for his trip to South Bend, holding preseason All-American Jeremiyah Love to 4.1 yards per carry is nothing to scoff at.
The Aggies will enter SEC play as a legitimate contender.
I’m more impressed with LSU’s defense than I’m worried about LSU’s offense
I know, I know. Garrett Nussmeier and the LSU offense haven’t hit 24 points in a game yet. The Tigers had 10 first downs and half of their rushing yards came on a 51-yard run to put the game away. Does that also overlook the fact that it’s a 3-0 team with maybe its best defense in over a decade? And does that overlook the fact that this group had a daunting start that included a trip to Clemson and a home game against a Florida team that rolled in The Swamp last year? Yes, yes and yes.
Time will tell if Nussmeier and the Tigers can win a shootout. What I do know is that LSU is comfortable winning games with its defense and being a bit more conservative on offense. Maybe that means we’re watching 2024 Tennessee. We don’t know. All we know is that LSU had matchups against 2 highly decorated quarterbacks, and it turned both of them into a shell of themselves with just 1 touchdown allowed in a pair of victories.
A 5-interception game is nothing to scoff at. LSU hadn’t done that to an SEC quarterback since 2020 against Matt Corral-led Ole Miss. It wasn’t flukey, either. LSU did that without defensive captain Whit Weeks, who was ejected for targeting on the opening drive, and fellow starting linebacker/little brother West Weeks left with a calf injury. Didn’t matter. LSU was a step ahead of Lagway the whole night.
Better days are ahead for the LSU offense … beginning on Saturday against Southeast Louisiana.
So … Alabama definitely heard the criticism. Will that matter at Georgia in a couple weeks?
The Alabama Crimson Tide came out and looked like they were on a mission against Wisconsin. Ty Simpson was dialed in from the jump (he was 1 short of tying Mac Jones’s record for consecutive completions), Germie Bernard continued to look like Alabama’s best player and the Kalen DeBoer-led Tide did to a backup quarterback what the Nick Saban-led Tide so often did to a backup quarterback. Even Ryan Williams got back into the action with a little trickery play that he took 75 yards to the house.
It was all evident in a dominant win against Wisconsin ahead of the bye week and subsequent Georgia game.
That begs the question — will a DeBoer-led Tide now do what a Saban-led Tide did to Georgia? That is, take care of business against Kirby Smart. Blowout wins against Louisiana-Monroe and Wisconsin shouldn’t make that feel imminent, especially given the fact that UGA hasn’t lost a home game at night since 2009. Shoot, Alabama is 2-5 in games away from Tuscaloosa under DeBoer. That’ll loom over that Week 5 matchup, even if the Tide get a boost with Tim Keenan and Jam Miller hopeful to return.
But if you were looking for the Tide to show some signs of life after being written off after the Florida State embarrassment — especially from Williams and Bray Hubbard — a pair of get-right beatdown wins should’ve checked that box.
Arch Manning isn’t just playing through nerves; he’s playing through flaws
Yeesh. Getting boo birds from the home crowd in the 3rd quarter against UTEP was … not the way Texas drew it up. Manning struggled on Saturday. A streak of 10 consecutive incompletions was the lowlight of a frustrating afternoon for the decorated Texas quarterback. The passing game just hasn’t found its rhythm, much of which seems like it’s on Manning.
The weird press conference moment that Steve Sarkisian delivered earlier in the week had to be on the minds of the Austin faithful. If Manning is fully healthy, as Sarkisian suggested, he’s not mechanically right. The off-target throws have been too frequent, especially in an offensive scheme that usually produces big throwing windows. Manning’s go-to guy was supposed to be Ryan Wingo, and that connection has yet to get going. It didn’t help that DeAndre Moore and preseason All-SEC selection Tre Wisner were both out, which was magnified when CJ Baxter left the game on his first carry of the day.
Texas doesn’t have anything on offense that it can turn to just to move the chains. Sooner or later, Manning has to figure that out.
Don’t let the LaNorris Sellers injury distract you from what Vanderbilt just did
Two things can be true at the same time. One is that it was brutal to watch Sellers leave the game after Langston Patterson got a clean shot on him, which led to a targeting ejection. For South Carolina, winning that game without the heart and soul of that team would’ve been a challenge against any SEC squad, and it didn’t help that Nyck Harbor also left this one. The Gamecocks had to throw their script out the window once Luke Doty came in.
But what that shouldn’t take away from what Clark Lea’s squad did in an elite atmosphere. Just as it did in the previous week against Virginia Tech, it silenced that building. That wasn’t just Diego Pavia, either. It was Steven Gregory and Clark Lea dialing up a game plan that had South Carolina’s offense completely lost both with and without Sellers.
Vanderbilt looks like a better version of the 7-6 team that shocked the college football world last year. That’s a scary thought for a host of SEC teams that were banking on some sort of regression. South Carolina, on the other hand, looks like it’s got “regression” written all over it with a daunting schedule that awaits.
Auburn-Oklahoma is now everything we hoped it’d be
All I wanted was for these teams to meet in Week 4 as undefeated, Top-25 teams. After Auburn got past South Alabama and Oklahoma trucked Temple in a bizarre trip to Philadelphia, that’s exactly what we’ll get in Jackson Arnold’s return to Oklahoma. Cheers to that.
And cheers to both Arnold and John Mateer looking what they were billed as. That is, legitimate upgrades at their respective programs. That’s going to make the juice for Week 4 that much better. Arnold has a chance to deliver Brent Venables a statement performance that would sting more than last year’s Tennessee loss or even more than last year’s Texas loss. On the flip side, Mateer can move into the driver’s seat for the Heisman Trophy while showing Oklahoma that it was right to move on from Arnold and land him and Ben Arbuckle from Washington State.
It’s fascinating that the scheduling gods made this the SEC opener for Auburn and Oklahoma. It’ll set the tone for a pair of teams who appear to be on their way to moving past last year’s disastrous offensive showing.
Arnold’s return to Norman will be must-see TV.
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.
