Hurricanes are blowing in, and title dreams are growing or crumbling, depending on who you’re rooting for. It’s the first week where the entire league is playing in conference — or was, anyway, before Hurricane Matthew forced the postponement of LSU at Florida — and it’s also the most competitive set of games we’ve had yet this season.
So if you’re somewhere safe, sit back, and prepare for a wonderful weekend of SEC football. Time to check in with some bold predictions for SEC Week 6.
The LSU/Florida game will be played because it will matter to the SEC title race(s): Look, the game has been canceled before the weekly predictions are made. But there’s a bold one hidden for you. Coaches hate rescheduling games as the season goes, but either Florida or LSU will make enough of a run that this game will matter to the SEC pecking order, and so it will be played somehow, some time.
Alabama’s offense will have 500 yards against Arkansas, and the Tide will cover: The Tide were somewhat underwhelming last week against Kentucky, but expect a big game from them this weekend at Arkansas. The Razorbacks will make enough plays offensively to keep the game competitive into the second half, which just means that the Alabama ground and air game will have no need to call off the proverbial dogs. Alabama has two tough games coming up in the next two weeks, but they will flex their muscles on Saturday.
Mississippi State will upset Auburn and Nick Fitzgerald will be the best QB in that game: Gus Malzahn’s job security situation is pretty fluid week-to-week, but a Mississippi State team off a bye week will be significantly better. Nick Fitzgerald will give Auburn a dose of its own dual-threat medicine, and the Gus Bus will spring a flat time in Starkville. The home team has won 4 of the last 5 games in this series, and that streak will continue.
I made FIVE bold predictions for the Vols & Aggies! For a game this big, one prediction didn’t seem like enough. Here’s one, but look for that story later on the site: Trevor Knight will pass for 300 yards, but Tennessee will limit his effectiveness on the ground. Will A&M lose its first game after earning its fifth win? You’ll have to wait a couple of hours for that answer.
South Carolina will lead Georgia at halftime, but won’t have the depth to win: The Bulldogs will be flat and heartbroken after last weekend’s crushing loss in Athens. South Carolina isn’t a good team, but Will Muschamp’s defense is predicated on making teams patiently dink and dunk for chunks of yardage. Georgia has struggled with those types of defenses (see Nicholls State, for goodness sakes). Carolina will hit some running plays on a fairly porous Georgia front seven, and will look good early before UGA’s superior talent takes over late in the game.
The under is the play of the week on Kentucky and Vandy, and Stephen Johnson is the better QB: Watching Kentucky and Vandy play tends to be like watching someone try to catch a greased pig at the county fair.
There’s a lot of noise and energy, and at the end, you wonder why everybody bothered.
Apparently, Vandy QB Kyle Shurmur is going to be playing with an eye patch following a recent injury. Requests for Kentucky’s Stephen Johnson to don a peg leg have gone unanswered, but these two passing games wouldn’t look much different if they were led by pirates.
Ralph Webb and Boom Williams are the big stories in this game, but they’ll play to a draw, and Kentucky’s spotty passing game is better than Vandy’s completely hopeless passing game, so UK wins by a score in a 14-10, 17-10, 21-14 type of game. The under is 51, and while degenerate gambling isn’t encouraged, this feels like free money.
Joe Cox is a columnist for Saturday Down South. He has also written or assisted in writing five books, and his most recent, Almost Perfect (a study of baseball pitchers’ near-miss attempts at perfect games), is available on Amazon or at many local bookstores.
