2020 SEC football awards for players, coaches announced
Alabama’s undefeated run through the SEC, including the conference championship win over Florida, was recognized on the All-SEC football awards.
The Crimson Tide had both offensive and defensive players of the year in DeVonta Smith and Patrick Surtain II. Smith had 98 receptions for 1,511 yards and 17 touchdowns. Surtain had an interception with 10 pass breakups and two quarterback hurries.
The freshman award was shared by Missouri and Auburn as Connor Bazelak and Tank Bigsby each came on strong, especially early in the season.
Bazelak completed 67 percent of his passes for 2,366 yards with seven touchdowns and six interceptions. His best game was against LSU when he passed for 406 yards and four touchdowns. Bigsby rushed for 834 yards and five touchdowns.
Georgia’s Jake Camarda had a 47.8 punting average to take home the special teams honor.
Here’s the list of all of the honors:
2020 ALL-SEC HONORS/COACHES’ TEAMS
Offensive Player of the Year: DeVonta Smith, Alabama
Defensive Player of the Year: Patrick Surtain II, Alabama
Special Teams Player of the Year: Jake Camarda, Georgia
Freshman of the Year: Connor Bazelak, Missouri; Tank Bigsby, Auburn
Scholar-Athlete of the Year: Mac Jones, Alabama
Jacobs Blocking Trophy: Landon Dickerson, Alabama; Alex Leatherwood, Alabama*
Coach of the Year: Nick Saban, Alabama
Nick Saban is not the coach of the year. His stacked team with NFL talent all over the place nearly lost to a 3-loss team who lost to LSU who very few teams had trouble beating this year. What a coaching job!
Nick Saban should absolutely be the coach of the year. They haven’t lost a game and probably will not. Don’t understand the mindset that because he has a loaded team (he recruited them!) that almost lost (they won!), that he shouldn’t win COY. Strange….
He recruited them? He doesn’t have to recruit, all he has to do look through the little eye hole in the door and see who’s knocking. If it’s a kid he likes he answers it, if not he just waits until they quit knocking and go away.
I don’t understand this argument. When Nick Saban came, Bama was one of the laughingstocks of the SEC. They had fallen off so bad. Nick led them to a national championship two years after coming, with the talent that he didn’t even recruit. Yes, now all the good players want to come to Bama, but Nick still has to recruit them and make sure they stay satisfied even if they aren’t starting. It’s funny because Devonta could have transferred when he wasn’t getting much praise last year, only thought of Bama’s fourth wide receiver. But Nick finds a way to make the kids feel like they always have a chance in playing time. Sure, all the good players want to come to Bama now. But Nick still has to coach them and make them better. Nick transferred a team that had been off the deep end for some time now into a dynasty that doesn’t look like it will stop. He just did something that’s never been done before, winning 11 SEC games, 10 in the regular season. All but one was a two score game. That’s incredible, and those who debate the fact that he deserves it this year are just haters.
Yes, he is the CEO of Alabama football. Even if you say that his assistants recruit them, well, he hired the assistants. Also, he built the culture that now allows them to cherry pick players that they want. This is all Saban’s doing. He deserves coach of the year almost every year, to be honest. But, we live in a culture where honors have to be spread around no matter who the most deserving is.
Nick Saban is COY not only in the SEC but in all of CF. This guy is also the GOAT in my opinion. He can coach, recruit, and represent Alabama and the SEC at the highest level.
I agree, he is coach of the Decade. He deserves it
So I believe they’re undefeated. Something everyone before the season was saying couldn’t be done with a conference only schedule..
I don’t see a nearly lost listed anyone in the record…. I do see a butt hurt Missouri fan posting dumb$hit although that’s not new…
Clearly the conference isn’t nearly as good as originally thought either. LSU, Auburn and Tennessee were all supposed to be good, remember? I mean, we all saw even Sarkisian can win games with that roster, Nick doesn’t even need to be there obviously.
You do realize Sark is a great coach and only got fired cause he was an alcoholic
“It’s the players who make the coach and never the other way around” -Sparky Anderson.
What goat Saban did in this year of the Covid is nothing short of incredible, truly did not expect any P5 teams to go undefeated, yet his team did. Saban is the runaway COY…end of story booch…imho of course
Sparky won COY award that year, if I recall…
Yeah, it was Sparky’s way of saying he didn’t do anything different than he did any other year, he just had a lot of good players, and that was the difference.
Saban has COVID before the UGA game with all the distractions and they still beat us.
Saban will find a way to win; that’s what makes him the GOAT. I admit it; I don’t like to but the truth hurts sometimes. Saban COY, no doubt about it Booches. I will say Drink is deserving of Rookie Coach of the Year in my book.
Any good coach will tell you that the players are the most important thing. Sparky was being humble when giving praise to the players. Getting a team of Alpha Dogs to play as a team is all about the coaching.
Bringing up that they barely beat UF who had just lost to a 3 win team illustrates a great job in coaching. Having your guys play hard no matter the opponent. Remember that Bama rolled that same LSU team a week earlier.
I think that beatdown by a 3 win team hurt Eli. I’m sure he was leading until then.
Saban should be coach of the year for his COVID response alone! Not a single game was rescheduled because of an outbreak in Tuscaloosa. If I’m not mistaken not so much as one player missed a start because of it.
I’m not sure if I should have been so harsh on Nick Saban… I really hope I sound like I know what’s going on….I wonder if the SDS regulars will think I’m some kind of expert but really deep down I don’t feel that way…I’ll just keep posting things so I can fool them….Yes! That’s what I’ll do!
They should have an offensive and defensive freshman of the year.
Agreed, I’d go with Tank Bigsby and Jalen Carter
Nah, Will Anderson would have won it easily if there was an award for freshman defensive player of the year.
So, it sounds like your logic is that since Nick 1) has been highly successful for years 2) has created a culture that draws top level recruits 3) annually produces top ranked recruiting classes and 4) wins like crazy then he isn’t eligible. That is some messed up logic.
This was for Booches94 and the comment about Saban being named.
There are no hidden meanings here. The logic is in my comment, try that.
Classic response and I see that tons of folks jumped on to support your comment. I love your Sparky Anderson quote which would suggest they should do away with the coaches award completely as no coach deserves it. Nice reference to back up your original “comment”.
The Sparky one was in reference to the guy saying Sark is a great coach as well as a great alcoholic. Even an alcoholic can look like a great coach with great players.
And it’s dumb..
Agreed
Gee…they’re calling me out on my meanings too. I’m really guessing but I don’t want to back down now. I guess I’ll google up more sports quotes and pick something that sounds smart. I hope it works!
Everyone is entitled to their opinion. These opinions represented by the list presented in this article are the result of voting by the 14 coaches in the SEC. I’d say that their opinions are worth hearing. We are all entitled to make our own list and we can then debate whether our opinions are worth hearing.
Dawg fans watching Carmada often boom punts 60 yards in 2019 knew he was special, but he just did not have the touch to pin opponents deep on the shorter kicks. He finally got there in 2020. When you have to punt inside your own 20 but your guy can actually flip the field from that position – that’s hard to beat.
Keith Farner…. If you’re including an asterisk behind the names for Jacobs Blocking Trophy, it’d be nice to have an explanation what the asterisk is for….. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Pittman and Drink got a lot of love early, but both of their teams fell off at the end. Both overachieved, but they didn’t finish strong. Saban was a good choice in my opinion.
Kevin Harris got robbed, SEC regular season rushing title. Most yards, higher YPC than both Najee and Spiller and more tds than spiller, should have got 1st team easily.