Last week wasn’t a bad week for the old Bold Predictions department. No, Sark didn’t lead Bama to victory as a fill-in head coach (although we had the game right otherwise), and Kentucky finally ended Tennessee’s run of success against them in Knoxville. But we hit for a pretty good batting average —Arkansas by 2 scores, Kevin Harris helping Carolina spring the upset, A&M struggling with Mississippi State. The pressure’s on in Week 5, because we’ve only got 4 games … but here’s our bold prediction for each SEC game.

Ole Miss springs the upset

On this abbreviated slate, there’s only one game that stands out as an upset. We all know it — Auburn is vulnerable. The Tigers could well be 0-4 with a few different calls. That offense is running like a truck in thick mud, and that’s good news for an Ole Miss team that might require an opponent that stops itself. Ole Miss got its horrible game out of the way last week — and, as well all know, that Arkansas defense is nothing to disrespect.

This game will end up being a shootout, but at the end of the day, Auburn shoots itself in the foot. We’ll take Ole Miss with a 41-35 upset.

Wilson delivers late for Kentucky against Missouri

Since Kentucky’s beatdown of Tennessee, there’s an element that seems to regard this game as one-sided. Not so fast. Kentucky’s offense would have been in some trouble if not for a pair of pick-6s last week (and almost 2 the week before, too). Given the Tigers’ 5-game losing streak against UK, and their bye week, they’ll be focused and ready to go.

Two years ago, Terry Wilson led the best drive of his career at Mizzou, rallying Kentucky to win on an untimed down with a 2-yard scoring pass. Says here that the sometimes beleaguered Wilson will pull the ‘Cats out of the fire late again. Kentucky trails in the 4th quarter, but rallies, largely due to Wilson, by a 24-20 count.

A surprising cover — and no QB change for Tennessee

Conventional wisdom is that Tennessee has absolutely no shot against Alabama. And we’re not here to persuade you that it’s wrong. But a motivated Tennessee team with a coaching staff shake-up will play its best game at home against a Tide team that figures to be a little big hungover. We don’t think UT makes the QB switch this week, which means Jarrett Guarantano gets the start, but we do think it’s an ugly kind of game and that Tennessee covers the 3-touchdown point spread, maybe in a 38-21 kind of game.

LSU gets right, led by big game from TJ Finley

We had South Carolina’s upset last week … but we can’t go down that path again. LSU is too good to play the way they’ve played in 2020. The guess here is that the off week focused the Tigers, and that Carolina won’t have quite enough offensive punch to keep up in this one. Of course, the injury to Myles Brennan is a big story, but let’s be honest– given some of the playmakers on the edge for LSU, true freshman QB TJ Finley can spend much of the game throwing safe passes and watching his burners run with the ball. Pencil in Finley for 250 yards and a couple of scores, and LSU gets a 35-21 kind of win.