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Week 9 sorted out the SEC East race as Florida only needs a win over slumping Vanderbilt to punch its ticket to the SEC Championship game in Atlanta on Dec. 5.
This week, we’ll get a little more clarity on the West race when LSU collides with Alabama.
Until then, it’s time for our weekly look back at the good, and not-so-good, decisions and tactics from SEC coaching staffs:
GOOD MOVE
Florida coach Jim McElwain has made a strong case for national coach of the year honors in his first season with the Gators. He’s breathed life into the program in a number of different ways, and the players have quickly bought into the new coaching staff’s ideas.
Bringing him to Florida cost the school a record buyout fee, but that $7.5 million is starting to look like a real bargain.
McElwain came to Gainesville with a reputation as a quarterback guru, and he’s lived up to that as well. Will Grier was having a breakout year before his suspension, and Treon Harris has blossomed under McElwain’s tutelage.
Harris didn’t have amazing numbers in the win over Georgia, but he had a 0 in the interception category, which kept the Bulldogs from getting any cheap points.
On the season, Harris has thrown for 695 yards, 5 touchdowns and no picks, and he’s on pace to shatter his stats from last season.
Some of that is the natural progression from his freshman to sophomore year. The rest of it is good coaching.
BAD MOVE
Texas A&M unleashed Kyler Murray on South Carolina on Saturday in College Station, and the true freshman was dynamic in a 35-28 Aggies win.
He threw for 223 yards and a score while completing 71 percent of his passes. It was even worse for the Gamecocks when he decided to run the ball as he scampered for 156 yards and another touchdown.
But South Carolina’s defense made it awfully easy for him.
Jon Hoke and Lorenzo Ward played a soft coverage defense for most of the day, designed to keep Texas A&M from getting large chunks of yardage in the passing game, and for the most part, it did that just fine.
But that left only four or five players near the line of scrimmage — and tons of room for Murray to pull the ball down and run free through the Gamecocks defense.
In a true freshman quarterback’s first start, I would have liked to have seen far more pressure, both in the form of press coverage and some extra bodies near the line. It’s easy for an athletic guy like Murray to run with the ball, but it’s much harder for a young quarterback to quickly diagnose a defense and deliver the ball to the right spot under pressure.
Hoke and Ward gave too much respect to Murray’s arm with their plan, and not nearly enough to his legs.
GOOD MOVE
Missouri has been horrifically bad on offense this season. How bad? How about last in the SEC in scoring, rushing and total offense.
It’s been a rough year for coach Gary Pinkel on a lot of different fronts, and the saga involving Maty Mauk hasn’t helped matters much.
Mauk served a suspension for a violation of team rules and was briefly reinstated, but he was slapped with another suspension for the rest of the season on Sunday.
True freshman Drew Lock has struggled in Mauk’s absence, and it’s not hard to imagine that the return of Mauk to the lineup would have been at least a small improvement for a stagnant offense.
But I give credit to Pinkel for putting his team and his program ahead of his desire to win football games. There are a number of reports swirling around concerning Mauk and his state of mind. A bit more time away from football might just be good for him.
BAD MOVE
Georgia was in need of a spark at the quarterback position. No one denies that.
And plugging in Faton Bauta wasn’t a terrible idea. However, the way Brian Schottenheimer used him was less than ideal.
It was absolutely critical that Georgia run the football well to stay in that game, but it just didn’t happen. The Bulldogs managed just 69 yards on the ground, putting the onus on Bauta to win the game through the air.
The results (154 yards, no touchdowns and 4 interceptions) were both disastrous and predictable.
In the first half, 17 of Georgia’s 26 plays were passes, two were picked off as Florida built a 20-0 lead and never looked back.
The game plan wasn’t great, and coach Mark Richt deserves a little criticism as well for not putting in a new quarterback to shake things up in the second half.
Randy Capps is a contributing writer for Saturday Down South. He covers SEC football, South Carolina and Georgia.
