Weekly takeaways, trends and technicalities from the weekend’s action.

In this week’s pumpkin-spiced edition of Monday Down South …

  • Setting the stage for the November Playoff race
  • Beamer Ball deflating by the week
  • Week 9 Superlatives
  • Updated Power Rankings

… and more. But first:

Georgia: Still Georgia

Two-thirds of the way through the regular season, the Playoff picture is only just beginning to come into focus. Before we wade into the looming hypotheticals on the horizon, though, let’s start on the one undeniable patch of terra firma: Georgia is the best team in college football until further notice. If there was any doubt, Saturday’s thorough, 43-20 beatdown of Florida was an emphatic reminder that the Dawgs are not mere figureheads at the top of the polls. In any realistic scenario, they’re still the team to beat.

Not that it comes as a revelation that the 2-time defending national champions deserve their reputation, or that the current milquetoast version of Florida was made to walk the plank with such ease. It was more like a reaffirmation of what we already knew but, under the circumstances, couldn’t quite confirm. After 2 months of relatively leisurely outings against the shallow end of the schedule, the Dawgs arrived at the Cocktail Party without a marquee win to their credit and with plenty of lingering question marks. Against the closest approximation of a peer they’ve faced to date, they put them all to bed in reassuringly familiar fashion.

How much of a drop-off would there be at quarterback from Stetson Bennett IV to Carson Beck? So far, zero: Beck was dialed in against the Gators, throwing for 315 yards and 2 touchdowns, and his output for the season is on a nearly identical pace to Bennett’s production in 2022 in every relevant category. Florida’s pass rush barely laid a hand on him, generating pressure on only three of Beck’s 30 drop-backs per Pro Football Focus. Who among a more or less interchangeable group of skill players would emerge to fill the big-play void on offense created by Brock Bowers’ injury? Between RB Daijun Edwards, WR Ladd McConkey and WR Dominic Lovett, the top 3 playmakers on Saturday accounted for two-thirds of the team’s 486 total yards and 3 touchdowns. How would the no-name defense stack up following yet another wave of attrition, in the absence of an obvious individual headliner? After throttling the Gators, the Bulldogs are in statistical lockstep with last year’s D across the board.

In other words, Georgia being Georgia, hitting its marks right on cue at the point on the calendar when the rest of the national field begins to thin with each passing Saturday. No regression, no playing down to the competition, no room for doubt. At least where Georgia is concerned, Playoff drama remains mostly manufactured.

With 25 consecutive wins under their belts, the Bulldogs are just 1 win shy of Alabama’s run of 26 straight in 2015-16, and just 3 shy of matching the SEC record of 28 straight, set by different Bama teams in 1978-80 and 1991-93. The schedule stiffens over the next few weeks, against 3 ranked opponents (Missouri, Ole Miss and Tennessee) who boast a combined 10-4 record in SEC play. All 3 harbor visions of a program-defining upset; all 3 will be heavy underdogs. Barring a stunning turn of events, UGA will match the record in Knoxville on Nov. 19, and eclipse it the following week at Georgia Tech.

After that, the going figures to get more interesting in the postseason, when any remaining question marks take on a new salience and any perceivable cracks in the facade tend to get exposed. By then, maybe it will actually be possible to perceive some — especially if Bowers, a one-of-a-kind talent even by Georgia standards, remains on ice. Eventually, UGA will face a real test to its supremacy, like the one it only narrowly passed in last year’s come-from-behind semifinal win over Ohio State in the Peach Bowl. In the meantime, get ready to be reminded, often, that no team in the modern history of the “national championship” has won 3 in a row under any widely acknowledged format. And brace yourself for the possibility that this team has what it takes to pull it off, because by all appearances its bid for a 3-peat is unfolding right on schedule.

Playoff Realpolitik

All that being said, with the first edition of the CFP committee’s weekly Top 25 due on Tuesday night, Georgia fans should also brace themselves for the possibility that the Dawgs will not debut at No. 1 based on the lack of a marquee win on their résumé to date. While their standing atop the traditional polls has not wavered, the committee is under no obligation to follow suit, and in the past has tended to prioritize big wins in any shape over dominating a mediocre schedule. Ohio State checks that box with a couple of down-to-wire wins over Notre Dame and Penn State; among the other unbeatens, Florida State (over LSU) and Washington (over Oregon) also have impressive skins on the wall. Georgia, championship track record notwithstanding, does not (yet).

That might make for an interesting round of headlines, not to mention setting off the Disrespect Siren in the Dawgs’ locker room. As far as impacting the actual Playoff field as it’s likely to shake out in the final accounting, the initial pecking order means nothing. (Just ask Mississippi State.) This time of year, it can never be repeated enough: The Playoff does not start today.

To that end, Playoff Realpolitik seeks to rank the current contenders based on their remaining paths to the Final Four, taking future schedules into account. Rather than a snapshot of where teams stand right now, it looks ahead to project where they will be on decision day, Dec. 3, based on multiple possible scenarios.

At this point, with 5 Saturdays to go, there are far too many potential scenarios to possibly account for them all. But we can start with the most basic premise: Which teams control their own fate? By my accounting, only 6 teams can definitely count on making the cut if they run the table, regardless of anything else that might happen outside of their control: The 5 remaining undefeated teams in the Power 5 conferences (Florida State, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio State and Washington), as well as a couple of 1-loss contenders with a direct path to their respective conference titles, Oregon and Missouri.

Win and in

1.  SEC East Champ
•  Georgia (8-0)
•  Missouri (7-1)
2.  B1G East Champ
•  Michigan (8-0)
•  Ohio State (8-0)
3.  Pac-12 Champ
•  Washington (8-0)
•  Oregon (7-1)
4.  Florida State (8-0)

Four undefeated champions from the major conferences is, obviously, the chalkiest possible scenario. But, uh, Mizzou? Believe it: Among 1-loss teams, the Tigers have the most straightforward path if they win out, which would require a monumental upset over Georgia this weekend, a follow-up win over Tennessee on Nov. 11, and a win over the eventual SEC West champ in the SEC Championship Game. You can debate whether they’re capable of pulling that off. (See above for my thoughts on that.) But this exercise isn’t about predicting wins and losses. In the unlikely scenario that they do pull it off, there’s no way a 12-1 SEC champion with that résumé is not going to make the cut. For a few more days, at least, Missouri’s fate is in its own hands.

Now, this is the part where you’re thinking wait a minute, what about Alabama? Good question! At 7-1, the Crimson Tide are in essentially the same win-and-in position as Mizzou, with one big caveat: A hypothetical scenario that results in 3 undefeated conference champions (Michigan/OSU, Washington and Florida State) and a deadlock between 12-1 Bama and 12-1 Texas for the final spot. In fact, from this vantage point that appears to be the only plausible scenario that would force the committee to decide between the Crimson Tide and Longhorns. But the ramifications of that debate could tear the nation asunder. How could the committee possibly snub a 12-1 SEC champion with wins over Ole Miss, LSU and mighty Georgia? On the other hand, how could the committee possibly opt for the Tide over a 12-1 Texas outfit that whipped them convincingly on their own field?

I truly don’t know what would come of that impasse if it were to come to fruition, and I’m not going to try to guess. Instead, I’m going to assign Alabama and Texas to a kind of limbo category, “Front of the Queue,” reserved for teams that probably control their own destiny, except in one very narrow, specific set of circumstances where they arguably do not. Regardless, like every team in this section Bama fans should be concerned with the winning out part before they start counting their chickens.

Front of the queue

5.  Alabama (7-1)
•  Win out + loss by Texas
or
•  Win out + loss by FSU, Washington, or winner of Ohio State/Michigan
6.  Texas (7-1)
•  Win out + combination of losses by Alabama, Washington, or FSU

Finally, we have teams that are squarely on the radar but do not control their own fate and need some help. Again, there are many more potential scenarios than this exercise can possibly cover at this point. But one that all of these teams would clearly benefit from: A loss by Florida State, effectively opening up a slot that — unlike the other chalk positions — is highly unlikely to be filled by another ACC team before it would be filled by any of the teams below. The more immediate question for LSU, Ole Miss, and Penn State: Sorting out the three-way tiebreaker procedures in their respective conferences.

On the radar

7.  LSU (6-2)
•  Win out + loss by Ole Miss
or
•  Win out + win tiebreaker in SEC West
and
•  Loss by FSU or Texas
8.  Ole Miss (7-1)
•  Win out + LSU wins out + additional loss by Alabama
or
•  Win out + win tiebreaker in SEC West
and
•  Loss by FSU or Texas
9.  Penn State (7-1)
•  Win out + win tiebreaker in B1G East
and
•  Loss by FSU or Texas
10.  Oklahoma (7-1)
•  Win out + FSU loss or 2-loss Pac-12 champion

Among the many potential outcomes we won’t be broaching this week: Avenues for any of the above to make the cut despite a loss between now and decision day. Those scenarios certainly exist, but space and bandwidth requires we defer them for another week. For now, the mandate is clear: Don’t lose, and you won’t have to worry about it.

South Carolina: Sinking fast

The flip side of the Playoff race kicking into gear is the much larger number of teams coming to grips with the fact that their season isn’t going to amount to what they’d hoped. In the SEC, no team has fallen as far short of the preseason bar as South Carolina. Saturday’s 30-17 loss at Texas A&M extended the Gamecocks’ losing streak to 4 in a row, dropping them to 2-6 overall and all but guaranteeing a losing season in Shane Beamer’s 3rd season.

For a team that ended 2022 on the highest possible note, the regression comes as a bitter pill. Last November’s back-to-back upsets over Tennessee and Clemson — both plausible Playoff contenders — felt at the time like a potential turning point for the program. Carolina finished with 8 wins for the first time since 2017, and cracked the final AP poll (at No. 23) for the first time since 2013. Spencer Rattler’s return behind center ensured the momentum would carry over into 2023. Instead, the Gamecocks have crashed and burned, managing a single win over an FBS opponent (a 37-30 decision over similarly reeling Mississippi State in Week 4) while struggling in virtually every phase.

As the face of the program, Rattler has inevitably come in for much of the blame. Frankly, though, quarterback is the least of Carolina’s problems. If anything, Rattler’s next-level arm is the only reason the team has remained even semi-competitive. On offense, the issues begin up front, with an injury-plagued o-line that has rolled out a different starting 5 in every game. The Gamecocks can’t run, ranking among the nation’s most anemic attacks on the ground, and can’t protect, repeatedly putting Rattler in the crosshairs in comeback mode — FBS opponents have sacked him 33 times in seven games. The defense, which ranks next-to-last in the SEC (ahead of only Vanderbilt) in both yards and points allowed, has not done much to help alleviate that pressure.

The upshot is an outfit that has effectively squandered the momentum it generated at the end of last season while regressing to the bottom rungs of the conference, more or less exactly the situation that Beamer inherited from Will Muschamp. (Recall that Muschamp also delivered a promising record in Year 2 before the worm turned, finishing 9-4 in 2017.) If there’s a silver lining, it’s the remaining schedule: Jacksonville State and Vanderbilt present opportunities to pull out of the tailspin over the next 2 weeks, followed by winnable dates against Kentucky and a fully demystified version of Clemson. All four games are at home, setting the stage for another potential November surge.

Still, Carolina will have to win all four just to salvage bowl eligibility, which given the expectations would amount to a consolation prize, at best. It’s also highly optimistic for a team currently trending in the opposite direction. As it stands, the Gamecocks seem at least as likely to take a devastating L at the hands of JSU or Vandy as they are to spring a reassuring upset over Kentucky or Clemson. Either way, Beamer isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. But the bar for appeasing a long-suffering fan base is certainly not getting any lower, either. The next few weeks will go a long way toward determining exactly where Beamer stands heading into what’s shaping up as a make-or-break Year 4.

Superlatives

The week’s best individual performances.

1. Texas A&M LB Edgerrin Cooper. Is the rest of college football hip to Cooper yet? Regardless, he’s putting together one of the best seasons of any defender in the country. He was ubiquitous in the Aggies’ win over South Carolina, as usual, racking up 7 tackles, 2 TFLs, 4 QB pressures, and a forced fumble that ended Carolina’s last-gasp comeback attempt in the 4th quarter; in coverage, he allowed just 15 yards on 5 targets, per Pro Football Focus, while adding a PBU to the box score for good measure.

For the year, Cooper leads all FBS linebackers in tackles for loss (15.5) and overall PFF grade (91.7), and leads all SEC defenders in “stops,” PFF’s metric for tackles that constitute a “failure” for the offense based on down and distance. The postseason awards circuit is always a fickle judge, but if he’s not squarely in the running for the Butkus Award something has gone very wrong.

2. Georgia QB Carson Beck and WR Ladd McConkey. No Brock Bowers, no problem. McConkey, finally at 100% after dealing with a lingering back injury over the first half of the season, stepped seamlessly into a feature role against Florida, matching a career-high with 135 yards on 6 receptions. Two of those catches went for gains of 41 and 54 yards, respectively, which along with a 55-yard completion to Dominic Lovett accounted for nearly half of Beck’s total output through the air on just 3 plays.

3. Auburn QB Payton Thorne. It’s been a rough year for Thorne, who found himself out of a job at Michigan State and subsequently languishing at the bottom of the SEC in almost every major passing category. After a month of playing the goat, though, he finally gave Auburn fans a glimpse of what they hoped they were getting Saturday in a 27-13 win over Mississippi State, his best outing of the season by a mile:

The competition accounts for some of that gap — Mississippi State ranks 123rd nationally and dead last in the SEC in pass efficiency D — but we don’t have to pretend the Bulldogs are better than they are to give Thorne credit for taking advantage of the opportunity to level up. On that note, he has 3 more opportunities over the next 3 weeks against Vanderbilt, Arkansas and New Mexico State before his final exam in the Iron Bowl. If he has any designs on returning as the Tigers’ starter in 2024, Saturday was just the first step in making his case.

4. Ole Miss RB Quinshon Judkins. If Judkins was the forgotten man in the Rebels’ offense in September, he’s been found: Saturday’s 124-yard, 2-touchdown effort against Vanderbilt was his 3rd time in triple digits in the past 4 games. As always, a significant majority of that output came after contact, per PFF, which credited Judkins with a season-high 8 missed tackles forced in a 33-7 blowout.

5. Georgia LB Jamon Dumas-Johnson. I can’t get out of this section without a nod to the Georgia defense, even if singling out one individual from the pack usually feels like a violation of the spirit they bring to the field. Dumas-Johnson gets the nod here based primarily on his efficiency as a blitzer: His 6 pass-rushing snaps against Florida yielded 4 QB pressures, 1 of the Dawgs’ 4 sacks, and a batted pass. He was also responsible for a key 4th-down stop in the second half, when he tracked down the elusive Trevor Etienne in the open field to snuff out a last-gasp Florida drive into UGA territory and effectively end the competitive portion of the game.

Honorable Mention: Auburn RB Jarquez Hunter, who ran for a season-high 144 yards on 8.5 per carry in the Tigers’ win over Mississippi State. … Tennessee QB Joe Milton, who was a hyper-efficient 17-for-20 for 227 yards and a touchdown in the Vols’ 33-27 win at Kentucky. … Tennessee RB Jaylen Wright, who opened the scoring in Lexington with a 52-yard touchdown run en route to his 5th 100-yard rushing game of the season. … Kentucky QB Devin Leary, who finished 28-for-39 for 372 yards and 2 touchdowns in a losing effort. … Texas A&M WR Ainias Smith, who had 6 catches for 118 yards and a spectacular touchdown in the Aggies’ win over South Carolina. … Texas A&M DL Shemar Turner, who led a typically relentless A&M pass rush with 6 QB pressures. … Florida edge Princely Umanmielen, who did his part against Georgia with 9 tackles, all of which PFF recorded as “stops.” … Ole Miss DB Trey Washington, who came down with 2 interceptions in the Rebels’ win over Vanderbilt. … And Vanderbilt punter Matthew Hayball, who dropped 2 of his 4 punts inside the Ole Miss 20-yard line while netting 46.8 yards per attempt.

Fat guys of the week: Tennessee DL Omari Thomas and Omarr Norman-Lott

Thomas and Norman-Lott anchored Tennessee’s interior d-line rotation against Kentucky, and their impact is evident in the box score of the Volunteers’ 33-27 victory even if their names are not: As a unit, the Vols held the SEC’s leading rusher, Ray Davis, to a season-low 42 yards on the ground, on a season-low 2.6 yards per carry. Davis’ long gain on the night netted just 8. In addition to clogging running lanes, Norman-Lott also recorded Tennessee’s lone sack, an 11-yard loss in the 3rd quarter that derailed a potential Wildcats scoring drive; they subsequently turned the ball over on downs instead, a key swing on a night when possessions were at a premium.

– – –
The scoring system for players honored in Superlatives awards 8 points for the week’s top player, 6 for 2nd, 5 for 3rd, 4 for 4th, 3 for 5th, and 1 for honorable mention, because how honorable is it really if it doesn’t come with any points? Standings are updated weekly with the top 10 players for the season to date.

Freak of the week: Georgia OL Earnest Greene III

Greene has started every game at left tackle as a true freshman, and he’s occasionally looked like, well, a true freshman. (PFF tagged him with an abysmal 12.7 pass-blocking grade against Florida, despite not allowing a sack. Harsh.) But then, occasionally he’s also looked like a full-grown, 320-pound monster beginning to achieve self-awareness, as the Gators’ Jason Marshall Jr. found out the hard way:

Yeah, grade that. When the light finally comes on and stays on, it’s going to chart a direct course to the first round in 2026.

Catch of the year of the week

Ole Miss WR Dayton Wade had a big night in the Rebels’ win over Vanderbilt, hauling in 8 receptions for a career-high 120 yards — none of them more memorable than this acrobatic, 48-yard haymaker early in the 2nd quarter:

Scroll back and check out at the hang time on that vault. Wade takes off just shy of the 15-yard line, turning his body 180 degrees in the process so that he’s facing the opposite direction of the one he was just running at full speed; he proceeds to land facemask-first just inside the 10, thereby completing a full mid-air 360 over the course of 15+ feet, literally on the fly. While, by the way, completing the longest reception of his career with a hand in his face. These kids are not normal, what else can you say.

Obscure stat of the week

Texas A&M was 4-for-4 on 4th-down conversions against South Carolina, the first time in Jimbo Fisher’s tenure the Aggies have converted more than 2 4th-downs in the same game. In fact, 4 successful conversions matches or exceeds their total in SEC play in all of the previous 5 seasons on Fisher’s watch:

Texas A&M 4th-Down Conversions in SEC Play
2018: 4-for-7
2019: 1-for-5
2020: 2-for-7
2021: 3-for-6
2022: 4-for-11
2023 (first 4 games): 0-for-4
2023 (vs. South Carolina): 4-for-4

Don’t mistake that for some kind of philosophical sea change: The first 3 attempts on Saturday were all on 4th-and-1, and the 4th was a meaningless clock-killing effort on literally the last snap of the game. Still, the corners of the fan base that have been begging for the offense to be more aggressive will take what they can get.

SEC Power Rankings

Updating the food chain.

1. Georgia (8-0). Do the Dawgs have a weakness? Statistically, I can only come up with 2 categories where they rank significantly below average: Fumbles recovered by the defense (1) and penalty yardage assessed against their opponents (39.1 yards per game). | (Last week: 1⬌)

2. Alabama (7-1). It might be an exaggeration to suggest the dynasty is riding on this weekend’s date with LSU, but getting bounced from the national race by the Tigers for the second year in a row would be one more sign of slowly declining health. | (LW: 2 ⬌)

3. Ole Miss (7-1). Figures that the Rebels’ last, best chance to finally win the West before the division goes kaput coincides with Georgia rotating onto the schedule for only the 2nd time in the past decade. | (LW: 3⬌)

4. LSU (6-2). No 2-loss team has ever seriously threatened to crash the CFP field (Auburn would have in 2017, but it lost the SECCG), but if the Tigers manage to run the table through the SEC Championship Game, they’ll give that precedent a run for its money. | (LW: 4⬌)

5. Missouri (7-1). Mizzou has had its moments, but given the potential implications an upset in Athens this weekend would instantly rank among the biggest wins in school history. | (LW: 5⬌)

6. Tennessee (6-2). With another well-balanced effort at Kentucky, the Vols are sitting on a rare feat: Through 8 games, they’ve amassed exactly 1,774 yards rushing and 1,774 yards passing. | (LW: 6⬌)

7. Texas A&M (5-3). The focus following an A&M win tends to land on its suffocating pass rush, which showed up in full force against South Carolina. Even the wins, though, the Aggies are still struggling to protect Max Johnson, who has faced pressure in own right on a staggering 48.6% of his total drop-backs this season, per PFF — easily the highest rate in the SEC, and more than all but 2 other Power 5 quarterbacks. | (LW: 9⬆)

8. Kentucky (5-3). The Wildcats played at their own deliberate pace against Tennessee, and only punted once, on the game’s opening series. But they never led, and the missed opportunities added up: Two turnovers on downs, 2 fields goals from the Vols’ 10-yard line, and a missed go-ahead field goal in the 4th quarter all proved too costly to overcome. | (LW: 7⬇)

9. Florida (5-3). All of the Gators’ other issues are exacerbated by the defense’s maddening inability to generate turnovers. Florida has just 4 takeaways, fewest of any Power 5 team, and put up a goose egg in the takeaway column against Georgia for the 5th time in 8 games. | (LW: 8⬇)

10. Auburn (4-4). In the long run, beating a struggling version of Mississippi State with its starting quarterback watching from the sideline is nothing to write home about. But considering Auburn was 2-14 in its previous 16 SEC games, just getting on the board under Hugh Freeze was a huge relief. | (LW: 11⬆)

11. Mississippi State (4-4). QB Will Rogers has never been as easy to appreciate as he’s been the past 2 weeks as a spectator. In his absence, the Bulldogs have managed a grand total of 2 touchdowns against fellow West Division also-rans Arkansas and Auburn. | (LW: 10⬇)

12. South Carolina (2-6). One silver lining in the loss at Texas A&M: A vastly expanded role for 5-star freshman Nyck Harbor, who had more catches (6) on more targets (8) against the Aggies than he had in the Gamecocks’ first 7 games combined. | (LW: 12⬌)

13. Arkansas (2-6). The Razorbacks badly needed an open date to break the monotony of a 6-game losing streak. But an extra week to lick their wounds doesn’t make cracking the win column in their last 3 conference games against Florida, Auburn and Missouri any more likely, or lessen the mounting pressure on Sam Pittman by even one degree. | (LW: 13⬌)

14. Vanderbilt (2-7). Farfetched as it seems, it’s not out of the question that the Commodores’ quest to record an SEC win will factor into a potential three-way tiebreaker scenario in the West simply due to their having appeared on Ole Miss’ schedule. If it comes down to that, it will be arguably the most relevant Vandy has ever been in the month of November. | (LW: 14⬌)

Moment of Zen of the week

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