In this week’s ambitious edition of Monday Down South …

  • Horns hold court in the Big House
  • Bama (barely) preserves its dignity
  • Arkansas’ arc bends toward chaos
  • Players of the week, Superlatives Standings and updated power rankings

… and more takeaways, trends, and technicalities from Week 2 in the SEC. But first:

Panic! In the Pocket

Is it too soon to draw any definitive conclusions about how the rest of the season is going to unfold after the first Saturday of September? Of course. Is it too soon to be stricken with angst over your team’s outlook at the most important position? Never. Half the SEC can feel relatively good about where they stand behind center — or at least relatively stable — with somewhere between 3 and 5 legitimate Heisman candidates on the conference roster. (Give or take Tennessee’s sophomore phenom, Nico Iamaleava.) The other half, however, is in the midst of various stages of hyperventilation, or should be.

For them, we’ve developed the latest in emotional forecasting: The official Monday Down South QB Panic Index, designed to assess each of the league’s more nerve-inducing class of signal-callers by just how much anxiety he inspires in his fan base going forward, from the most to the least.

DEFCON 1: Kentucky

Brock Vandagriff‘s first career start, a 31-0 win over Southern Miss in Week 1, was called on account of lightning midway through the third quarter. His second start was an unmitigated disaster. Looking more like a lamb to the slaughter than an aspiring pro, Vandagriff fell apart in Saturday’s 31-6 loss to South Carolina, finishing 3-for-11 passing for 30 yards in a performance that was as dire in real time as it was on paper. His passer rating (35.2), overall PFF grade (28.8) and Total QBR score (an incredible 1.2, out of a possible 100) ranked dead last among Week 2 starters nationally in all 3 categories.

Vandagriff was a wild card coming into the season, but he was supposed to be one of the good kind: A big-time talent just waiting for his shot. At Georgia, he was a major prospect who was widely regarded as the heir apparent to Carson Beck; if Beck had opted to go pro last winter, Vandagriff was the presumptive favorite (from the outside, anyway) to succeed him as the face of the No. 1 team in the country. Of the many questions that followed him to Kentucky, is this guy even playable? wasn’t one of them. But it certainly is now.

Vandagriff’s collapse puts Mark Stoops in a bind. Pulling the plug on a big-ticket transfer after a single game, even a catastrophic one, isn’t tenable. Clearly, though, neither was Vandagriff’s play against the Gamecocks. In his defense, he was under pressure from a relentless South Carolina pass rush on nearly two-thirds of his drop-backs, resulting in 3 sacks, multiple hits and a fumble. Still, per Pro Football Focus he was only 2-for-5 passing for 28 yards when kept clean, and he wasn’t pressured on the pick-6 that ended his afternoon at the start of the fourth quarter (see above).

As late as Saturday morning, this weekend’s tilt with Georgia in Lexington promised the intrigue of an up-and-comer striving to make good on his long-awaited opportunity against his old team. Based on the initial returns on Saturday afternoon, it’s shaping up more like a pending bloodbath. The Wildcats bet the house on Vandagriff, but if they decided to trot Rutgers transfer Gavin Wimsatt to take his lumps instead, no one would blame them. Probably including Vandagriff himself.

Red alert: Auburn

Payton Thorne looked like a new man in the opener, throwing for 322 yards and 4 touchdowns in a 73-3 slaughter of Alabama A&M. In Saturday’s 21-14 loss to Cal, he looked like he same guy Auburn fans remembered from 2023, serving up a grim reminder of why they desperately hoped Hugh Freeze would upgrade the position via the portal over the offseason. After a fast start, Thorne — a 6th-year senior making his 40th career start for a power conference team — looked like a reckless, wet-behind-the-ears rookie the rest of the way, throwing 4 interceptions in a span of 16 attempts over the final 3 quarters. (Read that again for emphasis: 4 interceptions. In 16 attempts.) Per PFF, 3 of the 4 INTs came from a clean pocket, including both of the back-to-back, game-clinching picks on the Tigers’ last 2 offensive snaps.

It could have been worse: A 5th INT, an apparent pick-6 on the opening series, was overturned on review, thus salvaging 1 of the Tigers’ 2 successful drives.

A miserable afternoon by any standard, but for a veteran player who was already the walking definition of “embattled” prior to the season, a visible self-immolation in one of the more winnable games on the schedule was a worst-case scenario. Auburn made a concerted effort over the offseason to improve its underwhelming surrounding cast, essentially rebuilding the wide receiver rotation from scratch with multiple transfers and a pair of blue-chip freshmen, Cam Coleman and Perry Thompson — all of whom contributed to the good vibes in the opener.

The Tigers were double-digit favorites against Cal largely based on that sense of optimism. The vibes turned to ash in a matter of hours Saturday, and they won’t be back as long as Thorne remains QB1. At the moment, they’ll be lucky if they’re favored again in SEC play, up to and including Vanderbilt.

Neither of Thorne’s understudies, redshirt freshman Hank Brown and true freshman Walker White, have taken a meaningful college snap. In that context, there’s something to be said for sticking with a well-season vet, however uninspiring. But that something is usually along the lines of “at least we trust the guy who’s played a ton not to turn the ball over.” When you can’t even say that anymore, it’s time consider that reality is making the decision for you.

Elevated: Texas A&M

A&M remains on high alert until further notice following Conner Weigman‘s 12-of-30, 2-interception meltdown against Notre Dame in Week 1, which arguably looks even worse after the Fighting Irish walked directly into an ambush against Northern Illinois in Week 2. Meanwhile, the Aggies rebounded by opening up a can on poor McNeese State, scoring on their first 8 offensive possessions in a 52-10 blowout. Weigman finished 11-for-14 against the Cowboys for 125 yards, 2 touchdowns and the top overall PFF grade (97.7) of any FBS quarterback over the weekend. Next up on the reassurance/redemption tour: At Florida for the SEC opener, where he desperately needs to prove in a hostile environment that he’s still on the right track.

On alert: Oklahoma

The first 2 games, home dates against Temple and Houston, were supposed to be gimmes that allowed Jackson Arnold to settle into a high-pressure role with a minimum of drama before hitting the SEC gauntlet. So much for that.

Coming off a lukewarm stat line in Week 1, Arnold was ice-cold Saturday in a sluggish, 16-12 win over Houston, averaging a meager 5.4 yards per attempt on what he himself described as “just a bad night in general.” He led 1 sustained scoring drive against the Cougars, an 81-yard march for a touchdown in the first half; otherwise, OU’s only other points came as the result of 1) a muffed punt that set up the offense in a goal-to-go situation early in the game, and 2) a safety by the defense that gave the Sooners a field-goal-proof, 4-point lead late in the fourth quarter.

The rest of the night was Punt City. Excluding the long touchdown drive, Oklahoma’s other 10 non-short-field possessions yielded 138 yards (including penalties), 8 punts, a missed field goal, and an interception.

https://twitter.com/UHCougarFB/status/1832600682513195253/

The “Heisman or bust” curve for Oklahoma quarterbacks established in the Lincoln Riley years is an unfair standard with Riley long gone. But the Sooners are deeply invested in Arnold, the gem of their 2023 recruiting class, who is clearly in a ride-or-die position. Brent Venables effectively banked his tenure on his prized recruit when he let his incumbent starter, Dillon Gabriel, portal out last December; he’d love nothing more than to insist “2-0 is 2-0,” chalk up Arnold’s early struggles to growing pains, and hope his precocious talent bears out ASAP. As it stands, a 37.5 QBR score against a team that was picked to finish 15th in the Big 12 and lost its opener by 20 points to UNLV isn’t going to cut it with a steep conference slate looming.

Recalibrating: Florida

OK, here’s one sweeping conclusion about how the rest of the season is going to unfold: DJ Lagway is Florida’s new starting quarterback. (Or should be, anyway.)

The question does not need to be litigated or dragged out. It’s not even a question. With all due respect to the savvy veteran stylings of Graham Mertz, who sat out the Gators’ 45-7 win over Samford recovering from a concussion suffered in the opener, Lagway is clearly the future, and, based on his 456-yard, 3-touchdown debut on Saturday, he’s also clearly the present.

After looking listless and juiceless in their Week 1 flop against Miami, the Gators were explosive on Saturday, averaging 24.5 yards per completion with 9 receptions that gained 20+ yards.

Sure, it was at the expense of Samford. It was also the most fun Florida fans have had watching their team since Anthony Richardson declared early for the NFL Draft, if not longer. Where Mertz represented a predictable, risk-averse march to mediocrity, at best, Lagway represents a vision for the offense that puts butts in the seats and has the potential to salvage Billy Napier‘s job simply by being a vision, even if the results don’t come right away against serious competition. The results weren’t exactly coming with Mertz at the wheel, either.

Why prolong the inevitable? Florida is not a threat to win more than 6 or 7 games against its nightmare of a schedule regardless of who is taking the snaps. The only panic in Gainesville is at the thought that Napier might be too stubborn to change course even when the ship is already going under.

Monitoring: South Carolina

LaNorris Sellers was on the right side of a 31-6 final score in his first SEC start, so delving too deeply into the details of his 11-for-15, 159-yard stat line is beside the point. Air-mail interception notwithstanding, he looked better against Kentucky than he did in his Week 1 debut in Old Dominion, which is moving in the right direction.

Monitoring: Arkansas

The good news: Taylen Green‘s eye-opening athleticism was on full display Saturday, when he accounted for 477 total yards at Oklahoma State. The not so good news: It took him 63 plays as a rusher/receiver to put up that number, an average of a relatively pedestrian 7.6 yards per play, and his recklessness also was on display. He put the ball on the ground twice, missed open receivers, and served up a pick-6 that became OK State’s first touchdown in a 39-31 loss in double overtime. More on how the Razorbacks managed to blow a game they dominated statistically and led virtually throughout below.

Monitoring: Mississippi State

If I was writing this in the third quarter of Mississippi State’s 30-23 loss at Arizona State, Blake Shapen might have been listed under “Elevated.” At that point, ASU led 30-3 while the Bulldogs loitered aimlessly. By the end, though, Shapen had shaken off some of the rust to lead 3 unanswered touchdown drives that cut the margin to 30-23. He didn’t get a chance to finish off the comeback only because the defense couldn’t get ASU’s offense off the field in the final 5 minutes. Frankly, with the season Mississippi State likely has ahead, resilience in the face of adversity is probably more valuable than anything having to do with his arm or athleticism.

_ _ _ _ _

Texas: Defense travels

Texas’ title chase begins and ends with the decorated right arm of Quinn Ewers, who came out of the weekend as the odds-on favorite for the Heisman. But based on Saturday’s one-sided, 31-12 beatdown at Michigan, the defense is going to be good for its share of the mileage. If the Longhorns hadn’t loosened the slack in garbage time, Michigan might still be merely theorizing about the existence of the end zone.

Let’s start with the fact that, to put it mildly, the offense that took the field for Michigan on Saturday bore little resemblance the unit that brought down the confetti in January. The Wolverines returned a single offensive starter from the CFP Championship Game (TE Colston Loveland), and trotted out an untested walk-on at quarterback (Davis Warren, making just his second career start) behind a completely rebuilt offensive line. Offensive coordinator Sherrone Moore is now head coach Sherrone Moore, having ceded play-calling duties to new OC Kirk Campbell.

The Wolverines struggled in their season-opening win over Fresno State, and seem likely to go on struggling as long as Warren — who has done very little in 2 games to make anyone forget the walk-on part — remains the starter. And the fact that he won the offseason competition to replace JJ McCarthy in the first place doesn’t exactly bode well for the guys he beat out.

That said, a convincing win in the Big House over an outfit that came in riding a 23-game home winning streak speaks for itself, and Texas’ domination was more thorough than the score or the stats implied.

Nearly 45% of the Wolverines’ total yardage, 6 of their 13 first downs, and their only touchdown came on their last 2 possessions in the fourth quarter, by which point the game had long been decided. Prior to that, their first 7 turns with the ball were grim, yielding 2 punts, 3 turnovers, and a pair of field goals on their only ventures across midfield.

More important, in the process Texas learned a lot about some of the more uncertain areas of the lineup, most of it good. The interior d-line, arguably the Longhorns’ top concern on either side of the ball following the departure of a consensus All-American (T’Vondre Sweat) and first-round pick (Byron Murphy) from last year’s CFP run, was a strength; Michigan’s top 2 running backs, Donovan Edwards and Kalel Mullings, combined for just 66 yards with a long gain of 12. The secondary, another question mark with an influx of new starters on a unit that was up and down last year, picked off 2 passes — commemorated with a prop sword dubbed “Texcalibur” — and held Wolverines wideouts to a long gain of 12 yards prior to garbage time. The outside pass rush, a decidedly juiceless proposition in 2023, was boosted by a breakout game from the gem of the ’24 recruiting class, Collin Simmons, whom PFF credited with a team-high 6 QB pressures and the only sack by either team in just his second college game.

Encouraging on its own, even more so coming on the heels of a shutout win over Colorado State in Week 1 in which the Rams averaged 3.1 yards per pass and had more yardage on punts (279) than in total offense (192).

It’s a long year, and the Longhorns are going to run into significantly better offenses along the way than the two they’ve left hogtied so far, specifically Oklahoma and Georgia on back-to-back Saturdays in mid-October. But the temptation to glance past the Sooners and Bulldogs toward January gets a little stronger when acing your big early road test winds up feeling more like a routine tuneup.

Alabama: Bulls take Tide OL for another ride

On a night when the upset sirens were sounding well into the fourth quarter, the final score didn’t come close to reflecting just how narrow Alabama’s 42-16 win over USF really was. With 11 minutes left, the Crimson Tide led by a single point, 14-13. If you really want an honest record of how the game unfolded, forget about the scoreboard. The reaction shots of increasingly disgruntled Bama fans told you all you needed to know.

Anger gave way to disbelief until the dam broke, finally, giving way to a late flurry of haymakers (3 Alabama touchdowns in the final 6 minutes) that nudged the result from the “close shave” column into the much larger archive of routine Bama blowouts. But it will be a while before anyone who actually watched it remembers it that way. In real time, most of the angst was reserved for a reshuffled offensive line, which earned the scorn in the absence of starting left tackle Kadyn Proctor. With Proctor sidelined by a shoulder injury, the starting five was a wreck, allowing 11 pressures (including 3 sacks), committing 6 holding penalties and jumping offsides 3 times.

The goat of the group was the new right tackle, redshirt freshman Wilkin Formby — a hometown 4-star product from Tuscaloosa — whose first career start went about as badly as it could go; on 36 pass-blocking snaps, he allowed 4 pressures and was flagged 3 times, including a holding call that negated a long completion, posting an abysmal PFF pass-blocking grade of 25.0. Formby was also flagged on a long touchdown run by Jalen Milroe that would have given the Tide some breathing room in the first half. Later on, all 3 of the late Bama touchdowns in the closing minutes came after Formby was replaced in the lineup by veteran Elijah Pritchett.

Ironically, Formby’s rough night was an echo of Proctor’s own baptism by fire against USF last year, when he allowed 2 sacks and was singled out as a weak link in one of the most alarming offensive performances of the Nick Saban era. For the season, PFF cited Proctor for more pressures allowed (36) than any other player in the SEC, and more sacks allowed (12) than any other player in the country. Slowly but surely, though, Proctor grew into the job, and ended his freshman campaign with 5-star hype intact heading into Year 2. For most of Saturday night, his absence felt like a bigger crisis than his presence ever did in ’23. Formby, a fairly touted recruit in his own right, may or may not get a chance to redeem himself. (Unlike Proctor last year, he’s not a regular member of the starting five.) But it’s worth keeping in mind that the first impression is rarely the last.

Life on the margins: Woo Pig, you blew it

Most box scores are fairly straightforward, but every so often there’s one that flies in the face of common sense. Arkansas’ 39-31 loss at Oklahoma State in double overtime is one of those box scores. The Razorbacks outgained the Cowboys by 265 yards of total offense, and by nearly 2 full yards per play; they earned 33 first downs to the Cowboys’ 21; they had 9 plays that gained 20+ yards vs. the Cowboys’ 2; they converted 58% of their 3rd-down attempts to the Cowboys’ 31%; they racked up a 12-and-a-half-minute advantage in time of possession; they held Oklahoma State’s All-American workhorse, Ollie Gordon II, to just 2.9 yards per carry with a long gain of 12 … and they lost?

What the heck happened here?

1. Wasted yards. Arkansas blew a ton of chances to score. In regulation, 10 of the Hogs’ 13 offensive possessions ended in Oklahoma State territory, with 2 others ending at midfield. They scored on 5 of those possessions; on the other 7 they came up empty, including 4 trips inside the OSU 30-yard line that resulted in zilch. Including penalties, the Razorbacks gained 292 yards — more than 45% of their total for the game — on drives that produced no points, or what I call “wasted yards.” Oklahoma State, which spent most of the first half offensively flailing in its own territory? Only 107 wasted yards, half of them coming on the game’s opening possession which ended in a turnover on downs.

2. Turnovers. Arkansas failed to capitalize on its opportunities in a variety of ways, including a missed field goal, a turnover on downs, and the clock running out on the first half with the ball at the OSU 20. The main issue, though, was giveaways, which not only cost the Razorbacks points but led directly to points going the other way, including a 73-yard pick-6 by OSU’s Kale Smith that represented a dramatic momentum swing and the Cowboys’ only points of the first half.

https://twitter.com/big12studios/status/1832512008136049144/

Just as consequential was a muffed punt in the fourth quarter by Isaiah Sategna, which set up Oklahoma State’s offense for a short-field touchdown to even the score at 21. That’s the point on the win probability graph when you see Arkansas’ chances abruptly plummet for the first time.

3. That ending. If you had the Razorbacks as 7.5-point underdogs, you were probably feeling good about that bet for the vast majority of the afternoon: OK State led for a grand total of 2 minutes and 6 seconds in regulation. You probably felt even better about it when Arkansas’ offense came up empty on the first possession of overtime, all but assuring the Cowboys would settle for a walk-off field goal. Alas, the only safe bet in college football is that nothing is ever assured. Oklahoma State proceeded to 1) miss the game-winning kick, sending the game to a second overtime; 2) score a touchdown on its ensuing possession to take a 37-31 lead; 3) convert the mandatory 2-point attempt to expand the margin to 8; and 4) force Arkansas’ offense into a game-clinching turnover on downs to complete a wildly improbable cover. Never gam– [smuggled into an unmarked van by our advertisers].

Turning point of the week

USF wave the white flag

South Florida, a massive underdog at Alabama, trailed the Crimson Tide by 8 points, 21-13, midway through the fourth quarter of a nail-biter. USF faced 4th-and-goal from the Bama 4-yard line. Easy call: Go for the touchdown and 2-point conversion to tie, right?

Easy for you and me in the peanut gallery, maybe.

For coach Alex Golesh, not so much. Instead, Golesh signaled for the kicker, passing on a shot at the end zone in favor of a chip-shot field goal that cut the deficit from 8 to 5 … and still left the Bulls needing a touchdown in the final 6:45 to win.

“I thought you had to go get points there in the drive and make it a one-possession game,” Golesh said later, confusingly, given that an 8-point deficit is already a one-possession game. “I took the points with the thought that our defense was playing lights out. I’d go back and I would still do the same thing. Defense is playing lights out — you take the points, you secure a one-possession game, you get a stop on defense, you essentially set up a 2-minute drive to go win the game.”

At any rate, whatever message Golesh was trying to send by kicking, his team interpreted it as a surrender.

From that point on, the same Alabama offense that had spent most of the game looking sloppy and disheveled ripped off 21 unanswered points, hitting paydirt on 3 of its next 6 plays to close the game; just like that, a burgeoning upset bid became a rout that very nearly covered the spread.

Who knows how the ending might have played out differently if USF had been bolder with the game on the line, or might not have. Maybe the Bulls were out of gas and would have collapsed regardless of the call — all the more reason, then, to take full advantage of what was almost certainly going to be their last realistic opportunity to close the gap while it was in their grasp.

Superlatives

The week’s best individual performances.

1. Alabama DT Tim Keenan III: Alabama struggled to contain USF quarterback Byrum Brown on the perimeter, but the Bulls made little headway between the tackles, where the 326-pound Keenan was a rock. A true nose in the “War Daddy” mold, Keenan was credited with 9 tackles, including 5 “stops,” PFF’s category for plays that represent a failure for the offense based on down and distance. Unlike old-school nose tackles, he can also wreck pockets on a regular basis as a pass rusher: He generated team-high 6 QB pressures, getting home twice and playing a major role in Brown’s dismal stat line as a passer (15-for-35 for 103 yards, or 2.9 yards per attempt). Along with inside linebacker Jihaad Campbell, the middle of the defense is one area Bama can feel good about heading into next week’s trip to Wisconsin.

2. Auburn edge Keldric Faulk: While the offense was stinking it up against Cal, Faulk was living up to the preseason hype. A load off the edge at 6-6, 288 pounds, he took up residence in the Golden Bears’ backfield, recording 5 QB pressures, 3 tackles for loss, 2 sacks and 7 stops, hitting like a freight train in the process.

Some guys have “next level” written all over them, and Faulk, a true sophomore, is one of them. In a typically crowded year for SEC edge rushers, he has a chance to move to the top of the list with a bullet.

3. Texas QB Quinn Ewers: Ewers’ raw stat line at Michigan (24-for-36, 246 yards, 3 TDs, 0 INTs) was solid enough, especially adjusted for the competition: He’s the first opposing quarterback to throw for multiple touchdowns in Michigan Stadium since the pandemic, and both his passer rating (151.6) and QBR score (89.7) were the best anyone has put up against the Wolverines since Georgia’s Stetson Bennett IV shredded them in the CFP semifinal in 2021. He was 6-for-10 on third down, and 2-for-3 of passes of 20+ air yards, including his first touchdown. (That followed another impressive TD pass that was wiped out by a penalty on the opening series of the game.)

More impressive, though, was the apparent ease of it all, which left you with the sense that he was willing and able to do a lot more if the defense hadn’t had the game well in hand. The passing game throttled down at halftime, after which Texas scored just once and prioritized keeping the ball out of trouble. With the big nonconference test out of the way and UT-San Antonio, UL-Monroe and Mississippi State on deck, it might be a while before we get a chance to see him come out with both barrels blazing again.

4. Tennessee RB Dylan Sampson: All eyes in the Vols’ 51-10 win over NC State were on their phenom QB, Nico Iamaleava. But the most productive player was Sampson, who looks a clear-cut No. 1 back in his third season on campus and a sneaky frontrunner to lead the conference in rushing and/or all-purpose yards. Against the Wolfpack, he accounted for a career-high 169 scrimmage yards on 7.3 per touch, highlighted by a pair of touchdown runs from 9 yards and 34 yards out.

That marked Sampson’s 7th career 100-yard game from scrimmage, 6 of which Tennessee has now won by 30+ points. There should be plenty of opportunities this year to prove there’s more to his game than mop-up duty in blowouts.

5. South Carolina DB Nick Emmanwori: Emmanwori made the highlight reel courtesy of his game-clinching pick-6 off Brock Vandagriff, but he was everywhere in the Gamecocks’ rout of Kentucky, recording a team-high 7 tackles as well as the best overall PFF grade (91.0) among SEC defenders in Week 2 who played at least 20 snaps.

Honorable mention: Texas TE Gunnar Helm, who caught all 7 targets as Ewers’ intended receiver for a career-high 98 yards and a touchdown. … Texas DB Andrew Mukuba, who picked off a pass, broke up a couple more and made his presence felt as a tackler on a banner afternoon for the UT defense. … Texas edge Collin Simmons and South Carolina edge Dylan Stewart, for reasons outlined above. … Oklahoma LB Danny Stutsman, who led all SEC defenders in Week 2 with 15 tackles and 9 stops in the Sooners’ defensively-driven win over Houston. … Arkansas WR Andrew Armstrong, who led all SEC receivers with 164 yards on 10 catches in the Razorbacks’ razor-thin loss at Oklahoma State. … Arkansas RB Ja’Quinden Jackson, who ground out 149 yards and 3 touchdowns on 24 carries. … Ole Miss RB Henry Parrish Jr., who ran for 165 yards and 4 touchdowns on just 14 carries in the Rebels’ 52-3 win over Middle Tennessee. … Ole Miss QB Jaxson Dart, who completed 25-of-27 passes for 377 yards against MTSU and added a touchdown as a runner. … Georgia QB Carson Beck, who tied the single-game school record with 5 touchdown passes to 5 different receivers in a casual rout over Tennessee Tech. … And Florida QB DJ Lagway, whose 456-yard, 3-touchdown bonanza against Samford should be only the beginning of what figures to be a long tenure as the Gators’ starter.

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

Obscure stat of the week

Jaxson Dart completed his first 24 passes against Middle Tennessee — most of them of the extremely high-percentage variety — which set a school record with room to spare. (The previous was 19 straight, set by Matt Corral in 2020 against Vanderbilt.) Combined with his finish in Week 1, Dart also set the SEC record with 30 consecutive completions before his streak finally ended on his 25th attempt of the night.

SEC Power Rankings

Updating the food chain.

1. Georgia (2-0). Tennessee Tech coming to town is a prime “empty the bench” opportunity, and the Bulldogs took full advantage: 49 UGA players recorded a statistic in the official box score. The next 8 games are all vs. SEC opponents, so a bunch of those names likely won’t appear again until late November.

2. Texas (2-0). If the Longhorns have a lingering concern after throttling the defending champs, it’s sustaining a week-in, week-out ground game with presumptive bell cow CJ Baxter out for the season. Understudies Jaydon Blue, Jerrick Gibson and Tre Wisner have flashed, but all 3 check in between 200 and 205 pounds and it is a long road to January.

3. Ole Miss (2-0). You probably could have guessed that the Rebels lead the nation through 2 weeks in scoring offense, total offense and yards per play. But note also that they’re 1 of only 5 teams that has yet to allow a touchdown over 2 games, joining Georgia, Missouri, Ohio State and Washington.

4. Alabama (2-0). The panic that followed last year’s close shave against USF should serve as a reminder not to overreact to, uh, this year’s close shave against USF. But with Wisconsin up and Georgia on deck, the window for fixing their [stuff] is not not open for long.

5. Tennessee (2-0). Continuing a theme: As impressive as the offense is behind Nico Iamaleava, the defense fueled a blowout over NC State. The Wolfpack finished with their worst output in terms of total yards (143) and yards per play (2.9) since their 2009 opener against South Carolina, which I’m going to ahead and say is the closest Grayson McCall is going to get to being compared to Russell Wilson. In fact, all 10 of the Pack’s points came as the direct result of Iamaleava interceptions, including a pick-6 for their lone touchdown.

6. Missouri (2-0). Not only has Mizzou yet to allow a point against Murray State and Buffalo: The defense has faced just 6 plays inside its own 40-yard line, which have netted a grand total of 3 yards.

7. Oklahoma (2-0). We’ll see how the season plays out, trend-wise, but Oklahoma finally putting a respectable defense on the field at the same time that its offense craters would be a real monkey’s paw scenario.

8. LSU (1-1). There was a brief moment Saturday night when LSU gave up a 67-yard touchdown run to a guy named Collin Guggenheim that the Tigers looked like they might be in some trouble against Nicholls State: Guggenheim’s second TD of the game pulled the Colonels within 23-21 early in the third quarter. Instead, LSU scored touchdowns on its next 3 possessions, threw it into cruise control in the fourth to preserve a 44-21 win, and no one in Baton Rouge ever has to acknowledge that this game happened.

9. South Carolina (2-0). Not sold on the offense — extraterrestrial wideout Nyck Harbor has yet to catch a pass this season, and wasn’t even targeted against Kentucky, what’s up? — but if the defense is a stock, I’m buying. 5-star freshman Dylan Stewart is a confirmed dude whose impact vastly exceeds his presence on the stat sheet.

10. Texas A&M (1-1). As always, dropping half-a-hundred on a random FCS patsy doesn’t count for much. But it certainly beats not dropping half-a-hundred on a random FCS patsy, and after the opener A&M needed all the reassurance it get could.

11. Vanderbilt (2-0).  The Commodores waxed an FCS outfit, Alcorn State, 55-0, and nobody batted an eye. Good times in Nashville.

12. Arkansas (1-1). I’m not prepared to embark on the Sam Pittman Hot Seat Watch in Week 2, but the Hogs’ double-OT loss at Oklahoma State was a “pulling defeat from the jaws of victory” effort if ever there was one. Arkansas is 3-10 in 1-score games since the start of the 2022 season.

13. Florida (1-1). Bring on Lagway.

14. Auburn (1-1). There’s a lot to like about the up-and-coming talent in Hugh Freeze’s first 2 recruiting classes, but until the Tigers get the QB situation sorted, breaking into the top half of the league is a pipe dream.

15. Kentucky (1-1). The atmosphere for big-time football in Lexington has improved dramatically over the past few years, but since their emphatic 2021 upset over LSU the Wildcats are just 3-8 at home vs. SEC opponents. The 25-point margin of defeat against South Carolina was the second-most lopsided loss in that span behind a 49-21 loss to Alabama in 2023.

16. Mississippi State (1-1). The Bulldogs gave up 297 scrimmage yards to Arizona State RB Cam Skattebo, a character who can only exist in a college football game unfolding in the middle of the night. These are the things you miss when you have healthy sleep habits.