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SEC Football

Monday Down South: November is here, and the national championship race is wide open

Matt Hinton

By Matt Hinton

Published:


Takeaways, trends and technicalities from Week 10 in the SEC.

Playoff Realpolitik

It’s the first week of November — the clocks are falling back, the days are getting shorter, and Americans of all walks of life are only thinking about one thing: The College Football Playoff committee’s first weekly Top 25 of the season, set to debut Tuesday night, when there will be (to my knowledge) nothing else going on to distract the nation from this longstanding and beloved tradition. This year, of course, marks the first season under the expanded 12-team CFP format, adding a new layer of intrigue to the proceedings.

Unlike some years, there’s very little intrigue about who will be atop the initial rankings: Oregon, which earned nearly every first-place vote in both major polls for the third consecutive week following its dramatic Week 8 upset over Ohio State. The Ducks, for now, are the one team everyone can agree on, in the traditional sense: They’re 1 of only 5 remaining unbeaten teams in the entire FBS, and the only 1 of the 5 that began the season with anything remotely resembling championship aspirations. The others — Miami, BYU (?), Army (??), Indiana (???) — have all come from far afield, seemingly at random, serving mainly as a reminder of just how off-kilter the first two-thirds of the regular season has been across the Top 25. The defending national champion, Michigan, is a nonentity. The team the Wolverines beat in the title game, Washington, is even more obscure. Florida State, coming off an undefeated regular season in 2023, has collapsed in a heap. Alabama lost to Vanderbilt. But the Ducks? They’ve won all the ones they were supposed to, plus the one they had to to be taken seriously as national contenders. So here they are, everybody’s No. 1 heading into the home stretch.

But it’s hardly a coincidence that the question of “who’s No. 1?” on any given weekend has rarely felt further removed from the question of who’s going to win it all. Where November has typically marked the point in the season where the real contenders begin separating themselves from the pack, the national championship race right now still seems to only just be getting started, with no particular focus or obvious frontrunner to measure the rest of the field against. According to ESPN’s Football Power Index, 23 teams still have at least a 10% chance of making the Playoff, including the likes of SMU, Army, Washington State, Colorado and Tulane. The teams with the best chance of making the bracket in FPI’s estimation, Oregon (95.8%), Georgia (92.8%) and Miami (92.5%), are not the teams with the best chance to go all the way once they’re in — that would be Ohio State (17.5% to win it all) and Texas (15.4%). The fact that no team has even a 20% chance of being on the field in Atlanta when the confetti falls sums it up: The national championship race is as wide-open at this point on the calendar as it has ever been.

To set the table for the coming month, let’s take a conference-by-conference look at how the Playoff race stands to unfold, taking into account all the variables and vagaries that are baked into it. No conference race is settled, and not a single 1 of the 12 slots has been secured. It’s all up for grabs. Each team is noted with its chances of making the CFP field according to FPI:

SEC

  • Projected Teams in the Field:  4
  • Best Bets:  Georgia (92.3%)  |  Texas (77.9%)  |  Tennessee (73.9%)
  • Controls Its Own Fate:  Texas A&M (19.1%)
  • On the Bubble:  Alabama (55.5%)  |  Ole Miss (29.2%)  |  LSU (21.9%)
  • Hanging by a Thread:  Missouri (6.5%)
  • Biggest Remaining Games:  Alabama @ LSU  |  Georgia @ Ole Miss  |  Tennessee @ Georgia  |  Texas @ Texas A&M

Texas A&M’s loss at South Carolina created a logjam at the top of the standings, and if you want to wade into the vagaries of the league’s official tiebreaker procedures to untangle each team’s potential path to the SEC Championship Game, be my guest. Personally, I’m not expending any bandwidth beyond the first criteria, head-to-head results, for at least another week. (I am on a deadline here.) For now, there’s only one thing we can say for certain: The only team that still clearly controls its fate in the conference race is … Texas A&M.

Shocking but true. Consider that, as it stands, no more than 3 teams can potentially finish 7-1 in SEC play: 1) The winner of Georgia/Tennessee on Nov. 16; 2) the winner of Texas/Texas A&M on Nov. 30; and 3) LSU. Now, the chalkiest, most straightforward scenario is simple: LSU eats it against Alabama this weekend — or in any of its subsequent 3 games against Florida, Vanderbilt and Oklahoma — thereby eliminating the Tigers and clearing the path for the winner of Dawgs/Vols to square off in the championship game against the winner of Horns/Aggies. No sweat.

But there are plenty of ways for that scenario to get borked.

Let’s say LSU knocks off the Tide, runs the table and forces a 3-way tie in the final ledger; if that tie involves Texas A&M, the Aggies would still punch their ticket to Atlanta by virtue of their head-to-head win over LSU in Week 9. The other spot would come down to tiebreaker math between LSU and the winner of Georgia/Tennessee, which would be contingent on a bunch of variables we’re not going to get into until we’re left with absolutely no choice. Just know that if the Aggies win out, as unlikely as that might seem at the moment, they will play for their first SEC title since joining the league.

Let me emphasize the word unlikely in the preceding graf, because there is no single scenario right now that qualifies as likely, even the one I described above as chalk. Nine teams remain technically, mathematically alive to win the conference, including Missouri and Vanderbilt; per FPI, none of the 5 teams currently tied for first place boast overwhelming odds of winning out.

In fact, between LSU/Alabama, Georgia/Ole Miss and Georgia/Tennessee over the next 2 weeks, there’s a better-than-decent chance that (barring a significant upset in the meantime) A&M and Texas will be the last two 1-loss teams left standing in conference play heading into their much-anticipated reunion on Thanksgiving weekend. That would guarantee at least 1 2-loss team in the SEC Championship Game, which has happened just 3 times since the league expanded to 14 teams in 2012. (LSU in 2022, Florida in 2020 and Florida in 2016.) We have not had a matchup of two 2-loss teams in the conference standings since 2007, the most chaotic season in the modern history of the sport. We’re not there yet, but it’s not out of the question, either.

Big Ten

  • Projected Teams in the Field: 4
  • Best Bets: Oregon (95.6%) | Ohio State (91.3%) | Indiana (86.6%)
  • Controls Their Own Fate: Oregon | Ohio State | Indiana (68.6%)
  • On the Bubble: Penn State (73.7%)
  • Biggest Remaining Game: Indiana @ Ohio State

If the overstuffed, 18-team version of the Big Ten was supposed to introduce more parity, well, maybe next year. In 2024, the B1G is a top-heavy league with a clear gap between the top 4, all of whom are likely to finish with at least 11 wins, and everyone else, all of whom are unranked and have already been mathematically eliminated from winning the conference.

Ohio State’s come-from-behind, 20-13 win at Penn State clarified the picture at the top somewhat by relegating the Nittany Lions to the at-large track. That leaves just 1 remaining game among the 4 CFP contenders, when undefeated Indiana visits Ohio State on Nov. 19; all signs point to the winner of that game advancing to face Oregon in the Big Ten Championship Game.

OK, let’s circle back for a second: Undefeated Indiana. Are the Hoosiers really doing this? Perennial doormats, they’re 9-0 for the first time in school history, fulfilling a meme — #9WINDIANA — that initially began as a kind of joke but has gradually turned into a bona fide bandwagon. They’re blowing the doors off the competition, outscoring opponents by an FBS-best 32.9 points per game, and by 26.7 ppg in Big Ten play; their closest game, a 31-17 win over Washington with GameDay on campus on Oct. 26, came with starting QB Kurtis Rourke sidelined by an injury. The previous week, they barbecued the best team they’ve played to date, Nebraska, by a score of 56-7.

But then, yeah, the best team they’ve played to date is unranked, rapidly unraveling Nebraska.

If there’s a sticking point to Indiana’s case for an at-large bid, it’s clearly the schedule, which outside of the upcoming trip to Ohio State is about as nondescript as they come. (A remarkable sentence to write about a schedule that includes both of the participants in last year’s CFP Championship Game, but hey, welcome to college football in 2024. Indiana opened as a 14.5-point favorite for this weekend’s date against Michigan, a line that would have been unfathomable just a couple months ago.) Short of an upset against the Buckeyes, a credible loss on the road would probably do at least as much to validate IU as any of its lopsided wins over the bottom half of the conference. A convincing loss, on the other had, would set off the fraud alarm with only remaining game, against last-place Purdue, to recover some credibility.

Advanced metrics like the Hoosiers, who come in 10th in the latest FPI ratings and 11th according to SP+; the traditional polls do, too, elevating them into the top 10 on the heels of a blowout win over Michigan State. (An early 10-0 deficit against the Spartans represented the first deficit Indiana has faced all season; it responded by scoring 47 unanswered over the final 3 quarters.) But a lot is riding on the trip to Columbus, where perceptions can change quickly — in either direction.

ACC

  • Projected Teams in the Field: 1 or 2
  • Best Bet: Miami (92.8%)
  • Controls Its Own Fate: Miami | SMU (47.2%)
  • On the Bubble: n/a
  • Hanging by a Thread: Pitt (11.4%) | Clemson (7.0%)
  • Biggest Remaining Game: Clemson @ Pitt

A convoluted race at the top of the ACC got a lot simpler Saturday with lopsided losses by Clemson and Pitt, presumably eliminating both until further notice. That left Miami and SMU as the only remaining unbeatens in conference play, and as frontrunners for the ACC Championship Game. The Hurricanes and Mustangs will both be clear favorites in every remaining game on their respective schedules, neither of which features an opponent that received a vote in this week’s polls. They’re on a collision course.

Assuming the chalk holds, the big question is how the committee will handle the loser of the title game — especially if it’s SMU. Miami probably has some margin for error; the Canes’ schedule is nothing to write home about, but if they make it to Charlotte with a 12-0 record they will probably be a top-4 or -5 team (they’re currently No. 4 in both traditional polls) and in position to weather a competitive loss without sliding all the way out of an at-large slot.

Can SMU say the same? The Mustangs’ only defeat to date, a Week 2 loss to BYU, won’t be held too harshly against them. But Saturday’s blowout win over Pitt is their only win over a currently ranked team, and that distinction depends on Pitt upholding its end to stay there.

There’s a loose consensus that the losers of championship games shouldn’t be punished in the final accounting for playing an extra game they earned the right to play. If the committee abides by that, an 11-2 SMU might have a shot at clinging to one of the last couple at-large tickets. If the committee is more concerned with quality wins than losses, that figures to be a tougher sell.

Big 12

  • Projected Teams in the Field: 1
  • Best Bet: BYU (57.9%)
  • Controls Its Own Fate: BYU | Iowa State (24.3%) | Colorado (13.8%)
  • On the Bubble: n/a
  • Hanging by a Thread: Kansas State (14.4%) | Arizona State (2.3%) | Texas Tech (1.7%)
  • Biggest Remaining Games: Colorado @ Texas Tech | Arizona State @ Kansas State | BYU @ Arizona State | Kansas State @ Iowa State

BYU can make things very easy on the committee by running the table, finishing 13-0, and clearing the field of would-be at-large contenders in the process. If the Cougars get dragged into the scrum, variables and contingencies begin to proliferate. The much-hyped parity in the Big 12 is borne out by the fact that no team has even a 20% chance of winning out against its remaining schedule, per FPI, and the 2 teams it gives the best chance, TCU and Baylor, are effectively out of the conference race with 3 losses apiece. The potential is very high that it’s gonna get weird.

As you can tell from the percentages, trying to untangle any specific threads in this race beyond “BYU wins out” is a fool’s errand. The upshot is that the Big 12 is what they call in basketball a “1-bid league” — the automatic spot reserved for the conference champ is almost certainly the only 1 it’s going to fill. The only conceivable path to at-large consideration is a scenario in which BYU finishes 12-0, loses the conference title game, and enters into the at-large pool at 12-1. The Cougars have a couple of ranked wins under their belt over SMU and Kansas State; they are plausible candidates, although just how plausible would ultimately depend on who they’re up against. But with a clear path to a first-round bye in front of them right now, they’d rather not leave it up to the committee.

Group of 5/Independents

  • Projected Teams in the Field: 1 or 2
  • Best Bet: Boise State (70.5%)
  • Controls Its Own Fate: Notre Dame (57.8%) | Army (20.5%)
  • On the Bubble: Tulane (11.7%)
  • Hanging by a Thread: Washington State (17.1%) | UNLV (8.9%) | Louisiana (7.9%)
  • Biggest Remaining Games: Notre Dame vs. Army | Army vs. Navy

The second team in this set is Notre Dame. The Irish’s November slate is uninspiring, despite their best efforts — when you put Florida State and USC on the schedule, you don’t count on them both staggering through various stages of collapse at the same time. But their opening-day win at Texas A&M still counts for something, and if they win out to finish 11-1 they will be near the front of the line for an at-large spot. If they stumble down the stretch, they can probably forget it. When your first loss came at the hands of Northern Illinois, you can’t afford a second.

The runaway favorite for the automatic Group of 5 bid is Boise State, which boasts a Heisman-caliber star in RB Ashton Jeanty; will be heavily favored in all of its remaining games, including the Mountain West Championship Game; and has arguably the highest-quality of all the “quality losses” this season, a 37-34 nail-biter at Oregon decided on a field on the last play of the game in Week 2. The Broncos only need 1 more domino to fall to clear their path: A loss by Army, the last remaining unbeaten in the Group of 5 ranks.

It’s a fairly safe bet that that loss will come on Nov. 23, when the Black Knights will be big underdogs against Notre Dame in Yankee Stadium. If by some minor miracle they get out of the Bronx with their perfect record intact, the Knights still have to preserve it against Navy a few weeks later (always a toss-up), followed by the American Athletic Championship Game the week after that, most likely against Tulane. Never say never, so let’s just say the 2% chance FPI gives Army of running the table through the AAC title game might be generous.

Projection …

What does all that amount to when it’s all said and done? Who knows! But it is probably going to look quite a bit different than it does today, still a month out. Here’s my best guess at how the bracket will shake out based on how the rest of the season sets up between now and then — although it is just that, a guess. Remember, the top 4 seeds marked for first-round byes are reserved for conference champs. Buyer beware.

Florida: Fadin’ with Aidan

DJ Lagway’s hamstring injury against Georgia was a devastating development in a game Florida was winning before he was carted off in the second quarter, and could have very plausibly won had he played the entire game. His replacement, third-string stopgap Aidan Warner, didn’t stand a chance. Warner averaged 3.0 yards per attempt with 1 interception on 7-of-22 passing over the final 2+ quarters, and it was a testament to just how dire the circumstances were that it felt like a fairly respectable effort. Florida even managed to even the score midway through the 4th quarter (with a boost from good field position and a 15-yard penalty against Georgia’s defense) before fading late. Whatever the scoreboard said at any given moment, though, at no point after Lagway’s exit were the Gators a serious threat to spring the upset; they were ultimately outscored 31-10 in his absence.

With Lagway apparently done for the year, the question now is what his absence means for Billy Napier’s job security with Warner due to finish out the season as the starting quarterback.

On one hand, a 4th straight losing season (the 3rd straight under Napier) at this point seems more or less inevitable. Lagway’s name is just the latest entry on a long list of injuries that already included the team’s leading rusher (Montrell Johnson Jr.), receiver (Eugene Wilson III), and top draft prospect on defense (Jason Marshall Jr.), not to mention erstwhile starting QB Graham Mertz. Minus their rising star, Florida is even less likely to crack the win column over the next 3 weeks against Texas, LSU or Ole Miss than it was at this time last week, and the odds weren’t great then. Napier’s fate already hinged more on the vibes and momentum accompanying Lagway’s promotion to a full-time role than on tangible results; Lagway on crutches is a bad omen for all of the above.

Then again, as long as the team remains remotely competitive, it hardly seems fair to bang the gavel with the offense in the hands of an obscure walk-on from the Ivy League. The Gators opened as 3-touchdown underdogs for this weekend’s trip to Texas, and the lines against LSU and Ole Miss aren’t likely to be much more forgiving. The finale against Florida State — which as of this writing has not fired coach Mike Norvell, but very likely will by the time Florida limps into Tallahassee on Nov. 30 — is going to be a depressing scene in a half-empty-at-best Doak Campbell Stadium, the last place it makes sense to take stock of the future.

Speaking of the future: Ask the locals, and they’ll tell you the biggest mark against Napier’s tenure right now isn’t what’s happening in between the lines in Year 3 of a rebuild. It’s what’s not happening in recruiting. Heading into the final stretch of the 2025 cycle, Florida’s class ranks next-to-last in the SEC according to 247Sports’ Composite Rating, ahead of only Vanderbilt, and 51st nationally, a reflection of the broader lack of long-term optimism surrounding the program. The Gators have commitments from just 2 of the top 20 players in the state of Florida, an inconceivable state of affairs in the years when Florida was routinely competing for rings.

In Napier’s defense, the program’s diminished status on the trail was a longstanding issue he inherited when he took the job, which has persisted over multiple administrations in Gainesville dating to Will Muschamp’s. But, with the notable exception of Lagway’s signature last December, Napier has not made much headway in un-diminishing it, one of his top priorities when he was hired. (The pending Jaden Rashada lawsuit over a botched NIL deal, which names the university and Napier personally, certainly doesn’t help.) We’ll see how much gas the 2024 team has in the tank over the coming weeks as it plays out the string. But the results on the field are not necessarily the ones that are going to carry the most weight when it comes to time to deciding whether a Year 4 is in the cards.

Superlatives

The week’s best individual performances.

1. Ole Miss QB Jaxson Dart and WR Jordan Watkins. A prolific box score is one thing, but Dart and Watkins didn’t just break records in the Rebels’ blowout win over Arkansas: They made it look easy, hooking up so effortlessly that Sam Pittman openly wondered aloud after the game if the Razorbacks were somehow tipping off their coverages.

On his end, Dart set school records for passing yards (515) and total yards (562), as well as personal career highs for touchdowns (6), pass efficiency (284.1) and Total QBR. Watkins, assuming the go-to role in place of an injured Tre Harris, set school records for receiving yards (254) and touchdowns (5), all of them coming in the first 3 quarters. (He didn’t touch the ball in the 4th.) Three of his 5 scores covered 60+ yards, all of them downfield shots that featuring Watkins running open — on one occasion absolutely wide open — behind the Arkansas secondary.

Dart also hit a couple of career milestones, moving to No. 1 all-time at Ole Miss for total offense (10,805 yards) and wins as the starting quarterback (25). His place in school history is officially secure. But none of those wins to date have been nearly as meaningful as a potential upset over Georgia would be this weekend.

2. South Carolina QB LaNorris Sellers and RB Rocket Sanders. Sellers has been up and down in his first season as a starter, but he looked the part and then some against Texas A&M, leading the Gamecocks to more yards (530) and points (44) against the Aggies than any opposing SEC offense since the 2020 Alabama attack that featured 3 Heisman Trophy finalists. Although he was just 13-for-27 passing, Sellers finished with a season-high 244 yards and 2 TDs through the air while adding 106 yards (also a season high) and a tone-setting touchdown on the ground. (Just as important: No turnovers.) Per PFF, his 12 missed tackles forced ranked 2nd in the FBS for the weekend behind only the nation’s premier tackle-breaker, Boise State’s Ashton Jeanty.

Meanwhile, Sanders turned in his best game as a Gamecock, by far, giving the home crowd a glimpse of what they hoped to see from him when he portaled in from Arkansas: 25 carries, 144 yards, 2 touchdowns, plus another 92 yards as a receiver. That represented his best output in terms of yards from scrimmage (236) in nearly 2 years. When he’s heathy — a crucial qualifier, unfortunately — Sanders remains arguably the conference’s most bankable workhorse.

3. South Carolina Edge Dylan Stewart. The official stats credited Stewart with a single sack against A&M, and an emphatic one at that. But that didn’t come close to reflecting his impact: As a pass rusher, Stewart turned in his best game of the season, leading the SEC for the weekend in both QB pressures (9) and overall PFF grade (89.8) while thoroughly ruining Aggies QB Marcel Reed’s night.

https://twitter.com/_RyanFowler_/status/1853112403791094056/

It’s an incredibly deep year for SEC edge rushers, which could limit Stewart’s potential for accolades beyond the ones reserved for freshmen. But if you were drafting for the long-term, he might be the first off the board, and with the exception of Tennessee’s James Pearce Jr., it might not be close.

4. Tennessee RB Dylan Sampson. While the Vols are waiting on Nico Iamaleava to make the leap, the offense continues to run through Sampson, who continues to deliver on a weekly basis. He was his usual, workmanlike self Saturday in a 28-18 win over Kentucky, grinding out 140 yards and 2 touchdowns on 27 carries, the longest of which gained 17 yards. In eight games this season, Sampson has run for 100+ yards and multiple touchdowns in all but 1 — and even the outlier wasn’t far off the mark.

5. Ole Miss Edge Princely Umanmielen. Umanmielen gets the nod this week as the token rep for Ole Miss’ d-line, which really deserves to be recognized as a unit. He was responsible for 4 QB pressures and 2 of the Rebels’ 5 sacks against Arkansas, as well as a fumble recovery that up their last touchdown of the afternoon.

Honorable Mention: Georgia edge Chaz Chambliss, who set career highs for tackles (6), TFLs (2.5) and sacks (2) in UGA’s win over Florida. … Florida DB Aaron Gates, who picked off a pass, broke up another, and allowed just 1 reception in coverage (for 3 yards) on an active afternoon against the Dawgs. … South Carolina TE Joshua Simon, who had a career-high 132 yards and 2 touchdowns on 4 catches in the Gamecocks’ win over Texas A&M. … Ole Miss TE Dae’Quan Wright, who contributed a career-high 99-yards and 2 TDs to the Rebels’ offensive bonanza at Arkansas. … Oklahoma RB Jovantae Barnes, who ran for 203 yards and 3 TDs on 11.3 per carry in a 59-14 blowout over Maine. … And Tennessee DL Joshua Josephs, whose strip sack in the 3rd quarter against Kentucky set up a short-field, go-ahead touchdown and swung the momentum decisively in the Vols’ favor.

– – –
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.

Obscure Stat of the Week

Arkansas’ 63-31 debacle against Ole Miss was a mirror image of their Week 9 win at Mississippi State, putting them on the opposite end of virtually identical beatdowns in consecutive weeks. In Starkville, they outgained the Bulldogs by 202 yards in a 33-point win; against the Rebels, they were outgained by exactly 202 yards in a 32-point loss.

SEC Power Rankings

Updating the food chain.

1. Georgia (7-1). Winning ugly is still winning, but if the Dawgs have a complete game in them, the next 2 weeks against Ole Miss and Tennessee are the ideal time to prove it. | Last Week: 1

2. Texas (7-1). The Longhorns are in fine shape health-wise, schedule-wise and stats-wise, especially on defense. But as badly as Steve Sarkisian wants to snuff out any hint of a controversy between Quinn Ewers and Arch Manning, Ewers’ mediocre performance since returning from injury has left the door cracked for nagging doubts to creep in. Coming out of an open date, the next 3 games against Florida, Arkansas and Kentucky are an opportunity to reevaluate before the stakes get too high. | Last Week: 2

3. Tennessee (7-1). Freshman kicker Max Gilbert is going through it: With 3 misses against Kentucky, he’s an alarming 1-for-6 on field-goal attempts in the Vols’ past 2 games. His 2 misses against Alabama in Week 8 were easier to shrug off, both of them coming from 50+ yards out. Gilbert’s misses against the Wildcats, on the other hand, were much more makeable attempts from 43, 40 and 34, respectively. It hasn’t mattered yet, but the thing with kickers is you never know when it will. | Last Week: 3

4. Alabama (6-2). Last year’s win over LSU in Tuscaloosa marked the beginning of Jalen Milroe’s emergence from volatile underclassman surviving from one week to the next to rising star capable of commanding a big stage. Coming off a glitchy October the Tide would love to see that version of Milroe setting the pace in Baton Rouge. | Last Week: 5

5. Ole Miss (7-2). Jaxson Dart is not generally considered a first-round prospect in 2025, even in a relatively underwhelming class of draft-eligible quarterbacks. This weekend may be his last, best chance to play his way into the conversation against a streaky but potentially gettable Georgia defense. | Last Week: 7

6. Texas A&M (7-2). The Aggies beat the stripes off LSU in Week 9 in what was supposed to be a defining win for the Mike Elko administration, only to drop below the Tigers a week later in both major polls. Hey, some of us still respect the actual results (for at least a week, anyway). | Last Week: 4

7. LSU (6-2). And before you remind me, yes, I’m aware that makes me a hypocrite for ranking the Tigers behind Ole Miss despite their head-to-head win over the Rebels in Week 7. But that was a) 3 weeks ago, and b) in overtime, so there’s a little more wiggle room. Beat Alabama and we won’t have to have to this discussion again. (Well, uh, unless Ole Miss also beats Georgia, in which case it will be one of the only discussions we’ll be having for the rest of the month.) | Last Week: 6

8. Missouri (6-2). No quarterback in the country needed a week off more than Brady Cook, who’s dealing with ankle and hand injuries that have forced him to miss the majority of the Tigers’ past 2 games against Auburn and Alabama. Eli Drinkwitz said last week that he expects Cook to return this season, but didn’t elaborate on a timetable. Given the dismal performance of backup Drew Pyne in his absence, the sooner, the better. | Last Week: 9

9. Vanderbilt (6-3). As a team, Vandy averaged a pedestrian 3.7 yards per play against Auburn with more incomplete passes (14) than first downs (12) and a long gain on the ground of just 7 yards … and won, 17-7, to secure bowl eligibility. For possibly the first time ever, it’s just been that kind of year for the ‘Dores. | Last Week: 10

10. South Carolina (5-3). For a long time I dismissed home-field advantage as a borderline superstition, but the older I get the more I believe. The “Williams-Brice After Dark” effect is palpable: Under Shane Beamer, Carolina is an astounding 14-3 in home games that kick off at 7 pm ET or later vs. 11-18 in all other games. | Last Week: 12

11. Arkansas (5-4). Before Saturday’s loss to Ole Miss, ESPN caught Sam Pittman on a hot mic talking about Arkansas’ relative lack of NIL funds compared to the competition: “We had to settle for the blue-light special on our o-line. Well, from what I hear they (Ole Miss) went out and got Louis Vuitton.” The really funny part was he said this on a field that literally has the Wal-Mart logo painted on the 25-yard line. | Last Week: 8

12. Florida (4-4). The loss to Georgia was Florida’s 7th straight vs. a ranked opponent (as of kickoff) and dropped the Gators’ overall record vs. ranked teams to 2-12 on Billy Napier’s watch. | Last Week: 11

13. Oklahoma (5-4). The Sooners scored 8 offensive touchdowns in a 59-14 blowout over Maine, which, sure, it’s just Maine. Considering Oklahoma’s offense has managed a grand total of 7 touchdowns in 5 SEC games, at this point they’ll take it anywhere they can get it. | Last Week: 13

14. Auburn (3-6). Social media made much of the fact that, following Saturday’s loss to Vanderbilt, Hugh Freeze’s record at Auburn stands at 9-13 — 1 game worse than the guy he replaced, the much-maligned Bryan Harsin, who was 9-12 on The Plains when he got the boot midway through the 2022 season. Of course, the circumstances aren’t exactly the same: Auburn’s regression under Harsin (the reason he was fired in the first place) left Freeze with a much steeper rebuild than the one Harsin inherited from Gus Malzahn. But every Auburn head coach of my lifetime has been more or less permanently on the hot seat within a couple of years of taking the job, anyway, so honestly Freeze is right on schedule. Forgetting to hand the ball to a healthy Jarquez Hunter while calling for Payton Thorne to drop back 34 times in a neck-and-neck game is inexplicable. | Last Week: 14

15. Kentucky (3-6). Brock Vandagriff was knocked out of the Wildcats’ loss at Tennessee on one of the most violent hits you’re going to see in the modern “protect the QB at all costs” era.

No, no. The other one.

Yeah, that’ll do it. Vandagriff limped off and didn’t return, yielding to backup Gavin Wimsatt for the rest of the night. No update as of this writing of his status, but with the season dwindling fast it’s about time for the Wildcats to start looking ahead to what the position is going to look like in 2025 — that is, once they settle whether Marks Stoops is still going to be the head coach. | Last Week: 15

16. Mississippi State (2-7). The Bulldogs trounced UMass, 45-20, notching their first FBS win under coach Jeff Lebby and ensuring that at the very least they’re not going to enter the offseason on an 11-game losing streak. Their pursuit of their first SEC win in more than a full calendar year resumes this weekend at Tennessee. | Last Week: 16

Moment of Zen of the Week

•     •     •

Matt Hinton

Matt Hinton, author of 'Monday Down South' and our resident QB guru, has previously written for Dr. Saturday, CBS and Grantland.

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