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

Rocky Top, you have a D

Tennessee 40, LSU 13: Short of, I don’t know, breaking the sound barrier, there wasn’t much Tennessee’s offense could have done against LSU that could have told us anything we didn’t already know. Big numbers from the Volunteers are quickly becoming one of the weekly facts of life.

The Vols started the day ranked No. 1 nationally in total offense, and ended it ranked No. 1 nationally after torching the Tigers for 502 yards. They started the day ranked No. 2 nationally in scoring, and ended it ranked No. 2 nationally with another efficient, 40-point performance in the books. (In fact, considering they settled for 4 field goals on the afternoon and missed a 5th, it was arguably not nearly as efficient as it could have been.) They ranked 3rd in Offensive SP+ after Week 5, and improved to No. 2 after Week 6. Hendon Hooker came in as a surging Heisman candidate, and left as a surging Heisman candidate, accounting for 295 yards, 2 touchdowns and possibly the most immaculate bomb you’re going to see all year.

Tennessee’s offense: It’s still good. If the Vols have a sustained dark-horse run in them — at 5-0, the case that they might is getting more compelling by the week — it begins and ends with Hooker, his explosive fleet of wideouts, and the relentless tempo they impose on defenses.

But no real contender lives by shootouts alone: At some point along the way, surviving the SEC gauntlet is bound to require playing a little defense of their own. And if we learned anything new in Baton Rouge, it’s that second-year DC Tim Banks’ unsung unit may be better equipped to hold up its end of the bargain than it typically gets credit for.

Start on the scoreboard: 13 points were the fewest Tennessee has allowed to a Power 5 opponent in more than 2 years, going back to a 35-12 win over Missouri in October 2020, and matched LSU’s worst output at home since a 2018 shutout vs. Alabama. The Tigers managed just 55 yards rushing (including sacks), also the fewest by a Power 5 opponent on Banks’ watch, and 355 yards altogether, exceeding only Vanderbilt last November. Notably, more than a third of that total came on a couple of meaningless drives in garbage time, covering 75 and 72 yards well after most of the home crowd had made for the exits. Prior to that, LSU’s first 8 possessions yielded 4 punts, 3 turnovers on downs (all in the first half), and a single relevant scoring drive, a 12-play, 96-yard march in the second quarter with Tennessee already leading comfortably.

Nothing came easy, and LSU never threatened to keep pace or claw its way out of the hole.

Beyond the numbers, in the competitive portion of the proceedings, the Vols looked like an outfit with a newfound taste for blood. They generated sustained pressure on LSU QB Jayden Daniels, finishing with 14 pressures (per Pro Football Focus) and 5 sacks. Four of them involved senior edge rusher Byron Young, who took another step toward full-blown stardom on the most productive day of his UT career. All but 1 of his 4 sacks were drive-enders on 3rd or 4th down, including an emphatic 4th-and-10 takedown that set up a Tennessee field goal just before the half.

They also turned the Tigers back on a key 4th-and-1 run at the start of the second quarter, when middle ‘backer Aaron Beasley shot the A-gap and stoned RB Josh Williams in the backfield for a loss, handing the ball back to Tennessee’s offense at midfield. The next play was Hooker’s 45-yard dagger to Jalin Hyatt to extend the lead to 20-0 (see above), and the rout was officially on.

Is it possible all of that says less about Tennessee’s defense going forward than it does about LSU’s ongoing dysfunction on offense? Sure. The Tigers are a squarely middle-of-the-pack attack that was already trending down coming off a sketchy Week 5 win at Auburn. They were behind the curve from literally the opening kickoff, which return man Jack Bech fumbled away to set up the Vols’ first touchdown barely a minute into the game, and faced a 10-0 deficit having run just 3 offensive plays. The running game was an afterthought and the urgency that fueled LSU’s ill-fated 4th-down decision-making was dialed up before the late sleepers even settled into their seats. And after all, we are still talking about the same Tennessee defense that gave up nearly 600 yards to Florida its last time out.

But if you’re in the market for sobriety or patience where Tennessee football is concerned, well, you’ve picked the wrong week. The blowout margin on Saturday lifted the Vols to No. 6 in the updated AP poll, their highest ranking at any point since 2005 — just in time to host Alabama in a game loaded with significance for the direction of the program, this season and beyond. They’re undefeated headed into the Bama game for the first time since their now-ancient national championship season in 1998, before all but the oldest players on the current roster — Hooker was about 9 months old — were even born. The collision with the Tide will be the biggest event in Neyland Stadium in about as long. College GameDay is coming back to town. A couple decades’ worth of angst will be rehashed for maximum effect. The word “Playoff” will be invoked openly and without irony. Bryce Young will (probably) be back.

In that context, a high-water performance in a hostile setting was the best possible result at the best possible time for reassuring long-suffering Tennessee fans that the moment is real, the cursed vibes have lifted, and this team has a fighting chance to meet it.

Better than a fighting chance: It has margin for error.

The defense was never going to be perfect, but maybe now the offense doesn’t have to be, either. For the first time in Josh Heupel’s tenure, it’s possible to imagine getting over in a big game that unfolds as something other than a shootout. That doesn’t mean that a shootout isn’t still in order. The oddsmakers, who set the opening line at Alabama -7.5 and the over/under at 64.5, assume Tennessee will have to score well into the 30s to put itself in position to win, a fair assumption. As long as Hooker is upright, that’s well within the Vols’ comfort zone. But anything the defense can do to expand that zone will be a vital step toward making the opportunity count.

Bryce on ice

Alabama 24, Texas A&M 20: As for Alabama, the Crimson Tide looked like a team replacing the reigning Heisman Trophy winner with a gifted-but-raw redshirt freshman in his first career start: Inconsistent, sloppy, and fortunate to get out with their perfect record intact.

To their credit, they were also explosive. With Young ruled out due to a shoulder injury, Jalen Milroe left little doubt about the “gifted” part, making plays as a runner and passer and throwing 3 touchdown passes on drives that covered 70+ yards. On the latter 2 scores, in particular, run-after-catch strikes to Jermaine Burton and Ja’Corey Brooks from 35 yards and 29 yards out, respectively, Milroe did his best Tua Tagovailoa impression, putting the ball in exactly the right place to allow his receiver to sprint away from a trailing DB and hit the jets in open grass. But the raw freshman stuff was on full display, too, most obviously in the second quarter, when he committed turnovers on 3 of Alabama’s last 4 offensive possessions before halftime. The first 2, both fumbles forced by A&M’s Fadil Diggs as Milroe attempted to step up into the teeth of a collapsing pocket, led directly to both of the Aggies’ touchdowns on drives that started in Bama territory.

But the sloppiness was a team effort. Milroe took care of the ball in the second half, only to watch 3 consecutive, sustained drives into A&M territory end with another fumble (by RB Jase McClellan) and a couple of missed field goals by the usually reliable Will Reichard. Two successful kicks would have put the game away in routine fashion. Again, Alabama had another chance to seal the deal with a first down on its last possession but went 3-and-out on 3 consecutive runs rather than risk Milroe putting the ball in the air.

Instead, the Aggies got the ball back down 4, with 1:50 to play and just enough of a sliver of hope to drive 69 of the 71 yards they needed for the game-winning, season-altering touchdown before time ran out.

The disbelief of those final few seconds was quantified in ESPN’s running win probability metric, which gave Alabama a 96.1% chance to win at kickoff, remained essentially flat with minor wobbles for most of the game, and never dipped below a 70% chance of a Bama win until a defensive pass interference penalty in the end zone set up A&M at the 2-yard line with three seconds to play — at which point the odds abruptly spiked in the Aggies’ favor for the first time.

It might have taken most of the night to sink in, but in the end, the fact that the Tide came as close as they did to letting a game they never seemed at risk of losing until the dying seconds slip away from them was another stark reminder of just how valuable Young is to surviving the SEC gauntlet. There’s knowing in an abstract way, and then there’s knowing. Milroe is the future, but if they’re going to make it to December with their championship hopes intact they need Young back asap.

‘Evan, Evan, Evan, Evan’

Texas A&M isn’t in the mood for moral victories these days, but if there was any solace in its last-second loss in Tuscaloosa it was the emergence of 5-star freshman Evan Stewart down the stretch as the plausible go-to target the offense has been missing. With his leading receiver, senior Ainias Smith, out for the year, QB Haynes King locked in on the freshman, targeting Stewart on 19 of his 46 attempts — a season-high for any SEC receiver — with 10 of them coming in the fourth quarter alone.

Stewart responded with season/career highs for catches (8) and yards (106), including the key play on the last drive: A spectacular leaping grab over two Alabama defenders that a) bailed out King on what by all rights should have been a game-ending pick, and b) moved A&M inside the Bama 40-yard line with a realistic shot at the winning touchdown.

In fact, when it came down to the do-or-die call that decided the game, the Aggies were a little bit too locked in. With 3 seconds on the clock and the ball at the 2-yard line following a defensive holding penalty in the end zone, the situation called for essentially the Aggies’ best 2-point conversion play. (Alabama even called a timeout to give them more time to think about it.) What followed instead was an indiscriminate mess that left King with no remotely open receivers and no choice but to wing a futile throw in Stewart’s direction that didn’t even make it to the goal line.

To the extent there was a plan there, it was apparently to isolate Stewart for a 50/50 throw to the front pylon – an NFL-grade play that, say, Ohio State might be able to execute in that situation with its NFL-grade talent on both ends of the throw, but which proved beyond the grasp of a backup QB on a gimpy ankle and a 19-year-old wideout in his 6th college game. (For the record, certain former SEC quarterbacks on social media were more forgiving toward the call than others.) It didn’t help that, according to Alabama DB Terion Arnold, who’d been opposite Stewart most of the night and blanketed him on the last play, Jimbo Fisher more or less announced where the ball was going to everyone on the field during the preceding timeout:

“I’m actually looking at Jimbo before the play, just going through,” Arnold said, “and he’s like, ‘Evan, Evan, Evan, Evan.’ I was like, ‘OK, I’m ready.””

By that point, though, given that A&M’s comeback effort had largely consisted of calling Stewart’s number for most of the previous two drives, it wasn’t exactly a state secret. When the game is on the line, “think players, not plays,” as the cliché goes, and Stewart was the player most responsible for getting the Aggies within striking distance in the first place. He couldn’t get them all the way there this time, against long odds.

But they’re obviously willing to keep giving him the chance — if not him, who? — and with his talent, he’s obviously just getting started.

The Rogers Rate

Mississippi State QB Will Rogers quietly passed a milestone Saturday in the Bulldogs’ 40-17 win over Arkansas: 946 career completions, a new SEC record. The previous mark had been held for nearly a decade by Georgia’s Aaron Murray, who completed 921 passes in 52 games from 2010-13; Rogers, by comparison, broke it in just 28 games, averaging more completions in the Bulldogs’ Air Raid scheme (33.8) than Murray averaged attempts at UGA (28.4). He needs exactly 600 more to match the FBS record of 1,564 completions, held by Houston’s Case Keenum, which at Rogers’ current pace he’ll surpass in approximately 18 games – roughly the end of next season, assuming he comes back for his senior year and stays healthy.

I say “quietly,” of course, because Mike Leach’s system deliberately blurs the line between run and pass to the point that the distinction is often meaningless. It’s broadly understood at this point that Mississippi State throws the ball the way most teams run it, substituting handoffs for quick, safe passes that serve essentially the same purpose.

Rogers has not been quite as conservative on that front this year as he was in 2021, but per PFF still ranks next-to-last among Power 5 QBs in average depth of target (6.3 ypa) and No. 1 in number of attempts aimed behind the line of scrimmage (63), which when run efficiently amounts to a ball-control offense. (Leach has consistently mocked the idea of time of possession as a meaningful statistic over the years, calling it “nearly useless” and “entirely idiotic,” but the Bulldogs led the conference in TOP in 2021 and rank No. 3 this year behind Georgia and Kentucky.) Not coincidentally, Rogers is also on pace to smash the FBS record for career completion percentage at 72.2 percent.

None of which is a knock on Rogers, a quintessential Leach QB who is as comfortable running his offense as any quarterback in America. He’s thrown at least 3 TDs in each of Mississippi State’s 5 wins vs. just 2 interceptions. He’s the main reason the Bulldogs are up to 16th in the updated AP poll. But it is worth keeping in mind as he inevitably closes in on every volume passing record on the books.

Ironically (or perhaps fittingly), the day Rogers broke the completions record happened to coincide with the Bulldogs’ best conventional rushing game on Leach’s watch. Rogers handed off 37 times against Arkansas, easily a career-high, and MSU backs combined for 173 yards rushing, easily the most since Leach arrived in 2020.

RB Dillon Johnson finished with exactly 100 yards on 5.9 per carry, the first individual 100-yard rushing effort in the same span. (Jo’Quavious Marks, with 52 rushing yards and 80 receiving, also went over 100 yards from scrimmage for the 4th time in his career.) The previous Leach-era high on the ground? Last week, when they ran for 144 yards in their Week 5 win over Texas A&M.

Superlatives

The week’s best individual performances.

1. Alabama Edges Will Anderson Jr. and Dallas Turner. The Tide’s blue-chip bookends wreaked havoc on an epic scale against Texas A&M, taking up residence in Haynes King’s nightmares. King faced some level of pressure on 25 of his 51 dropbacks, by PFF’s accounting, most of it coming off the edge via Turner (8 pressures, 2 sacks) and Anderson (11 pressures, 4 hits), whose absence from the sack column in the conventional box score in no way reflects his impact. Anderson did record a tackle for loss, keeping him atop the SEC with 10 TFLs on the year.

2. Texas A&M Edge Fadil Diggs. Diggs, a redshirt sophomore, had a breakout night against the Tide, recording 8 stops (defined by PFF as tackles that constitute a “failure” for the offense) and forcing both of the first-half fumbles by Jalen Milroe that kept the Aggies in the game. Without his efforts, A&M fans would have spent the second half memorizing Jimbo Fisher’s buyout clause by heart.

3. Tennessee QB Hendon Hooker and Edge Byron Young. Tennessee’s lopsided win at LSU was a balanced effort, so it’s only fair that the offensive and defensive headliners share the accolades. Hooker’s rain-making production in the last two games is even more impressive in the absence of his best receiver, Cedric Tillman, who missed both games with an ankle injury. (Tillman hopes to be back in the fold this weekend against Bama.) In the meantime, Hooker’s burgeoning rapport with USC transfer Bru McCoy (7 catches, 140 yards on 8 targets in Baton Rouge) is just one more reason to take the Vols’ surge seriously.

4. Ole Miss WR Jonathan Mingo. Coming off a Week 5 no-show against Kentucky, Mingo exploded in the Rebels’ 52-28 win at Vanderbilt, setting a single-game school record with 247 yards on 9 receptions. The majority of that total came on just 2 plays: Back-to-back touchdowns in the second half that covered 71 and 72 yards, respectively, and turned a relatively competitive game into a laugher.

Mingo’s output accounted for a little more than half of QB Jaxson Dart‘s 448 passing yards against the ‘Dores, a substantial chunk of which came on his 3 touchdown passes alone. In addition to the two long strikes to Mingo, Dart also connected on a 61-yard TD in the first half to Louisville transfer Jordan Watkins, who housed a short crossing route for his first score as a Rebel.

5. Florida DB Jaydon Hill. Hill, a redshirt junior coming off a torn ACL in 2021, made the biggest play in Florida’s 24-17 win over Missouri, returning his first career interception for a pick-6 in the first quarter. He also made arguably the second-biggest play, coming down with a second INT in the third quarter that snuffed out a 12-play Mizzou drive in the red zone. On a dismal afternoon for their own offense, the Gators needed all the help from the other side of the ball they could get.

Honorable Mention: Mississippi State DB Emmanuel Forbes, who had 6 tackles and broke up 2 passes to go with his 12th career interception in the Bulldogs’ win over Arkansas. … Alabama DB Brian Branch, who was credited with 9 tackles, 2 TFLs and 2 PBUs in the Tide’s win over Texas A&M. … Alabama RB Jahmyr Gibbs, who followed up last week’s breakout performance against Arkansas by running for 154 yards on 7.3 per carry against the Aggies. … South Carolina RB MarShawn Lloyd, who accounted for 141 yards and a touchdown on a career-high 24 touches in the Gamecocks’ 24-14 win at Kentucky. … Florida LB Ventrell Miller, who racked up 11 tackles (10 solo, 2 for loss), 8 stops and a couple of QB pressures for good measure in the Gators’ defensively driven win over Missouri. … Missouri DL Isaiah McGuire, who had 7 tackles and 3 TFLs in a losing effort against the Gators. … And Auburn DLColby Wooden, who set up the Tigers’ first and only meaningful score in a blowout loss at Georgia by recording a sack, forced fumble and fumble recovery on the same play.

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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? The standings are updated weekly with the top 10 players for the season to date.

SEC Power Rankings

Updating the food chain.

1. Alabama (6-0). Hard to penalize Bama for beating a respectable opponent with the sport’s most valuable player on the sideline. But after 2 down-to-the-wire finishes against Texas and Texas A&M, certainly no one is about to mistake this outfit for one hitting midseason on cruise control. (Last week: 1⬌)

2. Georgia (6-0). Bulldogs put up 42 points and 500 yards on Auburn in a game where their most productive skill players were the third-string running back (Daijun Edwards, 83 yards) and fourth-string running back (Branson Robinson, 98 yards). Playing with their food. (LW: 2⬌)

3. Tennessee (5-0). There’s going to be a lot of “biggest game since …” buzz this week, and the only right answer is too long. (LW: 4⬆)

4. Ole Miss (6-0). Nobody in Oxford is looking past a 3-game stretch against Auburn, LSU and Texas A&M, trust me, but if the Rebels can get to the other side unscathed a Nov. 3 visit from Bama could be their version of what Tennessee is enjoying (?) right now. (LW: 3⬇)

5. Mississippi State (5-1). Advanced ratings are a little bit higher on the Bulldogs than the traditional polls: They come in at No. 13 this week in ESPN’s Football Power Index, No. 12 according to SP+ and Jeff Sagarin, and No. 7 in Sports Reference’s Simple Rating System. A win at Kentucky could bring the humans around. (LW: 7⬆)

6. LSU (4-2). Tigers were slight underdogs (+3) against Tennessee, but a 4-touchdown wipeout in Tiger Stadium that wasn’t even as close as that is not what anyone had in mind. Both sides are unranked in this weekend’s trip to Florida for just the second in the past 30 years. (LW: 6⬌)

7. Kentucky (4-2). Will Levis’ stock might have gone up more in his absence against South Carolina than in any game he’s actually played. The Wildcats struggled to put 14 points on the board against a mediocre Carolina defense and redshirt-freshman backup Kaiya Sheron finished with the worst QBR score of any SEC starter in Week 6, which frankly is saying something. (LW: 5⬇)

8. Florida (4-2). I’ll have more on Anthony Richardson later in the week, but the Jekyll-and-Hyde aspect of his game from one week to the next is on the most extreme setting. Florida ran a total of 19 plays on its 3 offensive scoring drives against Missouri, only one of which was a completed pass: The last one, a 9-yard TD connection from Richardson to Ricky Pearsall that ultimately turned out to be the winning points. (LW: 10⬆)

9. Texas A&M (3-3). Aggies feel a little bit better about themselves heading into an open date with a more manageable schedule on the other side. Eight wins would have sounded like a disappointment a month ago, but right about now they’ll take it. (LW: 8⬇)

10. Arkansas (3-3). Razorbacks will carry a 3-game losing streak into a very strange midseason road trip to BYU, which might be a good reminder why more teams don’t schedule midseason road trips to BYU. (LW: 9⬇)

11. South Carolina (4-2). Gamecocks needed an upset to tip the forecast in favor of bowl eligibility and got it against a conveniently Levis-free version of Kentucky. Wins over Missouri and Vanderbilt over the second half of the season will get them across the line, but barring another stunner they probably need to win them both. (LW: 13⬆)

12. Auburn (3-3). Since his opening-day flop against Georgia, Bo Nix is legitimately thriving at Oregon. Just in case anyone was wondering, for whatever reason. (LW: 11⬇)

13. Missouri (2-4). Tigers are competitive, but halfway through Year 3, Eli Drinkwitz is 13-16 overall at Mizzou and 8-15 vs. Power 5 opponents. Losing close in a strong upset bid vs. Georgia is one thing; the patience for blowing winnable opportunities against the likes of Auburn and Florida is running thin. (LW: 12⬇)

14. Vanderbilt (3-3). Vandy led Ole Miss at the half, 20-17. Yada yada yada, the Commodores are still seeking their first conference win since 2019. Let’s just leave it at that. (LW: 14⬌)

Moment of Zen of the week