At the outset of Texas A&M’s wild, double-overtime marathon against Tennessee, CBS’ Gary Danielson introduced Trevor Knight to a national audience with a line that could double as the epitaph for Knight’s entire college career. “I can’t say he’s a pretty passer,” Danielson said, “but he’s a darn good quarterback, and that’s the most important thing.”

So it went: Right on cue, Knight confirmed the first half of Danielson’s assessment by throwing an interception under pressure on his first pass of the game. Then, with that out of the way, he proceeded to back up the rest by leading the Aggies to their most reassuring win in years.

For an audience that was just getting acquainted with Knight, or reacquainted, it was a fittingly volatile performance. Like Texas A&M the past few years, Knight entered his senior season with a well-earned reputations as an enigma: At Oklahoma, his tenure as the full-time starter in 2013 and ’14 ran the gamut from obscurity to Heisman hype and back again, with stops at every point in between.

As a freshman, he capped an unremarkable, injury-plagued debut with the game of his life, an out-of-nowhere gem in the 2014 Sugar Bowl that lifted the Sooners over Alabama and sent Knight’s stock soaring overnight. Instead, he suffered through a sophomore slump, lost the starting job outright the following spring, and spent the entirety of Oklahoma’s 2015 playoff run watching from the bench.

One game made him a rising star, then a bust when it became clear he’d set the bar so he may never be able to reach it again.

Accordingly, when he transferred to College Station last winter, Knight was regarded as a kind of consolation prize: Texas A&M had just lost a pair of massively touted underclassmen, Kyle Allen and Kyler Murray, who appeared to be on track to fulfill their five-star potential, and whose abrupt exits contributed to the perception of A&M as a program in disarray.

For the third consecutive year, the 2015 Aggies watched a top-10 ranking in early October unravel, dropping five of their final eight following a 5-0 start. Compared to his blue-chip predecessors, Knight was a retread; what did he have to offer in 2016 that they didn’t, except the constant reminder of what could have been?

Six games in, we have a better answer: Balance. With Knight at the wheel, A&M has emerged from its high-flying, Air Raid roots under Kevin Sumlin into arguably the most versatile attack in the SEC, a much more methodical unit that leads the conference at midseason in rushing offense and total offense and ranks third in scoring.

The Aggies have run for at least 200 yards in every game, passed for at least 200 yards, and averaged the exact same gain (6.8 yards) on runs and throws alike. They boast the conference’s leading rusher, freshman Trayveon Williams, and its leading receiver, senior Josh Reynolds.

And while indeed Knight is not a pretty passer — he ranks 10th in the SEC in pass efficiency in a down year for SEC quarterbacks — he has done enough with his arm to make the offense go, and added a different dimension as a runner that A&M has been missing since Johnny Manziel.

Among quarterbacks, only Lamar Jackson has rushed for more yards than Knight. And Knight has already broken five runs of 20 yards or longer, including a pair of long touchdowns in the Aggies’ win over Arkansas and a late, 62-yard sprint on Saturday that put A&M up by two touchdowns with less than four minutes to play.

.@Aggiefootball QB Trevor Knight finds the hole and picks up a much needed insurance TD. https://t.co/kn9nM6e9UW

— SEConCBS (@SEConCBS) October 8, 2016

As a team, Texas A&M churned out 353 yards against the Vols on 7.1 per carry, its best output on the ground since the hey day of Manziel’s Heisman campaign in 2012. Knight, of course, is a very different kind of runner — bigger, far less elusive, and more comfortable running by design than on ad-libbed scrambles. But Sumlin’s philosophy has evolved to fit Knight’s more conventional skill set, and the talent that seemed to evaporate into thin air at Oklahoma has expanded again to fill the niche.

The question now, with Alabama looming on the other side of a bye week, is whether the bar Knight set against the Crimson Tide nearly three years ago is still attainable.

He was primarily a passer in that game, not a runner, and a better passer than he’s been at any other point in his career. This time around, an upset in Tuscaloosa will vault A&M to the front of the playoff pecking order and reaffirm that Knight’s MVP turn in the Sugar Bowl wasn’t a mirage.

In the end, maybe he’s closer to that quarterback than to the one who struggled so much over the rest of his Oklahoma career. Then again, maybe Knight doesn’t need to be that quarterback: With the surrounding talent at A&M on both sides of the ball, the role of the savvy, play-within-the-offense senior has suited him and the offense just fine. Maybe that’s all he ever needed to be.

NOTEBOOK

Around the conference.

ALABAMA 49, ARKANSAS 30

This was a routine Bama blowout in almost every respect, even if the final score doesn’t look like the kind of number we’ve come to expect in a game that was largely dominated by the defense. Partly that has to do with the fact that Arkansas ran a lot of plays (84) and generated a lot of its production in garbage time — the Crimson Tide jumped to a 14-0 lead in the first quarter and led by at least 18 throughout the second half. (Five takeaways by Alabama’s defense helped keep the margin safely out of reach; the defense took two of them back for touchdowns itself and set up a pair of short-field TD drives by the offense on two others. I’ll dive deeper into Bama’s knack for turning turnovers into points later in the week.)

The Razorbacks moved the ball in spurts, but they never came close to making this a competitive game.

No, the real takeaway from this one was the explosive efficiency of Bama’s offense, which accelerated its dynamic pace by posting a season-high 517 total yards against the Razorbacks on just 51 plays. That number was split evenly between rushing (264) and passing (253), and came mostly in big chunks: All five of the Tide’s offensive touchdown drives found the end zone in five plays or fewer, including marches of 73, 81, and 66 yards in the first half.

Halfway through the regular season, they’re on pace to set Saban-era highs for both yards and points per game despite relying on a true freshman quarterback, a revamped offensive line, and a tailback-by-committee approach in the backfield that discourages the kind of individual star power Alabama has come to take for granted with Mark Ingram, Trent Richardson, Derrick Henry, et al. They’re also on pace for more 20-yard plays from scrimmage.

At times that inexperience has shown through; the Tide committed three turnovers Saturday, which would be harder to overlook in a closer game, or one in which the defense wasn’t taking the ball back at an even brisker pace. But they’ve yet to face either scenario — the offense has gained at least 460 yards in every game, and the other phases have scored at least one non-offensive touchdown in eight consecutive dating to last season. As long as both trends continue, even a version of Bama that betrays the occasional crack or two in the secondary is going to be very tough to beat.

FLORIDA 0, LSU 0, SEC 0, FANS 0

First of all, yes, canceling Saturday’s game in Gainesville was (obviously) the right move in the face of Hurricane Matthew. And no, it wasn’t the result of any shadowy conspiracy to rig the conference standings. No one is to blame for the weather and attempting to stage a football game under the circumstances would have been a terrible idea.

That said, the outcome of the game — or non-outcome, as the case may be — will certainly affect the standings, conceivably to the extent that it will help determine who gets to play for the SEC title in December and who doesn’t.

(The respective division champs will be determined by conference winning percentage regardless of the number of games played. So if Florida were to run the table in SEC play, for example, a second loss by Tennessee would be enough to hand the East to the 6-1 Gators; under that scenario, simply not playing one of the toughest games on the schedule could be a decisive edge for Florida. It’s possible for similarly bizarre and unfair scenarios to unfold in the West, as well.)

And on another level the standings are irrelevant: Even if it didn’t stand to alter the path to Atlanta, LSU-Florida is one of the handful of marquee SEC games that stands as a worthy spectacle in its own right, regardless of the broader context. It’s one of the annual blockbusters that fans look forward to and one of the reasons players choose to play at LSU and Florida in the first place. It matters to a lot of people, and it only comes around once a year.

Frankly it’s hard to imagine that anyone who enjoys sports on any level wouldn’t want this game to be played, which makes the apparent failure to work out a compromise that much more frustrating. Postponing and rescheduling games is hardly an unprecedented feat. There are multiple options. With the gonzo revenues the conference has raked in the past few years money is no obstacle; the logistics of moving games around are tricker but very doable if the interested parties want them to get done. The  fact that some of them seemingly don’t is disappointing and weird.

REORIENTATION

Time to rethink … Mark Stoops’ Job Security

Remember a few weeks back, when Kentucky was 0-2 and it was a fair question whether Stoops would even make it to midseason? Well, here we are, and the prognosis at the halfway point is looking … fine. Just fine. Saturday’s 20-13 win over Vanderbilt was the Wildcats’ third victory in their last four (the only loss in that span came at Alabama) and reinforced their rapid turnaround on defense, in particular: In its first three games, Kentucky was ripped by Southern Miss, Florida, and New Mexico State for at least 500 yards and 42 points in all three; since, the same unit has held South Carolina and now Vandy below 300 yards and 14 points in a pair of crucial division wins.

And yeah, sure, pretty much every defense has a banner day against South Carolina and Vanderbilt. Given where Kentucky was (and given the stakes for Stoops’ future) that still has to count as meaningful progress. And for the time being, anyway, the rebound has also allowed the embattled coach to push back at the “toxic negative stuff” that followed the humiliation at Florida, which included Lee Corso nominating the Wildcats’ D for the title of “worst defense in the history of football” and a steady stream of bile from callers to Stoops’ weekly radio show.

Still, if he’s going to have the last laugh in December, the next two games against Mississippi State and Missouri might be the most important of Stoops’ entire tenure — the Bulldogs and Tigers are a combined 1-5 against Power 5 opponents and ripe for the picking against a team on the upswing. Win them both, and the Wildcats will improve to 5-3 with four more chances (one against an FCS doormat, Austin Peay) to earn the win that will make them bowl eligible for the first time since 2010.

Lose either one, though, and the only remaining path to 6-6 will require springing a major November upset over Georgia, Tennessee, or Louisville. Lose both, and Stoops will find himself right back in the same dark, toxic hole he was in a month ago, only this time with almost no realistic chance to crawl his way back out.

SUPERLATIVES

The best of the week…

Alabama CB Minkah Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick picked off three passes in Bama’s win over Arkansas and broke up two others, almost single-handedly spoiling Austin Allen’s career-high, 400-yard night through the air — in fact, with 114 yards in interception returns (most of them courtesy of a game-clinching, 100-yard pick six in the fourth quarter) Fitzpatrick finished more yards off Arkansas’ starting quarterback than both of Arkansas’ starting wide receivers, Cody Hollister and Drew Morgan, combined.

On five career interceptions Fitzpatrick has 202 return yards, three touchdowns, and more than a passing familiarity with the Ball Out Belt.

Texas A&M DB Armani Watts. Even if you didn’t watch a second of A&M’s win over Tennessee, Watts’ official stat line — nine tackles, one interception, one forced fumble, one pass broken up — almost leaps off the page. But the decoration is in the details: The forced fumble (which Watts also recovered) negated a long, electric run by Alvin Kamara into Aggies territory, likely costing Tennessee points, and the interception was the game-winner in double overtime.

This marks the second time in three weeks that Watts has landed in this spot based largely on opportunism: Against Arkansas, he cost the Razorbacks two touchdowns by a) forcing a fumble just before a ball carrier crossed the goal line, and later b) recording a fourth-down tackle for loss to complete a goal line stand. This is an encouraging pattern.

Tennessee RB Alvin Kamara. Fumble notwithstanding, Kamara emerged as the Vols’ all-purpose engine in place of their usual workhorse, Jalen Hurd, accounting for 289 yards and three touchdowns from scrimmage on 28 frequently spectacular touches. According to ESPN Stats & Info, the former Alabama transfer is the first player from a Power 5 school in 20 years to log 150 yards receiving and 125 rushing in the same game, which will presumably be worth another starting nod this weekend against his old team whether Hurd is back in the lineup or not.

MISCELLANEOUS POWER RANKINGS

The top 10 things in the SEC this week.

1. Alabama’s Front Four. This week’s tally for the most dominant unit in college football: Nine tackles for loss, six sacks, 12 quarterback hurries, three forced fumbles, and yet another fumble returned for a touchdown, this time by the unstoppable Tim Williams. (For those counting at home, that’s four fumble returns for touchdowns in six games, to go with three pick-six returns.) And of course that’s just what made into the box score. As always, the defensive line’s presence was felt in innumerable ways, whether it was quantifiable or not. (Last Week: 1)

2. Nick Chubb at Full Strength. After sitting out all but one play in last week’s loss to Tennessee, Chubb roared back Sunday, thrashing South Carolina for 121 yards and two touchdowns on 7.6 per carry in a much-needed Georgia win. For the first time this year, I felt what I felt watching Chubb run in 2014 and ’15 — namely, pity for the opposing defenders who have to try to tackle. (LW: Unranked)

3. Texas A&M’s Pass Rush. Even with Myles Garrett at less than 100 percent, the Aggies sacked Josh Dobbs four times and harassed him into multiple mistakes — seven turnovers do not create themselves. (LW: 5)

4. Malik Foreman’s Hustle. Foreman had a rough game against Texas A&M overall. But had Tennessee managed to finish off its latest, greatest comeback in overtime, the play of the game (and maybe of the year) would have been Foreman finding the extra gear to chase down Trayveon Williams, get a hand on the ball just before Williams crossed the goal line, and turning a clinching A&M touchdown into a touchback that miraculously gave the ball back to Tennessee with just under two minutes to play.

YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING!!!!
TENNESSEE TAKES OVER ON THE TOUCHBACK. https://t.co/WvQX4T347x

— SEConCBS (@SEConCBS) October 8, 2016

Just to be clear: Trayveon Williams is very, very fast. Tennessee’s offense rewarded Foreman’s efforts, as everyone who has watched the Vols this season knew they would, by driving for the game-tying touchdown to force OT. (LW: Unranked)

5. Derek Barnett in Man-to-Man Coverage. Derek Barnett plays defensive end. He’s really good at it. But even he isn’t supposed to be able to do this:

No big deal here, just 265-pound DE Derek Barnett successfully covering an All-SEC wide receiver man-to-man 25 yards downfield. pic.twitter.com/CDGPagt7rb

— Matt Hinton (@MattRHinton) October 10, 2016

Sure, the ball from Knight was a bit under-thrown. The fact that Barnett was there at all, and managed to break up the pass without drawing interference, is a tremendous feat of awareness and athleticism. (LW: Unranked)

6. Auburn’s Offense When It’s Clicking. After six weeks of hand-wringing, the Tigers found their mojo in a 38-14 romp over Mississippi State, which might or might not say more about where the Bulldogs’ defense is right now than Auburn’s offense. But when it works this well, it’s best not to ask too many questions. (LW: Undefeated)

7. Bielema In the Wild. Like nature documentarians lurking patiently on the savannah, ESPN’s microphones managed to catch Arkansas’ coach in a primal dominance display after an apparent touchdown was negated by a holding penalty. Let’s watch as the noble zebras attempt to repel this aggressive encroachment onto their territory:

Despite his size and volume, Bielema’s grunts are unpersuasive. He returns to his herd to await his next opportunity. (LW: Unranked)

8. Hardcore Refs. A&M-Tennessee was one of the hardest-hitting games of the year, which took it’s toll on the players and, eventually, on one of the linesmen, who took a helmet directly to the rib cage and lived to flag again:

Despite the collision and the awkward fall, the ref popped up and stayed in the game. Chalk it up to an occupational hazard. (And stock up on Advil.) (LW: Unranked)

9. The Vol Renaissance. Tennessee finally ran out of miracles, but by pushing another Top-10 team to the brink, on the road, in absurd circumstances, and piling up more than 600 total yards in the process, the Vols proved they are what their shiny ranking said they were. That might not count for much this weekend against Alabama, but Tennessee remains the odds-on favorite to see the Tide (or Aggies!) again in the SEC title game. (LW: 2)

10. The Legend of Leonard Fournette. Before LSU’s trip to Florida was canceled, the Tigers’ Herculean workhorse wasn’t expected to play at all after sitting out the previous week’s win over Missouri. (There was also some idle chatter about the possibility of Fournette sitting out the rest of the year to preserve his sore ankle and the rest of his body for the 2017 NFL Draft, which would be even worse for college fans than straight up canceling a big game.)

If the Florida game is rescheduled, though, Fournette will likely be able to go — another reason everyone should be doing everything they can to make it happen, except for Florida defenders and defensive coaches. (LW: 10)