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I don’t want to scare you, especially during spooky season.
(I’ll show myself out for writing “spooky season.”)
I do, however, want everyone reading this to be aware of the calendar, which operates at 2X speed during fall. I have no scientific backing to that claim, but I have my brain.
This weekend will mark the halfway point of the 2024 regular season. That’s terrifying, I know. After this weekend, we’ll have just as many regular-season, full fall Saturdays left as what we started with. Yikes.
Fear not, though. This is when things start getting interesting. It’ll be even more interesting in the 12-team Playoff era. We’ve still got plenty of twists and turns left in 2024.
But before we do that, let’s look back on the first half with some SEC midseason awards:
Coach of the Year: Clark Lea, Vanderbilt
You had me at “he beat Alabama.” There’s just no world in which you could’ve convinced any consumer of college football that Vandy would beat Alabama in 2024, much less a week removed from the Tide winning a thriller against Georgia to move into the No. 1 spot. It was the Tide’s first SEC loss since November 2022 at LSU and it was Vandy’s first SEC win since beating Florida in November 2022.
Lea essentially threw out his playbook and started from scratch. In addition to taking over defensive play-calling duties as his own defensive coordinator, he poached basically the entire New Mexico State offense. Most notably, offensive coordinator Tim Beck and quarterback Diego Pavia. To say that the 2 have made sweet Music City magic together would be an understatement. Vandy hit the “over” on 2.5 wins, not just because it beat Alabama, but also because it stunned trendy preseason ACC pick Virginia Tech in the season-opener. Lea nearly upset top-10 Mizzou in Columbia, and he watched Georgia State score a last-minute touchdown drive.
Welcome to 2024, wherein Vandy is stunningly close to being 5-0 with a win against Alabama. If that’s “Coach of the Year,” vibes, I don’t know what is.
The best job-saving win: Sam Pittman beating Tennessee
Pittman will also be in the hunt for the aforementioned “SEC Coach of the Year” after he led Arkansas to its first win against an AP top-5 team in 17 years. The Hogs knocked off Tennessee even after losing Taylen Green and Ja’Quinden Jackson to in-game injuries. Credit Pittman’s bold move to bring Bobby Petrino back to Arkansas, but also credit his improved defense (more on that in a second).
Entering Year 5, Pittman was considered among the more obvious lame-duck coaches in the sport. AD Hunter Yurachek put out a statement late last year saying that Pittman would get a Year 5 because of the job that he did taking over for Chad Morris in Year 1. After a 4-2 start with wins at Auburn and home against Tennessee, a 7-win regular season and a 3-win regular season improvement feels like the expected outcome for Pittman’s Hogs.
#Arkansas HC Sam Pittman on field interview after upsetting Tennessee #CFB pic.twitter.com/9ooQKY5WRF
— Tanner Phifer (@TannerPhifer) October 6, 2024
The assistant coach that we need to be talking about more: Arkansas DC Travis Williams
Recency bias? Not if you’ve been paying attention to Williams since his post-Barry Odom arrival in 2023. That unit was a doormat before he arrived. In Year 2, he became the first DC to ever hand a Josh Heupel offense a scoreless first half with a masterful game plan that stymied Nico Iamaleava and the high-powered Vols offense. Landon Jackson’s surprising return to 2024 is a big part of that, but the Hogs have been excellent beyond the underrated star on their defensive line.
The raw numbers won’t blow you away, but they need some context. Think about this. The Hogs have faced the likes of Doak Walker winner Ollie Gordon II, preseason first-team All-SEC back Jarquez Hunter, current SEC leading rusher Le’Veon Moss and No. 2 SEC leading rusher Dylan Sampson, yet they have the No. 29 run defense in FBS. And even with an offense that’s second-worst in the SEC in turnovers lost, Arkansas has the No. 33 scoring defense.
Williams, the former Auburn linebacker, should be a popular candidate to run his own program for the first time.
The post-Week 1 take that aged like an avocado: The Year 2 Hugh Freeze offense is ready to take flight
Yuck, like an overripe avocado. Freeze made the bold decision to double down on Payton Thorne as his QB1, which got off to a promising start with a blistering showing against FCS Alabama A&M. But after Thorne looked totally in control with Auburn’s revamped pass-catchers in Week 1, he turtled with a disastrous 4-interception showing in a home loss to California. Thorne was benched the following week … only to be called upon to save the day after backup Hank Brown threw 3 interceptions in the first half of his first career start.
Woof.
Auburn is second-worst in FBS with 15 turnovers, and it doesn’t have a plan at quarterback other than hoping Thorne doesn’t serve the football on a silver platter to the opposing defense … as he did to blow Auburn’s 4th-quarter lead against Oklahoma. Auburn is No. 93 in FBS in scoring offense against FBS teams, and it lost 3 pre-October home games for the first time in program history. Not ideal.
The hot post-Week 1 take that needed to cool off: Conner Weigman doesn’t have it & Nico Iamaleava for Heisman
As a supporter of the “Weigman is better than people realize” movement this offseason, it wasn’t inspiring to see how poorly he played to open the season against Notre Dame. It was also a matchup against arguably the best secondary in America with Marcus Freeman and Al Golden dialing up pressure packages with 8 months to prepare. I’d say that challenge was a tall one in Weigman’s first live action in 11 months, especially in a new offense. As we saw in his return against Mizzou, Weigman being written off post-injury was premature. Marcel Reed’s time will come again after he was 3-0 as a starter, but even after the Notre Dame dud, it’s clear that he was A&M’s best chance to have a versatile offense.
Related: Looking to place a bet on the 2024 Heisman Trophy? SDS has you covered with all the latest odds!
And while I’m still all in on Iamaleava, we probably got ahead of ourselves by putting him at the forefront of the Heisman conversation after he diced up FCS Chattanooga. Those throws were phenomenal, no doubt. And Iamaleava got whatever he wanted. But he was still a redshirt freshman who was going to endure some growing pains at some point. We saw that at moments at Oklahoma, and coming off the bye at Arkansas, Iamaleava’s inexperience showed. He can still be the real deal, but with how good Tennessee’s defense looked, Heupel doesn’t need him to put up Heisman numbers for the Vols to reach the 12-team Playoff.
The most “drink when it’s said on a broadcast” comment: Ryan Williams is 17
Did you know that the Alabama receiver/unicorn won’t even be able to vote this November? Did you know that he wasn’t even alive for the pre-Nick Saban era at Alabama? Did you know that he could be going through NFL Draft prep as a 19-year-old if he leaves school after 3 years? Did you know that grown men that make tens of millions of dollars can’t do the things that he’s doing at 17 years old and he’s making all 17-year-old kids feel unaccomplished as fellow 17-year-old kids?
Did you know that most times I start a sentence with “did you know,” I’m usually just repeating something that you’ve already heard a bunch of times?
The early-season result that already feels weird: South Carolina 31, Kentucky 6
To be fair, I don’t think the casual college football fan realized how well the Kentucky defense played in this game. South Carolina scored on a pick-6 and LaNorris Sellers took advantage of a tired Kentucky defense a couple of times. The Gamecocks were held to 252 total yards of offense, which was lost in the shuffle of that blowout win in Lexington. Of greater significance at the time was that South Carolina’s defense made Kentucky attempting a forward pass look like all of us trying to understand quantum physics.
But since that game, Kentucky nearly went 2-0 against top-6 teams. Mind you, Mark Stoops entered Year 12 at Kentucky having only beaten 2 SEC teams who went on to have winning records in conference play. That win at No. 6 Ole Miss was Kentucky’s highest-ranked road win since the Jimmy Carter administration. The Cats quickly went from “we can’t stay on the field with an SEC team” to “we can beat anyone on a given day.” South Carolina, on the other hand, most recently got blown out at home by Ole Miss. Chalk it up to a weird matchup that UK was unprepared to handle back in Week 2.
Most disappointing team(s): Auburn & Mizzou
I already dug into Auburn earlier with the “post-Week 1 take that aged like an avocado,” so I’ll try not to repeat myself other than saying again, that it was the first time in program history that Auburn lost 3 pre-October home games, and it came against Cal, Arkansas and new-SEC team Oklahoma. You get it.
Mizzou deserves to be part of this conversation because while the Vanderbilt nail-biter win aged better than anyone could’ve predicted, getting walloped at A&M confirmed a lot of the skepticism Mizzou earned in the first 4 games. The discipline issues are a problem, Brady Cook can’t stretch the field, Luther Burden III has been a ticking time bomb and this defense looks very much like a group that lost its top 2 coaches and 5 players to the NFL Draft.
You could make a case that Oklahoma belongs in this category, but the Sooners at least can point to injuries on the offensive line and at receiver. What can Mizzou point to as its excuse for looking mediocre after it entered the year with loads of experience from an 11-win team? If that was limited to the defense, it’d be understandable, but it’s a team-wide issue in a disappointing first half of 2024.
Most surprising team: Vanderbilt, duh.
See “Coach of the Year, Clark Lea.”
Best player(s): Jalen Milroe and Walter Nolen
You’re gonna tell me that I’m an idiot for including Milroe in here because he just lost to Vanderbilt. You’re gonna make no mention of Alabama’s defense looking more like Alabama State’s defense and pretend that because Milroe turned the ball over twice in a 35-point effort, he’s to blame. OK, sure. Then tell me about Georgia when he had a historically dominant showing against a top-5 team. Tell me about how through 5 games, his 12-game pace is for 48 total touchdowns, 3,737 total yards and just 5 interceptions on 11.7 yards/attempt with 17 sacks taken (he took 44 last year). Beyond the stats, anyone who has actually watched Milroe can see the year-to-year transformation under Kalen DeBoer.
And how about Nolen? I admittedly thought he was overrated entering the season because he really only had half a year in which he started to look like the 5-star recruit he was billed as. I thought post-Tennessee injury last year, he wasn’t nearly as effective down the stretch for A&M. But now at Ole Miss, the guy has been a monster for the nation’s No. 1 run defense (both in yards/carry and yards/game). Nolen is PFF’s No. 3 run-defender among FBS interior defensive linemen, and after he faced questions about his consistency, he’s averaging a remarkable 46 snaps per game. Nolen has somehow been even better than advertised. He and JJ Pegues have anchored what’s been arguably the best defensive line in America in the first half.
If Ole Miss shakes off the Kentucky loss and reaches the Playoff, Nolen will have a real case as the most valuable non-quarterback in the SEC.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
