Are we having fun yet in the SEC? We should be.

Week 10 was loaded with important showdowns to determine the race to Atlanta. Fittingly, we got even more shakeups thanks to South Carolina halting the A&M freight train. And we nearly had some major shakeups with Georgia and Tennessee locked into games that weren’t decided until late.

That’s the new norm in the SEC. Trying to make sense of this conference is like trying to nail jelly to a tree.

But let’s attempt to nail some jelly with the biggest SEC takeaways from Week 10:

The race to Atlanta is an absolute free-or-all thanks to South Carolina

Welcome to 2024 in the SEC, wherein if you don’t like the conference leader, just wait a week and it’ll probably change.

Texas A&M held that honor going into Saturday night, and naturally, it ran into a buzzsaw at Williams-Brice Stadium. Rocket Sanders and LaNorris Sellers led the way for a 286-yard performance on the ground. That was awesome for Sanders, especially, who battled injuries the last year and a half since he emerged as a star at Arkansas in 2022. He was unstoppable.

It felt reminiscent of the 2022 beatdown of Tennessee, though fortunately for A&M, it still has Playoff life after suffering its second loss. Despite South Carolina ending A&M’s 7-game winning streak dominantly — the Gamecocks outscored A&M 24-0 in the second half — A&M still does have SEC/Playoff life.

Welcome to college football in 2024.

Shoot, it’s such a strange new set of circumstances that I even looked at South Carolina’s remaining schedule and wondered if it could get into the Playoff if it won out to reach 9-3. I don’t think that would happen, simply because losing to teams like Alabama (close), LSU (close) and Ole Miss (not close) could prevent block the Gamecocks from passing those teams in the first Playoff ranking, which is on Tuesday at 7 pm.

But in the SEC race, it feels fitting that the division-less format is yielding chaos. Look at all the SEC teams with 1-2 losses in conference play:

  • Georgia, 5-1
  • Texas A&M, 5-1
  • Tennessee, 4-1
  • Texas, 3-1
  • LSU, 3-1
  • Vanderbilt, 3-2
  • Ole Miss, 3-2
  • Alabama, 3-2
  • Mizzou, 2-2

Everyone in that group will face at least 1 other team in that group. In other words, we’re in for a loaded November that likely won’t be decided until the final weekend of the regular season.

Cheers to that.

DJ Lagway going down was a massive, massive bummer

Seeing Lagway leave with what Billy Napier later called a “significant” soft-tissue hamstring injury was awful. Absolutely awful. It was bad enough that Florida was already without Graham Mertz, who suffered a season-ending knee injury against Tennessee. The only positive from that was going to be that we’d get a full dose of the Lagway experience.

Until we didn’t. I blame the EverBank Stadium turf for that.

Lagway left the game with a 10-3 lead, which he earned because Aidan Mizell beat Malaki Starks over the top for a 43-yard touchdown grab. The 5-star freshman was outplaying the struggling Carson Beck (more on him in a second) and was flashing the potential that we’ve seen in the first 2 months of his career.

His injury prompted preferred walk-on/Yale transfer Aidan Warner, who mostly looked overwhelmed by the Georgia defense. He did lead a game-tying touchdown drive to make it a 20-20 game, but it was too tall of a task to lead an injury-riddled squad to an upset of Georgia. The Gators were already without top receiver Tre Wilson and top tailback Montrell Johnson Jr. The fact that Florida hung late into the 4th quarter was impressive in itself.

If Florida had a healthy Lagway, we’d be having a different conversation about Billy Napier’s squad. Saturday’s effort could’ve prompted questions about how many of these elite foes (Texas, LSU and Ole Miss) they could take down. Instead, the injury to Lagway changes that conversation. Well, as does the fact that Florida is without its top 2 corners now, which is what Beck took advantage of down the stretch after Florida’s defense picked him off 3 times.

Lagway’s injury will certainly complicate things for Napier. At 4-4 with a preferred walk-on at quarterback and 3 top-20 foes ahead, a slew of moral victories might not convince Florida’s administration that the Napier-Lagway combination deserves another year. A significant Lagway injury felt like a significant development for Napier’s future.

Let’s talk about Carson Beck and his second consecutive 3-interception game in a win

Woof.

Beck deserves credit for shaking off those 3 interceptions with a 12-for-14 finish, but yikes. For the second consecutive game, Georgia won despite a 3-interception game from the preseason All-American. In the past 2 games, Beck has as many interceptions as he had all of last season in 14 games. That’s … telling.

Beck isn’t getting unlucky. He’s failing to read zone coverages, he’s not on the same page as his receivers and he hasn’t been as accurate over the middle. Add it all up and you’ve got a frustrating quarterback. After Beck’s third interception, it was fair to wonder if Beck would get a series on the sideline. Kirby Smart stuck with him.

It didn’t help UGA’s offense that Beck didn’t have Trevor Etienne to turn to in the second half. The Georgia tailback was sidelined with a rib injury, which meant that Mike Bobo’s pass-heavy approach continued in the second half. That’s been the case amid Beck’s struggles. Perhaps the thinking has been that he’ll work his way through those issues, or maybe it’s the lack of backfield depth.

Whatever the case, Beck spent far too much time going blow for blow with a third-string preferred walk-on from Yale. The guy who looked like he could be the strength of a national championship team now looks like a guy who could be the weak link in another UGA title run.

Ole Miss will have Playoff hopes alive vs. Georgia after a blowout win, but there’s a “but”

Let me point out the positives of Saturday’s blowout win at Arkansas. There were plenty of them. OK, so let’s just show 1 tweet:

A record-setting day on the road was impressive, especially considering that it happened without Tre Harris, Caden Prieskorn and left guard Nate Kalepo. To make matters worse, leading rusher Henry Parrish Jr. left the game after he got his leg twisted.

But amidst a record-setting day, that’s 4 key offensive injuries ahead of the Georgia game. That’s not including LSU transfer Logan Diggs, who hasn’t played a down yet and isn’t expected back by next week. Against Arkansas, that didn’t matter. Jaxson Dart played like the best version of himself and Jordan Watkins did his best imitation of Harris with his record-setting day.

Against Georgia, though, being at full strength (or as close to it as possible) feels like the only way that Ole Miss can flip last year’s lopsided result in Athens. Then again, Florida was anything but full strength and it gave UGA everything it could handle because Beck couldn’t stop making mistakes.

Perhaps that’s setting the stage for a wild one next Saturday afternoon.

Tennessee doesn’t need — and should no longer be expected to obtain — style points

Hey! Tennessee scored in the first half for the first time since the Oklahoma game back on Sept. 21! Yes, Earth, Wind and Fire. I do remember the 21st of September, but barely. It was ages ago that Tennessee actually got on the board in the first half. Finally, that drought is no longer and the Vols finally have a first-half point this fall.

(That’s technically true because the last day of summer is Sept. 21.)

Tennessee’s offense ended its streak of 3 consecutive scoreless first halves, but it still trailed at half against a lost Kentucky team. Nico Iamaleava still didn’t look like the guy we saw in September. The Tennessee offense sputtered in key spots and it couldn’t make kicks, either. Dylan Sampson had a fumble in the final minute of the first quarter that appeared to have him in the dog house because he went without a carry in the second quarter.

That wasn’t the case in the second half. After he had just 7 carries in the first half, he had 20 in the second half, including 2 rushing touchdowns to move him into sole possession of the program’s single-season record.

Call me crazy, but that felt a bit more strategic than disciplinarian by Heupel. Sampson is the heart and soul of that Tennessee offense. They won’t close games unless they’ve got him closing runs (that second touchdown probably should’ve been whistled dead for forward progress but when the entire team jumps in I guess you have to let it play out). Heupel might’ve been pushing some buttons there.

That’s what Heupel has to do with this team, which isn’t going to be an offensive juggernaut anytime soon. There’s grace in this format for a team like Tennessee because it still has an extremely favorable path to get to 10-2 and get into the Playoff without playing in the SEC Championship. Beating Alabama will carry weight. Obviously, beating Georgia would carry even more weight.

For now, though, let’s just accept that this is who the 2024 version of Tennessee is.

Auburn is staring at a missed bowl game

OK, so maybe that wasn’t the biggest takeaway from Saturday’s … whatever that was. It wasn’t a collapse. It was just a failure.

And no, don’t tell me that the “jumping the shield” penalty was the difference in that game. Auburn would’ve still needed a touchdown drive if that hadn’t been called with 5:18 to play. That, as we saw with Auburn’s offense, was too tall of a task.

Freeze went from feeding Jarquez Hunter like Auburn fans had been begging for in the Kentucky win to forgetting he was on the team in the second half. Freeze said afterward that he thought the tailback was “gassed,” which was why he only got 2 carries in the second half, the last of which came at the 11:02 mark of the third quarter. Also of note, Auburn failed to score a single second-half point. On the bright side, at least the Tigers didn’t blow a double-digit lead in the 4th quarter.

On the not-so-bright side, Auburn’s bowl hopes are now pinned on beating A&M at home and Alabama in Tuscaloosa, where the Tigers haven’t won since 2010. With all due respect to Payton Thorne, he’s a few dozen notches below Cam Newton. With all due respect to all other Auburn teams, this might be the program’s worst squad since 2012 … and maybe longer.

It was foolish to think that this Freeze team would finally end the streak against Diego Pavia. Speaking of Pavia …

Vandy is bowl-eligible!

How about that?

Not only did Vandy clinch bowl eligibility for the first time since 2018, but it did so on Nov. 2. That’s the earliest Vandy has ever done that. Clark Lea deserves a ton of credit for doing that, and doing so with a team who had an over/under of 2.5 regular-season wins.

Diego Pavia owns the state of Alabama. He also owns Hugh Freeze, who is now 0-3 against Pavia having been outscored 97-31 in the 3 matchups, all of which he was the visiting quarterback. Sure, that came in what was easily Pavia’s worst offensive day after he failed to complete a pass in the second and third quarters. Credit Lea’s reworked defensive philosophy — becoming his own defensive coordinator — for that.

But when Vandy had to have it, Pavia put together the scoring drive to put the game away. Yes, it benefitted from a rare “leaping the shield” penalty on Auburn, which extended a Vandy drive instead of ending it with the field goal. Vandy took advantage of that and Auburn couldn’t get the break it needed.

We’re now living in a world in which Vandy has become the team that always seems to find a way. The schedule finishes with games vs. Vandy, at LSU and vs. Tennessee. Could Vandy win 1-2 of those games and have an 8-win season?

Either way, what a year this has been in Nashville.