What’s a month between friends? Hopefully not much … because while we might not have been spot-on with all of our preseason SEC predictions, we’re feeling a lot better about it now. So let’s just be forgiving, and let us predict how your team ends their regular season now, after Week 4. Here’s how we see it:
SEC West
Alabama: 12-0
Didn’t see a thing this week to change our mind about the trajectory of this Alabama season. It’s becoming less a question of Alabama winning and more a question of whether anybody else can be competitive.
Arkansas: 2-10
Similarly, didn’t see much to change our mind about Arkansas. Not trying to pile on, but this is rough.
Auburn: 8-4
Can an 8-4 team be an underachiever? If you’re Auburn, then you probably can. The Tigers just seem to be lacking that essential burst that would allow them to overtake the SEC’s big dogs.
LSU: 10-2
Of course, we had LSU going 10-2 at the start of the season (gulp). This (or maybe Kentucky) is the feel good story of the SEC and with every week that Joe Burrow doesn’t turn into a pumpkin, we start to wonder if they’ll play Cinderella all the way to the CFP, one ugly win at a time.
Mississippi State: 8-4
Let’s pump the brakes on the State as challenger to Alabama narrative. They met an SEC defense and it caught them completely by surprise.
Ole Miss: 6-6
The offense is fun, the defense is frustrating, the division is brutal. They’ll be fun to watch, but won’t grab a lot of SEC victories.
Texas A&M: 7-5
A&M is better than it was last season, but that schedule is just unforgiving. Playing in college football’s toughest division and adding Clemson didn’t leave much room for error. But they’ll be a heck of a good 7-5 or 8-4 team.
SEC East
Florida: 7-5
Still in the hunt for that elusive second spot in the East, but haven’t seen enough to make them a favorite in that hunt.
Georgia: 12-0
If they play another game that is this lackluster, we might have to predict them to lose a regular-season game. But seriously, even in a sloppy game on the road, they won by two touchdowns. They own the East, and might or might not stumble against LSU or Auburn.
Kentucky: 9-3
With the exception of Georgia, which looked surprisingly human this week, there’s not another game on Kentucky’s schedule in which the Cats don’t seem likely to have a puncher’s chance. Not unlike LSU, of course, everybody saw that coming.
Missouri: 8-4
The Missouri vs. South Carolina game in two weeks is one that will go a long way to sorting out the East’s final standings. Mizzou is more fun to watch, but also more prone to massive errors that could beat them.
South Carolina: 8-4
Carolina finished second in the East last year, and it could very well replicate last season. Sure, the Gamecocks got thumped pretty good by Georgia. But there’ll be plenty of those to go around. No reason to change the projection for this team.
Tennessee: 4-8
The previous two weeks showed that Tennessee plays well when it has a talent advantage. This week showed that the Volunteers look horrible when they face a talent deficit.
Vanderbilt: 5-7
The Commodores just don’t have the horses to end up in the upper half of the East this year. The James Franklin years seem like a long time ago. They could get to 6 wins, but Ole Miss looks better than the Dores at the moment.
Joe Cox is a columnist for Saturday Down South. He has also written or assisted in writing five books, and his most recent, Almost Perfect (a study of baseball pitchers’ near-miss attempts at perfect games), is available on Amazon or at many local bookstores.
