Breaking down the weekend’s SEC slate, all in one place.

Game of the Week: Texas at Alabama (-7)

The stakes

National brands. Playoff implications. Primetime stage. A dash of intrigue between the head coaches. A burgeoning rivalry fueled by conference realignment, implacable egos and a classic finish in 2022. This time of year, what more can you ask for? As September tone-setters go, Bama-Texas arrives with all the intensity of an annual midseason showdown.

For Texas, of course, there’s still the matter of justifying the hype, the persistence of which in the face of a decade-plus of disappointment remains one of the sport’s longest-running and most cherished jokes. You know the punchline. Once again, optimism is running as high in Steve Sarkisian’s 3rd season as head coach as it has at any point since Colt McCoy’s shoulder exploded in the 2010 Rose Bowl — a reference old enough by now that most of the players who’ll take the field on Saturday night are too young to have any memory of it. The Longhorns are ranked 10th/11th in the major polls, well ahead of any other team in the Big 12 and well within range of the early CFP orbit with an upset in Tuscaloosa. The roster, as ever, checks in at No. 6 in 247Sports’ Team Talent Composite and No. 7 in the Blue-Chip Ratio. Even the 7-point spread is 2 touchdowns narrower than the lopsided line for last year’s down-to-the-wire meeting in Austin. The breakthrough is coming, eventually. Right? Florida State is back from the wilderness; why not Texas?

For Alabama, of course, the goal is always the same: National championship or bust. At that altitude, the mystique the Crimson Tide have taken for granted for most of the Nick Saban era is a little thinner for this team, which is relatively light on proven star power and still facing some lingering suspicion from last year’s non-Playoff finish. The key word in that sentence being relatively. By any other standard, Bama remains easily one of the deepest teams in the country, and it looked like its usual, dominant self in the opener, a 56-7 tuneup against Middle Tennessee. Dispatch Texas with the same authority, and no one will remember the fleeting moment when it seemed possible to make out a faint cough in the machine ever happened.

The stat: 52.2%

That was the percentage of the 113 passes aimed at Texas WR Xavier Worthy in 2022 that resulted in a completion, per Pro Football Focus, among the lowest individual rates in the Big 12. A Freshman All-American in ’21, Worthy entered Year 2 with soaring expectations, an equally hyped young quarterback in Quinn Ewers and an offense committed to getting the ball in his hands. Instead, he was plagued by inconsistent QB play and untimely drops, and he never seemed to get the chemistry with Ewers quite right. As a freshman, he averaged a stellar 9.5 yards per target; last year, that number plummeted to 6.7 yards.

Still, what really made Worthy’s sophomore slump so frustrating were the frequent flashes of his enormous gifts. His 9 touchdown receptions still led the conference for the 2nd year in a row, and his reputation as a filthy route-runner and elite vertical threat remained intact. With just a little bit of consistency in Year 3 — likely his last on campus — his combination of speed and ball skills still stands to make him a 1st-round pick.

Worthy got off to a fine start in the Longhorns’ opener against Rice, hauling in 7 catches for 90 yards on 10 targets. Alabama’s secondary obviously poses a much steeper test, especially All-SEC corner Kool-Aid McKinstry, an aspiring 1st-rounder in his own right. As a sophomore, McKinstry faced more targets than any other SEC defender, most of which resulted in the ball clanging harmlessly to the turf: Opposing QBs connected on just 46.3% of those attempts, per PFF, yielding 4.4 yards per attempt, a long gain of 27 yards and an FBS-best 16 passes broken up. Bama doesn’t typically match up its corners opposite specific receivers, so don’t necessarily expect those 2 to be engaged in hand-to-hand combat all night. (Only 2 of Worthy’s 9 targets against the Tide last year came with Kool-Aid in coverage, yielding 1 catch for 15 yards.) When they are, though, it figures to be one of the premier 1-on-1 matchups in college football this season.

The big question: Is Jalen Milroe for real?

Milroe aced his debut as QB1, accounting for 245 total yards, 5 touchdowns and 0 turnovers against MTSU. More important than the stats: his much-scrutinized arm, which was responsible for 3 long touchdown strikes and an abrupt reassessment of his skill set. Hey, who ever said this kid was just a runner?

With the competition apparently settled, it’s on to the serious business of being the starting quarterback at Alabama. The title alone these days is worth an automatic boost in stock. Even against marginal opposition, the revelation that he can throw deep with accuracy raised Milroe’s ceiling overnight from “plus athlete with limitations” (Blake Sims) to “rising star with an NFL future” (Jalen Hurts), at a position where the latter has been the baseline now for the better part of a decade. Sure, some discretion is probably advised before we start throwing around the H-word. Let’s give him another start against a live Power 5 defense before we induct him into the same class as guys currently holding down franchise roles at the next level. But another performance like the last one, on a big national stage, and there will be no stopping the hype from breaching the walls.

The key matchup: Texas OT Kelvin Banks Jr. vs. Alabama edge Dallas Turner

Banks was a 5-star prospect in the 2022 class and wasted no time living up to the billing: As a freshman, he started every game at left tackle, earned a 2nd-team All-Big 12 nod from league coaches and generally played his way onto the 1st-round track in 2025 after facing (and holding his own against) 4 opposing edge rushers who went in the 1st round in April (Alabama’s Will Anderson Jr., Texas Tech’s Tyree Wilson, Iowa State’s Will McDonald and Kansas State’s Felix Anudike-Uzomah). Against Turner, he’s in for arguably the toughest assignment he’ll face as a sophomore. A top-10 recruit in the ’21 class, Turner spent his first 2 seasons in Tuscaloosa supplementing Anderson’s production with 13 sacks and 62 QB pressures of his own off the opposite edge; in Year 3, he’s past due to be a headliner.

Keeping Ewers in his comfort zone is essential to Texas’ chances: His arm talent might be the Longhorns’ most valuable asset, but it can also be offset by his lead feet under pressure. (Although he was usually well-protected, Ewers’ PFF grade on pressured dropbacks in 2022 ranked 45th out of 71 Power 5 quarterbacks with at least 50 attempts.) For a 20-year-old, there’s a whiff of late-stage Ben Roethlisberger to Ewers’ game in the sense that his mental clock in the pocket is slightly sped up to compensate for his mediocre mobility. The more quickly Turner and the rest of Alabama’s pass rush can get the ball out of his hands, the less damage Worthy and the rest of the Horns’ very dangerous receivers can do downfield.

The verdict

Milroe’s coming-out party in Week 1 was a huge relief for the Crimson Tide, and arguably worth the 7-point spread all by itself. Clearly, though, the pressure is on Texas, whose last notable road win over a top-5 opponent came with Vince Young at quarterback. Recruiting rankings notwithstanding, Ewers is no Young, in any sense. But he can throw the heck out of a football, he does have weapons around him and he has one of the game’s most respected play-callers in his ear in Sarkisian. If the Longhorns can keep him upright, they have a puncher’s chance of finishing what they started last year in Austin. Keeping Alabama’s offense in check, on the other hand, will involve significantly more variables.
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• Alabama 34 | Texas 23

Texas A&M (-4.5) at Miami

Two teams desperate to turn the page after a miserable season in 2022, 1 of which will wake up on Sunday morning feeling like it’s on the right track. We just don’t know enough yet about either side to judge whether they’re right. The Aggies and Canes beat their Week 1 opponents, New Mexico and Miami (Ohio), by a combined score of 90-13.

For A&M, specifically, it’s an opportunity to hit reset with a youthful core fueled by the massively hyped 2022 recruiting class, which now constitutes close to half the 2-deep. Seven of the Aggies’ 11 offensive starters against New Mexico were 1st- or 2nd-year players, including 5-stars at quarterback (Conner Weigman), running back (Rueben Owens), wide receiver (Evan Stewart) and o-line (Chase Bisontis). The defense featured underclassmen at all 3 levels, especially along a loaded defensive front. With that much rising talent, a brighter, more prosperous future is never more than another win or 2 away.
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• Texas A&M 27 | Miami 20

Ole Miss (-7.5) at Tulane

This trip is way more interesting than Ole Miss bargained for when it agreed to it a few years back. The Green Wave were one of the surprise hits of 2022, setting a school record for wins (12) en route to a conference championship, a Cotton Bowl upset of USC and an improbable top-10 finish. Most of the stars of that team moved on, with the very notable exception of senior QB Michael Pratt, one of the steadiest hands in the country. Pratt led the AAC in passer rating in 2022, throwing 27 touchdowns to 5 interceptions on a healthy 8.9 yards per attempt, and turned in a stellar 89.3 overall PFF grade — a huge improvement over the 56.2 grade he posted in 2021. Last week, he earned the top overall grade of any FBS quarterback in Week 1 (94.2), finishing 14-of-15 for 293 yards and 4 TDs in a 37-17 win over South Alabama.

Pratt could have bailed for a vacancy at a Power 5 school; instead, his return as a senior is the biggest reason the Green Wave are favored to repeat as Group of 5 reps in a New Year’s 6 bowl. Whether or not his team manages to crack the wider national consciousness again, he certainly has pro scouts’ full attention. At his size, it’s not out of the question that you’ll start hearing Pratt’s name floated among the potential 1st-rounders in the same dark-horse vein as Will Levis last year — only, you know, with the actual production to back it up.
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• Ole Miss 41 | Tulane 31

Arizona at Mississippi State (-9.5)

Our first real look at the post-Air Raid offense at Mississippi State, which deliberately took the air out of the ball in its Week 1 win over Southeastern Louisiana. Will Rogers attempted a career-low 29 passes, and the Bulldogs finished with more rushing yards (298) than passing (227) for the 1st time since the 2019 Egg Bowl. If we didn’t learn anything else, this is definitely Zach Arnett’s team.

For its part, Arizona might be the most shootout-friendly outfit in the country. The Wildcats made a huge leap forward on offense in 2022, improving on their 2021 scoring average by 2 full touchdowns per game vs. Power 5 opponents. They also took a huge step back on defense, giving up an appalling 43.9 ppg in 7 losses. (The defense was fine in a 38-3 win over Northern Arizona in the season opener, for what it’s worth.) QB Jayden de Laura is the most productive passer in Tucson since Nick Foles, but barring a dramatic turnaround on the other side, this is still a team whose spiritual home is in obscure late-night bonfires.
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Mississippi State 34 | • Arizona 26

Auburn (-6.5) at California

Credit to 1st-year Cal OC Jake Spavital: It has been a while since the Golden Bears have been affiliated with explosive offense, but they went off in their season opener, hanging 58 points on North Texas with 669 yards of total offense — their best numbers in both categories since Jared Goff’s last season in Berkeley in 2015. They were balanced in the process, finishing as 1 of 2 teams nationally in Week 1 to go over 300 yards rushing and passing vs. an FBS opponent.

Meanwhile, the status of Auburn’s best player, junior RB Jarquez Hunter, remains in limbo. Hunter was conspicuous in his absence in the Tigers’ season opener, a 59-14 rout over UMass. Rumors simmered throughout the offseason that he was 1 of multiple Auburn players facing a suspension from the university due to a leaked sex tape in which he allegedly appeared; in May, Auburn confirmed multiple suspensions for violations of athletic department policy without specifying who was suspended or why, and it has remained cryptic on the subject. Hunter missed the first 2 practices of preseason camp for unspecified reasons, but he suited up thereafter and is apparently healthy.

He’s also listed atop the official depth chart, for the record, although he was last week, too. Reporters have yet to coax a meaningful word on the subject out of Hugh Freeze, who deflected questions as usual at his weekly press conference. Eventually, you’d expect some clarity where a player of Hunter’s caliber is concerned, but it’s Week 2 and we don’t know any more than we did 6 months ago.
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• Cal 33 | Auburn 29

Ball State at Georgia (-43.5)

Another week, another chew toy for the nation’s No. 1 team, which won’t make its proper introduction to the rest of the country until next week’s CBS tilt against South Carolina. Ball State was more competitive against Kentucky in Week 1 than the 44-14 final implied, but the mission in Athens is strictly to get out with a check in hand and limbs intact.
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• Georgia 52 | Ball State 6

Vanderbilt at Wake Forest (-10)

One of the biggest games of the season for the 2-0 Commodores, who have few paths to bowl eligibility that don’t involve an upset in Winston-Salem. If sophomore QB AJ Swann is on the tenure track toward becoming a 4-year starter, this is 1 where Vandy would love to see a glimpse of the eventual finished product.
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• Wake Forest 37 | Vanderbilt 24

Middle Tennessee at Missouri (-20.5)
Kent State at Arkansas (-37.5)
Grambling at LSU (n/a)
Furman at South Carolina (n/a)
Austin Peay at Tennessee (n/a)
Eastern Kentucky at Kentucky (n/a)
McNeese State at Florida (n/a)

The existence of these games is hereby acknowledged. Godspeed to the underdogs, and to the head coaches of any of the home teams whose starters are still playing in the 4th quarter (especially Billy Napier).
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• Missouri 38, Middle Tennessee 14
Arkansas 51, Kent State 16
LSU 59, Grambling 6
South Carolina 45, Furman 13
Tennessee 62, Austin Peay 10
Kentucky 48, Eastern Kentucky 7
Florida 44, McNeese State 9

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