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

Game of the Week: Texas A&M at Tennessee (-3)

The stakes: How high can Tennessee set its sights heading into the meat of the schedule?

The Volunteers expected to enter last week’s open date unbeaten, with a lofty ranking and some nascent Playoff chatter to accompany a 5-0 start against the shallow end of the slate. Instead, a 29-16 flop at Florida in Week 3 wiped out whatever residual momentum had carried over from a top-10 finish in 2022 and reduced their margin for error to zero before they even had a chance to enjoy a little premature September hype.

Certainly no one is mistaking the Gators for dark-horse contenders in the SEC East; if the Vols were that thoroughly outclassed in Gainesville, what chance do they stand in the really big games, against Alabama and Georgia?

That question can’t be resolved until they actually go to Tuscaloosa in Week 8. But Tennessee can make the trip a heck of a lot more interesting by beating the same A&M team that just gave Bama all it could handle in Week 6. Although unranked, the 4-2 Aggies still pose a stiff test athletically — especially along the defensive line, where all those blue-chip recruits are finally emerging as a collective force — and adding them to the win column would represent the most compelling argument yet that the Vols are back on schedule with the Crimson Tide on deck. Whereas a second conference loss, at home, would all but officially consign the 2023 season to the disappointment bin barring a miracle down the stretch.

As for Texas A&M, while there are no sirens going off, with 2 losses and the SEC West crown looking like a pipe dream (again) there’s not much sense of having anything in particular to look forward to, either. These Aggies are more competitive than the outfit that collapsed in a heap in 2022, and there’s more than enough young talent on hand to sustain a vague outline of championship ambitions somewhere off in the distance. In the meantime, they’re still groping their way back to relevance in the division.

But a win in Knoxville would qualify as a milestone of a sort: A&M has lost 12 straight vs. ranked opponents on the road, dating to the 2014 opener at South Carolina. Do they still teach Kenny Trill in school?

The stat: 29.2%

That’s the percentage of Available Yards allowed allowed by Texas A&M’s defense this season, best in the SEC and 3rd-best nationally. “Available yards” is a metric devised and tracked by efficiency guru Brian Fremeau that does exactly what the label says: Of all the possible yards available to an offense (or opposing offenses) over the course of a season, what percentage does the offense actually gain? All touchdown drives, for example, represent 100% of available yards; a drive that starts at the offense’s own 20-yard-line and reaches the opposing 40-yard line gained 40 of the 80 available yards, and thus represents 50% of available yards, etc. The upshot: Aggies have been much tougher to move the ball on than the scoreboard implies.

In fact, their pace is on par with some of the best defenses of the past few years. The most recent teams in Fremeau’s database to finish with a lower Available Yards rate over the course of a full season are Ohio State (28.4%) and Clemson (28.9%) in 2019, including the Buckeyes and Tigers’ collision in that season’s CFP semifinals. The last SEC team to allow a lower rate: Alabama in 2016, which held opponents to an absurd 26.8% of Available Yards en route to the CFP title game.

Texas A&M isn’t going to sustain that pace for a full season — early wins over New Mexico and UL-Monroe can’t keep accounting for a third of the schedule forever — but as long as they remain in the general vicinity it should be good enough to give the Aggies a chance in every game they’ll play.

The big question: Does Joe Milton III have a big game in him?

All of the scouting reports on Milton coming into the season stressed his volatility, projecting him as a gifted but high-variance gunslinger prone to awe-inspiring peaks and maddening valleys. Instead, his output has been remarkably consistent, which for a player with his talent has proven to be just as maddening in its own way: Milton has put up resolutely mediocre stat lines in every game, never quite falling below the Mendoza line but having yet to move the needle with an undeniably plus performance, either. No peaks, no valleys:

Milton’s reputation for inconsistency has borne out in one area, in particular: Deep balls. Per PFF, he’s connected on just 8-of-30 attempts of 20+ yards downfield, good for the lowest completion percentage (26.7%) among SEC starters. That’s a steep drop-off from last year, when — contrary to his reputation — he led the SEC in deep-ball accuracy, at 48.3%. A couple of drops have factored into that number, as has a higher-than-average pressure rate on deep attempts. Both of last year’s resident deep threats, Jalin Hyatt and Cedric Tillman, have been sorely missed. No one among the current rotation of Squirrel White, Ramel Keaton, Bru McCoy and Dont’e Thorton Jr. has more than 2 long-ball receptions to his credit, and the most proven member of that group, McCoy, is out for the season with a broken ankle suffered in the win over South Carolina.

As the final scores indicate, that’s yet to make a difference in the wins, each of which Tennessee has more or less dominated on the ground. Still, Milton’s military-grade arm strength is his prized asset, and the one variable capable of putting the offense over the top (literally) when the running game runs into a wall. Florida held the Vols to just 100 yards rushing on 3.3 per carry in their only loss, while both of their touchdowns against the Gators came on or immediately following a successful Milton heave.

Of course, they can’t beat the best teams on the schedule by bombs alone. Without them, though, the next six weeks are going to feel a whole lot longer.

The key matchup: Texas A&M OL Chase Bisontis vs. Tennessee edge James Pearce Jr.

Pearce, a true sophomore, has one job in the Vols’ outside linebacker rotation and one job only: Get after the quarterback. Playing almost exclusively in a part-time, pass-rushing role, he’s climbing the ranks of the SEC’s most ferocious edge rushers with a bullet.

Against South Carolina, he made Spencer Rattler’s life miserable, recording 9 QB pressures (per PFF) and 3 of Tennessee’s 6 sacks on a dominant night for the defense overall. (The official box score says 2 sacks — 1 solo plus 2 half-sacks shared with teammates — but we’re not under any obligation here to make all the columns add up so he gets credit for all 3.) Even in a time-share at the position, Pearce is on pace to be the first Vol with double-digit sacks in a season since Derek Barnett in 2016.

Bisontis is … hanging in there. One of the most touted members of A&M’s 2023 recruiting class, he was thrust into a starting role at right tackle from Day 1 and has often looked like a true freshman just finding his legs. He’s allowed a team-high 19 QB pressures, per PFF, and had a predictably miserable outing against Alabama’s veteran pass rush in Week 6.

I do not enjoy singling out struggling freshmen, even touted ones. Bisontis was certainly not the only A&M o-linemen who got posterized in the loss to Bama, by a long shot. He’ll get there. But for now, the fact is that QB Max Johnson, a lefty, cannot afford to blindly trust his blindside. On obvious passing downs, opposite a fast-emerging talent like Pearce, the clock in Johnson’ head in a hostile environment will inevitably be running fast. Staying out of those situations is critical.

The verdict …

Tennessee under Josh Heupel has a well-deserved reputation for being more at home in shootouts than in slugfests, but up this point these aren’t the same high-flying Vols we saw in Heupel’s first 2 seasons. The defense is off to a better start than the offense, and the running game is off to a much better start than the passing game. They cannot rely (yet) on Joe Milton to transcend their flaws the way they could Hendon Hooker. But they may not face an opposing quarterback this season who’s capable of that on his end, either, and if they do, it’s not going to be on Saturday. The combination of pass-rushing prowess and home-field advantage swings the pendulum in the Volunteers’ court.
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• Tennessee 29 | Texas A&M 24

Missouri at Kentucky (-2.5)

A pivotal game in the race for 2nd place in the East, between teams whose perfect September records were abruptly un-perfected in Week 6. The offenses are a study in contrasts: Mizzou, a high-octane passing attack headlined by the nation’s leading receiver, Luther Burden III; Kentucky, a deliberative, run-oriented outfit averaging an FBS-low 54 plays per game. Both sides average about 33 points, with 4 non-offensive touchdowns to date helping keep the Wildcats up to speed.

The question is, which defense can disrupt what the opposing offense does best? Both Ds are licking their wounds. Missouri had been fine against the run prior to last week’s loss to LSU, which racked up 274 rushing yards on 6.4 per carry. (Go ahead and subtract Jayden Daniels’ contributions as a scrambler, which accounted for close to half of that number; still, the other half came courtesy of a career-high 134 yards from RB Logan Diggs.) And Kentucky had been fine on the back end, until Georgia shredded the ‘Cats for 435 yards and 5 touchdowns passing in a 51-13 massacre. UK needs to control the clock behind a big number from workhorse RB Ray Davis, or keeping pace with Burden and Associates threatens to exhaust every last drop in the secondary’s tank.
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• Missouri 31 |Kentucky 27

Arkansas at Alabama (-20.5)

Is Bama out of the woods? For all the angst in the early going, the Crimson Tide arrive at midseason as clear-cut favorites in the West, with a couple of ugly but ultimately reassuring wins over Ole Miss and Texas A&M in the bank. Jalen Milroe is the undisputed QB1; Jermaine Burton is coming off a breakthrough performance in College Station; the defense is playing like, well, a standard-issue Alabama defense. Nick Saban is possibly the chillest he’s ever been in his life. It’s not exactly a straight path to Atlanta with Tennessee and LSU still on deck — both in Tuscaloosa this time around — but all of the Tide’s larger goals remain very much on the table.

Arkansas, on the other hand, is reeling from a 4-game losing streak that has pushed its season to the brink. The Hogs’ biggest problems are on offense, where they rank last in the SEC and 113th nationally in yards per game. Their best player, Rocket Sanders, has been a shadow of his former explosive self due to a lingering knee injury that has cratered his much-anticipated junior campaign; in the meantime, KJ Jefferson has been picked off 6 times and sacked 20 over the course of the skid. The defense has not collapsed (yet), but at the current rate it can only keep the margins respectable for so long.
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Alabama 34 | • Arkansas 16

Auburn at LSU (-11.5)

Auburn limps into Baton Rouge with one of the most anemic passing attacks in the country: In 3 games vs. Power 5 opponents, the Tigers have averaged just 79.3 yards through the air on a grim 4.0 per attempt. Casual Auburn fans and sophisticated professional football writers alike are still learning the wide receivers’ names. Their last time out, against Georgia, QB Payton Thorne finished with more yards rushing (92, including sacks) than passing (82) for the first time in his career.

On paper, LSU’s much-maligned defense presents an opportunity for Auburn to level up on that front — LSU having already been victimized for fat passing lines by Florida State, Ole Miss and Missouri, and to a lesser extent by Arkansas. But we’ve also seen the Bayou Bengals clamp down on Mississippi State, which (like Auburn) lacked the juice at wideout to generate favorable matchups and struggled to protect Will Rogers. Auburn might be able to pound out a living on the ground, but it’s just as likely that LSU’s secondary seizes the opportunity to get right at Thorne’s expense as the other way around.
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• LSU 36 |Auburn 23

Georgia (-31.5) at Vanderbilt

As usual, the most important variable in this matchup is just how much of a taste for blood the defending champs have against the league’s sacrificial goat. Since a stunning loss to the Dores in 2016 — the long-forgotten nadir of Kirby Smart‘s first season — Georgia has won 5 straight in the series by an average margin of 40 points. Vandy’s last touchdown against UGA, in the dying seconds of a blowout in 2018, just celebrated its fifth anniversary.

On that note, the Bulldogs should be feeling relatively satisfied at the moment coming off their best outing of the season against Kentucky. They took the leash off QB Carson Beck against the best defense he’s faced to date, and he delivered, averaging a season-high 11.1 yards per attempt with 4 touchdown passes — each to a different receiver. The running game and defense held up their ends. Most of the handful of voters in the AP and Coaches’ polls who’d dropped the Dawgs from No. 1 on their ballots in September restored them there. The only sense of urgency in Nashville is getting out with everyone’s ACLs intact.
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• Georgia 45 |Vanderbilt 10

Florida at South Carolina (-2.5)

Last year’s 38-6 romp over South Carolina in Gainesville remains Florida’s best performance under Billy Napier, and not only due to the lopsided margin. It was also a kind of proof of concept for Napier’s long-term vision of a team built to win the line of scrimmage: 3 Gators went over 100 yards rushing, grinding out multiple extended scoring drives and a nearly 13-minute advantage in time of possession in the process. If there’s any single game he can point to as a blueprint for the program he’s attempting to build, that’s the one.

This time, Gators fans are not holding their breath for a repeat. One of the stars of the 2022 game, Anthony Richardson, is with the Indianapolis Colts. Another, sophomore RB Trevor Etienne, is coming off an injury that sidelined him in last week’s win over Vanderbilt; so is the only holdover on the offensive line, Austin Barber. Even at full speed, the ground game has been lukewarm at best over the first half of the season, bottoming out in a couple of deflating road losses at Utah and Kentucky.

And just as the Gators have struggled outside of The Swamp, South Carolina under Shane Beamer has tended to be a different team at home, posting a 6-3 record in SEC games in Columbia vs. a 2-8 mark on the road. That gap accounts for the 2.5-point spread in the Gamecocks’ favor all by itself.

Then again, it’s probably not for nothing that the past 5 of those 6 home wins have come in primetime, where Williams-Brice Stadium has quickly earned a reputation as a raucous, hostile environment after dark. Whereas Saturday’s tilt is a mid-afternoon kick set for 3:30 ET, leaving the locals less time to get properly lathered up. How much of the primetime energy translates to broad daylight? In a matchup this evenly matched, every little bit helps.
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• Florida 26 |South Carolina 24

Scoreboard

Week 6 record: 6-0 straight-up | 1-5 vs. spread (woof)
Season Record: 33-8 straight-up | 17-24 vs. spread

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