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SEC Football

SEC West loaded with one-dimensional pretenders

Brett Weisband

By Brett Weisband

Published:

The SEC is a minefield. One misstep and a team’s season can be blown to smithereens. That’s why every team needs a backup plan, something to turn to when Plan A goes up in smoke. Good teams — of which the SEC has plenty — will take away what an opponent does well and force them to look elsewhere. This year, there are a handful of would-be contenders who don’t have anywhere else to look.

Take Arkansas. The Razorbacks have been talked about all season as the best .500 team, the best winless-in-conference team, and plenty of other ways to describe a dangerous team that can’t win, they are likely just that. The Hogs have a very good running game and an underrated pass rush, a formula that should have earned them a few SEC wins by this point. Yet here Bret Bielema is, 0-13 in the SEC through the better part of two seasons in the conference.

Related: Bret Bielema’s 0-13 record is unprecendented

Bielema’s team has had multiple chances to win games in crunch time, and they’ve lost two of them in similar ways. Against both Alabama, a 14-13 loss, and Mississippi State, a 17-10 defeat, the Razorbacks had the ball with enough time to put together a drive to tie or take the lead. In both of those games, junior quarterback Brandon Allen threw interceptions that sealed the result in both games. Allen is a solid quarterback, one capable of taking a gameplan and executing. But Arkansas thrives on play-action passing, and late in games, when opponents know the Razorbacks need to pass, that option goes out the window.

Take Texas A&M. The Aggies were once prolific and on the path to the College Football Playoff. Now, they’re 6-3 and will be hard-pressed to finish at 4-4 in the SEC. A&M has fallen off the map over the last month, and their reliance on being able to move the ball consistently through the air is a big part of the reason.

Early in the season, the Aggies were jumping out to massive leads in a flash — does anyone remember their win over South Carolina? — and were able to run the ball at their own leisure. While A&M is certainly a pass-first offense, throwing on more than 57 percent of their offensive snaps, the offense is effective at running the ball when it can, at 4.7 yards per carry.

But those early leads have disappeared during a 1-3 post-September swoon, and its allowed opponents to tee off on A&M’s quarterbacks. The offensive line, a supposed strength with multiple NFL prospects, has been embarrassed in pass protection on too many occasions this season. It’s resulted in rushed throws, shaky decisions and turnovers, not to mention a precipitous drop in offensive production. With a defense incapable of stopping, well, anyone, Kevin Sumlin’s offense getting short-circuited by an over-reliance on its passing game is making life even harder for the other side of the ball when their opponent’s pass rush blows things up.

You can even take LSU, sitting at 7-2 and looking quite dangerous, as a team who could be in trouble this weekend, butting up against an Alabama team that will have no defensive goal in mind other than shutting down its run game. While Les Miles and his stubborn ways have brought in great results for LSU over the years, the Tigers’ two bad losses this season have come when they’ve fallen behind early, removing the option of controlling the game via the run.

Related: LSU has turned it around thanks to Les Miles’ refusal to change

Anthony Jennings has performed admirably as a game manager for the Tigers, but isn’t the type of passer to drop back snap after snap to throw his team back into the game. While freshman Brandon Harris has flashed potential, he was exposed against Auburn as not ready to that either when he was forced to throw in his short-lived first start against Auburn.

Arkansas and Texas A&M can both write this season off. They’ve stepped on one or two too many land mines as they traversed the SEC landscape, and now they’re limping and crawling to the finish. If that continues next season, both Bielema and Sumlin will begin to feel the heat. Miles is far more comfortable in his position thanks to a long track record of success, but that doesn’t stop LSU fans from getting riled by his bull-headedness. Arkansas and A&M have already failed in their one-dimensional efforts at winning; LSU could be tossed in the same scrap heap after this weekend.

Brett Weisband

A former freelance journalist from Philadelphia, Brett has made the trek down to SEC country to cover the greatest conference in college football.

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