Aside from the dependable dominance of Georgia, the story of this SEC season has been that almost anything can happen in a given week. If anybody didn’t believe that, Week 12 might have set them right. Missouri and South Carolina winning over Florida and Auburn had to surprise. Alabama had to dig deep to get past Arkansas, and even Vanderbilt had a decent performance against Mississippi. In any case, here are the winners and losers of SEC Week 12.

Winners

South Carolina

Struggling through a season, deep into the QB depth chart, and trailing Auburn’s powerful ground attack 14-0 in the 1st quarter, South Carolina could have been forgiven for folding the tents and calling it a nice season. Instead, QB Jason Brown fought back, and the Gamecocks leaned on a tough ground game, a hard-charging defense, and a little bit of officiating luck (see below) to pull the 21-17 win. Pure guts.

Drinkwitz’s 2-point gamble

Sure, Missouri’s defense did a great job keeping the Tigers in a field-goal trading slugfest with Florida. But after giving up 7 to the Gators to open overtime, Mizzou coach Eli Drinkwitz saw his Tigers get into the end zone, then he pushed his chips to the middle of the table. The 2-point pass from injured QB Connor Bazelak to Daniel Parker lifted the Tigers to a win, to bowl eligibility, and to salvaging a 2021 season that threatened to spiral out of control. Bonus points for the light saber thing in the postgame for Drinkwitz. Might as well pile on Dan Mullen while you can.

https://twitter.com/247Sports/status/1462220705592922114

Arkansas’s fake field goal-jump pass

Like the Sam Pittman era, this is magic. Gutty call, perfect execution, and the Hogs came surprisingly close to taking down the Crimson Tide. Plays like this show that the loss certainly wasn’t for any lack of imagination.

Bryce Young

Solid Alabama QB throws for … wait … 559 yards? Yes, you read that right. Alabama had 2 receivers (John Metchie and Jameson Williams) who each topped 170 yards. Seriously, we tuned into an SEC West game and a Big 12 scrimmage broke out.

Losers

SEC officiating

Some very questionable stuff in the Arkansas/Alabama game, but the winner of the most consequential and likely blown call of the week has to be the ruling on a late South Carolina punt which was ultimately ruled to have touched an Auburn player. Videos looked pretty inconclusive  … except to SEC staff, who basically ended the game by giving the Gamecocks the ball.

Sure, it’s a tough call. But the original call was that the ball didn’t hit the returner, and the reversal? Let’s just say “inconclusive” probably has a new dictionary photo. Terrible job by the league where the play matters more, but the officiating somehow never seems to.

Florida

Where to start? Bad play, bad coaching, just the complete mid-season collapse of a promising team. It’s going to be a very interesting next couple weeks in Gainesville, particularly if the Gators can’t get past the (also) 5-6 Seminoles next week. It’s hard to see how Dan Mullen weathers this storm, but we’ll see.

Auburn’s offense

It’s funny how certain themes exist regardless at some programs of who the coach is. Auburn has an much talent as any program in the SEC that isn’t Georgia or Alabama. The Tigers offense can periodically show daunting power runners. It’s also a team than can surrender a 25-point lead to Mississippi State and a 14-point lead to South Carolina in successive weeks. It’s coach Bryan Harsin’s first year, so he’ll plug along, but Mike Bobo seems unlikely to be part of Harsin’s Season 2 on the Plains. This week’s game included Auburn, on its own 35, going for it on 4th and 1 with a deep pass that fell incomplete. That essentially gifted South Carolina a touchdown in its 21-17 win. Sheesh.