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

Game of the Week: Florida vs. Georgia (-14.5)

The stakes

Once again, Georgia is exactly where it expects to be at this point on the calendar: Undefeated, atop the polls with room to spare, well-rested coming off an open date, and right on schedule to defend its SEC and national titles in the postseason. Now, the Dawgs’ season really begins.

The fact is, for the keepers of a 24-game winning streak, in many ways the ’23 Dawgs are a substantially rebuilt outfit still finding themselves. An unusually backloaded schedule has hardly given them the chance. Unlike the past 2 years, when the eventual champs immediately confirmed their bona fides in high-profile opening-day wins over Clemson (2021) and Oregon (2022), this team skipped the big nonconference showcase altogether, settling for sleepy September blowouts over UT-Martin, Ball State, and UAB.

Meanwhile, UGA’s 4 conference opponents to date (South Carolina, Auburn, Kentucky and Vanderbilt) are a combined 3-14 in SEC play. What it does it say about Georgia that 3 of those games — all but the Week 6 romp over Kentucky — were competitive, 4-quarter affairs in which they fell well short of covering the spread? That they’re a cut below the championship squads that rarely left the routine, below-the-fold wins in doubt? Or merely that they’ve been in cruise control because they can afford to be?

The next few weeks should give us a much better idea of whether the defending champs have the juice to go all the way again.

While there is still no single, season-defining blockbuster on the horizon, Saturday does mark the beginning of a month-long gauntlet against four Top 25-ish opponents (Florida, Missouri, Ole Miss and Tennessee) with a combined 11-5 record in SEC play, collectively adding up to a significant test of Georgia’s week-in, week-out staying power.

It’s precisely this stretch of games that the preseason skeptics of the Dawgs’ 3-peat bid pointed to as a potential ambush zone, and that was before Mizzou’s emergence as the league’s most pleasant surprise. They’re embarking on it with their best player, Brock Bowers, sidelined indefinitely due to a high ankle sprain and a relative dearth of star power across the rest of the lineup. Extending the winning streak to 30 games heading into the postseason poses a real challenge; ESPN’s Football Power Index sets Georgia’s odds of running the table through the SEC Championship Game at just 14.5%. The Cocktail Party is the first step toward making it look like it was inevitable.

As for Florida, the season can still go in either direction. At 3-1 in conference play, the Gators technically control their own fate in the SEC East; in addition to upending the national pecking order, an upset on Saturday would instantly vault them into driver’s seat in the division while validating Billy Napier‘s long-term vision for the program. More realistically, a competitive effort in a close loss could still leave an uneasy fan base feeling placid enough about the team’s chances of salvaging an 8- or 9-win campaign with LSU, Missouri and Florida State looming. Another blowout on the order of the past 2 years, on the other hand, and fears of a November doom spiral can officially commence.

The stat: 23.6%

That’s the 3rd-down conversion rate of opposing offenses against Georgia’s defense this season, best in the nation. There’s a long way to go, but as long as it holds that number represents a historic pace: The last Power 5 defense to hold opponents below 25% on 3rd down over a full season was Michigan in 2016 (21.0%). No SEC defense has pulled it off since Alabama in 2011 (24.5%), under then-defensive coordinator Kirby Smart. The best any opponent has managed against Georgia so far was South Carolina in Week 3, which converted its first 3 3rd-down attempts to open the game before finishing 2-for-10 over the final 3 quarters.

On the other side, 3rd-downs have been a roller coaster for Florida’s offense. The Gators opened the season by converting a dismal 1-for-13 attempts in their Week 1 loss at Utah, and turned in another rock-bottom effort a few weeks later by converting just 1-of-9 in a low-scoring win over Charlotte. In between, though, they were a solid 7-for-14 against Tennessee — one of the key factors in a methodical, 29-16 upset in which Florida finished with a 15-minute advantage in time of possession. (“Methodical” being the word when you generate 349 total yards in a win; when you lose, the same output is “plodding.”) Given Florida’s lack of downfield pop in the passing game, staying on schedule and taking advantage of manageable opportunities is an indispensable part of the blueprint.

The big question: Can Florida turn up the heat on Carson Beck?

Beck, like his predecessor Stetson Bennet IV, is arguably the best-protected quarterback in America: Per Pro Football Focus, defenses have generated pressure on just 15.2% of his 217 drop-backs this season, the 2nd-lowest rate in the FBS behind only Oregon’s Bo Nix. Beck’s impressive efficiency as a first-year starter reflects just how difficult it has been to force him out of his comfort zone. In his best game to date, a 389-yard, 4-touchdown gem against Kentucky, he was kept clean on 34-of-36 drop-backs and hit just once.

Florida could get creative in an effort to crank up the temperature, although so far the Gators have been relatively blitz-averse under first-year coordinator Austin Armstrong. Instead, the main source of heat by far has been senior OLB Princely Umanmielen, who has been far more disruptive off the edge than his 3 sacks imply: Altogether, PFF has credited Umanmielen with 32 QB pressures, good for 4th in the SEC and more than twice as many as any other Florida defender. And while Georgia has been typically solid up front, what little success defenses have had has come largely at the expense of the tackles, true freshman Earnest Greene III on the left side and 5th-year senior Xavier Truss on the right. Truss, a converted guard, has allowed 9 pressures and 1 sack in 5 games since kicking outside to replace Amarius Mims, an aspiring first-rounder who hasn’t played since Week 3 due to (yep) a high ankle sprain.

Smart has been typically cryptic about Mims’ status, which other than Brock Bowers’ injury qualifies as the closest thing the Bulldogs have to a pressing personnel issue. If he’s sidelined again, Umanmielen’s snaps opposite Truss represent Florida’s best chance to put Beck on his back.

The key matchup: Florida WR Ricky Pearsall vs. Georgia DB Tykee Smith

Pearsall’s presence in the slot is the one piece of the offense Florida has been able to rely on. In a banner year for SEC wideouts, he’s right up there, ranking among the top 5 in the league in receptions (44) and yards (619); through 7 games, that puts him on pace to finish as the Gators’ first 1,000-yard receiver since … wow, care to stop and take a guess before reading on? I’ll leave it to the reader to look up the name but the year was 2002. Anyway, Pearsall is coming off his best game in Florida’s come-from-behind win at South Carolina, where he finished with 10 catches for 166 yards on 12 targets, including the eventual game-winning touchdown in the final minute.

In Georgia’s scheme, defending the slot falls primarily on Smith, a once-hyped West Virginia transfer who has finally stuck in the nickel role (“Star,” in the local parlance) after 2 injury-plagued seasons in 2021 and ’22. So far, he’s run hot-and-cold, recording a team-high 4 interceptions on one hand while also giving up 3 touchdowns in coverage, per PFF. One of those, a 49-yard, catch-and-run strike by Vanderbilt, was the result of a straight-up bust when Smith (No. 23 below) turned to run with a vertical route despite having safety help over the top, leaving the middle of the field wide open for an uncontested slant route that Vandy’s London Humphreys took all the way to the end zone:

Pearsall doesn’t need that much space to get open, but the Gators will need a quick strike or two to offset what figures to be an offensive slog otherwise, and there’s very little doubt in whose direction they’ll be looking to supply it.

The verdict …

It’s difficult to imagine Florida making a real game out of this as a 2-touchdown underdog without a big, field-tilting break going in its favor, and it has not shown much propensity for generating those kinds of plays on either side of the ball. Offensively, the Gators are tied for last in the SEC in scrimmage plays of 30+ yards; defensively, they’ve managed just 4 takeaways (2 fumbles, 2 interceptions), which ranks last in the SEC and 129th nationally. Their path to beating Georgia via ball control and field position is narrow, to say the least.

Then again, outside of the Kentucky game these Dawgs have not demonstrated quite the killer instinct over the first half of the season that they have in the past, and Bowers’ injury is an enormous X-factor with potential ripple effects across the offense. Who is the go-to playmaker in his absence? Beyond the highlight reel, Bowers’ unique versatility as an inline blocker and receiver in space gave Georgia the luxury of running the entire playbook with their base personnel; what do the sub packages look like without him? What specific matchup does the defense fear? Those questions may not come to bear on the outcome on Saturday, but looking ahead some answers would be very reassuring.
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Georgia 31 | • Florida 19

Tennessee (-3.5) at Kentucky

The Vols and Wildcats are coming off demoralizing defeats that effectively eliminated them from dark-horse contention in the East, which diminishes the urgency in Lexington in one respect while increasing it another: Neither side really has anything in particular to play for down the stretch, but the outlook over the final month is officially grim for the loser. Tennessee still has Missouri and Georgia on deck; for its part, Kentucky can look forward to Alabama and Louisville. Either way, if 9 wins are realistically on the table, this needs to be 1 of them.

On the same note, both teams are still waiting for their respective quarterbacks to come out of their shells. Tennessee, especially, expected more from Joe Milton III, who — incredibly, given the prolific track record of Josh Heupel‘s offense and the previous quarterbacks who have manned it —
has still yet to throw for 300 yards or 3 touchdowns in any game this season.

For a while, it looked like the light was finally beginning to come on in last week’s loss at Alabama, where Milton turned in easily his best performance of the season in the first half: 16-for-22, 175 yards, 2 TDs, zero INTs, zero sacks. Tennessee led at halftime, 20-7. In the second half, though, he promptly turned back into a pumpkin, going 12-for-19 for 96 yards, no touchdowns and 3 sacks, including a strip sack in the 4th quarter that Bama took to the house to put a 34-20 comeback on ice.

Milton has been inconsistent, inaccurate and surprisingly reluctant to stretch the field. Whether that’s from lack of trust in his receivers, his protection, or his own erratic touch, the Vols need him to get his coordinates sorted out ASAP, while the prospect of a New Year’s 6 bowl remains within the realm of possibility.
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• Tennessee 29 |Kentucky 23

Vanderbilt at Ole Miss (-24.5)

Ole Miss fans aren’t to the point of poring over tiebreaker scenarios just yet, but looking beyond this weekend a plausible path still exists to the top of the SEC West. Besides taking care of their own business — easier said than done with Texas A&M and Georgia still on the schedule — Ole Miss is also rooting for LSU to spring an upset at Alabama in Week 10, thereby (hypothetically) creating a 3-way tie at the top of the division between the Rebels, Tigers and Crimson Tide, with all 3 sporting a 1-1 record against the other 2. If that’s how it plays out, Ole Miss’ Nov. 11 trip to UGA could have enormous implications, and an upset there could be the Rebels’ first ticket to Atlanta. Hey, it can’t hurt to dream, can it?
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• Ole Miss 39 | Vanderbilt 17

South Carolina at Texas A&M (-14.5)

Another game between struggling teams that’s meaningful mainly for avoiding the feeling that the season has fallen through a trap door. Can Texas A&M fans survive another November of being assigned to read the fine print of the buyout clause in Jimbo Fisher‘s contract amid a string of increasingly depressing defeats? Can any of us? The fact is that, rampant speculation notwithstanding, Fisher is almost certainly not getting fired this year for anything short of an open revolt in the locker room: Pulling the plug before Jan. 1 would cost A&M — more specifically, A&M boosters — an absurd $76.8 million. They’ve got enough turmoil in the global oil market to worry about as it is. Fisher’s goal is just to keep the bottom from falling out before he can gesture confidently toward Conner Weigman‘s return to the starting QB job in 2024.
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Texas A&M 27 | • South Carolina 22

Mississippi State at Auburn (-6.5)

Will Rogers‘ run of 39 consecutive starts ended last week due to a shoulder injury that sidelined him in Mississippi State’s 7-3 win at Arkansas — the lowest-scoring game in SEC play since Alabama beat LSU 10-0 in 2016. (For a lower total, you have to go all the way back to the infamous 3-2 game between Mississippi State and Auburn in 2008.) With backup Mike Wright struggling and their defense in control, the Bulldogs slowed the pace to a crawl, running a grand total of 48 plays with only 12 passes. Rogers’ status for Saturday remains TBD, per Zach Arnett, whose standard line re: injuries is that every player is day-to-day.

Meanwhile, Auburn effectively abandoned the notion of a downfield passing game, and frankly it’s hard to blame them. In SEC play, starter Payton Thorne is a meager 1-of-11 on attempts of 20+ yards, the lone completion coming in a Week 7 loss at LSU with Auburn trailing by 24 points in the second half. (Backups Robby Ashford and Holden Geriner are a combined 1-for-7 in the same span.) In the quarterbacks’ defense, who would be on the other end? I defy anyone who isn’t a diehard Auburn fan to name an active wide receiver without looking it up. RB Jarquez Hunter accounted for the team’s longest reception of the season in last week’s loss to Ole Miss, covering 47 yards on a pass thrown 10 yards beyond the line of scrimmage.
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Auburn 23 | • Mississippi State 20

Scoreboard

Week 7 record: 4-1 straight-up | 4-1 vs. spread
Season record: 42-10 straight-up | 26-26 vs. spread