In 2017, significant improvement was the name of the game in the SEC.

Georgia, the team that won 8 games the year before, nearly won a national championship. The Dawgs improved their win total by an impressive 5 games. Certainly, a variety of factors contributed to that.

Having a guy like Jake Fromm under center was huge, as were the four seniors who returned for another year of school instead of leaving for the NFL. And maybe having Kirby Smart in his second year as a head coach made a big difference.

There isn’t necessarily a perfect formula to turning around a program playing in the SEC. No two teams and seasons are exactly alike.

What I wanted to find was whether there were at least a few commonalities linking the SEC teams who made those big year-to-year jumps. For programs like Florida and Tennessee, there are several areas that fans should seek big-time improvement in if they’re going to get a major bump in wins in 2018.

And by “major,” I defined that as +3 in the year-to-year win total. Here were the SEC teams that qualified by that standard from 2015-17:

  • 2017 Georgia, +5
  • 2017 Mississippi State, +3
  • 2017 Missouri, +3
  • 2017 South Carolina, +3
  • 2016 South Carolina, +3
  • 2015 Florida, +3

Those 6 SEC teams all had, in my opinion, what fans could call a “bounce-back season.” It’s often the difference between being mediocre and good (5 of the 6 teams won at least 9 games in their bounce-back season).

Credit: Melina Vastola-USA TODAY Sports

Some would argue that the early stages of a bounce-back year already began in bowl season. We often define bowl victories as “big momentum boosts” heading into the offseason. Expectations for the following season seem to increase based on bowl victories (looking at you, Tennessee).

But if you actually look at the way those 6 teams finished their previous seasons, only half earned bowl victories:

  • 2017 Georgia, Liberty Bowl win
  • 2017 Mississippi State, St. Petersburg Bowl win
  • 2017 Missouri, No bowl
  • 2017 South Carolina, Birmingham Bowl loss
  • 2016 South Carolina, No bowl
  • 2015 Florida, Birmingham Bowl win

I could get into a long rant about how overvalued bowl victories are when projecting next-year win totals, but I’ll leave it at that.

OK, so let’s dive into some of the statistical common denominators in a bounce-back season. Conventional wisdom says that allowing fewer points in a game results in more victories. The numbers back that up, too.

Here’s a look at each of those team’s FBS scoring defense ranking improvement (yowza, MSU):

  • 2017 Georgia, +19
  • 2017 Mississippi State, +67
  • 2017 Missouri, -7
  • 2017 South Carolina, +26
  • 2016 South Carolina, +20
  • 2015 Florida, +9

Earth-shattering stuff, right? I know what you’re thinking. “Next, this hack writer is going to tell me that scoring more points per game is also a good thing.”

You got it!

Here’s a look at each team’s FBS scoring offense ranking improvement (bigger yowza, Georgia):

  • 2017 Georgia, +82
  • 2017 Mississippi State, +15
  • 2017 Missouri, +34
  • 2017 South Carolina, +17
  • 2016 South Carolina, -6
  • 2015 Florida, -47

Hmmmmmm. That 2015 Florida team doesn’t look like the rest. Are we really sure that Jim McElwain’s first season in Gainesville resulted in a 3-game improvement and not a 3-game drop?

The more you look at the data, the more you realize that Florida’s SEC East title might have actually been a blind squirrel finding a nut. In important categories like third-down conversion percentage, four teams had a significant improvement while 2016 South Carolina was nearly the same and Florida took a major step back:

  • 2017 Georgia, +43
  • 2017 Mississippi State, +55
  • 2017 Missouri, +23
  • 2017 South Carolina, +23
  • 2016 South Carolina, -8
  • 2015 Florida, -37

And what about FBS run defense ranking improvement?

  • 2017 Georgia, +16
  • 2017 Mississippi State, +42
  • 2017 Missouri, +54
  • 2017 South Carolina, +51
  • 2016 South Carolina, +19
  • 2015 Florida, -12

All of those aforementioned categories, one would think, would help fuel a turnaround. For the most part, they did. Florida was really the only exception to the rule.

But fear not. There’s an explanation. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that 2015 Florida tied for the best winning percentage in games decided by 2 scores or less:

  • 2017 Georgia, 3-1
  • 2017 Mississippi State, 3-2
  • 2017 Missouri, 1-1
  • 2017 South Carolina, 6-3
  • 2016 South Carolina, 6-6
  • 2015 Florida, 6-2

Teams don’t improve by being bad in close games. You probably already knew that. You probably also knew that teams don’t make big improvements unless they have the right quarterback. One can’t have subpar play at the game’s most important position and expect to improve.

Credit: Marvin Gentry-USA TODAY Sports

Not surprisingly, those six teams all had solid quarterbacks leading their turnaround seasons (Treon Harris shouldn’t really count because Florida was 6-0 with Will Grier until he was suspended and 4-4 after the fact).

Here are those quarterbacks with their experience:

  • 2017 Georgia, Jake Fromm (first-year starter)
  • 2017 Mississippi State, Nick Fitzgerald (second-year starter)
  • 2017 Missouri, Drew Lock (second-year starter)
  • 2017 South Carolina, Jake Bentley (second-year starter)
  • 2016 South Carolina, Jake Bentley (first-year starter)
  • 2015 Florida, Will Grier/Treon Harris (first-year starter)

That’s an interesting thing to note. Half of those improvements were fueled by first-year starters. So all of those teams suggesting that it’ll take time to turn things around with a new quarterback are clearly mistaken. Bentley, Fromm, Fitzgerald, Lock and Grier will enter 2018 as 5 of the top 25 quarterbacks in America. Now, they’re all grizzled veterans.

What about the experience of head coaches? Does it have to be someone entering his fifth or sixth year to really turn things around? Not at all. In fact, Dan Mullen was the only coach of those 6 teams who had been at his school for more than 2 years:

  • 2017 Georgia, Kirby Smart (Year 2)
  • 2017 Mississippi State, Dan Mullen (Year 9)
  • 2017 Missouri, Barry Odom (Year 2)
  • 2017 South Carolina, Will Muschamp (Year 2)
  • 2016 South Carolina, Will Muschamp (Year 1)
  • 2015 Florida, Jim McElwain (Year 1)

That surprised me. Considering the hurdles that new coaches usually have to jump over with roster turnover and implementing a system, it’s pretty amazing that 5 of those 6 coaches were in their first or second season.

As cliché as it sounds, improved coaching and quarterback play is really at the root of any turnaround. It makes perfect sense why a struggling team usually changes those two things before anything else. A stunning 36 percent of the conference will try and have that bounce-back season with a new coach in 2018.

Perhaps we should expect significant improvement to be the name of the game again this year.