EXPECTATIONS
The Southeastern Conference made some dubious history last season, as only one league team lost fewer than four games. That obviously was Alabama, which won seven of its eight league games by double digits before humiliating Florida, 54-16, for the league championship in Atlanta. Nick Saban’s Crimson Tide were the only SEC team to finish last season in the national top 10, and they’re the only team that will start out there this year, having been voted No. 1. Auburn and LSU are being viewed as Alabama’s chief challengers in the Western Division, with Auburn coming off a trip to the Sugar Bowl and getting the Crimson Tide at home in late November. LSU must face Alabama on the road. Georgia is the program with the most hype in the East, with Kirby Smart’s Bulldogs returning quarterback Jacob Eason, the tailback tandem of Nick Chubb and Sony Michel and 14 of their top 15 tacklers from 2016. Every SEC team but Ole Miss and Missouri made bowl games last season, and everybody but the Rebels harbors aspirations for a postseason berth this year. Two years after winning the Sugar Bowl, Ole Miss has self-imposed a bowl ban and parted ways with coach Hugh Freeze.
CONCERNS
Texas A&M was the only SEC team to lose its last five games to Power Five conference teams, with the Aggies even losing at home in November to a spiraling Ole Miss. Kevin Sumlin’s program made quite a splash in the league in 2012, stunning Alabama in Tuscaloosa and routing Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl, but the Aggies are 15-17 in SEC games in the four seasons since. Aggies junior receiver and return specialist Christian Kirk is arguably the league’s most dynamic player, but they will need consistency at quarterback and a better defensive showing in the third season with John Chavis as coordinator if Sumlin is to make it to 2018. In fact, the West quartet of Texas A&M, Arkansas, Mississippi State and Ole Miss, which combined for 34 wins in 2014 but only 24 last season, may no longer be superior to Eastern counterparts Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina and Vanderbilt. Alabama is easily the league’s elite program, while Auburn and Georgia have the potential to assemble special seasons. Florida and LSU must get better quarterback play to have a 10-win season, while the nine other programs have too many holes or weaknesses to make significant noise. Tennessee has the best shot of the nine.
Jarrett Stidham transferred to Auburn from Baylor University in the offseason and is now the starting quarterback for the Tigers.WHAT’S NEW