As the 2017 Southeastern Conference football season barrels into October, the summer projection of Alabama and Georgia vying for the league championship in early December looks better than ever.
Auburn, Florida and Texas A&M also are undefeated in SEC play through the first month and could certainly have their say, though Texas A&M’s modest four-game win streak may evaporate this Saturday when Alabama arrives. This season’s Iron Bowl is in Auburn, and Florida’s Gators have won 21 of their last 27 against the Bulldogs, but nobody has looked stronger from a week-to-week basis than Alabama and Georgia.
That said, not everything has gone to script so far in the sport’s proudest conference. A look at five once-popular thoughts that now belong in Tennessee’s “Team 121” trash can:
1. LSU will be Alabama’s chief challenger for this year’s SEC title.
LSU running back Derrius Guice (5) reacts during a timeout as his team continues to fall behind to Troy in the second half of an NCAA college football game in Baton Rouge, La., Saturday, Sept. 30, 2017. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton)
Ed Orgeron’s Tigers began this season ranked 12th in the Amway Coaches Poll, which made them the second-highest pegged SEC team behind Nick Saban’s No. 1 Crimson Tide. LSU opened with a 27-0 blanking of Brigham Young, not allowing the Cougars to cross midfield, but Orgeron’s first full season at the helm in Baton Rouge now includes a 37-7 loss at Mississippi State and last Saturday’s 24-21 home loss to Troy.
“I’ve got to keep this team together, because they’re hurting,” Orgeron said in a news conference after Saturday’s stunning setback. “We’ve got to find out why we’re not making the plays we’re supposed to make. We’ve got to do some soul-searching.”
LSU is paying offensive coordinator Matt Canada $1.5 million and paying defensive coordinator Dave Aranda $1.8 million, yet that investment has yielded its worst loss ever to Mississippi State – a program against which Orgeron’s predecessor Les Miles went 11-1 – and the first nonconference loss in Tiger Stadium since 2000. The team’s top two talents, running back Derrius Guice and outside linebacker Arden Key, have yet to stay healthy as a tandem for an entire game.
The Tigers are playing at Florida this week, so there is the possibility of LSU’s first 3-3 start since that same 2000 season, when Saban was in his first year as an SEC coach.
“I’ve got to be a leader,” Orgeron said. “I’ve got to do my best job ever right now.”
As a full-time SEC coach, which includes his 2005-07 stint at Ole Miss, Orgeron is 3-22 in conference contests.
2. Mississippi State is now the second-best team behind Alabama.
This way of thinking, of course, was the result of MSU’s 37-7 shellacking of LSU on Sept. 16.
There was instant talk of “We would trade our coach right now for Dan Mullen,” but such chatter has subsided the last two weeks after the Bulldogs lost to Georgia and Auburn by a combined 80-13. Mullen is Mississippi State’s most successful coach of the last half century and this year’s Bulldogs seem better than last year’s St. Petersburg Bowl champs, but they are a long way from the 10-win team of 2014.
“We’re just playing awful,” MSU quarterback Nick Fitzgerald told reporters Saturday night in Auburn.
Georgia ended September as the SEC’s second-best team behind Alabama, with Auburn a close third.
3. Auburn’s offense under Gus Malzahn only works with a running quarterback.
This was the popular thought after Jarrett Stidham was a sitting duck at Clemson on Sept. 9, enduring 11 sacks in a 14-6 loss.
In Auburn’s 51-14 triumph at Missouri and 49-10 rout of Mississippi State the past two weeks to open SEC play, the Tigers have amassed 993 yards to go along with those 100 points. Stidham did have five carries for 35 yards at Mizzou, but his lone run of substance against MSU picked up 10 yards.
What Stidham has displayed is uncanny accuracy, completing 58 of 70 passes (82.9 percent) since the loss at Clemson, and he had four completions of at least 47 yards against Mississippi State. The Tigers averaged 9.1 yards per play against Mullen’s Bulldogs.
“I think you see him every week getting more and more comfortable,” Coach Malzahn said Saturday night in a news conference. “We’re protecting him well, and our receivers are growing up and making plays down the field. I think it’s kind of all starting to come together.”
4. Take away his running, and Alabama’s Jalen Hurts isn’t that good a quarterback.
The most amusing opinion of them all.
It’s like saying, “Take away Herschel Walker’s size and speed, and he wouldn’t have made Vince Dooley’s travel squad.”
Nobody could deal with Walker’s unique traits in the early 1980s, just like nobody has shown they can take away the running of Hurts. The 6-foot-2, 218-pound sophomore is averaging 8.4 yards per carry, 92.2 rushing yards per game, and has reeled off a big early run in every game that keeps defenses guessing the rest of the way.
Hurts has improved his passing accuracy from a year ago and is currently at a 64-percent clip, and he has the SEC’s best ratio with six touchdowns and no interceptions. In fact, he hasn’t been picked off since the second quarter of last November’s Iron Bowl.
“I think Jalen has really developed very nicely throughout the course of the season,” Saban said Monday in a news conference. “One of the things we’ve been working on is that, even when he scrambles, for him to keep his eyes down the field. That can be a tremendous complement to his running ability.”
Every other SEC starting quarterback has been intercepted at least once, but Hurts still has his critics.
“I just go out there and try and play,” Hurts said. “I don’t try to think too much. I just read and react and play ball.”
5. Verne Lundquist won’t be missed in the CBS announcing booth each Saturday.
Maybe it’s not Verne who’s being missed as much as intriguing games.
It’s hard to fathom, but among the 2013 “SEC on CBS” telecasts were Auburn’s 34-28 win over Alabama in the “Kick Six” finish, Alabama’s 49-42 outlasting of Johnny Manziel and Texas A&M, Georgia’s 44-41 victory over LSU that featured dueling quarterbacks Aaron Murray and Zach Mettenberger, Auburn’s 43-38 win over Georgia in the “Prayer in Jordan-Hare,” Georgia’s 34-31 overtime win at Tennessee and Auburn’s 45-41 comeback triumph at Texas A&M.
Obviously not every season can include nine one-possession telecasts like that year contained, and this year’s CBS schedule did include Florida’s 26-20, final-play subduing of Tennessee, with Brad Nessler nailing the call. Yet the last two weeks of Alabama-Vanderbilt and Georgia-Tennessee were decided by a combined 100-0.
The home teams never scored a point.
Which leaves CBS in the pickle of either showing matchups of somewhat mediocre teams, like Saturday’s Florida-LSU encounter, or televising Alabama or Georgia and running the risk of a four-touchdown game at halftime.
What say you, Verne?
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.