As the Southeastern Conference arrives at the midway mark of this coronavirus-altered football season, Alabama has established itself to nobody's surprise as the league's top team.
Rival Auburn will have to settle for being the SEC's most exciting program.
The Tigers improved to 3-2 on Saturday by outlasting Ole Miss 35-28 in a game that featured four lead changes and ended with the Tigers intercepting Matt Corral at their 5-yard line. The week before that was a 30-22 loss at South Carolina that ended with Auburn quarterback Bo Nix getting tackled at the 9-yard line of the Gamecocks. The week before that was a 30-28 topping of Arkansas on a 39-yard Anders Carlson field goal with seven seconds remaining.
"We easily could have folded the tent and said, 'There it goes again,' and lost hope," Nix said Saturday in Oxford. "It shows what kind of players we are and what kind of players we have. We're ultra-competitors and fighters, and I'm happy to be the quarterback of this team.
"We're extremely confident and know at the end of the day what we're going to get out of each other. We know that we're the only team capable of stopping ourselves."
Carlson's field goal against the Razorbacks followed Nix fumbling the previous snap and spiking the ball behind him, which officials ruled as an intentional-grounding penalty and not a lateral that would have resulted in a turnover. The officials likely missed Auburn running back Shaun Shivers touching the ball Saturday on a kickoff that was ruled a touchback with Ole Miss leading 28-27, but the Rebels were their own worst enemy in the final minutes with missed tackles, dropped passes and clock mismanagement.
"It was a tough week last week," Auburn coach Gus Malzahn said. "We had a tough loss in a game we thought we could have won. We had to do some soul searching, and our team responded."
Many Auburn fans aren't exactly pleased with these close calls given the historical aspect.
The Tigers posted four consecutive routs of Arkansas by at least 30 points before this season. They had been 8-0 against South Carolina since the Gamecocks joined the SEC in 1992, and they've only lost twice in Oxford in the past quarter century.
That may be a reflection of why Nix is so exciting but often so maddening.
In Auburn's 15 games against Power Five opponents with Nix as the starter, the Tigers have played 10 one-possession contests. Nix has guided Auburn to fourth-quarter rallies over Oregon and Alabama last season and Arkansas and Ole Miss this year, but there also have been three-interception debacles at Florida last season and at South Carolina earlier this month.
Who knows? We may be witnessing the premier close-game magnet in SEC history.
"I think it's part of having this 10-game SEC schedule," Malzahn said Sunday night. "If you look back at our 2010 and 2013 years, there were a lot of one-possession games that it went down to, and those are the ones that you've got to win.
"These kinds of game experiences, especially when you win, give you a lot of confidence moving forward. There wasn't any panic in our guys."
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Tennessee's 48-17 loss to Alabama saddled third-year coach Jeremy Pruitt with an 0-8 record against the Crimson Tide, Georgia and Florida. All eight of those losses have transpired by at least three touchdowns, with last season's 35-13 loss in Tuscaloosa representing the closest contest.
"To be honest, they've been better than us. It's plain and simple," Pruitt said. "If we were better than them and lost the games, I would admit that, but they've been better than us. We've played with them in spurts, but from an execution and finishing standpoint, we have not been able to sustain and do that.
"I really like our team and our makeup. We have a lot of young guys who have a chance to be really good players, and as they grow and develop, we'll continue to close that gap there."
Pruitt is 15-15 through his first 30 games at Tennessee, which edges the 14-16 records assembled by predecessors Derek Dooley and Butch Jones. Dooley and Jones each had six losses by three touchdowns or more during their first 30 games, while Pruitt has 12.
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As if Alabama hasn't been impressive enough this season, it appears Nick Saban is very happy with his kicker.
Sophomore Will Reichard, a 6-foot-1, 190-pounder from the Birmingham suburb of Hoover, made field goals of 39 and 24 yards Saturday in Neyland Stadium and is now 6-for-6 this season. His most notable connection was from 52 yards at the halftime horn against Georgia.
Reichard was the nation's top kicker in the 2019 signing class but battled a hip injury last season that limited him to five games.
"It means a tremendous amount," Saban said. "It takes a lot of pressure off you in a lot of situations when you feel very confident you can kick a field goal from 35 yards and in, and that's very comforting. There are times when there is nothing more demoralizing when you're already upset you didn't score a touchdown or continue the drive, and then you miss it. It's a little bit of a psychological letdown.
"To have a good kicker is really a positive, and I think it's a weapon. Will has done a really, really good job so far."
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Kentucky certainly didn't carry things over from its big win in Knoxville, losing 20-10 at Missouri.
The Wildcats were perfectly horrible offensively, managing eight first downs and 145 total yards. In the final three quarters, Kentucky possessed the ball for nine minutes and 57 seconds out of the possible 45 minutes.
"It's really difficult to put this in words, because it's been a long time since we've had a game like that," Kentucky coach Mark Stoops said. "They just constantly held the ball - 36 plays to 92. You don't have a chance to win a game when it's like that."
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The midseason debut of the year goes to LSU freshman quarterback TJ Finley, the mammoth 6-6, 242-pounder from Ponchatoula, Louisiana.
South Carolina was a trendy upset pick heading to Baton Rouge, but Finley replaced injured junior Myles Brennan and completed 17 of 21 passes for 265 yards and two touchdowns in the 52-24 rout. Finley also had a rushing score.
"We're really proud of TJ, and that's what we saw all camp," Tigers coach Ed Orgeron said. "He's got a strong arm and is very confident."
LSU travels to Auburn this week for the first matchup in which both of these SEC West Tigers are unranked since 1999.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524. Follow him on Twitter @DavidSPaschall.