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

Game of the Week: Alabama (–11.5) at Ole Miss

The stakes

Saturday marks the latest Alabama-Ole Miss meeting on the calendar since 1915, and it finds both sides in very unfamiliar territory for this time of year.

For the Rebels, a backloaded schedule has presented them with a major opportunity. Through 9 games, they’ve taken care of business despite barely moving the needle on any given weekend, quietly positioning themselves to make a late move. Although they don’t control their own destiny in the SEC West due to a head-to-head loss at LSU, at 8-1 they do remain very much in the picture in the final weeks of the regular season. An upset against Bama, combined with an LSU loss in either of the Tigers’ last 2 conference games, would put Ole Miss in the driver’s seat for its 1st-ever division title, and with it a shot at crashing the Playoff in the SEC Championship Game. A long shot at this point, yes, but one that is as visible in mid-November as it has ever been.

For Bama, on the other hand, the season already feels like it’s in the past tense. At 7-2, the Crimson Tide are effectively eliminated in the West (LSU would have to lose both of its remaining conference games) and have no realistic path to the Playoff — the 1st time since 2010 they’ve been bounced from the BCS/Playoff race prior to the Iron Bowl. Alabama hasn’t played a regular-season game without a championship at stake since the current players were small children. Bryce Young‘s bid for back-to-back Heismans is a lost cause. Both coordinators, Bill O’Brien on offense and Pete Golding on defense, are very likely on their way out.

How will this team respond? Vegas says it will be fine. Nick Saban outfits are renowned for their relentless, business-like consistency. But they’re also known for remaining relevant right up to the finish line. It has been an astonishingly long time since he has had to keep up the interest of one that suddenly is not.

The stat: 6.0 yards per catch

That’s the average gain after the catch by all Alabama receivers this season, per Pro Football Focus, easily the Tide’s lowest YAC average in the decade since PFF began keeping track. As you’d expect, that number has always lined up closely with the talent level at wide receiver: In every other year in that span, Bama has had at least 1 future 1st-round wideout at the top of the rotation, peaking in 2019 with 4 1st-rounders and an absurd YAC average of 9.5 yards. By comparison, the lack of explosiveness from the current group — which has yet to produce a go-to target, much less a star — has been glaring.

The key factor in generating YAC is creating separation from opposing DBs, and the far right column tells you all you need to know about how the Tide have fared on that front. The bottom row in particular stands out: Unlike past seasons, this year’s YAC leader by far is RB Jahmyr Gibbs. In the loss at LSU, about 3/4 of Bama’s YAC output came from Gibbs, fellow RB Jase McClellan and tight end Cameron Latu, with much of the rest coming on a broken play that possibly no other active college QB other than Young could have kept alive long enough to find an open receiver waiting behind the coverage.

Gibbs, who leads the team with 39 catches on 46 targets, has proven to be an invaluable security blanket out of the backfield, fulfilling the all-purpose role he was recruited from Georgia Tech to play. But Alabama didn’t convert to a pro-style dropback passing scheme to feature the running back. Who is the vertical threat? The speedster who can take a screen or quick slant to the house? The guy the NFL wants and opposing secondaries fear? Those were the pressing questions facing the offense before the season, ones urgent enough that it added 2 high-profile transfers and 5 blue-chip freshmen to the WR room to address. At this stage, it’s looking increasingly likely they’re going to carry over into the next one.

The big question: Can Ole Miss establish the run?

Playing against type, Ole Miss has run more often for more yards than any other Power 5 offense this season, averaging more than 270 yards vs. FBS opponents on nearly 50 carries per game. Only the service academies have kept it on the ground more often, and when QB Jaxson Dart gets involved, defending the Rebels isn’t too far removed from defending an uptempo version of the triple option. In their past 2 wins, they’ve racked up big rushing numbers vs. Auburn (448 yards on 69 carries) and Texas A&M (390 on 63 carries) while exploiting both for wide-open touchdown passes off run action.

In fact, no quarterback in America relies more heavily on play-action than Dart, who has employed it on 63.1 percent of his total dropbacks, including RPOs. (Only one other P5 starter, Hendon Hooker, is over 50 percent.) As a conventional dropback passer, he still has a lot to prove. In Ole Miss’ loss at LSU, Dart came out hot, starting 9-of-10 passing for 155 yards in the 1st quarter, but struggled as the Tigers rallied in the 2nd and pulled away after halftime. In the 2nd half, without the benefit of a viable ground game, he was just 8-of-18 for 80 yards, and the Rebels’ only trip into LSU territory ended with an interception in the end zone.

Notable in his absence in Baton Rouge: RB Zach Evans, who sat out against the Tigers with a knee injury but returned a week later to account for 105 yards on just 10 touches at Texas A&M. At full speed, Evans and true freshman Quinshon Judkins are among the premier backfield combos in the country, having combined for 1,878 yards from scrimmage and 22 touchdowns on 6.2 yards per touch. But they’ve yet to face a defense even remotely on the level of Alabama’s, which may not be a vintage Bama unit but still comes in at or near the top of the SEC in almost every relevant category. (The only area where the Tide are behind the curve: creating turnovers.) Dart will have to make some play with his arm, but how many and under what circumstances will depend on how long the play-action game commands respect.

The key matchup: Ole Miss OTs Jayden Williams and Micah Pettus vs. Alabama OLBs Will Anderson Jr. and Dallas Turner

Williams and Pettus, both redshirt freshmen, have settled in as the Rebels’ starting tackles but are still finding their footing. They were abused in the loss at LSU, allowing a combined 13 pressures and 3 sacks, per PFF, and were dinged for another 7 pressures against Texas A&M. On the other side, Anderson and Turner have lived up to the hype, combining for 71 pressures and generally solidifying their status as future 1st-rounders. Their presence is yet another reason it’s vital for Ole Miss to stay out of obvious passing downs: If they get an opportunity to pin their ears back, Dart is a sitting duck.

The verdict

As usual, speculation about the “end of the Alabama dynasty” is overblown, or at least premature. The sky is falling after every Bama loss of the past decade, which is just a testament to how few and far between those lapses have tended to be. On their own, 2 losses to good opponents in berserk road environments on literally the last play of the game is not an existential crisis.

But then, as razor-thin as those defeats were, the Tide have survived close calls, too. The record could just as easily be worse: On the flip side of the heartbreakers in Knoxville and Baton Rouge, they came out on the right end of a couple of coin-flip finishes against Texas and Texas A&M. Young’s absence was a factor against the Aggies, but even with its star quarterback in the fold, this team simply has not resembled at any point the vaunted Bama powerhouse we’ve come to expect. That doesn’t mean it won’t be back to its usual domineering selves in 2023. The baseline talent level is still 2nd to none, and what concerns do exist can be addressed more directly than ever via the transfer portal, which Saban has exploited as skillfully as anyone. For that argument to remain convincing for the next 9 months, however, the 1st step is for the current team to go out by finally delivering convincing results on the field.
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Alabama 36 | • Ole Miss 27

Georgia (–16.5) at Mississippi State

Even for a Death Star outfit like Georgia, a road trip to Starkville coming off a big win has the potential to get weird. The last time the Bulldogs faced the Bulldogs, in 2020, Mississippi State gave UGA a
run for its money in Athens with half the MSU roster incapacitated. And we’ve seen this Georgia team sleepwalk through the first 3 quarters of a 7 p.m. road kickoff earlier this season at Missouri. The Air Raid runs hot and cold, but on any given Saturday you never know when it might find a tiny hole and keep poking it until it rips wide open.

If Georgia’s defense has any holes, though, they’ve yet to be identified. Tennessee certainly didn’t find any last week. Meanwhile, in its last outing against a blue-chip defense, Mississippi State was effectively shut out by Alabama, which held Will Rogers to career lows for yards per attempt (3.9), efficiency (82.3)  and Total QBR (35.6). (MSU only avoided a goose egg against the Tide by scoring an otherwise meaningless touchdown as time expired.) To effectively attack the Bamas and Georgias of the world, you need a mobile QB who can make plays outside of structure and/or receivers capable of winning 1-on-1 downfield, and Mississippi State has neither.
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• Georgia 34 | Mississippi State 14

LSU (–3.5) at Arkansas

Arkansas is coming off its worst offensive outing of the season in a 21-19 loss to Liberty. But the reason the Razorbacks are sweating out bowl eligibility at 5-4 has more to do with the defense: They rank among the nation’s worst in total defense (117th), scoring defense (102nd), yards per play allowed (120th), pass efficiency defense (109th), 3rd-down defense (124th) and takeaways (100th). The “strength” of the unit, the run defense, ranks 59th in yards per game allowed and 77th in yards per carry. On the other side, LSU has found its rhythm offensively over the past month by embracing QB Jayden Daniels‘ dual-threat skill set. If the Hogs have a chance to spoil the Tigers’ ascendance in the West, they’re going to have to score early and often to do it.
– – –
• LSU 38 | Arkansas 30

Missouri at Tennessee (–20.5)

Eli Drinkwitz is 2 games below .500 as Missouri’s head coach and highly unlikely to climb above the Mendoza Line as Year 3 draws to a close. The guy he replaced, Barry Odom, was fired for going exactly .500 over 4 years. Is it time to start sizing up Drink for the hot seat? Not so fast my friend!

Barring catastrophe, a contract extension in Year 3 is par for the course: Coaches and their agents long ago convinced schools that a contract with a visible end date is a drag on recruiting. (Who wants to sign up to play for a team that’s not invested in the coach for the next 4 years? So the thinking goes, despite the fact that coaches get fired with no regard for the remaining years on their contract all the time.) It’s a signal of confidence, sometimes as a means of willing that confidence into existence before a struggling administration passes the point of no return.

Tacking on a $2 million raise, on the other hand, for a coach with a losing record who is not by any leap of imagination at risk of being hired away at a salary competitive with what he was already making, sends a couple signals, too: One, the incentives involved in big-time coaching salaries are more untethered to anything resembling an actual “market” than ever; and two, there is so much of it pouring in so quickly that schools literally can’t think of anything else to do with it. How much longer can this kind of obscenity go on before the players decide to band together to give them a few ideas?
– – –
• Tennessee 41 | Missouri 17

South Carolina at Florida (–8.5)

Can Anthony Richardson put together 2 plus performances in a row? Last week’s 279-yard, 4-TD outing at Texas A&M was as good as the Gators’ volatile young QB has looked since the season opener, which was all mock drafters needed to see to activate the part of their collective brain that makes them repeat the name “Josh Allen” like an incantation. Florida, of course, is counting on Richardson coming back in 2023 to reap the fruits of this year’s growing pains. Usually, the prospect of the light coming on for a 1st-year starter late in the season is an encouraging sign. When he’s as over-the-top talented as Richardson, it may just be illuminating the path toward the exit.
– – –
Florida 33 | • South Carolina 28

Texas A&M at Auburn (–1.5)

A team that has already fired its head coach vs. a team that only wishes it could: Welcome to November at the bottom of the SEC West.

Technically, both sides remain bowl-eligible at 3-6 overall, but at this point that distinction is probably more meaningful for Texas A&M, which is effectively working toward 2023 already behind freshman QB Conner Weigman. Jimbo Fisher has confirmed Weigman will get the start Saturday after missing last week’s loss to Florida due to the flu, and the idea of a strong finish (including a potential upset of LSU in College Station) and a few extra weeks of practice ahead of a bowl game still has some purchase. Whereas Auburn doesn’t even know yet who its head coach is going to be next year, much less its quarterback, who is most likely not on the current roster. Neither side really wants to be here, but the only thing more demoralizing than being a team suspended in interim coach limbo is losing to one.
– – –
• Texas A&M 26 | Auburn 20

Vanderbilt at Kentucky (–17.5)

Kentucky, not Vandy, comes into this one ranked last in the SEC in total offense, which is a) not great for the Wildcats, who haven’t even played Georgia yet; and b) mainly a relic of those few weeks early in the season when it looked like the Commodores might be on the verge of turning the corner after putting up numbers on Hawai’i and Northern Illinois. That has obviously not carried over to SEC play, where they rank last in everything in the course of being outscored by an even bigger margin (29 ppg) than they were last year (26 ppg). Nobody is tuning in for Kentucky’s slumping offense, but against the Dores’ perennially outmanned defense, it should be a relatively easy afternoon.
– – –
Kentucky 31 | • Vanderbilt 16

SCOREBOARD

Week 10 Record: 3–4 straight-up | 3–4 vs. spread
Season Record: 59–15 straight-up | 35–36 vs. spread