While hosting the Morning Show on Labor Day, Thomas Mott and Will Palaszczuk had a conversation about the death of the dominant SEC. With Tennessee, Missouri, and South Carolina getting upset, it was an easy conversation. Gone are the days of every SEC team being good enough to beat even the best from other conferences.
Now, true SEC homers naturally got upset at this. But the majority of rational fans agreed that the SEC is now no different from the Big Ten or BIG 12 or even the PAC 12 in that it has two to three great teams with the rest of the conference being pretty much hot garbage.
First off, before we look at the SEC teams we must first look at Notre Dame, who should be no trouble. Yes, they did beat Louisville 35-17, but this game was close until the fourth quarter. Ian Book is an average QB with no ability to take over and throw his way to a win. They can run the football, but they also gave up 249 yards on the ground to Louisville. I’ll stick with my prediction that Georgia beats Notre Dame by two to three scores.
Now for the SEC. The game at Tennessee won’t be an issue. My only wonder is if more Georgia fans will show up than Volunteer fans.
South Carolina’s starting QB Jake Bentley brook his foot in the loss to North Carolina and won’t be an issue.
Kentucky lost a lot of players to the NFL from that great team last year and this past Saturday gave up 24 points at home to Toledo. That game was tied at halftime 14-14.
That right there would get UGA to 7-0 before the Dawgs enter the latter part of the season, which will be harder.
Next is Florida. Florida has a QB in Felipe Franks who did not improve from a very bad last year and tried very hard to give the game away to a bad Miami team with a late fourth quarter interception. Their defense is good but not unbeatable as they gave up 214 yards in the air to a freshman QB.
We already mentioned Missouri losing to Wyoming. Don’t expect much of a passing attack from them.
Now, we conclude with Auburn, Texas A&M and Georgia Tech.
Auburn has the best defense on this schedule, but it's basically a carbon copy of Florida. They have a head coach who can put them in bad situations and a QB who cannot throw his way to victory despite looking good on two passes Saturday night to beat the Ducks.
Georgia Tech is a couple of years away from competing because they have triple option players running the spread.
The only REAL threat that Thomas sees on the UGA schedule is Texas A&M, and that’s because it will be the best QB they face all year. Kellen Mond is proven, he’s a junior, he almost beat Clemson last year and has a head coach who knows how to win in Jimbo Fisher. The problem for the Aggies is their schedule. They have Clemson, Auburn, and Alabama in the first six weeks. Can they have enough juice left to take on UGA? That’s yet to be seen.
But overall, the good news for Georgia is that despite a less-than-exciting opener from Jake Fromm, the schedule is light enough for them to have one loss or fewer going into the SEC title game. The bad news for Georgia is that the team they’ll face in the SEC Title game is better than a year ago.
Bama looms large and its only Week 1.