The SEC Forum at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Alabama - Duh.  They have four games basically, at Florida, at Auburn, LSU, and at A&M.  And yes,they could lose one somewhere, but I doubt it, 8-0.

A&M - Favorable slate, Bama and Auburn at home, at LSU.  My notion is 6-2.

LSU - At Bama, but the other tougher teams at home, so 7-1.

Auburn - I see four losses for them, first year coach and all, 4-4.

UGA - Two games, at Auburn and Florida, I predict 7-1, probably a close loss to Clemson to boot.

Florida - Bama at home, At LSU and UGA, Two losses.

I had a consensus kind of notion and it was pretty far off.  I did get UGA-Bama in the CG basically.  Ole Miss did better than expected.  

The SEC East has 3 Vanderbilts this year:  Vanderbilt, South Carolina, and Tennessee.

This, among other things, didn't age well, but nobody foresaw the Florida debacle, certainly not me.  Kentucky or Tennessee ended up the second best team in the East.

Did anyone have LSU and Auburn tying for last in the West?

It happened, if LSU wins tonight.

Frustrating overall.  We weren't going to win the division or anything important this year, but now knowing that O handcuffed the DC up until the Alabama game, it kinda sucks looking at a few L's that probably should've been W's.  Probably pick up Auburn and UCLA with this version of the defense.  Maybe Kentucky.  Pretty good November for a squad down 8 guys and a lot of youth/inexperience picking up the slack. 

With even a remote improvement from either the OL or QB, maybe we even have enough offense to pick up one or both of the Alabama or Arkansas games.  Defense certainly did their job against those two.  However, that's getting into a lot of ifs, ands, and buts, and our record highlights the fact we don't play games in those imaginary universes.  So, yeah, frustrating. 


Lagniappe:  I just filtered the SEC ypp allowed stats through the month of November, the start of which was the Tiger defense's reboot, starting with Bama.  Confirms my suspicion...LSU was 4th in the SEC since then.  Behind UGA (duh), Alabama, and Texas A&M.  They allowed 4.64 ypp through those 4 games (vs. Bama, Arkansas, Directional U, and A&M).  I'm pretty pleased with that result from a bunch of guys who we mostly thought would be backups/scrub time guys this year. 

EDIT:  Wanted to see how the defense split out, so filtering the same time period for just rushing defense, LSU was the league's second leading rush defense, giving up 2.44 yards per carry, behind only Alabama, giving up 1.68 yards per carry (holy crap!), but ahead of UGA (barely) giving up 2.51 ypc.  These are raw stats, so it's just a talking point....there's other factors like junk time, opponent's played, situational objectives, etc. that may move teams up or down the list in a "real world" analysis.  I do think there's some value to raw numbers though.  Still not great against the pass for LSU in November though, coming in 6th in the league behind (in order) UGA, A&M, South Carolina, Alabama, and Kentucky.  We allowed 6.9 yards per attempt in November...certainly not bad, but we've done better, and other teams are significantly ahead.  UGA giving up only 4.6 ypa in that same span (again, holy crap!). 

Who did better, and worse, than you expected?  Obviously Florida did considerably worse than anyone thought.  I'm not overly surprised by anything else, I revised my LSU thinking down, Ole Miss did better, Arky maybe did one game better,  Tennessee was about +1.  Auburn and Mizzou were probably -1 relative to expectations.

UGA was about plus 2.  

I like what I see Pittman doing, if he can sustain.  UK indeed has been solid for a few years now.