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

UK @ Vandy
Auburn @ A&M 
Ole Miss @ Bama

Arky @ LSU
Memphis @ Mizzou
MSU @ USCe

Auburn and A&M getting their first conference tests should be interesting.  I'm taking A&M at home. 

Ole Miss at Bama may be interesting as well.  Lane Kiffin always dials the play-calling to 10, I'm not sure where this Alabama defense is, and the Rebs may be able to score some points.  Question is if Bama's OL is as bad as they've looked the last two weeks, or is there something fixable there.  The QBs and OC may be a problem, but like rtf4 said, neither matters too much when the OL has problems.  

Texas had a classic hangover game, but the subsequent performances of both them and Bama take some luster off the "two heavy-hitters going at it" narrative. 

Does Georgia have QB issues or are they suffering from an acute case of two-time-defending-NC-itis?  Clanga @ USC might shed some light on LSU and UGA, respectively.  

UGA's schedule looks pretty soft.  Florida could do something by late October, I guess.  Ole Miss may be decent. 

Or they might not.

Wonder if that will affect UGA when they get to the CCG and/or playoffs.  Not that they don't have the talent to win games there, but it's a detriment when you play a bunch of weak teams. 

Whoever emerges in the West may be in a similar predicament.  

The SEC as a whole doesn't look very good.  

I wasn't paying much attention in the off-season but I heard some rumblings that some LSU guys thought Daniels might be the best QB in the league.  I thought "that can't be right."  Then I started watching the games and realized, "Ah, I get it.....this is a crappy year for SEC QBs."  

I didn't expect Arnett to neuter Rogers so effectively, though. 

LSU or Alabama, or someone else, could emerge in the West with the same problem as UGA....not having played any really good teams.  Both of them could be meh and the jury is still out on what one beating the other actually means.  Throw A&M in there, who could win, or be a team that is beaten by the others, and I still don't know what it means.  The West looks like a hot bowl of Average Soup.  

I don't see anyone in the SEC, or maybe anywhere, that looks that impressive, yet.

FSU plays Clemson this weekend.  If FSU were to roll them, it may simultaneously mean Clemson is in decline and FSU is also pretty good. 

LSU has potential to be a very good team.  Some of their day 1 problems are fixable, and already show signs of progress.  Some of their problems, I suspect are not, because there's a talent deficiency in the secondary and there's not much you can do about that.  I also don't think the interior push in the run game is likely to be anything more than average, or below.  Close games get exponentially harder to win when you can't reliably get a couple yards up the middle when you need to.  If everything maxes out, they could be a top 10 quality team, maybe top 5.  I don't think they're likely to be a top 4/playoff caliber team. 

Alabama still has so much talent, it's dizzying.  Before the fan base hangs the OC or the QBs, it looks to me like something has to be done about the OL.  I'm not sure why they aren't good, but it has to be fixed before anything else.  I don't know what the problem is and so I don't know if it can be fixed.  If it's fixable, they could still round into being a very good team. 

UGA and Ohio State and Texas all look to be in the same boat, with vast amounts of talent, but without Alabama's glaring deficiency.  UGA will have to use it better and stop playing with their food at some point, the Buckeyes will have to prove it against a team not made out of paper mache, and Texas will have to focus week-in and week-out and not risk a performance like Saturday's on a conference opponent.  But all look to have great potential. 

It's still early.  A few teams are still likely to round into being very good, and there's some good candidates from that pool.  

I hate to have to say such things as "Arkansas will be telling" because this Arkansas team probably shouldn't tell us anything.  But the reality is Arkansas, much like Florida, almost always finds a way to take years off of our life, even if LSU is markedly better.  If LSU covers the spread, that would probably make me think they really are cleaning up the problems that cost them the FSU opener.  @MSU was great, but as mentioned, the cowbells were either unable or unwilling to expose LSU's weaknesses, and I'm not sold that LSU's defense is as good as they looked.  Another great day from the front 7 and a serviceable day from the secondary would be a good sign.  And if LSU's offense is legit they need to prove they can handle adversity and clean up mistakes, which they failed to do in week 1.  Exploding on MSU could've been an outlier.  Do it twice, I might start to believe. 

I honestly have no idea what to expect from Alabama/Ole Miss.  I've never, not in the worst Shula years, seen an Alabama offense look like it did against USF.  There's still a big part of my brain that thinks any minute they could flip the switch on their gobs of superior talent and go back to being "Bama."  If they don't, Ole Miss is certainly capable of tagging them.  We will not have previously heard the likes of the outcries emanating from Tuscaloosa if the Tide start the season 2-2. 

UGA, looked to me, just needed to wake up.  They needed to eat their halftime Wheaties and drink some coffee, and once they did, they proved they were far superior to the Gamecocks, which is how it should have looked.  They're still my pick for the East and the conference unless they give me new reasons to think otherwise.