As for who ends up playing in ATL later, I don't think anything has changed, except perhaps Florida is looking a bit frayed (or not, they have beaten UGA before with a less talented team obviously).
LSU is looking more competitive on offense. I'm not sold on Auburn despite the nice wins and experience for Nix.
Too early to tell obviously, but UGA looks about like what's expected. Assuming ND is a good team, UGA played well against them.
Didn't check in on UF this week. May have time at some point to watch their Tenn. game. Score alone looks like an improvement over what I saw from UF in the Miami and UK games. I like Mullen as a coach and I only half joked when I told people Franks getting hurt would only improve Florida.
LSU has turned into some kind of Big 12 team. Offense that destroys cupcakes, can't tackle worth a damn. I can't tell if I'm evaluating them based on what I actually see or if I'm just steeped in the memory of a bunch of high-scoring teams that pile up points vs. Nobodies and then get stomped by the first real defense they run into. There is a big part of me that doesn't believe they can keep going like this against two or three of the conference teams we'll see. Texas is going to wind up with a good defense, I think, and putting 45 on them is good, I guess, but I didn't trust their defense coming into the season and I'm not going to waffle on it now. They replaced 8 starters on that side of the ball, and they weren't a particularly good unit last year anyway. Not a good recipe for a good defense in week 2. There is a lot of talent there, and with experience (and I really like their DC Orlando) they'll probably wind up very good, but I'm not counting on that game to mean LSU can score a bunch on Auburn, Florida, or Bama. Will probably hinge on how good the OL actually is.
Defense has been pretty okay actually, just not as good as it should've been on paper. Tackling is the worst culprit, the good news being that's one thing that can improve in a season, if it happens to do so. For as much as being made about our secondary, it's actually been really good coverage out there, just that guys are trying to strip the ball instead of make tackles and simple 8-10 yard completions occasionally turn into 60 yd. TDs. No complaints about run defense, other than a couple of plays vs. Vandy where run fit was poor and....ugh....tackling was bad.
The other thing that may improve them there is LSU has been without 3 starters on the line since the Texas game and was missing 4 of the front 7 the week before that--along with a hobbled CB--because of injuries in the Texas game. Although they were totally faking those injuries, so I hear from people where I live. This week off comes at a really good time. Some optimism that all but a couple of these guys could be back by Florida week.
Florida, as usual, will be the measuring stick for what this team is. By Florida week, the Tigers have usually become whatever they're going to be and it's often the start of the jump up in talent/end of cupcake season. Maybe we'll do some tackling drills between now and then, or something.