The SEC didn’t win the National Championship but once again crowned itself as the top football league in the country. Alabama remained Alabama, Georgia’s rise under Kirby Smart continued, Kentucky had a once-in-a-generation season, new coaches at Florida and Mississippi State did well, LSU was squarely in the mix, while Missouri had a surprisingly solid campaign in the last year with quarterback Drew Lock.
2018 Finish
Team – Overall – League – F/+ Rank
$ Conference Champion
* Division Champion
Alabama, 14-1, 8-0, #1 * $
Georgia, 11-3, 7-1, #3 *
Kentucky, 10-3, 5-3, #30
Florida, 10-3, 5-3, #11
LSU, 10-3, 5-3, #6
Texas A&M, 9-4, 5-3, #17
Missouri, 8-5, 4-4, #16
Mississippi State, 8-5, 4-4, #12
Auburn, 8-5, 3-5, #15
South Carolina, 7-6, 4-4, #38
Vanderbilt, 6-7, 3-5, #64
Tennessee, 5-7, 2-6, #87
Ole Miss, 5-7, 1-7, #66
Arkansas, 2-10, 0-8, #95
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows. The bottom 4 teams all look stuck in mediocrity or worse. The Arkansas job looks particularly challenging as they went win-less in SEC play and continue to face an uphill battle in the SEC West Division. We’re also not sure anyone can really challenge Alabama and/or Georgia in the league which will be a story line until proven otherwise.
New Coaches
The SEC made a lot of changes a year ago and stayed put with their head coaching situations heading into 2019. Chad Morris (Arkansas), Dan Mullen (Florida), Joe Moorhead (Mississippi State), Jeremy Pruitt (Tennessee), and Jimbo Fisher (Texas A&M) will all be entering their second seasons in the SEC.
Easiest Schedule: Kentucky
The Wildcats are an excellent choice for stock down (see below for my pick!) due to their first 10-win season since 1977 and a bar that high surely will not be met again. Kentucky was the 2nd lowest rated 10-win team in the F/+ rankings ahead of Syracuse but their 2019 schedule is ripe for a lot more wins. They shouldn’t be challenged out of conference (Toledo, Eastern Michigan, UT Martin, Louisville all at home) and the Cats miss all of the strongest teams in the West, including Alabama, LSU, Texas A&M, and Auburn.
Toughest Schedule: Florida
The Gators are perennially on the toughest schedule lists. For 2019 they will open in Orlando against Miami and conclude the season hosting Florida State. In between they will have road trips to Kentucky, LSU, South Carolina, and Missouri with a home date against Auburn and the annual Jacksonville game against Georgia.
Stock Up: Georgia
This seems crazy for the 2018 #3 team according to F/+ rankings. It’s just the Dawgs schedule is fairly manageable, they did feel like they underachieved last year with a bowl loss to Texas, and I don’t see them losing as many games as last year. They had to rebuild their defense in 2018 and can re-load for 2019 while their receiving corps can develop in what should be an easy 3-0 start before Notre Dame comes to town. They miss Alabama and LSU and with a quarterback that is maybe no worse than the 3rd best in the country I would take the over on 10.5 wins.
Stock Down: Texas A&M
I see too many holes on the roster for a program that is right up there with the toughest schedules in the country. Outside of 4 gimme games (Texas State, Lamar, Arkansas, UTSA) and one very mildly challenging road game (Ole Miss) the Aggies are lining up 7 teams that should be inside the national Top 40. This is life in the SEC West and feels like a lot to overcome for Mike Elko and a rebuilding defense.
Burning Question: How Good Will LSU Really Be?
While the SEC depth is impressive it remains to be seen if anyone can truly challenge Alabama within their own division. A lot of people are high on LSU improving from a very nice 10-3 season but this is also a team that lost 29-0 in Death Valley to the Crimson Tide last year. I’m not sure offensive coordinator Steve Ensminger inspires a bunch of confidence that the Tigers are going to be closing the gap on what should be another ridiculous Alabama offense that averaged 45.6 points and 7.8 yards per play a season ago.
Top League Game: Alabama at Auburn
This might be Nick Saban’s easiest regular season at Alabama and it might not even be close. They avoid Florida (no regular season meeting since 2014) and Georgia (last regular season meeting in 2015) plus LSU has to visit Tuscaloosa. The non-league games feature Duke, New Mexico State, Southern Miss, and Western Carolina. The Tide even get easy games (Tennessee and Arkansas both at home) in the run up to LSU. If there’s going to be chaos leave it to the Iron Bowl, I don’t see Alabama losing prior to that.
Worst Team: Vanderbilt
Derek Mason has never won more than 6 games in a season at Vanderbilt, is entering his 6th campaign in Nashville, and received a contract extension earlier this year. Now, he’s losing a quality quarterback (Kyle Shurmur, 6th best passer rating in the SEC for 2018) and has to rebuild most of his defense. The Commodores also face a brutal start with Georgia, at Purdue, and LSU which is highly likely to be 0-3. In addition, while the rest of the schedule is pretty manageable for their standards the 3 toughest games (South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee) are on the road.
Predicted 2019 Finish
SEC East
Georgia 11-1
Florida 9-3
Missouri 8-4
South Carolina 6-6
Kentucky 6-6
Tennessee 5-7
Vanderbilt 3-9
SEC West
Alabama 12-0
LSU 9-3
Auburn 7-5
Mississippi State 7-5
Texas A&M 6-6
Arkansas 5-7
Ole Miss 3-9
Alabama jumped from 193 passing yards per game in 2017 to 323 yards in 2018, returns Tua Tagovailoa at quarterback, and all receivers including Biletnikoff winner Jerry Jeudy. For a program that was unbeaten in SEC play and +261 in point differential it’ll take a couple major upsets to keep the Tide away from winning the division. Auburn and Mississippi State are breaking in new quarterbacks and surely won’t keep up s the West could be very boring if LSU isn’t up to the task.
The SEC in 2019 does feel like it’s going to be a battle of quarterbacks between Tagovailoa, Jake Fromm (Georgia), Feleipe Franks (Florida), and Joe Burrow (LSU)–yet even those 4 players drop down a tier with each listed name. Clemson transfer Kelly Bryant is possibly a fun addition to that group although it’s a lot to ask for him to carry Missouri with those other teams above them in the SEC.
I’m a little surprised Florida isn’t getting more buzz heading into the season. They lost a couple games last year in Kentucky and Missouri (the former snapping a 31-game winning streak that felt far worse than it ending up being because it was week 2 and we didn’t know how good the Wildcats would be) that normally would be black stains for the Gators but both opponents overachieved in 2018 and it was just year one for Dan Mullen. They would rebound and ended the season out-scoring opponents 145-39 over their last 3 games, including a blowout win over Michigan in the Peach Bowl.
Normally, pre-season predictions can’t help but love teams that finished hot the year prior. If Franks make a decent jump they can topple Georgia in the East Division and make the SEC a lot more fun.
That header picture is too funny.
Would be nice to see some chaos and anything other than Bama and UGA rolling along, but I’m not holding my breath. I applaud UF for actually playing big time rivals even though out of conference! We’ve lost too much of that in CFB for what should be yearly games (ND-UM, Texas-aTm, Nebraska-Oklahoma, Pitt-PSU, Pitt-WVU, etc).
My big prediction for this year is the bottom drops out on LSU (Coach O never keeps it together for long) and one of Miss St. or aTm emerges as 2nd in the west in what will be the most interesting storyline in the league for the regular season, since the big boys won’t provide too much drama.
Alabama remained Alabama
Too funny.