2023 SEC Football Media Day 3 Preview: Alabama Underdog? Say What?
SEC Football Kickoff Media Days are ongoing until Thursday at the Grand Hyatt in Nashville, TN. It is the first time the event is held in Nashville and the third time it will be held outside of the Birmingham, AL metro area. It was in Atlanta in 2018 and last year.
No school has won three straight major poll national championships and despite losing 41% of its overall production, according to ESPN’s Bill Connelly, the Georgia Bulldogs seek to become the first to accomplish the feat.
As for winning the SEC Football championship, ESPN Analytics gives Georgia the highest chance of winning the conference title. The Bulldogs are seeking their second straight league crown and third since Kirby Smart took over in 2016 (2017 & 2022).
SEC Football Fun Facts
The ESPN Analytics numbers align fairly closely with Caesars Sportsbook, which has Georgia as the odds-on favorite to win the conference (-115) with Alabama (+240) and LSU (+450) the only other schools with better than 10-1 odds.
The 2023 season will be the final one with divisions for the SEC as the conference will eliminate them in 2024 with the arrival of the Oklahoma Sooners and Texas Longhorns to the league.
Georgia and Alabama are the ESPN Analytics favorites to win the SEC East and West, respectively, and reach the conference championship game.
Seven SEC Football teams are in the FPI top 25, the most of any conference. Twelve of the SEC’s 14 teams have a better than a 50% chance of reaching bowl eligibility according to ESPN Analytics.
As for recruiting, Alabama and Georgia have the top-2 ranked signing classes for this season with LSU coming in at No. 6. Oklahoma and Texas, which will join the SEC in 2024, also have top-5 classes.
SEC Football Media Day Team Schedules This Week
Monday: LSU, Missouri and Texas A&M
Tuesday: Auburn, Georgia, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt
Wednesday: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida and Kentucky
Thursday: Ole Miss, South Carolina and Tennessee
I will be doing previews all week for every team. Today I will preview Alabama, Arkansas, Florida and Kentucky. More on this later on Shemon and Sheppard.
Alabama Crimson Tide
Alabama fell short of the national championship game last season for just the third time since the Playoff was introduced nine seasons ago. The previous two times – after losing in the semifinal in 2014 and missing the Playoff in 2019 – the Crimson Tide bounced back to win the title.
With Pete Golding and Bill O’Brien leaving for new opportunities, Nick Saban was once again tasked with replacing his coordinators this offseason.
Leading the defense this year will be a familiar face in Kevin Steele, who returns to Tuscaloosa for his third stint on Nick Saban’s staff and his second as defensive coordinator.
He also previously served as the defensive coordinator for a variety of major programs in Clemson, LSU, Auburn and most recently Miami.
Pete Golding took over the Crimson Tide defense in 2019 after serving as co-defensive coordinator in 2018. In the four years since, the identity of the Crimson Tide has shifted from a defensive powerhouse to an offensive juggernaut.
Taking the reins on offense is former Notre Dame assistant Tommy Rees. The Fighting Irish made the College Football Playoff in 2020 in his first year as offensive coordinator. Under his guidance, the Irish were one of 16 teams in FBS to average at least 31 points per game in each of the past three seasons.
Just a hunch, but something tells me that Alabama will be in the hunt for a CFP spot when it’s all said and done. This team will also thrive this year as an alleged “underdog”.
Arkansas Razorbacks
After four straight losing seasons from 2017-20, Arkansas has finished each of the past two seasons with bowl wins under Sam Pittman. The Razorbacks have won nearly as many conference games in three seasons under Pittman (10) as they did in seven seasons under Bret Bielema and Chad Morris (11).
KJ Jefferson is back for his third season as the Hogs starting quarterback. He’s gone 16-8 as a starter over the past two seasons. He’s passed for over 5,300 yards, rushed for over 1,300 yards and accounted for 60 touchdowns over the past two seasons.
Jefferson is one of five SEC players with multiple seasons with 2,500 passing yards and 500 rushing yards over the past 25 years. With another 2,500/500-yard season this year he’ll match Tim Tebow for the most in SEC history.
Jefferson started every game for Arkansas in 2021, leading the Hogs to a 9-4 record, their most wins in a season since 2011 (11-2). Last year, Jefferson was 7-4 as a starter and helped the Razorbacks offense take another step forward. But he did miss two games to injury (Arkansas lost both), and the offense nose-dived, as the team averaged just 13.5 PPG without him.
Florida Gators
The Gators are coming off their second consecutive 6-7 season after losing 30-3 to Oregon State in the Las Vegas Bowl.
It could have been a 30-0 shutout but Adam Mihalek kicked a 40-yard field goal with 37 seconds left to extend Florida’s streak of 436 consecutive games without being shut out, which is an FBS record.
It’s the second time since 1950 that the Gators finished under .500 in consecutive seasons. They went 4-17-1 across the 1978 and 1979 seasons. Florida hasn’t had *three* straight losing seasons since 1945-47.
Billy Napier became just the fourth Florida coach to post a losing record in his first season since the SEC was founded in 1933, and the first since Charley Pell went 0-10-1 in 1979. The Gators bounced back to finish 8-4 in 1980, Pell’s second season.
The biggest question for Florida will try to answer this offseason is who will replace QB Anthony Richardson, who was selected by the Colts with the No. 4 pick in the 2023 NFL Draft. He was just the second Gators QB to go in the top 10 picks of the NFL Draft in the Common Draft Era (since 1967).
The way is now clear for redshirt junior Graham Mertz, who transferred from Wisconsin after going 19-13 in three seasons with the Badgers.
Mertz took some steps forward as a passer in 2022, posting a better TD-Int than his previous two seasons and pushing the ball down the field more often.
The Gators defense has to improve if they want to make noise in what is often regarded as the toughest conference in the nation this year. Patrick Toney is off to the NFL as the Cardinals defensive backs coach.
He was replaced as co-defensive coordinator by Austin Armstrong, who spent the last two seasons as defensive coordinator at Southern Miss after serving as linebackers coach for Billy Napier at UL Lafayette in 2020.
On the plus side, Florida did generate 22 turnovers on defense, tied with Mississippi State and Tennessee for 2nd most in the SEC behind only South Carolina (23).
Kentucky Wildcats
After recording the fourth 10-win season in program history in 2021, the Wildcats regressed slightly last season, finishing 7-6 overall and finishing the season with a 21-0 loss to Iowa in the Music City Bowl to snap a four-year winning streak in bowl games.
Mark Stoops did pick up seven wins to bring his total to 66 wins in 10 seasons as the Wildcats’ head coach. That broke the program record of 60 victories set by Bear Bryant in his eight seasons in Lexington.
Stoops was eager to welcome Liam Coen back to his staff as offensive coordinator. Coen teamed with quarterback Will Levis to score their fair share of points in 2021, but Coen departed for the then-Super Bowl champion Rams last season to become their offensive coordinator.
Former 49ers offensive staffer Rich Scangarello took over as OC in 2022 but was fired following a disappointing season.
Quarterback Devin Leary transferred in from NC State after a pectoral muscle injury cut his 2022 season short. Leary will have plenty of options to chose from as the Wildcats return three receivers who finished with at least 400 receiving yards last season:
Barion Brown (628, 4 TD), Dane Key (519, 6 TD) and Tayvion Robinson (497, 3 TD). Chris Rodriguez Jr. is no longer in the backfield, but incoming transfer Ray Davis finished fourth in the SEC with 1,042 rushing yards last season at Vanderbilt.
Each Of The SEC Teams Biggest Questions Going Into The 2023 Season
The slow college football offseason drip is about to be opened up into a full flow. College football can’t get here soon enough. But this week we get some soundbites to react to with SEC Media Days. This got me thinking; what is the biggest question for each of the SEC teams? 2023 will be the final season of the SEC as we’ve known it for the last 15 years. This is the final season with an East and West division before Oklahoma and Texas come into the conference in 2024.. There have been two coaching changes in the conference this off season. Hugh Freeze is back in the SEC, now with Auburn. And Zach Arnett takes over in Starkville after Mike Leach tragically passed away following the 2022 season.
When looking at the biggest question for each of the SEC teams, coaches are not on a lot of programs short list.
Programs at the top of the conference are breaking in new quarterbacks. Alabama has serious question marks. Georgia is replacing the only quarterback to win a national championship in Athens in the last 40 years. And will a change of scenery help former 5-star Graham Mertz match his skillset with results. Will Tennessee keep their offensive production up with Hendon Hooker gone and Joe Milton taking over. I’m going to stay away from quarterback question marks for SEC programs. That’s always going to be the biggest question mark when the position is unanswered. Ahead of the SEC Media Days let’s look at the biggest question for each SEC team heading into the 2023 season.
