The SEC went a combined 9-5 during Week 4 of the college football season. Here are this week’s power rankings in the SEC based on dominance in Week 4.
Week 4 of the 2016 college football season was an interesting one in the SEC. The best conference in college football went 9-5 in Week 4, with all five losses coming in SEC games.
Saturday saw the No. 14 Tennessee Volunteers beat the No. 19 Florida Gators for the first time since 2004 in their SEC East rivalry game. A few hours later was the swan song for Les Miles with the No. 18 LSU Tigers, as he was fired after his team’s 18-13 loss to the unranked Auburn Tigers on The Plains.
The No. 12 Georgia Bulldogs looked lost on the road in Oxford to the No. 23 Ole Miss Rebels for their first loss of the season. Even the Southwest Classic in Arlington between SEC West rivals No. 10 Texas A&M and No. 17 Arkansas did not disappoint. Trevor Knight at Gig ‘Em Nation celebrated a 45-24 victory over the Hogs at AT&T Stadium.
The SEC sorted itself out a bit in Week 4. Here are the SEC Power Rankings based on dominance on Saturday.
Losses
Interestingly, every team in the SEC is no worse than 2-2 after Week 4. One of eight SEC schools entering Week 5 at .500 is the South Carolina Gamecocks. Though South Carolina didn’t look atrocious in its road loss to Kentucky in Lexington on Saturday, the Wildcats were the worst SEC team entering play on Saturday.
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Will Muschamp’s Gamecocks continue to play great defense. South Carolina has allowed 27 points or fewer in all four of its 27 games. The problem is that the Gamecocks haven’t scored more than 20 points in any particular game.
With already two SEC losses on the season, South Carolina may struggle to get that required second, maybe even third SEC win to reach bowl eligibility this holiday season. Keep in mind that the Gamecocks still have a road date with Clemson at the end of the year. South Carolina’s best chance at another SEC win is against Missouri, but even that feels a bit out of reach at this point.
The LSU Tigers played so bad on Saturday night that it got both Les Miles and Cam Cameron fired. LSU entered play in Week 4 as the No. 18 team in the nation. The Tigers lost the Tiger Bowl to the Auburn Tigers at Jordan-Hare, 18-13.
LSU’s offense has become a running joke in college football circles for the last decade. The Tigers have elite talent on both sides of the ball, but Miles and his staff could not evolve the offensive attack into the new millennium.
Louisiana State University now has the pick of the litter to attract a new head ball coach. This will be the best job on the market on this coaching carousel. Expect LSU to throw everything but the kitchen sink at Florida State’s Jimbo Fisher and Houston’s Tom Herman to be their next head coach in 2017.
The Georgia Bulldogs revealed what they really are to the college football world on Saturday: a young, inexperienced team that will go through growing pains under first-year head coach Kirby Smart.
Georgia was smoked by the No. 23 Ole Miss Rebels, 45-14 in Oxford on Saturday afternoon. The Bulldogs defense had no chance at stopping Rebels senior signal caller from having his best day of the season. Georgia’s secondary looked shaky and the offensive line was downright ugly.
That being said, Georgia played hard in defeat for Coach Smart. This team will learn from this experience, but Saturday exposed how pitiful former head coach Mark Richt had been at recruiting in 2013 and 2014. The Bulldogs upperclassmen will hold this team back.
The Arkansas Razorbacks were just outplayed by the Texas A&M Aggies in the Southwest Classic. While both SEC West teams are definitely in the upper half of the SEC this season, Texas A&M could make the College Football Playoff, while Arkansas regresses to the mean as an eight or nine-win program.
This game was won and lost in the trenches. Surprisingly the Aggies’ SEC-best pass rush dominated the SEC best offensive line of Arkansas. Razorbacks quarterback Austin Allen was running for his life behind an overwhelmed Hogs offensive line.
What really did the Razorbacks in was the defense’s inability to keep Aggies quarterback from making big plays with his arm and legs. Giving up the big score ruined Arkansas on Saturday night. The Hogs are a good team, but surrendering the explosive plays keeps them out of the SEC elite for yet another season.
The Florida Gators had their 12th straight victory over the Tennessee Volunteers in the books and they choked. Florida was up 21-3 at halftime in Knoxville. Tennessee was all “here we go again…” and the Gators were on the cusp of being the best team in the SEC East.
Then the second half happened. Florida managed an embarrassing eight yards of offense in the third quarter. The Gators would go on to lose to Tennessee, 38-28 to fall to 3-1 on the year.
Florida has one of the better defenses in the SEC but was exposed in the middle of the game once cornerback Jalen Tabor had to briefly leave the game with an injury. The Gators can still win 10 games, but has to get better play at quarterback, whether that’s Luke Del Rio, Austin Appleby, or even true freshman Feleipe Franks.