SEC football power rankings: Florida chokes, Gus thrown under the bus, Alabama keeps rolling

The SEC power rankings are shaken up again entering Championship Week after Florida crapped the bed, Auburn fired Malzahn and Alabama and Georgia rolled.

Though there are still some other SEC football games to be played thanks to COVID postponements, we’ve concluded the heart of the regular season and it’s time for the SEC Championship Game between the Alabama Crimson Tide out of the West and the Florida Gators out of the East. Of course, the title game doesn’t come without some noise before it.

Most of that noise comes from Florida absolutely dropping the ball in Week 15. As a one-loss team, they could’ve gone into the title game with the opportunity to beat Bama and make it into the College Football Playoff. Instead, they delivered a disheartening performance and lost to the LSU Tigers, a sub-.500 team on the year.

Elsewhere in SEC football, Auburn made the shockingly quick move to fire head coach Gus Malzahn on Sunday, obviously unhappy with the 6-4 season for the Tigers (and likely having eyes for Hugh Freeze). And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

So with that, let’s take a Championship Week look at the SEC football power rankings and assess how the league stacks up against itself.

SEC football power rankings entering Championship Week

Vanderbilt’s dubious 2020 season is finally coming to a close but not without some final losses to really drive home how bad this team is. The Commodores fought early in the rivalry game against Tennessee but fell short by 25 points in the end, affirming what we already knew about this group.

South Carolina was off in Week 15, which is probably for the better as it pertains to the mental health of the fan base. The Gamecocks have some optimism moving out of 2020 with Shane Beamer taking over at head coach but this year in a vacuum is nothing but hard to watch in Columbia.

It’s hard to totally fault Mike Leach for how bad the Mississippi State offense has been outside of their record-breaking Week 1 performance. He has a track record of needing a year or two to get his guys for the Air Raid to take shape. Having said that, there is certainly warranted concern about how hapless the Bulldogs looked against Auburn in Week 15 and at many other times as well.

Congratulations, Vols — you beat Vanderbilt. Of course, so has every other team that’s played the Commodores this season, so Tennessee really shouldn’t feel too good about themselves. Perhaps Jeremy Pruitt can start to hang his hat on the play of young quarterbacks and the talent on defense but his seat is getting increasingly hot at this point.

I’ve said it before and will again but the fact that Sam Pittman has guided Arkansas to even three wins this season is an accomplishment for this team. However, this is still only a 3-7 team that got run off the field when Alabama’s offense didn’t even unleash its full arsenal. There is room for growth but the needle is pointing up for the Razorbacks.

Kentucky was the other team with the week off on Saturday but the simple truth is that not much would’ve changed for the Wildcats. We know exactly who this team is, a group that can beat the bad teams soundly and can pop up and challenge some of the upper-echelon on occasion but not consistently. They are a mid-tier SEC football team, through and through.

This was a huge win for LSU and one that should inspire some confidence in Baton Rouge. Max Johnson looked good as the Tigers upset Florida and, despite being down weapons, this team kept fighting against a team that’s simply better than them. Ed Orgeron was always going to have a tough task in 2020 but this is something that the team can build on.

The fact that Auburn promptly fired Gus Malzahn after they beat Mississippi State shows just how lackluster the Tigers were in that win and have been for much of the season. Bo Nix hasn’t progressed and the offense actually looks less promising than it did early in the season. That’s an issue that the new head coach will have to sort out.

Propping Missouri up to No. 25 in last week’s College Football Playoff rankings might’ve been a bit of overkill. And the Tigers showed that by looking not in the same realm as Georgia as they took a 49-14 loss right on the chin. With young Connor Bazelak, who got injured but returned in Week 15, and Eli Drinkwitz, though, Mizzou looks to be in good hands moving beyond 2020.

A COVID cancelation robbed the Ole Miss Rebels of the opportunity to make a late-season statement against Texas A&M but they likely would’ve remained in line with teams like Missouri and Auburn. This team is flawed, particularly on defense, but the first year under Lane Kiffin has been wholly promising as they’ll look to finish the year at 5-4 when they finish the season against LSU.

No matter what Dan Mullen was spouting off in his post-game press conference about playing 10 games, this was a horrible loss for Florida. Kyle Pitts not playing shouldn’t be the deciding factor against a mediocre LSU team and it only seems to tell us two things: The Gators are going to get destroyed by Bama and, if Georgia had made its quarterback change sooner, Florida might be 7-3 now.

It’s got to be a tough pill for Dawgs fans to swallow as they’re watching J.T. Daniels sling the rock all over the yard. Georgia’s offense held them back against Alabama and Florida but Daniels appears to give that unit a new ceiling. But if we’re talking about who the best SEC teams are right now, Georgia is hotter than anyone that doesn’t reside in Tuscaloosa.

Texas A&M saw COVID take another game from their schedule and, despite the fact that Kellen Mond and the rest of Jimbo Fisher’s team are knocking on the door of the College Football Playoff, it’s hard to imagine what the Aggies can do to get in. They lost their chance when they lost to Alabama, which is why they won’t be in Atlanta during Championship Week.

In a game in which Mac Jones barely cleared 200 yards passing and DeVonta Smith had only 22 yards receiving, Alabama still notched a 52-3 win over an Arkansas team that is far from bad. The Crimson Tide are on a crash course to boat-race Florida and win a National Championship thereafter. With how they look now, who’s stopping them?

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