My computer rolled up and disappeared on me. It’s back now. And while I am not want to hustle too many list posts on you on a regular basis. But in lieu of a preview post? I will steal a conference gimmick from Doctor Saturday and give 6 Hyper specific predictions for each team.
We’ll start simple. We’ll start with the bottom of the pack last season. The Vanderbilt Commodores.
Last year they went 2-10 and 0-8 in the SEC. This year?
1) Robbie Caldwell’s folksiest quote will be dropped in the post game press conference after the November 6th game versus Florida. At this point? Vanderbilt will be 1-9 and have suffered 3 consecutive blowout losses and nearly beat South Carolina again.
2) Chris Marve will improve his team leading tackle total. By 40. He’s going to be the lone defensive force of the Commodores. And as such? 14 tackles a game.
3) The running game of the Commodores will get off to a slow start. 4 starters need to be replaced, and the one good aspect of the offense from last year will not allow them to stay in games early on.
4) Jordan Rodgers will be starting by October. It will lead them to a win. I’ll give him entirely too much credit for it.
5) Udom Udoh will be the leading receiving threat, such as it is. And it will explode upon the October entrance of Jordan Rodgers and the fact that this is going to be a long year.
6) There will be no win in the SEC for Vanderbilt. They will get a win. But it’s going to be 1-11 and 0-8 for Vandy at this point.
I know what you’re thinking. LOL what? Is this even a post. And I say unto you, mister and missus hypothetical reader. I like to challenge myself. Sometimes, I want to see if I cannot make something interesting. And when Auburn tripled the size of their indoor practice facility? I have an excuse!
In one of the strangest one of these things is not like the other sort of scenarios? Two out of the twelve? Don’t have indoor practice facilities. One of them is Vanderbilt. Guess the other one. Come on.
I’ll even add to it that it’s nobody in the SEC West. When Auburn’s expansion is complete? There will be nobody who has to work a short field either. You might guess Kentucky. But you’d be wrong.
South Carolina and Tennessee are both working off of short fields. But they’ve got something to work with.
So at this point? The fact that Georgia and Florida don’t have an indoor facility is strange. These are the Eastern powers of the SEC, after all. They should be top of the line in everything they do. But one of them has plans for a new indoor facility.
And guess what? It’s not Florida.
Let me say that again. The team of the previous decade has found their way into the best high school recruits of this generation. And their facilities are lacking. There is an obvious lesson to it.
The narrative coming out of the SEC, besides Alabama’s general ailments of the bye week disadvantages, is that we are in the midst of a duopoly. There’s Florida, there’s Alabama, and then there’s the other ten teams. I come to you with one question. Can anybody charge in and steal a spot?
10. Vanderbilt (Nope. A running game and a decent defense means you have a punchers chance against the majority of the league, but that got Mississippi State five wins last year. That’s seven wins too little.)
9. Mississippi State (2%. Mullen may be building off of last season, but the team still needs more at WR than Chad Bumphis and an Anthony Dixon replacement. They won’t steal anything more than the Liberty Bowl this year.)
8. Tennessee (5 percent. They won’t m9iss Bryce Brown, and you may not be able to throw too well on them. But these are underdogs who made their bed and has to lie in it.)
7. Ole Miss (5 percent. They have a solid run defense. But their team is too young. Nathan Stanley doesn’t have a great offensive line to protect him either. And Raymond Cotton? He has the shoulder of the Tubervillian Chris Todd. They’ll be interesting again. But not this year.)
6. South Carolina (10 percent. In terms of talent? They may surprise. Ellis Johnson has a defense that reloads every season. And the offense is intriguing in terms of Jarvis Giles and Marcus Lattimore carrying the rock, and the catching the ball? Alshon Jeffrey isn’t gonna be pumping gas anytime soon. The problem? Stephen Garcia’s general incosistency plus program inertia equals Pizza bowl.)
5. Kentucky (They have a 1 in ten shot of beating Florida. And if they do that? Their number rises exponentially. But at this point? Hartline-Cobb-Matthews-Locke are a lot more interesting to me than they are to you. As such? This is the one that could rise in unlikelyhood.)
4. Arkansas (20 percent. Alex Tejada plus a road game at Auburn could pose a problem. The Defensive Front Seven could pose a problem. Ryan Mallett’s inconsistency? Also problematic. But you answer one of the questions? And they’re a dangerous middle of the road SEC West Team.)
3. Georgia (25 percent. Freshmen don’t win the SEC. In that respect? Aaron Murray’s weight is better than the other 10 returning starters. A defensive switch in scheme doesn’t help either. And even a Freshman Matt Stafford couldn’t beat Kentucky in Lexington in the pre-Raylan Givens era.)
2. LSU (25 percent. I don’t trust Jordan Jefferson, and the line lost its players of value as well. But they have a lockdown pass defense and considering the state of the SEC West? That’s worth a lot to the party right there.)
1. Auburn (50 percent. Here is your last, best hope for an insurgency. And as such? It’s 50-50. Either they beat The Crimson Tide or they don’t.)
I will make a more formal predsiction this Summer. And I will further the individual season previews in the weeks upcoming. So yeah. It’s coming kids.
It’s always a tragedy in the singular. Statistically Rajaan Bennett was not the only one who lost his life today. He’s not the greatest. He won’t be the worst. But someone loved by his family and friends is not alive to see today.
And it’s because of the potential lost. Rajaan was, by all accounts an excellent young man. And not just because he was a four star recruit. He hit the books with aplomb. He was the man of the house for a long while. And he died senselessly.
I don’t want to steal a quote from Mitch Albom, but it feels apt here. Fairness does not govern life and death, because if it did? No good person would ever die young.
Fresh off a nice little bit of embarrassment in front of a national
television audience, the Ole Miss Rebels try to get right in nashville
before their showdown with Alabama in Oxford next weekend. Vanderbilt
has been plagued with defensive injuries and academic issues which,
under normal circumstances, might pose a problem, but as last Thursday
night showed, Ole Miss’ offense leaves much to be desired at this
point in the early season. Much of the Rebel struggles begin with the
revamped line. Bradley Sowell,he of the “Im glad we aren’t number 4
anymore” Sowells, has got to show an ability to at least fall in front
of on rushing defenders before the offense will have any sort of
continuity. On the field last year, Ole Miss was clearly the superior
team, but let a bucket-full of turnovers cost them the win. This
year, if they can refrain from giving Vandy cheap points and thus any
sign of hope, it should be a workmanlike W for Ole Miss. Ole Miss 24
Vandy 13
Vanderbilt will be facing Rice in a must win game for them this season. They stand the chance of losing any possible momentum for the rest of this season if they do not win this game. In all honesty Vanderbilt should have no problem defeating Rice who is 0-3 on the season.
Rice has a struggling defense who may have a difficult time stopping Vanderbilt, especially if the offense from the Western Carolina game shows up. This offense was able to gain more than 600 yards during that game. If Vanderbilt can replicate that, they should be able to win soundly.
I expect Vanderbilt to win this game because their team needs this badly to salvage any momentum they had going coming into this season. This is a must win situation for the Commodores. I say Vanderbilt wins 34-10.
Mississippi State vs Vanderbilt, Prediction Pick, 2009
Two over-achievers from last season hook up for a meeting this Saturday. Both teams enter the contest with identical 1-1 records with each team losing a conference game already. Last season, MSU beat Vandy when the Commodores were ranked 13th and undefeated at 5-0. The revenge factor will be played out this weekend.
Mississippi State was disappointing on defense against Auburn last week. I’m not sure if Coach Mullen understands that he cannot run a spread offense without big-play athletes yet, but that is exactly what was attempted against Auburn. Yeah, it worked great against Jackson State, but once you get into a tough SEC schedule, it isn’t going to fly. Rotating quarterbacks isn’t such a bright move either.
Realistically, this may be Mississippi State’s best chance at winning an SEC game all season, and they are still listed as 9-point underdogs. I think Vanderbilt brings too much defense and just enough offense to escape the upset at home.
The key for LSU against Vanderbilt is two-fold. First, they really need to shore up their back seven on defense and second, they need a much more efficient and mas fuerte performance from the offense. The expected well-lubricated crowd for the home-opener should help too. Night games in Baton Rouge are always a bit of a spectacle.
LSU’s defense looked shaky again when they beat Washington last week. Some of that is probably due to UW having a competent coach, but the questions about the Tigers’ ability at linebacker and in the secondary remain. Their speed is questionable at best, and it’s making every matchup against speedy teams that much scarier for the LSU faithful, and probably Les Miles too.
Well, maybe not this week since Vanderbilt is coming to town. The Commodores always play respectable defense, but their offense is routinely atrocious, even when Jay Cutler was there. They also like to run the ball before they pass, which plays right into LSU’s strength up front and, for a while at least, means the secondary won’t have to wonder how many times they’re going to get burned by no-name receivers. While I respect Bobby Johnson and Vandy, this squad doesn’t measure up against LSU, especially not on the road.
Against Washington, LSU sufferend from the kind of offensive schizophrenia that limited that unit last year as well. They couldn’t decide whether they want to spread it out and play fast with Jordan Jefferson, Keiland Williams and the receivers, or if they want to line it up with two tight ends and let Charles Scott batter away at defenses, filling the hole in the wall with their Cajun dead, so to speak.
The end result of this was nothing looked cohesive on that side of the ball, Washington dominated the time of possession (36:52 to 23:08), and Charles Scott and Keiland Williams had a combined 19 carries and no touchdowns. That is not the LSU way of doing things. They did have some big plays in the passing game, but Jefferson never looked particularly comfortable and was not very efficient. They are not a finesse team and shouldn’t try to be one. If anything, they can improve the passing game’s efficiency by running the ball more and making Jefferson even more of a running threat than the eight carries he had last week. As it was, you could tell what was coming based on the formation LSU was in. Shotgun with Williams next to Jefferson was probably some kind of pass. I-formation meant run with Scott. It’s not rocket science (or even high school biology with Les Miles) but that was way, way too predictable last Saturday.
Thus, this week, it’s imperative the Tigers remember who they are and run the freaking ball. Should they do that while managing to shore up the defense a little, they should cruise, albeit in a hard-fought, physical game. This is a 14.5-point spread, and though LSU was surprised a bit by Washington, Vanderbilt, a conference opponent, shouldn’t be one. Expect a cover, Tigers fans.
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Half-Dozen Hyperspecific Predictions about…Vanderbilt
The end result of this was nothing looked cohesive on that side of the ball, Washington dominated the time of possession (36:52 to 23:08), and Charles Scott and Keiland Williams had a combined 19 carries and no touchdowns. That is not the LSU way of doing things. They did have some big plays in the passing game, but Jefferson never looked particularly comfortable and was not very efficient. They are not a finesse team and shouldn’t try to be one. If anything, they can improve the passing game’s efficiency by running the ball more and making Jefferson even more of a running threat than the eight carries he had last week. As it was, you could tell what was coming based on the formation LSU was in. Shotgun with Williams next to Jefferson was probably some kind of pass. I-formation meant run with Scott. It’s not rocket science (or even high school biology with Les Miles) but that was way, way too predictable last Saturday.
