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Every fall, records come falling down. In the SEC, always chock full of great athletes and teams, broken records are inevitable, whether they are individual, team or league marks. With evolution those lofty marks are never long for the record books.
And particularly during this SEC decade of glory, with Alabama leading the way and fellow recent champions like Florida, LSU and Auburn chiming in, and with athletic excellence reaching deep into both divisions, you have more of a propensity than ever for records to fall.
So which marks will be shattered in 2016? Leonard Fournette, with a full season and a couple of postseason games, certainly could challenge Derrick Henry’s single-season SEC rushing record, set all the way back in … 2015. Fournette is a safer bet to become LSU’s career leader in rushing yards.
But there are many other records at risk. So we’ll lock in on three that could go down, a little after the leaves do in October.
Ole Miss: SEC single-season total offense
Texas A&M set the SEC standard in 2012 with 7,261 yards. Ole Miss led the conference last season with 6,731.
The Rebels’ pursuit, of course, is contingent on All-SEC quarterback Chad Kelly (below) staying healthy. And staying upright. The one position on the Rebels’ offense that could prevent this from being a record-setting unit is, admittedly, the most important one: the offensive line.
So we’re going to be positive here, not always easy these days, and say that embattled coach Hugh Freeze will be able to plug the holes that were left on the offensive line with the departures of all-everything tackles Laremy Tunsil and Fahn Cooper. Sophomore Sean Rawlings is slated to return and be the right tackle, Javon Patterson and Jordan Sims should be solid at the guard positions, and center Robert Conyers is expected to anchor the line.
Yes, Conyers is coming off a torn ACL, but in May he was named to the Rimington Trophy Watch List, an annual award given to the best center in college football. So Conyers should be ready, assuming he stays on the field, to help protect Kelly and give this offense a shot to be great.
Freeze also recruited one of the top offensive linemen in the country, five-star tackle Greg Little of Allen, Texas, who was called by some the top recruit in the country in 2016.
“At 6-5 1/2 and 318 pounds, Little moves like someone who weighs 30 pounds less and can eventually play closer to 330,” wrote Bud Elliott of sbnation.com.
Little believed in Freeze’s spirituality, and that’s what got Ole Miss over the top in snatching him from Alabama’s grasp. Now if Little can be a fast learner, the Rebels’ line might not be such a weak link, which will mean Kelly and Co. can put up that league record-setting offensive total in 2016. At a program that’s had Eli Manning and his dad, Archie, at the helm, that would be no small feat.
Another reason for this record-breaking prediction? Simple. Ole Miss has been on the come for a few years, on the field at least. There is no substitute for the power of a culture of winning. The Rebels don’t just hope to win now, they expect to, and this could be the year they jump to national title-contending status. Winning games is now in the program’s muscle memory.
So is putting up massive amounts of yards led by Kelly, as shown by last year’s SEC-leading output. With the moxie the Rebels carry into this year combined with their talent, Ole Miss could very well add another 500 yards or so to its 2015 total and pass the insane record number attained by Johnny Manziel and Co. four years ago in College Station.
If the offensive line doesn’t get in the way of that and instead stays in the defense’s way, then Kelly, running backs Jordan Wilkins and Akeem Judd, receivers Quincy Adeboyejo and Damore’ea Stringfellow, and tight end Evan Engram can keep doing what they did last year, and maybe better than any SEC team ever.
The SEC will win a record 10 bowl games
Not surprisingly, during the SEC’s dominance of the past decade, the conference won a record seven bowl games in 2007, then tied that mark in 2013 and 2014. Well, last year the SEC took its excellence up a few more notches, going 9-2 in bowls, smashing its own record and establishing a new NCAA mark.
So how about the number 10 in 2016? Why not?
The league is on a roll of epic proportions, in terms of national titles won (mostly thanks to Bama) but also just in how treacherous it is to get through because of its insane depth.
Also, there are those extra opportunities in the College Football Playoff to grab one or, if you’re the last one standing, two bowl wins, as Alabama did in January. Assuming the SEC has a representative (or two?) in the CFP, there is a chance for as many as three more bowl wins to add onto the litany of SEC teams playing in non-playoff bowls.
So we’ll call it now: The SEC will break its bowl wins mark for the second year in a row and get to the magical, unheard of number of 10 bowl victories in 2016 — and that’ll even be with a couple bowl losses mixed in, like last year.
A conference this big and this great, that became the first to send 10 teams to the postseason in three consecutive seasons in 2015, absolutely has a shot to go one better in 2016 to get to double-digit bowl victories.
Florida’s single-season mark for made field goals
This could be a fun one. And it makes a ton of sense, since the Gators’ offense could struggle to score touchdowns this fall, like it did last season. The current record is 24 field goals by Caleb Sturgis in 2012, which will definitely be doable to reach and pass for Eddy Pineiro’s powerful right leg.
Pineiro is a former soccer player at ASA College in North Miami Beach whose 77-yard field goal in practice was an Internet sensation.
The mystery man chose Florida over the likes of Alabama and Miami, and that should pay off big-time for the Gators this fall, especially in those games that UF is able to keep close with its stingy defense. Pineiro might just win a few of those games with his leg, which he showed was ready for the spotlight during the spring game.
“The No. 1 JUCO kicker, who actually didn’t play football, looked mostly unflappable under the bright lights, drilling field goals of 52, 46 and 56 yards and nailing all five of his extra-point attempts. His only misses came from 53 and 52 yards,” wrote Edward Aschoff of ESPN.com. “Pineiro is slowly gaining folk-hero status in Gainesville, and coaches have to be thrilled to finally have a true place-kicker.”
After this fall, the UF record book will also have Pineiro’s name in it.
Following the kicking nightmares of last fall, when three Gators kickers combined to go 7 for 17 on field-goal attempts and Austin Hardin ended up transferring, Pineiro could be the strong-footed savior for a UF offense that will likely need all of those field goals to win games.
And we definitely think he’ll kick more than 24 in 2016.
Cory Nightingale, a sports copy editor at the Miami Herald, lives for Saturdays. He especially enjoys the pageantry, tradition and history of SEC football.
