7 things I’m absolutely overreacting to in SEC and college football after Week 4
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One month of the college football season is gone, a bittersweet reminder that the shortest season in American sports goes by so quickly you hardly have a chance to celebrate the fact it’s arrived.
September rarely brings certainty. That tends to come in October, which ushers in separation with the spooky season.
Still, last Saturday was a delicious preview.
Six ranked matchups that brought us another signature win for Texas, signs of life in the storied Swamp, a statement win for Jeff Lebby in Starkville, and a cruel reminder in the Southern Cal-Oregon game that in the age of NIL and revenue-sharing payments to athletes, it’s time to have fines for dirty play, too. Did I mention Kirby Smart and the Georgia Bulldogs keep bludgeoning everyone in their path to death?
From Texas silencing Rocky Top to Kamario Taylor and beyond, here are 7 things I’m absolutely overreacting to after Week 4 of the SEC and college football season.
The Longhorns keep winning. I’m still worried about the Texas offense
Texas enters October ranked No. 1 in the country, and no team has 2 wins as good as the Longhorns, who have defeated then No. 1 Ohio State and won at No. 14 Tennessee.
When you are that good, any criticism feels like nitpicking at the Mona Lisa but sometimes things just don’t feel right and that’s where I’m at with Steve Sarkisian’s offense after the month of September.
The Longhorns mustered just 262 yards of offense at Tennessee and over half of that came on their first 3 possessions, which resulted in 10 points. Absolutely give some credit to Jim Knowles, who continues to demonstrate why he was one of the best offseason coordinator hires in America. He’s elevated the play of the Vols’ defense, which finished 92nd in America in total defense a year ago, immensely.
But Texas rushing for just 61 yards against Tennessee a week after scoring just 30 points and averaging under 5 yards per play against UTSA?
That’s not going to cut it come December and January.
The Longhorns also continue to try hard to beat themselves. They committed 11 penalties on Saturday, including Colin Simmons’ urination simulation penalty, couldn’t properly field an onside kick despite calling a timeout to talk about it, and their all-world quarterback is completing under 50% of his passes over the last 2 football games.
It’s a privilege to be as good as Texas is and have these types of first-world problems.
But it feels like Texas is a team with plenty of questions despite the number attached to its name in the polls.
Kamario Taylor is a human highlight reel, and Mississippi State is the biggest September surprise
Okay. The second part of that take is probably not an overreaction.
State was picked 15th in the SEC Media poll in Tampa (I had them 14th, which also makes me an idiot), but the Bulldogs are unbeaten through September and 2-0 in the SEC thanks largely to the prodigious talents of quarterback Kamario Taylor.
It isn’t that he drops dimes like that every week.
It’s that he is making every possible winning play.
For the second consecutive week, he engineered a comeback victory in SEC play, this time torching No. 19 Mizzou for 360 yards and 3 touchdowns in the 31-24 win. Jeff Lebby’s offense is soaring, climbing into the SP+ Top 10 efficiency rankings offensively (per Bill Connelly) and ranking 9th nationally and 3rd in the SEC in offensive success rate.
An even bigger home game looms Saturday when Alabama and another massively talented young quarterback, Keelon Russell, visit Starkville. I’m not sure State can overcome the talent differential in that game, but I’d be stunned if Taylor and the Bulldogs don’t win one of their next 4 games — an October gauntlet of Alabama, at LSU, Oklahoma, and at Texas.
Florida needs to pay Buster Faulkner all the money
I was in Gainesville this weekend where Florida steamrolled No. 4 Ole Miss 52-28 in The Swamp. As the Gators lit up the scoreboard with 500 yards of offense, including 302 on the ground, it was hard not to look down and feel a rush of nostalgia to the Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer days at Florida, when unstoppable Gators offenses stormed their way to SEC and national championships.
This Florida team, as first-year Gators head coach Jon Sumrall smartly pointed out after the win on Saturday night, “has not arrived yet.”
Florida has plenty of work to do defensively and the Ole Miss game was just the first in a 5-game late-September-to-early-November gauntlet that will feature additional ranked matchups at Missouri, at Texas, and against archrival Georgia in Atlanta.
Florida will have a chance to win all of those games, though, which is a remarkable thing to write less than a full year after the departure of Billy Napier.
Florida fired Napier largely because despite recruiting well, his stolid, predictable offense simply couldn’t get the Gators out of the mud of mediocrity that’s plagued the program for the better part of 2 decades since the departure of program icons Tim Tebow and Brandon Spikes in 2009.
I do think the Rebels were a bit flat after their emotionally charged victory over LSU a week earlier. Ole Miss was also without Kewan Lacy, one of the nation’s best running backs, and Trinidad Chambliss missed the balance he provides, especially early in the game, when Florida kept winning on third down defensively.
But it’s impossible to dismiss the manner in which Florida thoroughly dominated Ole Miss on the line of scrimmage. Phil Trautwein, a Florida alum Sumrall plucked from Penn State, was worth every penny, as his offensive line imposed its will on the football game for 4 quarters.
Meanwhile, offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner is proving he’s every bit as good as his elite Georgia Tech offenses (albeit in the ACC) suggested he might be.
Blessed with perimeter weapons galore and the nation’s best running back in Jadan Baugh, Faulkner did whatever he felt like doing against Ole Miss, piling up explosive plays (Florida is second in the SEC in explosive plays, behind only Georgia) and scoring 50-plus on a top 5 team for the first time since the Spurrier era.
Florida has scored 214 points in 4 games. They scored 259 all season a year ago under Napier.
Faulkner will receive plenty of calls this offseason.
Sumrall and Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin’s toughest recruiting job will be to convince Faulkner that he’s such an elite talent that he should wait for the “right” job, not just the first open one that seems interesting (South Carolina, Florida State, I am looking at you).
Can Florida make a Playoff run? Compare Kalshi vs. Polymarket to find the best price. You can see the Kalshi market below:
Iowa is a legitimate contender in the B1G
One of the best games of the weekend was No. 17 Iowa’s thrilling 20-19 win at then-No.18 Michigan. For the second time this season, a game at the Big House came down to the last play. This time, no one needed additional time, as Reece Vander Zee hauled in a 16-yard touchdown pass from Hank Brown to win the game as regulation expired. The Iowa student radio broadcasting call of the last play was goosebump inducing.
With Penn State and Washington also losing on Saturday, Iowa is suddenly among the only unbeatens left in the B1G, fighting for Playoff position with Ohio State, who visits Iowa City this weekend. Even if the Hawkeyes lose that game, the rest of the schedule is manageable. Finish 11-1 and Kirk Ferentz and the Hawkeyes will crash the College Football Playoff. What a tremendous story.
Accountability Index: What I got right—and wrong—in Week 3
Let’s take a look back at what I hit and what I missed last week:
Nailed it: We take Georgia and Kirby Smart for Granted, Part II
The Dawgs’ special brand of joyless murderball continued on Saturday as Georgia annihilated an Oklahoma team that increasingly looks headed for a losing season 41-13. It probably could have been worse, to be honest, but Mike Bobo was mercifully conservative in the second half after Georgia stormed to a 28-0 lead.
The Dawgs’ excellence is something we truly take for granted, whether it’s Georgia fatigue or the fact that it is so rarely pushed it’s boring.
Georgia may not be ranked No. 1, but this is the best football team in America after one month.
Nailed It, Part II: Is it time to panic about Oklahoma?
I asked a week ago if the team we needed to be most worried about in the SEC was the Sooners, who are listless offensively, and have a bona fide quarterback problem with John Mateer turning into a turnover machine.
Brent Venables has a bye week before the Red River Shootout, and we’ve seen miracles in the Cotton Bowl plenty of times before. But if Oklahoma thought moving the football against Georgia was tough well… there’s a defense that’s even more disruptive waiting at the State Fair of Texas.
It’s going to be a long year in Norman barring a change under center and if that happens, what happens to Venables?
Cold Take? Assuming Mike Elko would get it fixed quickly after the Kentucky loss
LSU in Death Valley at night is not an easy way to get back on the wagon, but Texas A&M fans have a right to be concerned after following up their stunning home loss to Kentucky with a 35-6 blowout defeat in Baton Rouge.
Marcel Reed was terrible, completing just 10-26 passes for 106 yards and throwing an interception, his third in 2 SEC games. The Aggies are averaging a SEC worst 4.4 yards per pass attempt through 2 SEC games and while that should improve against Arkansas this weekend, there is cause for long-term concern in College Station, at least as it relates to this season’s ceiling.
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Neil Blackmon covers SEC football and basketball for SaturdayDownSouth.com. An attorney, he is also a member of the Football and Basketball Writers Associations of America. He also coaches basketball.
