Thoughts of the Day: July 7, 2021

A few thoughts to jump start your Wednesday morning:

A QUESTION OR TWO FOR EVERY TEAM IN THE SEC

The three obvious questions for the Florida Gators in 2021 center around quarterback Emory Jones, improvement on the offensive line and a defense that underwhelmed enough to set records as the most inept in UF football history. Solve those issues, it would seem, and the Gators could not only challenge for but win the SEC East title.

Jones is a dynamic runner but can he be equally effective throwing the football. If he is able to make all the throws and complete passes to receivers like Jacob Copeland opponents won’t be able to load up the box against the Gators. The offensive line returns five guys who are either returning starters or who have seem spot duty as starters in the past. A slimmed down Stewart Reese at center flanked by Ethan White and Josh Braun with Richard Gouraige at left tackle should give UF four solid starters. But what if Jean Delance can’t get it done at right tackle? The defense couldn’t be worse than last year when the Gators ranked 83rdnationally, could they? The infusion of transfer tackles Antonio Shelton and Daquan Newkirk along with linebacker Diwun Black should at least get the Gators into a top 40 finish defensively. If Todd Grantham coaxes a top 25 finish, Florida might rule the SEC East for a second straight year.

A bigger question than these might have everything to do with September 18 when Alabama comes to town. Playing at home and early in the season might make this game far more competitive than experts currently think, but what happens if UF malfunctions in all areas and Alabama does to the Gators what it did last year to Texas A&M (52-24 win)? What if it’s a heartbreaker? Either way, will the Gators recover enough to remain in the SEC East race? They’ll still have to beat LSU in Baton Rouge and Georgia in Jacksonville but they will have their backs to the wall and two SEC losses probably won’t cut it.

Now for the rest of the SEC:

ALABAMA: Everybody assumes that Alabama is going to run the table and win a second straight national championship but there is a new QB (Bryce Young), a new offensive coordinator (Bill O’Brien) and only three returning starters on offense. Eight defensive starters return and that figures to be the strength of this team. If Young and the offense shoot blanks early on, can the defense win games until the offense matures? And, what about that season opener with Miami? That might actually be the toughest game on the Alabama schedule and D’Eriq King is the type of quarterback that can make even great defenses look silly. Just ask Clemson.

ARKANSAS: A year ago Florida transfer Feleipe Franks played so well that Arkansas was within eight points of a winning record. Franks has moved on to the NFL and Arkansas won’t have the element of surprise in 2021 although eight starters return on offense where KJ Jefferson takes over at QB and nine return on defense. On paper Arkansas has a better, more experienced team and that should make for a very competitive team. Can the Hogs get bowl eligible against a schedule that includes Texas, Texas A&M, Alabama, Georgia, Ole Miss and LSU?

AUBURN: New HBC Bryan Harsin had a good thing going at Boise State where the Broncos are the only Division I program in the entire state. Now he’s in the Southeastern Conference and not just anywhere, but in Alabama where he has to share the state with Nick Saban. Not only that, he’s got to play Penn State, Georgia, LSU, Ole Miss and the Aggies. And, not only does he have to do it with Bo Nix at quarterback but with Mike Bobo as his play caller. Can Bobo coach up Nix enough to win against good SEC defenses or does Harsin need to hire an exorcist? If Nix can’t get it done Auburn is going to have a VERY long season.

GEORGIA: The latest Moses who is charged with leading Georgia to the promised land is JT Daniels, who curiously didn’t start a game in 2020 until AFTER the loss to Florida even though he was cleared to play medically prior to the Auburn game. He wasn’t better than Stetson Bennett IV or D’Wan Mathis? Was he not smart enough to pick up the offense? Or was there some other issue? Once Daniels did start he lit up three nondescript SEC opponents and Group of Five Cincinnati to go 4-0 and spring hope eternal among the Georgia faithful, who haven’t tasted a national championship in 14,797 days – but who’s counting? What happens if Daniels not only loses but stinks it up against Clemson in game one? At Southern Cal and in the four games last season Daniels couldn’t read a blitz spelled CAT if you spotted him all three letters. Brent Venables is drooling.

KENTUCKY: Mark Stoops hired a brand new offensive coordinator in Liam Coen and charged him with juicing up one of the more predictable offenses in the country. There are two problems, however: (1) The personnel is built for ground and pound with Chris Rodriguez and Kavosiey Smoke and (2) there is no quarterback with any kind of track record throwing the ball. The Wildcats added Nebraska wide receiver transfer Wan’Dale Robinson, who is capable of stretching the field but can Joey Gatewood, Beau Allen or Penn State transfer Will Levis be able to get the ball to him?

LSU: If you go by talent alone, LSU has enough to run the table in 2021 and that’s with Florida, Alabama, Ole Miss and Texas A&M on the schedule. Talent isn’t going to be the issue for Coach O and the Tigers. The issues will be off the field where the NCAA is pondering whether to accept LSU’s self-imposed sanctions for a number of violations or drop the hammer and a Title IX lawsuit that not only calls into question LSU’s football culture but names Coach O as a defendant. Those are the kind of distractions that can derail an entire football season. If the NCAA comes down hard and the Title IX lawsuit isn’t settled out of court, will LSU stick by Coach O or will it stand by its man?

MISSISSIPPI STATE: In year one of the Mike Leach Era at Mississippi State, the Bulldogs ran for 483 yards. That’s not a one-game total. That’s the whole season. Compounding matters were the 18 interceptions the MSU quarterbacks threw. Is there any wonder why the Air Raid spent a lot of time in the hangar getting its props feathered? Leach offenses routinely carved up defenses in the Big 12 and Pac-12. Can the Bulldogs (a) run the ball enough to keep defenses honest in 2021 and (b) will the Air Raid work against SEC defenses?

MISSOURI: Eli Drinkwitz over-achieved in his first year on the job by going 5-5, but that was with a stud runner like Larry Rountree III (3,720 career rushing yards) on offense and a tackling machine-like Nick Bolton (192 tackles in 2019-20) on defense. They’ve moved on to the NFL, and the Tigers don’t have studs capable of replacing them. There are six very winnable games on the schedule. Can Drinkwitz win the games he’s supposed to and steal one or two others to finish in the upper half of the SEC East?

OLE MISS: Lest we forget, Lane Kiffin turned Jonathan Crompton into an NFL draft pick and he won a national championship with Jacob Coker at QB at Alabama. Neither of the two JCs could sniff the jock of MC (Matt Corral), who was brilliant last year when he wasn’t completing passes to the other team (13) in three of the Rebels’ 10 games. In the seven games in which MC was OF (on fire), he threw 23 touchdown passes and completed only one pass to the bad guys. Now that he’s had a year to learn the offense and a spring practice, MC could be LO (lights out) for an entire season which could be BN (bad news) for just about everybody on the Ole Miss schedule. Don’t forget, he threw for 365 yards and averaged 13 yards per attempt against Alabama last year. If MC can avoid the INT can the Ole Miss D create enough TOs (turnovers) to improve the W-L (won-lost) record enough that the Rebels can contend for second place in the SEC West?

SOUTH CAROLINA: New HBC Shane Beamer has never been a head coach nor an offensive or defensive coordinator. He does know special teams, which is a good thing since the Gamecocks figure to be punting and receiving kickoffs with a certain amount of regularity in 2021. Beamer does have two stud running backs in Kevin Harris (1,138 yards, 15 TDs in 2020) and redshirt freshman Mar’Shawn Lloyd. Does Beamer risk boring an already bored fan base by going ground and pound to try to shorten games or does he make things more exciting by spreading the field and chunking the ball all over the yard? Either way it’s going to be a long season. There are three winnable games on the schedule – D1AA Eastern Illinois, Troy and Vanderbilt.

TENNESSEE: Tennessee fans spent the last three years watching their quarterbacks launch one SCUD after another so they are excited that new coach Josh Heupel brings a track record of high powered offensive success with him from UCF, where his three teams all averaged more than 42 points per game. That’s the good news. The bad news is Heupel was a diminishing return after going 12-1 in 2018 with leftovers from Scott Frost. UCF went 10-3 in 2019 and 6-4 last year. Six of the seven losses the last two years were in shootout games and by eight or fewer points. Shootouts figure to be the norm in 2021 also. Can Tennessee score enough points to satisfy the faithful while getting the Vols within sniffing distance of .500?

TEXAS A&M: When the teams were selected for the College Football Playoff the Aggies did a dandy impersonation of Georgia, one that Frank Caliendo would have been proud of. Listen to Jimbo and it was one of those NNCs (Near National Championships) because the Aggies “deserved” to be in the playoff. Of course, there was that teensy little problem of losing by four touchdowns to Alabama and failing to win their division. This year Jimbo has a loaded up defense and an offense that will break in a new QB and four starters on the O-line. The Aggies are saying this is their year. There is, of course, that minor little detail of Alabama, Ole Miss and LSU on the schedule along with the fact Nick Saban is undefeated against former assistants. Can Jimbo Fisher depend on his defense to win games while he uses smoke and mirrors until the offense figures things out?

VANDERBILT: It’s back to square one for Vandy, which has turned to alum and former Notre Dame defensive coordinator Clark Lea to see if he can be James Franklin, Part Deux. Franklin caught lightning in a bottle and did the unthinkable by taking Vandy to three straight bowl games and two straight 9-win seasons. Now the chardonnay and brie tailgate see, to think they could do this every year. The Commodores need offense in the worst way (averaged all of 14.8 points per game last year) so when they fired Derek Mason, a former defensive coordinator, what did they do? They hired another defensive coordinator. There are three winnable games on the schedule – D1AA East Tennessee State, at Colorado State and UConn. Can the Dores win two out of three? If they can Lea might be a candidate for SEC Coach of the Year.

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Dave Stewart, who won a World Series MVP and 169 games in his career, has ripped the Los Angeles Dodgers for their handling of abuse allegations against pitcher Trevor Bauer. Stewart makes a point that the Dodgers should have suspended Bauer prior to Major League Baseball stepping in, but it seems a bit hypocritical that Stewart has the loudest voice here. He was, after all, arrested in 1985 on suspicion of lewd conduct with a prostitute who turned out to be a transvestite.