In a league that has had plenty of questions about who’s for real and who’s not we finally got a clear cut answer on Saturday night. It’s Georgia and everyone else. We know who’s No. 1 this week, but how does the rest of the conference stack up behind them?
Here are our Week 7 SEC Power Rankings.
Bottom 6
16. Arkansas
15. Vanderbilt
14. Texas A&M
13. Auburn
12. Florida
11. South Carolina
Top Ten
10. Tennessee
Things got dicey in Fayetteville, but Tennessee got its first win there since 2001. The Vols looked bad for 2.5 quarters but were able to pull it out.
9. LSU
Maybe dropping five spots after a one-point loss on the road is drastic. However, we’re halfway through the season, and it looks like the Tigers are 0-2 against the only two good teams they’ve played. The ceiling can still be high for this team, but the doubt from everyone is starting to creep in. No one wants to enter November with two losses, but you especially don’t want to be there before the halfway point of October.
8. Oklahoma
Defense and special teams matter. Thank God for Oklahoma. The offense still had a ton of struggles against Texas, but that was expected against a really good Longhorns’ defense. Oklahoma did everything they had to do to beat their arch rival, and a team that was looking dead in the water has resurfaced after knocking off No. 1.
7. Kentucky
Kentucky is good, right? They have to be? Whether you want to believe in Kentucky or not is not for me to decide, but doubting them at this point should be done at your own risk.
6. Missouri
Two dominant performances by Missouri, and all the sudden the afterthought of the conference is 5-1 with their lone loss coming on the road in Starkville. The Tigers offense was expected to be the strength of this year’s team, but the defense has stolen the show each of the last two weeks.
5. Mississippi State
State was on a bye this week which means they survived the chaos of Week 6.
4. Texas
Texas lost to an unranked team and only dropped five spots in the polls. Talk about a pretty privilege. The Longhorns only have one loss on the season, but they have looked more than flawed in several of their games.
3. Ole Miss
Okay fine, maybe Ole Miss is good enough to make the College Football Playoff and be in the top tier of the league. The loss to Florida was very puzzling, but they responded in a big way this week against Vanderbilt. Good teams don’t play with their food, and the 42-3 halftime lead from the Rebels was proof that they aren’t messing around.
2. Alabama
Alabama lost its game against Georgia, but it’s hard to look at this team with too much negativity. If a couple of favorable calls don’t go against them they might have won, but good teams don’t make excuses. They also don’t take sacks that put them out of field goal range in a three point game. Alabama looked plenty impressive in the loss though.
1. Georgia
It’s Georgia and everyone else, just like the title of the article said. The Dawgs went to Tuscaloosa and looked incredible. Gunner Stockton proved once again that he isn’t flashy, but he is a winner. He completed over 80% of his passes and was 9-of-10 on third downs all night. What was most impressive for Georgia was that the offense put up 455 yards of offense, including 206 on the ground, and that was without their top two running backs.
