Charlie Weis Jr. getting on the plane from Oxford to Baton Rouge was lost in the shuffle of Lane Kiffin‘s fittingly chaotic exit from Ole Miss. On the surface, an offensive coordinator following a head coach from 1 job to another is commonplace in the sport. On the other hand, an offensive coordinator usually isn’t considered a packaged deal when he has the options that Weis has.

A 32-year-old offensive play caller like Weis has plenty of time to go off on his own to reach his ultimate destination job, wherever that might be. After all, Kiffin was the head coach of the Oakland Raiders when he was Weis’s age. There have likely been plenty of conversations between them about the pros and cons of rising the coaching ranks too quickly.

That’s all well and good. But as Weis’s stock continues to rise, one can’t help but wonder about his loyalty to Kiffin.

Weis has now taken his name out of the running for multiple OC jobs both in the NFL and in college. It’s not necessarily a stunner that a coach who publicly said he wants to stay in the college game turned down the opportunity to be the Eagles’ scapegoat. Er, OC. Same thing.

It’s also not necessarily a stunner that Weis reportedly turned down Billy Napier’s offer to be Florida‘s offensive coordinator before the 2024 season. Even if he was intrigued by the possibility of working with then-freshman DJ Lagway, it wouldn’t have made much sense for Weis to leave a secure role with Kiffin for the same position with the offensive-minded Napier, who was on every hot seat imaginable heading into 2024 before getting fired in 2025.

But the move that slightly surprised me was Weis getting on that plane to Baton Rouge instead of staying in Oxford

Had he done that, he would’ve had full autonomy of the Ole Miss offense with the defensive-minded Pete Golding staying on board as Kiffin’s successor. Don’t think that matters? Don’t forget that Weis’s predecessor, Jeff Lebby, left Kiffin’s staff at Ole Miss for the same position at Oklahoma, where the defensive-minded Brent Venables gave him full autonomy that he parlayed into an SEC head coaching job.

If Weis’s ultimate destination is to become a head coach, it might be easier for him to get that opportunity if he succeeded without Kiffin as opposed to succeeding with him. As we know, it’s Kiffin who gets the majority of the credit when his teams light up scoreboards, not Weis. That’s what made the Ole Miss Playoff run so important for Weis’s future. Without Kiffin, we watched Weis call a masterful game against a well-rested, emerging Georgia defense. If Trinidad Chambliss had only been the byproduct of Kiffin and not Weis, he would’ve collapsed in the Playoff. Next to Fernando Mendoza, no quarterback in the field played better than Chambliss, who also led the best offensive effort of the Playoff against runner-up Miami’s loaded defense (7 of Indiana’s 27 points came on a blocked punt for a touchdown). Weis definitely deserved credit for that.

Some might point to the uncertainty of Chambliss’ future in Oxford as a reason why Weis couldn’t have entertained the opportunity to stay as Ole Miss’s offensive coordinator, as well as the $750,000 bump in annual pay (or more) to leave:

Others would highlight the certainty that Kiffin would have all the resources in play for Weis would give him a higher floor at LSU than Ole Miss. Time will tell if that’s the consensus opinion a year from now, though Kiffin’s portal haul certainly suggests that his play caller will have pieces in place from the jump.

It’ll be a much different feel than 2018 when Kiffin hired the 24-year-old Weis to the vacant OC role at FAU. Weis was the youngest OC in the history of Division I football, which wasn’t lost on Kiffin.

“Age is irrelevant. Experience is relevant,” Kiffin said back in 2018 (H/T ESPN). “I can be 50 years old, and if I’ve only coached for three years, then I’ve only coached for three years. He was this child coaching prodigy. When everyone else was playing in college, he was coaching. He’s coached with Will Muschamp at Florida, at Kansas with his dad, he’s coached at Alabama with Nick Saban, and he’s coached in Atlanta, and he’s coached here. There’s a lot of 40-year-olds that will never be able to say that.

“When you sit in his meetings, if you closed your eyes and just listened — the way he commands a room, the way he commands the players, the other coaches way older than him — you’d never guess he was 25.”

The irony is that Kiffin is now 50, and Weis will be his OC at a 3rd different school. What gets somewhat overlooked was that Kiffin could’ve bailed on Weis after that first season at FAU in 2018. That year, FAU went 5-7 with an offense that regressed by 9.5 points per game. Perhaps Kiffin’s own experiences as a young coach who once got a quick hook was what prevented him from bailing on Weis. A more cynical person would suggest that Kiffin just didn’t want to admit that he was wrong for hiring such a young offensive play caller who, prior to FAU, had never had an on-field role. Either way, Kiffin and Weis were both rewarded in 2019 with an FAU offense that vaulted back into the top 15 in FBS in scoring.

But it’s not as if that 2-year stretch made them a packaged deal after that season. When Kiffin got the Ole Miss job at the end of 2019, it was Lebby who became his first OC while Weis went to the other coast of the Sunshine State to become the OC at USF. After Lebby made that aforementioned move to Oklahoma, Kiffin reunited with Weis, who made the smart decision to get off Jeff Scott’s sinking ship in Tampa. Hiring Weis was again somewhat bold by Kiffin, considering that USF’s offense played a significant part in a 3-18 (1-14 vs. AAC) mark in 2 seasons with Weis.

Is Weis’s loyalty tied to Kiffin showing faith in him at 3 pivotal points in his young career?

One can assume that, and since those 3 pivotal points, Weis rewarded Kiffin with 4 top-30 scoring offenses. At this point, Kiffin is well past needing to sell to others on why Weis should be his play caller. And if there were any scattered skeptics somehow remaining at LSU, all they had to do was turn on Ole Miss in its Playoff run, which ended 20 seconds short of a trip to the College Football Playoff National Championship Game.

What’s different now is that Kiffin and Weis are both at LSU, which is not a place where any sort of disappointing on-field result is “somewhat overlooked.” That’s not to say Weis will automatically fall into the scapegoat role that he might’ve feared he would’ve been signing up for with the Eagles. It is, however, a reminder that Kiffin’s leashes with his assistants figure to be shorter than ever. There’s risk in that for Weis.

It’s possible that Weis can defy the odds and become the first Kiffin assistant to leave his staff directly for a Power Conference head coaching job. On second thought, Golding just pulled off that feat, but only because he opted not to get on that plane and follow Kiffin to Baton Rouge. Golding decided that after 8 years as a defensive play caller for Nick Saban and Kiffin, he was ready to take on that challenge of running his own program. After all, SEC head coaching jobs might come open more often than most, but they’re still highly coveted.

That type of vacancy might be the only thing that’ll get Weis to leave Kiffin. That could also come in the form of a coveted non-SEC job like Clemson, Florida State or Kiffin’s old stomping grounds, USC. What seems inevitable is that Weis will become a head coach — in college or in the NFL — well before his father did at age 49. The Notre Dame job, ironically enough, went to the elder Weis after he also spent 8 years as an offensive coordinator. Of course, those were NFL coordinator jobs, which were also preceded by 2 decades of additional sideline experience. It’s the type of experience that Weis Jr. was able to bypass thanks in large part to Kiffin.

At his 4th different offensive coordinator stop, Weis will become one of the most intriguing non-head coaches to follow in the sport. You could argue he was as intriguing as anyone during Ole Miss’s unprecedented Playoff run. That spotlight only grew as he juggled 2 jobs. It won’t fade in his most scrutinized role to date. Will it lead to him getting fired by Kiffin for the first time? We don’t know that. Will it lead to him becoming the youngest Power Conference coach in the sport? We don’t know that, either.

Weis boarded that plane to Baton Rouge at the end of a weekend that’ll live in college football lore forever. He was fortunate enough to etch his name in college football lore for what he did without Kiffin in the weeks that followed. In time, his legacy will be defined by what he does away from the watchful eye of Kiffin.

For now, though, the 1-2 punch that took flight to Baton Rouge has another job to do together.

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“Man, Mike Macdonald was right to fire me after 1 season.”

One can’t assume that Grubb had any of those thoughts. After all, he didn’t get to the place he’s at by letting results outside of his control impact his confidence as a play caller. For all we know, Grubb’s only thoughts while watching Sam Darnold play the game of his life with his successor, soon-to-be-head-coach Klint Kubiak, were positive and not introspective.

But here’s another thought — what Seattle just did after being 1-and-done with Grubb doesn’t exactly bode well for Alabama’s offensive future.

I know, I know. NFL results and college results are different beasts. Now is the part where you tell me that Nick Saban couldn’t cut it in the NFL, and he’s the best college coach ever. A more applicable and recent case of those different beasts might be Chip Kelly, who was the offensive play caller for Ohio State’s national championship run in 2024, but then was 1-and-done (not even) with the Las Vegas Raiders a year later.

Sometimes, results are independent of one another and we shouldn’t connect dots. I get that.

What’s troubling, however, is that Seattle’s post-Grubb offensive success coincided with Alabama’s historic failure with him in Year 1

By “historic failure,” I’m obviously referring to the ground game. Like, the thing that Alabama struggled with more on a per-game basis than any team in program history, including the 0-10 team in 1955.

Getting to an SEC Championship and then pulling off a 17-point comeback at Oklahoma in the Playoff was great in Year 2 of the Kalen DeBoer era, but running for 104.1 yards/game was not. Duh. We’re not breaking news by saying that. And considering that 1999 Florida State had the worst rushing yards/game average (122.8) of any national championship winner since that stat became available in 1936, yeah, it’s fair to say the Tide’s Achilles’ heel proved costly in making a run to a title.

To be fair, scheming in the run game was never billed as one of Grubb’s strengths. In his 5 previous seasons as an FBS OC before reuniting with DeBoer in 2025, he didn’t have a single top-60 rushing attack in terms of yards/game.

When Washington’s national runner-up season put Grubb and DeBoer into the national spotlight, it was thanks in large part to a high-octane vertical offense that led the country in passing with a first-round quarterback and 3 NFL-bound receivers (it was 4 future NFL receivers if you include soon-to-be-drafted Germie Bernard). That season, the Washington rushing attack finished outside the top 100 in FBS in yards/game. It was Dillon Johnson or bust, which worked just fine when he was healthy, but then crumbled when he got banged up against Texas in the semifinals. His success after first contact (689 yards as a runner vs. 13 Power Conference foes) and forcing missed tackles (43 total) played a big role in his 1,189-yard season with Grubb at the controls.

Alabama didn’t have anyone with 600 total rushing yards in the 2025 season, which went 15 games. Even worse, Alabama’s entire backfield forced just 48 missed tackles (3.2/game) and of those 890 yards after first contact from that group, 28.7% of them came against mighty Louisiana-Monroe and FCS Eastern Illinois. In other words, Alabama’s running back room had just 635 yards after first contact in the 13 Power Conference games it played (48.8 average). Just for a little perspective, Tennessee had a middle-of-the-pack rushing attack in the SEC (No. 8 in the conference in yards/game), and its backfield averaged 91.7 yards after first contact per Power Conference game.

If you’re just blaming that discrepancy on the Jam Miller injury, you’ve got your blinders on. If you just pin Seattle’s 2024 ground game struggles on Kenneth Walker III being injured or the offensive line not playing well enough behind the wrong quarterback, ask yourself this. Don’t you think that if the latter were true, Macdonald would’ve shown his top assistant a little more grace after his first year on the job in which the Seahawks were 10-7? Or do you think that having a bottom-5 rushing attack in the NFL with slippery backs like Walker and Zach Charbonnet was considered a fireable offense and worthy of a schematic overhaul?

Even Grubb can’t deny how much of an upgrade his Seattle OC successor has been

By the way, Macdonald’s post-Year 1 firing of Grubb was followed by Seattle vaulting into the top 10 in the NFL in rushing yards/game in 2025. A renewed commitment to the ground game — the Seahawks tied for No. 3 in the NFL in rushing attempts in the regular season — has been noticeable. In a pair of all-or-nothing games in which Seattle’s offense was mostly without Charbonnet after tearing his ACL in the first half of the divisional round vs. San Francisco, Walker shined with a combined 256 scrimmage yards (he never eclipsed more than 225 scrimmage yards in a 2-game stretch under Grubb) and 4 rushing touchdowns.

For those who have wondered how Seattle reached the Super Bowl with a quarterback who led the NFL in turnovers, look at the elite defense and the versatile ground attack, which has shifted to a much more zone-run heavy offense under Kubiak than it was under Grubb. According to Pro Football Focus, Seattle’s zone-run attempts nearly doubled from 160 in 17 games under Grubb to 317 in 19 games under Kubiak.

Like Seattle in 2024, Alabama’s 2025 ground game with Grubb lacked an identity. It had nearly an even split of zone runs to gap runs (193-200), which might’ve looked good on paper, but it clearly didn’t fool any defenses. At least not enough to yield any sort of breakaway runs. Alabama’s lone run of at least 30 yards in 13 games vs. Power Conference competition came on a 30-yard run by Daniel Hill in the second half of the Round 1 Playoff game at Oklahoma.

Hill will be a focal point of a 2026 Alabama ground attack that stayed the same in some ways — keeping Grubb felt somewhat inevitable given how synonymous he’s been with DeBoer’s success — but changed in others. One of those changes included a delayed firing of offensive line coach Chris Kapilovic, who happened to be the offensive line coach and run-game coordinator at Michigan State when the aforementioned Walker won the Doak Walker Award (no relation) in his breakout season in 2021. Kapilovic’s successor in that role is reportedly Adrian Klemm, who in the 2020s alone worked under the likes of Lincoln Riley (USC offensive analyst), Bill Belichick (Patriots O-line coach), Dan Lanning (Oregon run-game coordinator/O-line coach) and Mike Tomlin (Steelers O-line coach).

Perhaps a new offensive line coach with recent experience at both levels will help fuel a ground-game turnaround in 2026. But considering that Alabama was the 4th consecutive place in which Grubb’s rushing attack wasn’t anything to write home about, one shouldn’t hold their breath a complete 180.

Well, at least not like the one we saw for Super Bowl-bound Seattle.

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As it pertains to college football, “hell” can’t be confused with purgatory. Some teams exist just fine in purgatory and don’t ever necessarily feel like the situation is dire enough to start throwing around the “H-word.” To be in college football hell, one must understand context. It’s more than just bad vibes. It’s vibes that feel like a certain form of torture is imminent. Whether that’s having an under-performing coach on an insane contract or having a team that can’t seem to get out of its own way, college football hell comes in a variety of forms.

To get out of hell, one can get a breakthrough season or hire the right coach. Indiana was firmly in college football hell for decades, but it hired Curt Cignetti and found a way to replace apathy with dominance. Kentucky was in college football hell the last couple years of the Mark Stoops era, but hiring an offensive-minded, 30-something coach who has dominated the transfer portal has changed the offseason mood in Lexington. Michigan was in college football hell, then Kyle Whittingham bailed the Wolverines out.

Talk to a fan of a team in college football hell, and you’ll probably confirm that notion within the first minute of that conversation. A groan, an exasperated sigh, a Hail Mary plea to the college football gods, etc. You get it. You can smell the desperation on them.

For these 8 Power Conference teams, college football hell is all too real:

Arkansas

Wait a minute. Didn’t Arkansas just hire a new coach in Ryan Silverfield? Isn’t 2-10 supposed to be a thing of the past? It could be, though it’s worth noting that none of Arkansas’ 5 first-year coaches in the 21st century reached a bowl game. Silverfield didn’t suddenly shift the mood because he wasn’t the splashy hire that Arkansas fans hope for when the coaching carousel began. A team with 3 winning seasons in the 2020s has had moments of hope, but 23 1-score losses in the 2020s has felt like torture. One of those nail-biter losses happened, ironically enough, against Silverfield. Perhaps that could prove to be a good omen. But a non-splashy transfer portal class has some skeptical about the new Arkansas head coach, who has never endured a rebuild quite like the one that awaits in Fayetteville. It didn’t help that as recently as September, AD Hunter Yurachek admitted that Arkansas’ NIL efforts weren’t set up well enough to win a national championship in football. That’s a crushing thing to hear from a person in power.

Cincinnati

Originally, I had Boston College as my last team in but decided that a pivot to Cincinnati made sense. After all, Bill O’Brien’s “what’s up, Trevor” line from this past season provided me more entertainment than any single press conference soundbite. Cincinnati might’ve just had another multi-win improvement that saved Scott Satterfield’s job, but it also just lost its promising quarterback, Brendan Sorsby, to flushed-with-cash Texas Tech. A 9-18 record in 3 years in the Big 12 doesn’t suggest that the Bearcats are anywhere close to the place that they were at the start of the 2020s when they became the first and only Group of 5 team to reach the 4-team Playoff. Satterfield also fired both coordinators, which usually isn’t the best sign for a head coach’s future. An underwhelming transfer portal class didn’t exactly squash the notion that Satterfield’s days could be numbered and a job that once looked attractive post-Luke Fickell could be a tougher sell.

Clemson

You had me at “he hired Chad Morris to run his offense.” Ask aforementioned Arkansas or recently hell-departed Auburn (promising new coach) about that. That alone would make Clemson a worthy inclusion of this list, but the Tigers are in hell because the team that Dabo Swinney bragged about breaking Clemson out of its 2020s funk couldn’t even win 8 games. Mind you, that was after it started at No. 1 in the FBS in percentage of returning production. Clemson didn’t pay $60 million to fire Swinney after his disastrous 2025 season. Even worse, he repeatedly defended his ways and all but dared AD Graham Neff to fire him by declaring that he’d find work elsewhere if his time was up. It’s not. Instead, Swinney still has the power to do things like … hire Morris. Clemson fans will defend Swinney to the ends of the earth for those 2 titles, but deep down, they know what everyone else does — the game has passed him by.

Florida State

What if I told you that a coach coming off a 2-year stretch with a 7-17 record and a 3-13 mark vs. ACC competition is still owed $45.6 million if he’s fired at the end of the 2026 season? Would you say that’s hell? It certainly feels like it. Mike Norvell’s got twice as many seasons without bowl berths (4) as he has bowl berths (2). That’s not lost on FSU fans, plenty of whom wanted him canned at the end of 2024. The fact that 2025 started off with a win against Alabama but still finished with a 5-7 mark was inexplicable. Teams who rank in the top 1/4 in FBS in both yards/play and yards/play allowed aren’t supposed to be 5-7. But whether it was special teams miscues or late-game execution failures, FSU endured another nightmare season. Even worse, it had to watch Miami make a run to the national championship for the first time in 23 years. It’s burning hot — and not in a good way — in Tallahassee.

Mississippi State

I’m not saying that the Jeff Lebby era is doomed, but consider the context of this stat. Mississippi State‘s fanbase hasn’t witnessed a home SEC win since the Mike Leach era, AKA 2022. It was actually the 39-33 overtime win against Cadillac Williams-led Auburn, which included the famous clip of Leach taking chairs away on his own sideline. Lebby might need to follow suit because after getting a late invite to the Mayo Bowl as a 5-win team, he’s 7-18 heading into Year 3. The decision to bring his predecessor, Zach Arnett, back to Starkville to run the defense is intriguing, but Mississippi State fans watched countless blown opportunities with what felt like an improved team in 2025. Meanwhile, Bulldog fans got to celebrate the Lane Kiffin departure … only to watch Ole Miss nearly reach the national championship without him in what was its best season in program history. Will that ramp up the pressure on Lebby in Year 3? It depends who you ask, but it’s worth noting that his boss, AD Zac Selmon, hired Lebby after they worked together at Oklahoma. Meaning another losing season in Year 3 might not mean a change at head coach is imminent. We’ll see if that’s the case, but it’s not bold to say that there are likely sad cowbells in hell.

Nebraska

I’m old enough to remember when “Year 3 Matt Rhule” was going to have the Huskers competing for a Big Ten Championship. Instead, “Year 3 Matt Rhule” gave us a few things. It gave us Nebraska’s 9th consecutive season without a win vs. an AP Top 25 team, it gave us a season-ending injury/subsequent departure of prized QB1 Dylan Raiola and it gave us a 2-year Rhule extension to prevent Penn State from poaching him from a 7-6 team. By the way, the 2-year extension means that beginning in 2030, Rhule will earn $12.5 million annually in the final 3 years of his contract, which now runs through 2032. If he’s fired, he’s owed 90% of the remaining contract, which means that this is what he’s owed if he’s fired at the end of these seasons:

• End of 2026: $63,900,000
• End of 2027: $54,900,000
• End of 2028: $44,550,000
• End of 2029: $33,750,000
• End of 2030: $22,500,000
• End of 2031: $11,250,000

Yes, a coach who has a 2-25 record vs. AP Top 25 teams who lost 6 games in 5 of his 6 seasons as a Power Conference head coach will still be owed $33,750,000 if he gets to coach another 4 seasons. If that’s not college football hell, I don’t know what is.

UNC

Hell is opening up social media and wondering what ridiculous thing the 73-year-old coach’s girlfriend did in a given week. One could stomach that if it included some Year 1 promise. Instead, it included a 4-8 season in which Bill Belichick beat 3 FBS teams who had a combined 8-28 record. Woof. That’s not what you’d draw up for a coach on an 8-figure annual contract. The silver lining of Belichick’s disastrous Year 1 was supposed to be that his reported interest to get back to the NFL would prevent UNC from forking over a significant buyout. But so far, Belichick hasn’t exactly been at the forefront of NFL coaching carousel talks. Any sign of UNC becoming the “33rd NFL team” is nonexistent. UNC’s hope of avoiding punching bag status seems unlikely as long as Belichick (and Jordon Hudson) are at the controls.

Wisconsin

You know you’re in rough shape when your fanbase is disappointed by an athletic director’s decision to run it back and invest more resources into his personnel. That’s how bad it’s been for the aforementioned Fickell in Madison. A program that had a slam-dunk hire is now in one of the worst possible situations. It’s not just that Wisconsin can’t keep a quarterback healthy. It doesn’t have any sort of identity heading into Year 4 with Fickell. Take transfer portal class rankings for what they are, but all of those “increased resources” led to Wisconsin currently having the No. 44 class, which is 2 spots behind Fickell’s old school, Cincinnati, who couldn’t even keep Sorsby. Yeah, it’s rough. Wisconsin missed a bowl game in consecutive years for the first time since 1991-92, and there’s no sign that improvement is imminent. Fan support fell off a cliff at Camp Randall Stadium, which is no longer a feared venue like it was throughout the 21st century. That’s a troubling place to be as Wisconsin tries to find its footing in a Big Ten that’s currently in a golden age.

And keep an eye on Tennessee and USC

I’m not willing to put either team in “hell” status just yet. After all, Tennessee just had 4 consecutive 8-win seasons for the first time since 2001-04. Let’s not act like Josh Heupel is Butch Jones or Jeremy Pruitt, both of whom put the Vols in hell. But it is worth noting that a troubling whiff at quarterback and an overhauled defense have more questions than answers ahead for Heupel in Year 6. That’s after consecutive disappointing endings, albeit with Tennessee’s first Playoff berth. Heupel going 0-3 against Tennessee’s top rivals (Alabama, Florida and Georgia) would be a disastrous development after he failed to beat an FBS team with a winning record in 2025.

USC, on the other hand, continues to recruit like a program that’s earning annual Playoff berths. He signed the No. 1 high school class, he kept the promising Jayden Maiava at quarterback and he posted a 7-2 record in the Big Ten. The irony, of course, is that not only has Riley not reached the Playoff at USC, but the Oklahoma program that he left just got there for the first time under Brent Venables. While USC cares less about Oklahoma than Oklahoma cares about USC (specifically Riley), the clock is ticking on Riley. He lost the best defensive coordinator he had in D’Anton Lynn, who took the same position at Penn State. Watching the majority of Riley’s defenses has been hell, which could continue even with Gary Patterson set to take on that role. A buyout that’s Jimbo Fisher level doesn’t have an immediate end in sight, either. A 7-6 USC season with a dreadful defense would have USC firmly on this list.

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Close, but no cigar.

Miami gave the ACC a chance to do something it hadn’t done in the 2020s. That is, win a national title. While the Hurricanes fell short of becoming the first ACC team since 2018 Clemson to be the last team standing, they did at least end an embarrassing drought for the conference. Before Miami beat Texas A&M in the first round of the College Football Playoff, the ACC had yet to win a New Year’s 6/Playoff game in the 2020s. Even worse, the conference had yet to even keep it within single digits in those games.

The ACC had not been close until Miami went on a run that seemed doomed in late-November when Notre Dame was inexplicably ranked ahead of the Canes in 5 Playoff Polls even though Mario Cristobal’s squad had the head-to-head advantage against the fellow 2-loss Irish. Not only did Miami have to sweat out Selection Sunday, but Phillips and the entire ACC did after 5-loss Duke stunningly won the conference championship.

“Close, but no cigar” would’ve been a devastating blow to the ACC that day. That, however, was avoided.

But there’s a new reality that faces Phillips and the ACC in this all-important juncture.

Did the ACC just watch its lone opportunity for a 2020s title slip away?

As much as I’d love to spend this digging into future ACC rosters like Miami’s (Malachi Toney and Mark Fletcher Jr.’s return will be worth the price of admission), roster/coaching fluidity has made that too challenging to speak on with certainty one way or the other. And while the ACC earned some respect for a 9-5 postseason that included a 4-0 record vs. the SEC, post-bowl momentum isn’t a thing in this era of the sport.

We don’t have a crystal ball to answer that question, but we do know that this is a key stretch for the conference because of what awaits in 2030-31. With exit fees dropping to $75 million at that time — it starts at $165 million in 2025-26 and drops $18 million per year until leveling out at $75 million in 2030-31 — we know that it will be more affordable for ACC powers to look elsewhere if more lucrative opportunities await. The Grant of Rights deal that locked the ACC into that 2-decade agreement to rectify the realignment that happened in the first part of the 2010s was tweaked.

One of the things that happened as a result of that Florida State lawsuit against the ACC was that Playoff teams from the conference kept all of that revenue as opposed to having it spread among the other members. That meant Miami pocked all $20 million of that Playoff revenue. Perhaps that funds the next championship-contending team. Certainly the “funds” at Miami don’t appear to be lacking, and seeing a run that ended a touchdown short of a national title will only allow those to grow.

What the ACC needs in the final 4 years of the 2020s decade is for other ACC teams to have deep Playoff runs and to see the financial benefits of $20 million worth of conference bonuses. Like, imagine what it would look like if the ACC pulled off what the SEC and Big Ten have both done in the last decade. That is, have 3 different conference teams with a national title in as many seasons. If you’re Phillips, you wouldn’t have to do any selling with the monetary value associated with that.

But again, let’s come back to the original point

Miami was the first ACC team in the 2020s who was even close to a single Playoff win. In the ACC, that’s currently valued at $8 million ($4 million for a CFP appearance and $4 million for a quarterfinal appearance). While it’s difficult to project what each ACC school should expect to be making under the amended revenue distribution model — it’s now tiered to reward teams with a larger viewing audience — Big Ten schools will each get a cut of the $1 billion annual TV revenue check through the rest of the decade. That’s an equal revenue distribution, which could make it all the more attractive for non-competing ACC schools to get a cut of that once the exit fees drop to $75 million.

Phillips can see the writing on the wall. The entire complexion of the ACC could change at the end of the decade. There’s real urgency.

Of course, some would counter that by saying the Big 12 was able to roll with the punches of losing Texas and Oklahoma. Also of note, the Big 12 has exactly 1 Playoff victory in 12 years of the system (2022 TCU), and it was followed by a 65-7 loss to Georgia in the College Football Playoff National Championship. We can both respect the Big 12’s pivot while acknowledging that’s not an ideal place to be for a Power Conference.

Power Conferences are defined by championships won. The SEC was defined by a run from 2006-22 that saw the conference take home 13 titles with representation in all but 1 of those national championships. The Big Ten is currently being defined by having 3 different teams take home national championships in as many seasons.

What will define the ACC during this all-important stretch? Before Miami went on this run, Phillips has stood up at ACC Media Days and flexed about things like “Preseason Dodd Trophy Watch List representation” and the completely subjective claim that the conference had “the most exciting collection of college football teams in America.” In Phillips’ defense, his conference hadn’t exactly given him much to brag about during his time in that role. At least not in football, AKA the sport that finances college athletics.

For a month, Miami did more heavy lifting for the ACC than it did in the previous 20 years in the conference. Go figure that the Canes have yet to win the ACC, yet they were 1 play away from winning a national championship on Monday. Miami was the lone ACC team to finish in the final top 10 of the AP Poll, which wasn’t necessarily a surprise for a conference that crowned a 5-loss team as its champion. It’s alarming to think that in the last 5 years, 2025 Miami and 2023 Florida State were the lone ACC teams to finish in the top 10 of the AP Poll.

“Close, but no cigar” isn’t the mantra that will preserve the ACC deep into the 2030s. But at the very least, Miami’s run put “close” back into the ACC’s range of outcomes.

Soon, we’ll find out if “straight-faced and alone in the back of the room” will define the next chapter of the ACC.

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So naturally, after Curt Cignetti just pulled off a historic season to give Indiana its first national championship ever, the question has already circulated — has he overtaken Kirby Smart as the best coach in the sport?

Smart, of course, been the consensus answer to that question since Nick Saban retired. Maybe there were some folks who argued for Dabo Swinney, AKA the other active coach with multiple rings, but it’s hard to make that case when someone has 5 consecutive seasons of finishing outside of the top 10. Fellow 2-time national champion Smart, on the other hand, has 9 consecutive top-7 finishes, but he also has 3 consecutive seasons of failing to reach the semifinals.

So again, let’s ask the question: Cignetti or Smart?

That depends on your interpretation of the question. If you interpret that question as “who I’d want for the next 5 years,” Cignetti has a legitimate case. Yes, even at age 64, you could argue that going 27-2 in his first 2 years with victories away from home against Ohio State, Alabama, Oregon (2) and Miami is the type of thing that suggests there’s nothing that’s going to stand in his way in the immediate future. That’s different than someone like Smart, who went into December just trying to improve on his 1-7 record vs. Alabama. He did that in decisive fashion en route to his 4th conference title.

It’s hard to come up with a reason as to why Cignetti could face a hurdle that would limit his success for the rest of the 2020s

This isn’t someone who refused to adapt like the aforementioned Swinney, and at a time in which financial backing has never been more crucial, Cignetti has it in the form of the largest alumni base in the country. Could collective bargaining and enforceable NIL earnings — I’m old enough to remember when the College Sports Commission was going to do that — be the hurdle that stands in Cignetti’s way? That’s not impossible, but what would suddenly make that more of a challenge for him than Smart?

And alternatively, is it fair to ask if the relaxed transfer portal/NIL has hurt Smart’s team? It’s an entirely different challenge to retain blue-chip depth now compared to when Smart successfully stockpiled talent in the latter half of the 2010s and in the first part of the 2020s.

There could be questions about what it will look like after not only Fernando Mendoza’s 2025 portal class and the original James Madison transfers leave, but also when the James Madison assistants have all gone their separate ways. After all, coordinators Bryant Haines and Mike Shanahan have both been with Cignetti at 4 different stops. What’s to say their departures won’t result in a step-back for the program?

Their eventual departures could yield that, but only hindsight will tell us that. Hindsight told us that Smart’s X-factor wasn’t just Stetson Bennett IV. It was Todd Monken. Smart’s 3 consecutive seasons without Monken have all failed to produce a semifinal berth for Georgia. Does that mean Smart was only as good as his offensive coordinator? Of course not, but it’s a reminder that even the best coach in the sport could have personnel moves that prove to be tougher to overcome than others. Not everyone rolls with assistant turnover like Saban.

He’s not at the center of this argument, though. It’s 2 of his former assistants.

If your “best coach” is simply the “most accomplished,” it’s obviously Smart, but that needs context

Why does it need context? Because if you’re arguing that the “best coach” is simply the “most accomplished” coach, you’re also saying that Swinney should be higher on that list than Cignetti. That’s flawed logic. That’s the type of lazy rationalizing that’s only used to fit a narrative because no sensible college football fan is taking Swinney over Cignetti right now. And if they’re doing so based on games that happened 5-10 years ago, why stop there? Why not take it a step further and argue that Bob Stoops would be considered a better coach than Cignetti if he got back in the game?

That’s not how this works. The “best coach in the sport” argument has to take résumé into account, but comparing total wins doesn’t provide full context. In that sense, Mack Brown was fired at UNC as a top-3 active coach in the sport.

That argument obviously won’t favor Cignetti over Smart. While Smart was repeating as national champs after losing a record 15 players to the NFL Draft, Cignetti was just making the jump from FCS to FBS. While Smart was attempting to 3-peat, Cignetti was just attempting to get a Power Conference job.

None of those side-by-side arguments will favor Cignetti, unless you conveniently make it a 2-year sample size. Yes, you can Google Cignetti and see that he wins, but to be considered the best coach in the sport, you probably need more than 2 years of Power Conference head coaching experience.

Unofficially, nobody has ever earned that title with such a small sample size at this level. Cignetti earned the right to be the first by going 27-2 with a national championship that happened with a completely overhauled roster compared to the one he inherited. He just might not have earned the right to surpass someone who has been as consistently in the hunt as Smart has been for nearly a decade.

That’s probably the key distinction here. It’s not that Cignetti can’t overtake Smart. A historic season like this at least gets the wheels in motion for that, perhaps as soon as next year. But in order for that to become a more universal answer under all interpretations of that question, Cignetti probably needs at least 1 more national championship appearance.

And for the sake of his argument, it probably can’t result in a loss to Smart.

The post Has Curt Cignetti overtaken Kirby Smart as the best coach in the sport? appeared first on Saturday Down South.

When you root for storylines, you root for chaos and intrigue. Apathy is the only thing worth rooting against for someone in my position, though I realize I don’t speak for everyone with that perspective.

For an Oklahoma fan, the best storylines of the year might’ve been watching Brent Venables build a top-5 defense en route to a Playoff berth after losing his 2 best players, as well as watching both Lincoln Riley and Texas miss the field altogether. For a Notre Dame fan, the best storyline of the season might’ve been watching the Playoff and adding hypothetical victories to Marcus Freeman’s résumé.

To each their own.

For me, these were my 10 favorite storylines of the 2025 season:

10. Arch Manning breaks everyone’s brain

One second, he was going to be the best thing since Tim Tebow. Another second, he was the biggest bust in college football history. The following second, he was back to being the sensation that many people thought he’d be. Dare I say, Manning went through some ups and downs that felt in line with most first-year starters. Of course, his last name prevented him from getting the same set of expectations for most first-year starters. The reactions to Manning were all over the place, just like many of his starts in 2025. The consistency lacked, though the promise didn’t. Manning still had 37 touchdowns (26 passing, 10 rushing, 1 receiving) and 3,566 yards of offense during a season in which his Heisman Trophy path faded by early-October. How fitting that we get to do it all over again in 2026.

9. The fightin’ Cody Campbells of Texas Tech seize a golden opportunity

When Texas Tech’s well-documented offseason spending spree unfolded, many wondered what would be considered an acceptable set of expectations. After all, the Big 12 got rid of the preseason poll, so we couldn’t lean on that. It was enough to give the Red Raiders a preseason AP Top 25 ranking for the first time since the Mike Leach era, but was the portal overhaul from a billionaire like Campbell really going to change the trajectory of the program? As it turned out, yes. A Big 12 title came in dominant fashion — defensive line transfers like David Bailey, Romello Height and Lee Hunter all earned first-team All-Big 12 honors — with nothing but 3-score victories in the games in which Behren Morton started at quarterback. And while the program didn’t get on the board against Oregon in the quarterfinal matchup, earning a conference title and a Playoff bye certainly met those expectations. There was no better sign of this being a new world of college football than the likes of Texas Tech, Vanderbilt and Indiana going a combined 38-5.

8. Forrest Gump Alabama continues

Don’t get it twisted. I’m not referring to how Gump ran before, during and after his time at Alabama. Lord knows that Alabama somehow having an even worse ground attack than it had with the 0-10 squad in 1955 would prevent anyone from making that comparison. I mean Alabama again proved to be the ultimate “life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get” team. The blowout loss to lowly Florida State happened in the opener, as did Alabama becoming the first team in SEC history to have 4 consecutive wins vs. AP Top 25 teams without any byes or extra rest. Of course, we also got the blowout loss in the SEC Championship to Georgia, a historic 17-point comeback in the Playoff win at Oklahoma and the most lopsided Alabama loss of the 21st century to end the season in the Rose Bowl against eventual-national champion Indiana. “Consistency” is not in Alabama’s DNA anymore, which is wild for the program that didn’t lose to an unranked team from 2008-20.

7. Bill Belichick does not, in fact, turn UNC into an NFL team

I’m old enough to remember when UNC was supposed to become the 33rd NFL team under Belichick. That’s what GM Michael Lombardi declared a year ago before Belichick coached his first game. It was bold, especially considering the personnel missteps that doomed the end of Belichick’s all-time run with the New England Patriots. As it turns out, a 4-8 team who beat 3 FBS teams with a combined 8-28 record did not actually remind anyone of an NFL team. It instead reminded us that Belichick in Chapel Hill feels more like cheese in cereal.

6. The emergence of Trinidad Chambliss

If you had told someone at this time last year that Jaxson Dart’s replacement would finish in the top 10 of the Heisman Trophy voting and lead the program to its best season in school history, you would’ve assumed that it was the byproduct of Austin Simmons’ emergence. Instead, Simmons struggled, got hurt and opened the door for a post-spring, Division II transfer like Chambliss to become one of the darlings of the 2025 season. It wasn’t just that Chambliss was in the Lane Kiffin/Charlie Weis Jr. offense. He handled pressure as well as any quarterback in the sport, and it ultimately led to Ole Miss winning a program-record 13 games that nearly included a national championship berth. In a few months, Chambliss went from being a guy that only diehard Ole Miss fans knew to starring in AT&T commercials. One cannot tell the story of the 2025 season without appreciating how special Chambliss was.

5. Miami being nationally relevant in December (and January) for the first time in 23 years

Nope, nope, nope. Don’t misconstrue this being on this list as “college football is better when Miami is good” take. Barf. That’s not what this is about. This is about how fun Miami was to watch with dudes like Rueben Bain, Keionte Scott, Malachi Toney and Mark Fletcher Jr. shining on a national stage. Mario Cristobal’s ability to develop that offensive line coupled with the hire of Corey Hetherman to run the defense resulted in a special Miami run. It was such a special postseason run that it quieted Notre Dame fans who felt wronged for the last-minute rankings flip of the 2 teams, even though they did in fact play a game to start the season. Watching this version of Miami, which has invested time and money in the right ways, was indeed a fun storyline because we hadn’t seen it unfold like that since the Canes joined the ACC. While the ACC title drought still exists, poking fun at the program died a painful death in 2025.

4. Diego Pavia and the Vandy encore

I’m not saying that I loved every bit of the Pavia experience. I could’ve done without the constant late-season camera shots of his mom (we get it), and Pavia’s post-Heisman runner-up reaction was as short-sighted of a move as any we’ve seen from someone just hours removed from earning a place on that stage, but still. Pavia stayed healthy and one-upped his breakout season. He was electric, and not necessarily in the same way that his idol, Johnny Manziel, was. Pavia operated within the Tim Beck scheme at such a high level that it made Vandy worthy of Playoff consideration. Unlike last year when he faded in the latter half of the season when he was banged up, Pavia saved his best for last in the regular season. After the calendar turned to November, Pavia racked up 19 touchdowns (14 passing, 5 rushing), 2,245 total yards (1,841 passing, 404 rushing) and posted a 183.4 QB rating. While he didn’t lead another victory against Alabama or earn a spot in the Playoff, think about how insane it would’ve been to predict a 10-win regular season. Clark Lea did a whale of a job, and it helped that he had one the most dynamic SEC playmakers of the 2020s.

3. The instant crash and burn of preseason national title contenders

Between Clemson, Penn State and LSU, there was an unprecedented amount of early turmoil with teams who hoped to be the last team standing. Penn State and LSU fired coaches before they reached November while Clemson kept Dabo Swinney because paying $60 million to fire a coach with multiple national titles within the last decade wasn’t going to happen. But those 3 teams got all sorts of preseason buzz, yet we didn’t even have them in the 12-team Playoff conversation in November. LSU at least avoided that 3rd loss until the last weekend of October — James Franklin got that (and the boot) in Week 7 — but it was still enough to pay $54 million to fire Brian Kelly. Some might include preseason No. 1 Texas in this camp, but the Longhorns at least thought they deserved Playoff consideration at the end of the regular season. It’s wild to think that neither Clemson, Penn State, nor LSU even reached 8 wins in 2025.

2. The Lane Kiffin drama and Ole Miss’s subsequent CFP run

Hand up. I thought Kiffin had changed. I bought into the notion that Kiffin was a different guy than the one who left Tennessee for USC after 1 season on the job. Whoops. The only thing that Kiffin changed was his exercise routine. Leaving Ole Miss after 6 years wasn’t the stunner, but leaving a Playoff-bound program was unprecedented, though I suppose if there was ever a coach to become the first to do so, it was Kiffin. And while there was discourse about whether Kiffin was wanted by the players to stay on board, one thing was obvious. There’s no way he thought Ole Miss could make a deep run. If he did, he wouldn’t have left for LSU. Period. Instead, we got to watch Ole Miss not only dominate Tulane in its first ever Playoff game, but it got the better of Georgia in the rematch. Being 19 seconds away from a national championship berth was beyond what Kiffin ever expected from his squad, at least in his absence. Did Kiffin’s absence fuel that run? Perhaps. Whatever the case, it made for incredible theater.

1. Indiana becomes the ultimate first-time national champion

What Indiana just did is indeed movie-worthy. It’s so movie-worthy that none of the details need to be changed. Indiana became the first first-time national champion since 1996 Florida, and did so with just 7 former 4-star recruits. A program that was 3-9 with the most losses in college football history before Curt Cignetti’s arrival did the unthinkable in Year 2. As recently as 3 weeks ago, IU was just trying to win a bowl game for the first time since 1991. IU’s season concluded with beating the likes of Ohio State, Alabama, Oregon (in a rematch) and Miami (in Miami’s home stadium) by a combined 78 points. We can accept that IU probably wouldn’t beat a team like 2019 LSU or 2001 Miami, but don’t dismiss what type of run it took simply because the program lacked history. There’s no better turnaround in the history of this sport. If you can’t appreciate a storyline that, perhaps this football thing isn’t for you.

The post My 10 favorite storylines that the 2025 season gave us appeared first on Saturday Down South.

“How do you like that, SEC?”

It’s not in Petitti’s nature to make brash statements in the way that one Greg Sankey, who was also in attendance at Hard Rock Stadium, has been known to do. It was Sankey who somewhat infamously said at the SEC Championship 2 years ago that “one of these things is not like the other” when discussing Alabama‘s Playoff credentials for the last year of the 4-team field in 2023. At that point, Ohio State was the only Big Ten team who had won a national title in the 21st century. On top of that, it had been 9 years since the Big Ten had claimed a national title.

Roughly 25.5 months later, one of these things is not like the other. It’s just not what Sankey had in mind.

Three consecutive national championships by 3 different schools was a feat that only the SEC could flex about in the post-integration era of college football. We saw that play out twice during the SEC’s run of dominance from 2006-22. It happened in 2007-10 with LSU, Florida, Alabama and Auburn getting it done, then it happened again from 2019-21 with LSU, Alabama and Georgia doing so.

It was the type of flex that quieted the lazy narrative that the SEC was just Alabama and everyone else. While there’s something to be said for Nick Saban being the rising Tide who lifted all the SEC boats during that run, the results were there.

Now, it’s the Big Ten who gets to celebrate its most impressive feat ever.

Think about it. Big Ten fans have long been bothered by SEC bias, but how was the college football world supposed to treat a conference in Dec. 2023 when these were the only national titles it had claimed since 1975:

• 1997 Michigan (with Big 12 Nebraska)
• 2002 Ohio State
• 2014 Ohio State

Three national titles in 4 decades, and really, it was more like 2.5 with Michigan’s shared national title. At the time when Sankey banged the drum for the SEC in Dec. 2023 — he really was focusing strictly on the Alabama schedule compared to Florida State and not on the Big Ten — the Big Ten’s last non-Ohio State team to win an outright national title was 1952 Michigan State. And sure, while there were other shared non-Ohio State Big Ten national champs like 1958 Iowa, 1960 Minnesota and 1965-66 Michigan State, even plenty of Boomers weren’t old enough to remember to remember those teams.

This is the golden age of Big Ten football. Indiana confirmed that.

In an odd way, Indiana’s 16-0 season is the ultimate Big Ten flex. It’s perhaps a microcosm of the conference as a whole, albeit in an extreme way. Lord knows the smattering of pre-Curt Cignetti era crowds at Indiana games wasn’t the same experience throughout the Big Ten. But this rise in a new era of college football has indeed been meteoric. If it had just been Michigan and Ohio State winning national titles, that probably wouldn’t have changed too many opinions about the balance of power within the conference. Even plenty of Boomers only remember that type of Big Ten hierarchy.

And while an Oregon national title would’ve still yielded the 3 unique champions in as many years, perhaps it would’ve felt a bit “bought” because of the established Ducks joining the Big Ten in 2024.

But Indiana? Despite what naysayers will tell you, that wasn’t a bought championship. It wasn’t bought for IU, and it wasn’t bought for the Big Ten. That was a mix of finding the perfect coach, who not only made elite personnel decisions across the board, but he also recognized the new era of the sport.

Even Saban joked about why the Big Ten has a new advantage:

You couldn’t make that case in 2023 when Michigan won it all with a unique combination of soon-to-be-punished coaches and a roster that felt like the last non-portal reliant group of its kind. You could make a stronger case of that in 2024 when Ohio State won it all, especially after SEC transfers like Caleb Downs and Quinshon Judkins played a big part in that run, but again, the Buckeyes always had title-contending rosters.

Indiana? Like, the school with the largest living alumni base that just turned Miami’s own stadium into a pro-Hoosier crowd in a national championship after a lifetime of irrelevance? That’s new.

What IU lacked in blue-chip recruits, it made up for with how instantly well-paid that coaching staff was, though as Cignetti said with a deadpan after Monday night’s national championship that “our NIL is nowhere near where people think it is. So you can throw that out.”

Uh, that’s changing soon.

This whole sport is continuing to change. Perhaps it’ll change in the form of Petitti forcing Sankey to agree to the 24-team Playoff that his Big Ten administrators are pushing for behind the scenes. At this point, who knows? Certainly nobody could’ve predicted 25.5 months ago that the Big Ten would crown a trio of national champions, and that all of them would come from universities who had spent more than a century in the conference.

Call it a Big Ten golden age. Perhaps this 3-year run will end and the power will shift elsewhere by the end of the 2020s decade, wherein another round of realignment could be in store with those ACC exit fees set to drop to $75 million in 2030-31. Or perhaps the angst that Big Ten fans felt as the SEC stacked national titles during the first 2 decades of the 21st century has shifted South.

Either way, it’s clear. There’s no time like the present for the Big Ten, and IU just gifted the conference its most impressive feat ever.

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“It’s probably one of the greatest sports stories of all-time.”

Indiana football, national champions. In real life, tackle football.

The team that had as many players on its 2025 roster from James Madison (7) as it had 4-star high school recruits. The team that had the most losses of any program in America when Cignetti showed up a mere 25 months ago, guns blazin’ at all who stood in IU’s way of relevance, not immortality. It wasn’t supposed to be immortality in the form of becoming the first team to go 16-0 since 1894 Yale, who, by all accounts, had a slightly easier road to achieve that feat than the one that stood in the way of a 3-9 team who needed just 2 years to become an all-time great.

Hate it if you will. If you do, sports might not be your thing.

If you didn’t like that Cignetti capitalized on a unique time in college football wherein he filled his roster with 47 players between the age of 22-25, that’s on you. You’re entitled to that take, but just know that you missed out on something beyond logic.

“Our NIL is nowhere where people think it is,” Cignetti quipped. “So you can throw that out.”

Take note, future scriptwriters. The story is better Cignetti’s way than what any remaining IU naysayer will tell you.

Surely if it were just NIL and old players, everyone could do it, right?

Nope. There was only 1 who did it en route to 16-0, AKA 19th century Yale mode.

For what it’s worth, even a Day 1 Cignetti guy like Mikail Kamara doubted that this could ever happen.

“I didn’t think it was possible, man. I can’t lie,” Kamara said. “It’s something your write a book about, you write a movie about.”

It was made possible in part because of Kamara coming up with a blocked punt that completely flipped the momentum in a 3-point game. Kamara’s blocked punt was scooped up by Indiana to make it a 17-7 game, which marked the first time in College Football Playoff history that a blocked punt resulted in a touchdown.

Sure, add that to the list of firsts. At this point, the list is too long to comprehend.

Who can write a script that well? Even the college football gods probably have been shrugging for months. Better yet, who could you possibly cast for Cignetti and Fernando Mendoza?

Imagine an actor offering up that Cignetti smirk, or in Mendoza’s case, that smile. Imagine trying to recreate the running style that gets made fun of by teammates. With all due respect to Hollywood, there probably aren’t enough cinematic camera angles that can possibly recreate the drama of Mendoza’s 4th-and-5 run into the end zone.

Hollywood screenwriters usually have to manufacture a moment like that. It’s the type of play that you see in a sports movie, but in the real life version, Mendoza didn’t pinball off a trio of defenders, and he actually just waltzed in for a touchdown. It was actually the play of a lifetime.

This was the team of a lifetime. And for all the talk about how bright the future is for the 64-year-old Cignetti in Bloomington, he knows as well as anyone that there’s no guarantee that he’ll ever have another team quite like that. You don’t always get running backs who finish runs like Roman Hemby and Kaelon Black. You don’t always get centers who get it from the jump like Notre Dame transfer Pat Coogan. You don’t always lean on Johnny-on-the-spot defenders like former JMU transfers D’Angelo Ponds and Aiden Fisher, who operated the Bryant Haines defense at championship level.

Next year will instantly be different, though IU fans will sleep well knowing that Charlie Becker isn’t even draft-eligible yet.

But Monday night wasn’t the time to spin it forward. It was the time to be present and appreciate one of the great sport stories of all-time. Even the PG-rated Mendoza let out an extremely atypical “Let’s F—– Go!” on the postgame podium. Cignetti was present enough to enjoy a Hoosier Gameday Lager from Upland Brewery (a Bloomington staple) before he even made it to the postgame press conference.

“It was the best beer I’ve ever had in my life,” Cignetti said, “and it made me want to have another.”

He earned it. If you couldn’t sit back and watch this Indiana team with a cold beverage of your choice because you wanted to gate-keep, that’s on you. Call the fans fair-weather if you must. Who could possibly fathom the program with the most losses in Division I history struggling to sell tickets? Also, ask yourself this. If the subject of “fair-weather fans” prevented you from enjoying this run, don’t you think the overwhelming Playoff support evened the scales? Like, IU fans had the crowd advantage … even in Miami’s home stadium with historic get-in prices.

Again, you can’t make this stuff up.

At some point in the postgame celebration, John Mellencamp’s “Hurts So Good” came blasting on the Hard Rock Stadium speakers, and the local hero’s song was belted out by the tens of thousands of IU fans who stayed for all the postgame celebrations. Those words felt all too real for anyone who ever experienced Indiana football. A 33-year streak without a bowl game victory isn’t “Bad News Bears.” IU wasn’t relevant enough for that.

A program so entrenched with apathy wasn’t supposed to flip the switch like IU did, and just because we saw it happen once doesn’t mean we should expect others to follow suit.

Could it open the door for other college football have-nots? Time will tell.

On Monday, Indiana became the first first-time national champion since 1996 Florida. For nearly 3 decades, doing what Indiana did felt like a pipe dream. Even a program like 2022 TCU went on a historic run to the College Football Playoff National Championship, only to get walloped 65-7 by Georgia and instantly fade back into the middle of the college football pack.

If 2025 was the beginning of Indiana dominance at the top of the sport, nobody should be surprised. If nothing like that ever happens again, nobody should diminish what 2025 was.

A movie played out in real time. Carson Beck didn’t have to be the villain, though some would put him in that role after his messy exit from Georgia. So perhaps it was only fitting that Beck threw the game-ending interception to Jamari Sharpe, who could barely get his legs under him after he clinched a national championship for Indiana. In real life, tackle football.

One day, the screenwriters will take on a nearly impossible task. Recreating Indiana’s run will almost feel too unbelievable for anyone who attempts to do so. Until then, settle for the original story.

It’s one of the greatest of all-time.

The post If you can’t appreciate this Indiana national championship team, sports might not be for you appeared first on Saturday Down South.

Back then, some cat by the name “Nick Saban” was just trying to show Alabama fans that he could avoid losses to teams like Louisiana-Monroe. Nobody was surprised when a 7-6 team didn’t start in the top 10 of the 2008 preseason AP Poll. If anything, Alabama was given the benefit of the doubt just to crack the preseason Top 25 (No. 24).

The rest, of course, is history. Alabama went 12-2 and the following year, it began a streak of 15 consecutive years of both starting and finishing inside the top 10 of the AP Poll. It turned out, as long as Saban was on that sideline, the most obvious preseason take one could have was that Alabama deserved to start inside the top 10. You could’ve found better arguments against things like “water is wet.”

But on the heels of an “eye-of-the-beholder” season in Tuscaloosa, Year 3 of the post-Saban era, or rather, Year 3 of the Kalen DeBoer era, we could see something that hasn’t happened since 2008.

Alabama starting outside of the top 10 makes sense.

Before you tell me that I’m anti-DeBoer, I don’t believe he’s on the hot seat in the way that others will tell you, nor do I believe the guy who gets rumored for every major Big Ten opening is going anywhere. At least not yet. DeBoer left a runner-up Washington squad and took on the role of “Saban successor” for a reason, and that reason wasn’t to lose 4 games on an annual basis. He wants to win a national title, and someone who currently has an 8-3 record vs. AP Top 10 teams — his .727 winning percentage in those matchups is easily the best among active coaches with at least 5 such games — has a more direct path to do that than plenty of his peers.

I’m more of a DeBoer believer than not, but with his 2026 team, I’ve got more questions than answers.

That goes beyond the quarterback situation in a post-Ty Simpson world

It’s possible that former 5-star recruit Keelon Russell reminds people of 2021 Bryce Young during his Heisman-winning redshirt freshman season. It’s also possible that in his 4th season with DeBoer, Austin Mack will assume the role of QB1 and make good on the time that coaching staff invested in him.

Neither one of those scenarios, however, are imminent, especially after there was plenty of meat left on the bone from the offenses that Simpson and Jalen Milroe ran. Mack’s Rose Bowl relief of Simpson marked the first time in his college career that he completed a pass against Power Conference competition, while Russell has yet to check that box.

Is that a death sentence for Alabama’s 2026 outlook? Of course not, but in the past, a question at QB1 was usually aided by Alabama having other obvious areas of strength. The secondary? With Bray Hubbard, Keon Sabb, Zabien Brown and Dijon Lee back, that unit will be a strength. After that, though, find me position groups that are set-it-and-forget-it strengths.

Yhonzae Pierre was a key return announcement as Alabama’s best pass rusher. He and Hubbard are also the only 2 returners who had multiple sacks last year. Kane Wommack’s unit played mostly well down the stretch, but finding that pass-rush consistently was an issue for a 2025 Alabama defense that was loaded with returning experience. One of the few noteworthy portal additions was versatile defensive lineman Devan Thompkins from USC, but it was mostly a 1-way street out of Tuscaloosa with defensive linemen and edge-rushers.

Most troubling was Alabama’s approach to fixing the ground game

The unit that somehow finished with an even worse rushing yards/game number than the 1955 squad initially appeared to be adding NC State transfer Hollywood Smothers. That made sense, considering that Smothers forced as many missed tackles (48) as Alabama’s entire backfield in 2025. But then Smothers flipped to Texas and Alabama was left with making sure it retained Daniel Hill and AK Dear. The Tide did that, which means those combined 94 carries for 424 rushing yards are back for another season.

(I actually like Hill and wanted him to get more work, though I understand why an underwhelming showing in pass protection probably limited that.)

To repeat, Alabama’s worst season ever running the ball resulted in not adding any transfer running backs while adding 2 inexperienced offensive linemen from Michigan.

Set it and forget it? Not quite.

But once upon a time, wasn’t Alabama’s receiver room considered to be the ultimate advantage? Wasn’t that the area that DeBoer was going to overhaul from the jump after Alabama hit a rare lull late in the Saban era? Well, receiving yards leader Germie Bernard is off to the NFL Draft, while touchdown catch leader Isaiah Horton left for Texas A&M. At least Ryan Williams is back, right? All he did after becoming the youngest college football video game cover ever was finish No. 20 in the SEC in receiving yards (689) and No. 22 in receiving touchdowns (4). He did, however, lead the SEC with 10 … drops.

Yikes.

This offensive staff is banking on its ability to develop talent. That’s going to determine what happens with the 2026 version of Alabama, and perhaps the DeBoer era as a whole. The Tide deserve credit for not only reaching the SEC Championship, but also for rallying back to earn a Playoff victory at Oklahoma. Alabama also deserves a bit of skepticism after a trio of lopsided losses in which it looked like anything but a top-10 team.

It’s strange to think that Alabama technically didn’t play as a top-10 team when a roller-coaster season came to a crashing halt with a historically lopsided loss against Indiana in the Rose Bowl. Sure, that sort of thing happened during the Saban era, but already under DeBoer, it has 9 games played outside of the AP top 10. That’s as many as Alabama had during that 15-year stretch (2009-23) with Saban.

Perhaps AP voters (I’m not one) will be willing to give Alabama the benefit of the doubt and continue that preseason top-10 streak in 2026. Usually a team that loses 4 games in consecutive seasons with the amount of turnover that Alabama will have doesn’t get that kind of grace.

Alternatively, maybe that’s exactly what DeBoer and Co. need heading into a season. After all, this is clearly a new era in Tuscaloosa.

You don’t have to look at a preseason ranking to see that.

The post Why I don’t believe Alabama deserves to start as a top-10 team in 2026 appeared first on Saturday Down South.

The lone transfer portal window has closed (except for Indiana and Miami players who have 5 days after the national championship), the underclassman date to declare for the NFL Draft has passed (except for Indiana and Miami players who have until Jan. 23) and the Early Signing Period is in the rearview mirror. For the most part, we know what these rosters will look like in 2026.

Yeah, it’s the middle of January. No, it’s not too early to lay out a top 10 for 2026.

Here’s how I feel about that 7 months ahead of Week 1:

No. 10 LSU

Let’s start this off with perhaps the most polarizing team of 2026. Yes, much of this could depend on the health of Sam Leavitt coming off foot surgery, though we just watched Division II Trinidad Chambliss become a revelation after Austin Simmons struggled and got hurt, so who knows how important that is. What feels important is that in addition to signing the highest-rated transfer portal class (again), Lane Kiffin brought Charlie Weis Jr. with him from Ole Miss to LSU, and he kept Blake Baker to lead his Year 1 defense. That group will return 2 of the premier defensive players in the sport with Whit Weeks and DJ Pickett back, though that unit will still be questioned with major turnover up front. But yes, the Lane Train in Baton Rouge will start at full speed with preseason Playoff expectations.

No. 9 Oklahoma

I’ll say it. People are sleeping on Oklahoma. People are sleeping on a 10-win team that made the Playoff with an unhealthy quarterback and a mess of a ground game. But with another year of experience for John Mateer, the Sooners will again have quarterback-play caller continuity. The return of the SEC‘s top big-play threat Isaiah Sategna was pivotal, as was the fact that not a single one of the 63 underclassmen who declared for the NFL Draft were from OU. Sure, replacing guys like R Mason Thomas and Peyton Bowen shouldn’t be a given, but in 2025, Brent Venables had to replace his top 2 defensive players from 2024, and he responded by leading the No. 4 defense in yards/play allowed. Expect more of that, especially with guys like 2025 breakout star Taylor Wein, Eli Bowen and Courtland Guillory back. Some long overdue late-season offensive line continuity projects well into 2026, as well. Don’t let the blown lead against Alabama overshadow what looks like a promising core returning in Norman.

No. 8 Texas Tech

You thought that 2025 was 1-and-done for the fightin’ Cody Campbells? Nope. Sure, losing All-Americans like David Bailey and Jacob Rodriguez will hurt that vastly improved defense, but adding decorated transfers Mateen Ibirogba and Adam Trick will help in those spots, as will the significant upgrade at quarterback with All-Big 12 selection Brendan Sorsby. With all due respect to Behren Morton, he wasn’t up for the task of navigating an elite defense in a Playoff game. Sorsby gives the Red Raiders a better shot at being multi-faceted for an offense that’ll return 7 starters, including 1,100-yard rusher Cameron Dickey and J’Koby Williams, both of whom have more 20-yard runs than any returning Big 12 players. All signs point to Texas Tech taking a slight step back defensively, but being a bit more explosive on offense.

No. 7 Notre Dame

The Irish might’ve decided that the Pop-Tarts Bowl was beneath them (it wasn’t), but after an awkward ending to 2025, they’re firmly back into the national championship conversation heading into 2026. CJ Carr and leading receiver Jordan Faison, who is retiring from lacrosse to focus on football, will return for a group that dominated lesser competition in the latter half of the season. A late portal push emphasized getting better on the defensive line, which will help after stopping the run and getting after the quarterback were both early-season issues. Can Notre Dame replace the best running back in the sport? Better yet, can Notre Dame replace the best running back duo in the sport? That question will be answered internally, though it helps that the Irish have developed elite ground attacks internally without necessarily seeking portal help. After Marcus Freeman led a 34-7 mark with a trio of double-digit win seasons the last 3 years, Notre Dame isn’t going anywhere.

No. 6 Miami

Despite those public transfer portal whiffs for a Carson Beck replacement, let’s not dismiss a few things with national championship-bound Miami. One is that there might not be a team in college football with 2 more proven skill-players than what Miami returns in Malachi Toney and Mark Fletcher Jr. As we’ve seen throughout the Playoff, that duo is capable of doing the heavy lifting against elite competition. Miami will also return change-of-pace back CharMar Brown, and it added promising South Carolina receiver Vandrevious Jacobs. At this point, one has to trust that Mario Cristobal will develop an elite offensive line while Broyles Award finalist Corey Hetherman will reload what figures to be a new-look defense. Unlike plenty of previous Miami teams the last 2 decades, 2025 has showed exactly why the Canes are finally worthy of some preseason love.

No. 5 Texas

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I might end up being the lowest on Texas out everyone who does these preseason rankings. Yes, at No. 5 … after a 3-loss season in which the majority of its defensive starters left for the NFL Draft. Even if Will Muschamp shows he can run a defense with total autonomy — something he hasn’t had since he was South Carolina‘s head coach in 2020 — it’s hard to envision Texas having an elite defense with so much production to replace. Having said that, the Arch Manning-offense should be poised to win shootouts in ways that it rarely could in 2025. The portal additions of home-run threats like Cam Coleman, Raleek Brown and Hollywood Smothers were huge, as was retaining Trevor Goosby and Connor Robertson on that scrutinized offensive line. Manning now has better offensive surroundings — and a year of experience — that should set him and Texas up for a more consistent 2026.

No. 4 Indiana

Let’s be clear. IU’s best team in program history (by a million country miles) will lose a ton of talent to the NFL Draft, most notably projected No. 1 overall pick/Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza. Plus, so many of those James Madison players that Curt Cignetti brought with him will move on after a historic 2-year run in Bloomington. Why the No. 4 ranking then? Well, Cignetti and his 2 play-calling coordinators aren’t going anywhere. That’s huge. Plus, once again, IU was prolific in the portal by adding decorated TCU quarterback Josh Hoover, as well as Elijah Sarratt replacement Nick Marsh from Michigan State and running back Turbo Richard after he had 962 scrimmage yards for Boston College. Let’s not forget that while it’ll be a new-look offense, late-season star Charlie Becker and Khobie Martin will be back after promising seasons as underclassmen skill-players. IU’s biggest pre-2026 questions will be in the trenches, but given how well this staff as done at developing talent and recruiting diamond-in-the-rough transfers — adding Joe Brunner from Wisconsin was pivotal for the interior of IU’s offensive line — it’s hard to view that as an obvious weakness. The movie in Bloomington might have an encore.

No. 3 Georgia

The silver lining of that frustrating end to the 2025 season was that Georgia‘s roster was perhaps a year ahead of schedule. This was a relatively inexperienced core that figured out how to capitalize in key moments. That unique combination in 2025 won’t guarantee anything in 2026, but there’s a lot to like. Gunner Stockton the best adjusted completion percentage under pressure (79.6%) among qualified FBS quarterbacks (min. 50 pressured drop-backs), and Conner Weigman is the only returning Power Conference quarterback who had more rushing touchdowns than Stockton (10). He’ll need a new go-to receiver after Zachariah Branch was exactly what Georgia needed, but with the majority of UGA’s skill-players and an experienced offensive line set to return, this offense should be prolific. The promising early returns on those defensive underclassmen — most notably Elijah Griffin and Ellis Robinson IV — bodes well for a unit that’ll be led by returning standouts Raylen Wilson and KJ Bolden. After a 3-year absence from the semifinals, UGA is still capable of owning the “team of the decade” crown with a championship run in 2026.

No. 2 Ohio State

Answer this question: If Ohio State just had Julian Sayin, Jeremiah Smith and a bunch of former 3-star recruits, how high would the Buckeyes start in the preseason poll? Top 10? Probably. As we know, the Buckeyes don’t just have Sayin and Smith, though that’s an ideal place to start. They also have 2025 breakout star Bo Jackson operating behind what should be an improved offensive line, led by All-Big Ten selections Austin Siereveld, Carson Hinzman and Luke Montgomery, all of whom bypassed the NFL Draft. That’s a promising situation for Ryan Day’s future play caller, whoever that might be. And while there are future top-10 picks like Arvell Reese and Caleb Downs to replace on defense, Matt Patricia’s Year 1 unit was surprisingly among the most productive groups of the entire Playoff era. Several transfer portal reinforcements will help that transition in Year 2, as will the returns of Kenyatta Jackson and All-Big Ten selection Jermaine Mathews Jr. You get it. Ohio State is much more than just the ultimate NBA Jam duo of Sayin and Smith.

No. 1 Oregon

With Dante Moore returning for Oregon with a decorated group of pass catchers (don’t forget about Evan Stewart’s return from injury), we could be talking about the second consecutive year in which a program earns its first-ever preseason AP No. 1 ranking. Hopefully for Oregon’s sake, that turns out differently than it did for Texas, who missed the Playoff altogether and became the 20th team in the last 21 years to fail to win a national championship after earning that preseason No. 1 ranking. Oregon could have to overcome that, as well as losing both coordinators. But beyond that and Moore’s return, Dan Lanning’s front 7 is loaded with experience. You’ve got 3 All-Big Ten defensive line selections back (Matayo Uiagalelei, Teitum Tuioti and A’Mauri Washington), as well as a secondary who’ll return arguably the top corner in America in Brandon Finney Jr., as well as All-Big Ten safety Koi Perich from Minnesota. That defense could be the best in the sport, and paired with the likely preseason Heisman Trophy favorite in Moore, how can one not be bullish on the Ducks?

Oh, and 1 more thing…

Ole Miss is a preseason top-5 team if Trinidad Chambliss does end up getting another year of eligibility. That needed to be said.

The post A way-too-early top 10 for 2026 appeared first on Saturday Down South.

A quarterback room is often a fluid beast in this era of college football, and controlling one can probably feel like hugging the wind. Best of luck. Like the wind, it’s unpredictable. Gone are the days of mapping out a 2-3 year plan for quarterback rooms.

I’d love to know what Heupel’s 2026 quarterback plan is. It’s unclear. I can’t imagine that he expected to close the transfer portal window without an incoming option after Tennessee publicly whiffed on several household names.

Ty Simpson was reportedly offered $4 million, but said “no.” Sam Leavitt chose Lane Kiffin and LSU, which wasn’t stunning, but was probably slightly more embarrassing that it happened after multiple outlets reported that he was still being pursued by the Vols with a high-priced offer after he gave LSU his verbal commitment. Beau Pribula was perhaps the biggest surprise decline of the group when he picked Virginia over Tennessee.

Three big swings, 3 big whiffs. Not the way Heupel drew it up.

As of this writing, we’re still waiting to hear an official word on Joey Aguilar and his attempt for another year of eligibility, but given how aggressive Tennessee was in the portal, one can assume this report from Matt Zenitz probably has more truth to it than not:

Not ideal.

It’s not ideal that Tennessee won’t even enter the 2026 season with Jake Merklinger as an option after he entered the transfer portal and signed with UConn. It’s not ideal that for the second time in as many seasons, Tennessee looks like a team that’s scrambling instead of a team that has a plan that’s being executed.

Unlike last year, however, the change of the lone transfer portal window means that Tennessee’s starter won’t be a post-spring addition. Of course, that means it won’t have to incur a post-spring loss like Nico Iamaleava.

Go figure that it’s Iamaleava who’ll be staying at UCLA and now it’s the Vols who are trying to find any sort of stability at the game’s most important position.

What’s interesting is that this pivotal season for Heupel will be Year 6, and he has yet to have the same QB1 to start consecutive season openers (remember that Joe Milton was his first QB1 in 2021 before Hendon Hooker took over). That’s not the way any coach would draw it up. That feels more like survival mode.

Sure, Tennessee fans might want to push back on that because it’s not that the quarterback room suddenly lacks talent. George MacIntyre was billed as the natural successor to Iamaleava. It was understood that the 6-6, 195-pound freshman was going to protect his redshirt while he put on weight and, for lack of a better word, waited behind Aguilar and Merklinger in 2025. Maybe MacIntyre is the guy.

Better yet, maybe Faizon Brandon will be the guy

That’s the 5-star early enrollee who’ll now get the “quarterback of the future” billing officially, though he’s had that since Iamaleava’s awkward departure last spring. Brandon might be the quarterback of the future, but it’s rarely ever the design to have a true freshman quarterback start from the jump in the SEC.

Bo Nix did it at Auburn, though he had a top-10 defense to help him along the way. DJ Lagway had success when he became Florida‘s starter as a true freshman in 2024, though that didn’t happen until Graham Mertz suffered a season-ending injury against, ironically enough, Tennessee. That was similar to Jake Fromm, who shined as a true freshman in helping Georgia to a national championship berth, though that wasn’t the plan for Kirby Smart in Year 2. It only happened because Jacob Eason, who was thrown into the fire as a true freshman in 2016, got hurt in the 2017 season opener.

Fromm is the last true freshman SEC quarterback to throw for 20 passing touchdowns. He and Jalen Hurts are the only SEC true freshmen in the Playoff era who threw for 20 touchdown passes. Just for a little perspective, 43 FBS quarterbacks hit that mark in 2025. We’re talking about what it looks like to have a respectable passing offense. No matter who Heupel starts, that’s what he’s aspiring to do in 2026.

Yes, you can set your watch to that ground game being productive, especially with DeSean Bishop’s return after a 1,000-yard season. It’s the first time in the Heupel era that he’ll return a 1,000-yard back, so that’ll help Tennessee’s new QB1.

If Brandon or MacIntyre is the guy, it’ll be another Heupel-era first. It’ll mark the first time that his opening day quarterback has never taken a snap Power Conference competition. That’s not that bold when you remember that 4 of Heupel’s 5 Week 1 starters were veteran transfers.

History tells us that it might be a quarterback-friendly, up-tempo offense, but you still need experience to run it properly. The only time that a Heupel offense finished outside the top 20 in yards/play was the Iamaleava-led group in 2024. Go figure that a herky-jerky, Dylan Sampson-dependent offense also coincided with the Vols’ first and only Playoff berth. A top-7 scoring defense might’ve had something to do with that.

You can bet that Heupel, who is now coming off his second consecutive disappointing finish to a season, would like to avoid any scenario in which he’s hearing hot-seat chatter. Someone who inherited a post-Jeremy Pruitt mess and has had nothing but winning seasons isn’t exactly a dead man walking, but after the way things fizzled out in 2025, there’s some urgency heading into 2026. That’s perhaps why Tennessee had such public high-priced offers to transfer quarterbacks.

In Heupel’s ideal world, he would’ve connected with one of them. In this current world, he struck out.

That doesn’t mean that Heupel will strike out in 2026, but truth serum or not, it’s certainly not the start that he was hoping for.

The post This isn’t how Josh Heupel envisioned his quarterback room ahead of a pivotal 2026 season appeared first on Saturday Down South.

Also, the guys hand out a bunch of SEC Transfer Portal Superlatives.

Fox Sports’ Chris “Bear” Fallica joins the show to talk Miami’s chances in the title game and some of his favorite bets.

The guys close with Lad of the Week!

Watch the full episode here:

Subscribe to The Saturday Down South Podcast here, and subscribe to Saturday Down South on YouTube for all the latest video content!

The post SDS Podcast: Natty preview! SEC Transfer Portal Superlatives, Chris “Bear” Fallica on Miami & title game bets appeared first on Saturday Down South.

One is that you and I don’t know if he’ll be a first-round quarterback in the 2026 NFL Draft. Despite what he was reportedly told before declaring for the next level, I won’t pretend that’s imminent, even in what’s expected to be a thin quarterback class during a quarterback-needy time across the NFL.

Another is that you and I don’t know that Simpson will become a franchise quarterback. He could check a ton of boxes as an NFL-ready guy, but he could also still fall short in some key areas (throwing under pressure) and/or end up in the wrong situation. The latter could still be true if his late-Round 1 projection holds and he goes to a team like Pittsburgh or Cleveland (they acquired Jacksonville’s 2026 Round 1 pick in the Travis Hunter trade), both of whom will have new head coaches.

The last — and perhaps most controversial — thing that you and I don’t know is whether Simpson would’ve played at a high level at one of his high-priced transfer portal suitors. Why not? Go ask decorated preseason quarterbacks like Garrett Nussmeier or Cade Klubnik what returning to school for another year did for them, and that was with having the advantage of having the same offensive play caller, which Simpson obviously wouldn’t have in a new destination.

According to the former Alabama quarterback, he had $6.5 million suitors in the transfer portal after he announced his intentions to forgo his last year of eligibility and enter the 2026 NFL Draft.

If you read that tremendous insight from Chris Low, you saw this noteworthy quote that came from his interview with Simpson.

“Everybody would just remember me as the guy who took all this money and went to Miami or Tennessee for his last year. But I was a captain. I put my hand and footprints in the cement at Denny Chimes,” Simpson told On3. “I would have lost everything that I built at Alabama.”

Scoff at that if you choose. I’ll choose to salute it.

Why? Isn’t Simpson stupid to turn down more money than he could’ve gotten with his projected NFL Draft slot? Won’t the Darren Rovells of the world point out Simpson’s rookie salary compared to that $6.5 million offer and say that he cost himself millions by choosing the NFL? Couldn’t he have double-dipped and made that money in the transfer portal while also getting Round 1 money in 2027?

Maybe. Don’t care.

I care about acknowledging that there are long-term benefits (both monetary and non-monetary) to sticking with 1 school

That’s not to say that Simpson is the first person to think bigger picture with a decision like that.

Last year, Quinn Ewers was criticized for declaring for the NFL Draft and being selected in the 7th round instead of transferring from Texas, who was expected to move on to Arch Manning. Ewers reportedly turned down an $8 million offer from other schools because he sought to preserve his relationships at Texas. Ahead of his 3rd start as a rookie with the Dolphins, he explained why he made that decision (via ESPN).

“I felt like what I built with my teammates at Texas and the legacy that we built, I didn’t want to mess anything up there,” Ewers said. “… To me, it’s not about the materialistic things of this world because it comes and goes. What’s important to me is the relationships that are built along the way. And I didn’t want to disrupt or rub anybody the wrong way, being selfish and trying to go get money from another team, because I was a lifelong Longhorn.

“Growing up, I wanted to play there. Ended up being the quarterback there, living on my dreams. My 10-year-old self wouldn’t transfer away and go somewhere else. So, at the end of the day, that was the right decision for me.”

If you don’t think that was appreciated in Austin, you’re crazy. Ewers will forever have a home at Texas as a prolific former 3-year starter who could’ve been vindictive that the Longhorns chose Manning over him. Did he have to do that? Of course not. After all, we’re no longer in an area in which the departing school gets a say in a transfer’s future destination. Unlike Simpson, who likely would’ve been welcomed back as the starter at Alabama, Ewers would’ve had more motivation to find a new home in college knowing that Texas was ready to move on.

And yeah, the irony is that Ewers started his career off by reclassifying to enroll early at Ohio State and transferred back to his home state of Texas after 1 year because “that’s where his resources were.” Clearly, he’s not someone who ignored the financial side of his decision.

The same is true of Simpson.

Being a captain at Alabama is indeed a big deal

It’s the type of deal that’ll carry a ton of weight in that state well past his playing days, much like it did for former Tide quarterbacks/captains like AJ McCarron and Greg McElroy, both of whom returned to post-football work in Alabama. In a perfect world for Simpson, he spends 15 years in the NFL and earns generational wealth that gives him a comfortable post-football life. In a more likely world for Simpson, he makes millions in the NFL and he knows that even as a Tennessee native, he’s always got a home and support in the state where he spent all 4 years of his college career.

If that bothers you, ask yourself this. Are you also a college football purist who wishes that we could turn back the clock to 20 years ago? If the answer to that is a firm, “yes,” than you’re a walking, talking contradiction.

Simpson’s approach might be considered the outlier in this new era of college football, but it doesn’t mean it’s the wrong one. There are just more paths to a legacy than ever.

Take the Carson Beck path. He claimed after his game-winning touchdown in the Fiesta Bowl that leaving Georgia for Miami was “one of the best decisions he could’ve ever made” (H/T Caroline Fenton). It’s hard to argue with Beck considering that after he initially declared for the NFL Draft, he did take the reportedly lucrative NIL deal and the Hurricanes to their first national championship berth in 23 years. Did Beck ruin relationships at Georgia by having this type of season at Miami? Time will tell, though one could argue that the Beck-Georgia relationship was in a different spot post-SEC Championship injury than what Simpson felt he had with Alabama.

What’s undeniable is that whether you’re Simpson, Beck, Ewers or someone else, no 2 situations are exactly the same. We shouldn’t assume loyalty anymore, but we should certainly respect it.

Simpson’s loyalty could speak volumes when he sits down with NFL front offices. Time will tell how they feel about all of his physical abilities, but if the goal is to become the leader of an organization, Simpson’s mindset appears to be well-suited to do just that.

That’s 1 thing I know.

The post I have all the respect for Ty Simpson after seeing why he turned down transfer portal riches and stuck with his NFL decision appeared first on Saturday Down South.

Where were all the elite returning SEC running backs?

That wasn’t a dig at Texas standout Tre Wisner, but it was telling that he was the SEC’s lone returning 1,000-yard running back from the previous season. That was after a 2024 season in which the SEC entered without having a single returning 1,000-yard back for the first time in the Playoff era, and only 1 of the top 8 returning rushers was set to return. Going into 2025, 3 of the top 8 SEC rushing leaders returned, but a post-ACL tear Le’Veon Moss and Wisner were the lone SEC running backs who hit a single one of these boxes the previous season:

• 800 rushing yards
• 9 rushing touchdowns
• 5.4 yards/carry (min. 100 carries)
• 65 rushing yards/game

And take SEC Media Days representation for what it is, but there wasn’t a single running back among the 48 player representatives ahead of the 2025 season. Add in Florida‘s Montrell Johnson Jr. being the lone running back at SEC Media Days in 2024, and that was 1 running back out of 96 possible SEC representatives in that 2-year stretch.

Consider that 2-year stretch over because mercy, there’s a loaded group of returning SEC running backs heading into 2026. In the final days of the lone portal window being open, the SEC’s group of running backs for 2026 is stacked to the brim with proven playmakers.

Let’s start with the obvious. Ahmad Hardy (Mizzou) and Kewan Lacy (Ole Miss) both returning to their respective schools means that for the first time in SEC history, the conference will return multiple 1,500-yard rushers.

Yeah. Sip on that for a second.

That bested the 2023 group, which saw both Rocket Sanders and Quinshon Judkins make history as the first time that the SEC ever brought back multiple 1,400-yard rushers. Hardy and Lacy were 2 of the 3 Doak Walker Award finalists (NFL-bound Jeremiyah Love won the award), so naturally, both should top any preseason running back list in college football. That’s significant, but look beyond that.

For the first time since 2017, the SEC will return 4 1,000-yard rushers

That’s as many 1,000-yard rushers as the conference has had in the previous 3 years combined. In addition to Lacy and Hardy, Jadan Baugh returned to the new coaching staff at Florida and former Tennessee walk-on DeSean Bishop also announced his return. All of those guys are back after 1,000-yard seasons. Bishop somewhat quietly racked up 16 rushing scores. Before this 2026 group, Judkins was the only returning SEC running back in the previous 7 seasons who hit that number. Heading into 2026, Bishop, Hardy and Lacy will all return after reaching 16 rushing scores in 2025.

In all likelihood, the running back spots on the preseason first- and second-team All-SEC squads will be scooped up by those 4 guys. Look beyond that, too.

In 2026, the SEC will return 6 of its top 7 rushers from 2025, all of whom would’ve checked at least 2 of those aforementioned boxes (800 rushing yards, 9 rushing TDs, 5.4 yards/carry, 65 rushing yards/game):

• 1. Ahmad Hardy (Mizzou), returning
• 2. Kewan Lacy (Ole Miss), returning
• 3. Jadan Baugh (Florida), returning
• 4. DeSean Bishop (Tennessee), returning
• 5. Mike Washington Jr. (Arkansas), out of eligibility
• 6. Jeremiah Cobb (Auburn), returning
• 7. Nate Frazier (Georgia), returning

That’s 6 SEC running backs returning who hit 940 rushing yards last year, which also hasn’t happened since 2017. Why bring that up? Well, because that doesn’t even include the transfer portal class of SEC running backs, which is also loaded.

Former 1,000-yard rusher Bryson Washington left Baylor for Auburn to join Alex Golesh, who most recently led a USF rushing attack that averaged 212 yards/game. After racking up 937 rushing yards, NC State transfer Hollywood Smothers initially committed to Alabama to fix those ground-game woes, but then flipped to and signed with Texas. That came after Steve Sarkisian already added Arizona State transfer Raleek Brown, who ran for 1,141 yards last year. The only returning Power Conference running backs who had more rushing yards than Brown last year were Hardy, Lacy, Baugh and Rutgers star Antwan Raymond. To recap, 4 of the top 5 returning Power Conference leaders in rushing yards will play in the SEC, and that doesn’t even include Bishop.

(I realize that Mark Fletcher Jr. is set to return for Miami, and he could join the top 5 if he reaches 62 rushing yards against Indiana in the College Football Playoff National Championship. You get it, though.)

Here’s another crazy thought. I haven’t even mentioned the backfield that Lane Kiffin will operate at LSU.

Kiffin’s ground games have averaged a minimum of 166 yards/game the last 12 seasons at Alabama, FAU and of course, most recently at Ole Miss, where the aforementioned Lacy had the third-most rushing touchdowns (24) in a season in SEC history. LSU got huge news that in addition to bringing running backs coach Kevin Smith to Baton Rouge from Ole Miss, it retained both 2025 preseason All-SEC running back Caden Durham and former 5-star tailback Harlem Berry, who flashed plenty of promise as a true freshman once he started getting touches in the latter half of the season. The arrow is pointing up for the LSU backfield after an Ole Miss running back was a first-team All-SEC selection in 3 of Kiffin’s 6 years in Oxford.

Consider that another piece of this promising 2026 outlook for SEC rushing attacks. At a time in which many are wondering where the SEC fits in this ever-changing college football landscape, perhaps there’s something to be said for the investment made at the running back position. Once upon a time, you could set your watch to a slew of SEC running backs becoming household names and entering the Heisman Trophy conversation. That hasn’t been the case recently.

Now, though, the stage is set for a dominant year of SEC running backs. The last time the SEC was this stacked at the position heading into a season, 2017 yielded an all-SEC College Football Playoff National Championship. That’s hardly imminent in 2026, but it’s worth noting as the SEC searches for answers to restore its dominant ways.

A return of the back might just be the remedy.

The post Return of the back? A way-too-early look at the historically stacked group of SEC running backs in 2026 appeared first on Saturday Down South.

Cam Coleman and Arch Manning? Sign me up. Those 2 could give each other exactly what they lacked in 2025.

Manning needed a contested-catch guy after Texas lacked 1 of the 29 SEC receivers who had at least 5 contested catches in 2025, and Coleman led the SEC with 13 such grabs (the entire Texas wide receiver room had 15). Manning needed a downfield target after finishing No. 1 in the SEC with 65 pass attempts that traveled 20 yards beyond the line of scrimmage, and he got the guy who was tied for No. 3 in the SEC with 10 such catches.

Coleman, on the other hand, just needed a quarterback and an offensive play caller with a pulse. With all due respect to Payton Thorne, Jackson Arnold, Ashton Daniels and Freeze, it was fair to question that during the last 2 years on The Plains. It wasn’t a coincidence that in the first 2 games of the post-Freeze era, Coleman got the most targets of his career (20), and he had 15 catches for 208 yards with 2 touchdowns.

So yeah, when we found out on Sunday that Coleman was taking his high-priced talents to Texas for 2026, I nodded in approval.

It made a ton of sense that those 2 joined forces. I’d love to know what that recruitment looked like when Coleman visited Austin. I assume that Steve Sarkisian just looked at Coleman and said, “we all know why we’re here. Let’s make this thing happen.”

It’s happening, and suddenly, the ceiling of that Texas offense is higher than any point that it was at in Year 1 of Manning as QB1.

That probably would’ve been true with simply the natural progression of Manning, but adding Coleman and his massive catch radius to an offense that also got key returns on the offensive line with Trevor Goosby and Connor Robertson is promising. We can dig into whether the ground game will bounce back after an extremely disappointing season ended with former 1,000-yard back Tre Wisner and CJ Baxter hitting the portal, but Steve Sarkisian‘s history with prolific ground games coupled with adding 1,000-yard rusher Raleek Brown from Arizona State and flipping NC State transfer Hollywood Smothers from Alabama doesn’t have me questioning that unit.

Texas is now ready to win shootouts … which it might need to

The Coleman move and the Texas offseason spending in general suggests this 2026 team will have a different identity than the 2025 group. It’s a transition year on defense. Getting home-run play threats on offense like Coleman and Smothers, who tied for No. 4 in FBS with 6 runs of 40+ yards, suggests Sarkisian knew that Texas was going to need to win high-scoring games. He can deny that publicly, but replacing the multi-year defensive production that the Longhorns lost to the NFL Draft was probably always going to yield that.

Then the firing of Pete Kwiatkowski happened. Even if you think that group disappointed down the stretch, albeit with some key injuries, it was a bold move by Sarkisian to fire Kwiatkowski and hire Will Muschamp as his defensive coordinator. The last time that Muschamp had total defensive autonomy was when he was the head coach at South Carolina in 2020. The last time that Muschamp led a top-50 scoring defense without the help of Kirby Smart/Glenn Schumann was the 2017 season when South Carolina finished No. 25.

Muschamp is indeed a question mark. That unit is the type of question mark that should probably slow down the preseason Texas hype train, which got ramped up on Sunday with the Coleman announcement, and understandably so. Coleman and Manning will enter the 2026 season as one of the elite duos in the sport, and if Ryan Wingo cleans up the drops issues (he had 7 in 2025), suddenly we’re talking about one of the most explosive offenses in the country.

Remember, as much success as Texas has had the last 3 years with a trio of double-digit win seasons, the offensive production went in reverse. Last year was the worst offense of the Sarkisian era both in scoring (30.5 points/game) and yards/play (5.96). Texas finished No. 41 in the FBS in both areas after being held to 23 points or less in half of its games vs. Power Conference competition.

If those 2025 offensive numbers repeat themselves, Texas will whiff on a Playoff berth again

Better yet, the calls for Sarkisian to give up play-calling duties will be deafening.

With Coleman in the fold, though, Sarkisian got someone who won’t be scheme-dependent in the way a new-look Texas receiver room often felt in 2025. That’s why seemingly everyone wanted the 19-year-old wideout. Sure, the play-calling and quarterback play limited him at Auburn, but being that prolific with downfield and contested catches with a quarterback who often refused to cut it loose said a lot about Coleman’s game. If that’s on display in a more consistent way with Manning, there’s reason to believe that Coleman can one-up the production of Sarkisian-era early-round Texas receivers like Matthew Golden, AD Mitchell and Xavier Worthy.

Does Coleman’s potential give Texas enough juice to be worthy of a preseason No. 1 ranking for the second consecutive year? Given the defensive personnel questions, it shouldn’t, though given how that played out for Texas in 2025, one would think avoiding that type of preseason hype would be a positive development.

The irony is that when the Longhorns were the preseason No. 1 team for the first time ever in 2025, many were willing to overlook the major offensive turnover. If that happens this year, it’ll be the opposite.

Whatever the case, Coleman’s arrival speaks to the sense of urgency on The Forty Acres. We know why he’s in Austin.

Time to make this thing happen.

The post I still have questions about Texas, but the Cam Coleman-Arch Manning duo isn’t one of them appeared first on Saturday Down South.

That’s not to dismiss the Demond Williams drama. That well-documented situation somehow unfolded as Leavitt sat court-side with Kiffin at the LSU basketball game, which led many to assume that the Arizona State transfer would wind up somewhere like Miami or Tennessee, where he also visited (he previously visited Kentucky but UK wasn’t among the finalists). In this era, that could never be ruled out. Shoot, we’re in the early stages of “portal flipping,” which seems like another dizzying process for top transfers.

This development came hours after the Leavitt commitment to LSU was announced:

But Tennessee’s last-ditch effort ultimately came up short, and Leavitt ultimately signed with LSU. He’ll be an ideal Year 1 quarterback for Kiffin and Charlie Weis Jr. It doesn’t take a quarterback guru to see why that’s the case.

Look no further than Kiffin’s Ole Miss quarterbacks and you’ll see why that’s the case. If there’s a quarterback in college football who feels like he could be the younger brother to Matt Corral and Jaxson Dart, it’s Leavitt. Trinidad Chambliss might’ve finished with the better season than any of them, but he was also someone who clearly understood his skill set upon arrival as a 23-year-old from the Division II ranks (there’s another key statistical difference that I’ll get to later). This is more of a conversation about who Leavitt is right now in comparison to when Corral and Dart began in the Kiffin offense as talented, but mistake-prone quarterbacks (Corral had 16 turnover-worthy plays in Year 1 with Kiffin in 2020 and Dart had 15 turnover-worthy plays as a first-year starter in 2022).

Two things can be true at the same time with Leavitt.

One is that someone with 5,468 yards of offense and 46 career touchdowns at the Power Conference level isn’t exactly someone who is starting at the ground floor. The 21-year-old is ahead of 2020 Corral and 2022 Dart in that regard. It’s exactly why Kiffin pursued Leavitt to be his Year 1 quarterback. There’s a sense of urgency for someone who left an Ole Miss team that was 19 seconds away from playing in a national championship. A year ago, Leavitt’s Arizona State squad was a 4th-and-13 stop away from advancing to the semifinals. Even though 2025 turned into a disappointing season for Leavitt and the Sun Devils, he still out-dueled eventual-Big 12 champ Texas Tech and posted an average of 276 yards of offense in his 7 starts this year.

Leavitt isn’t a lost cause. If that were the case, his portal market would’ve looked much different than it did.

He is, however, someone who needs some developing to his game. In those 7 games in 2025, he had 12 turnover-worthy plays. That was up from 5 in 2024 when he blossomed into an ideal 1-2 punch with Cam Skattebo. Leavitt played in roughly half the games, yet he still took more sacks in 2025 (20) than he had in 2024 (19) with a pressure-to-sack percentage that rose from 13.3% to 23.0%. Whether that was health-related or not, it was troubling to see Leavitt’s efficiency go in the wrong direction. After he averaged 8.1 yards/attempt in 2024, he didn’t hit that mark once in 2025.

Leavitt was still effective as a runner in Year 2 at ASU — he averaged 7.1 yards/rush and was only 2 yards short from matching his 2024 yards after first contact with 41 fewer attempts — but he averaged just 2 designed runs per game. It was difficult to build an ideal game plan for Leavitt, and it showed.

Enter Kiffin, stage left.

In Kiffin’s offense, Leavitt will throw out of play-action much more than he did at ASU. At least that’s what Kiffin’s time at Ole Miss would suggest is imminent. Here are the percentages of drop-backs with play-action for each QB1 during Kiffin’s 6 years in Oxford:

• 2020 (Corral): 49.1%
• 2021 (Corral): 60.4%
• 2022 (Dart): 57.6%
• 2023 (Dart): 45.5%
• 2024 (Dart): 53.2%
• 2025 (Chambliss): 48.8%

At Arizona State, Leavitt went from 38.5% play-action in 2024 to 29.6% in 2025. I’ll bet all of Leavitt’s NIL money that we see that number go up a considerable amount with Kiffin. Leavitt should be well-suited to handle that. Of those 12 turnover-worthy plays that Leavitt had in 2025, only 1 came went he operated out of play-action. He also only took 3 of those 20 sacks on those 85 play-action drop-backs. It might’ve been difficult to draw up a game plan for Leavitt at times because of how much success he’s had in his career when he can extend plays, but one can see why Kiffin and the LSU staff targeted him after a somewhat disappointing season.

I’d bet slightly less money but still have plenty of confidence that, much like the last quarterback who left Arizona State for LSU — some guy named “Jayden Daniels” — Leavitt will have more depth at the pass-catcher spots. Don’t get it twisted. Skattebo was a 1-man wrecking crew in 2024, and when healthy in 2024-25, projected first-round pick Jordyn Tyson was a better player than any incoming pass catcher at LSU. But the depth that Kiffin added in those spots had to be a selling point. ‘Tre Brown, Tre Wilson, Jackson Harris and Jayce Brown will all come in as decorated transfers to a group that’ll return dynamic pass-catching tight end Trey’Dez Green and the promising, but oft-injured, Nic Anderson.

In an ideal world, Leavitt is someone who can continue to find effective ways to have a diverse target distribution while still presenting the mobile element.

Chambliss ended up being a bit of an outlier for Kiffin quarterbacks because he had 81 designed runs compared to just 24 scrambles. When he was pressured a career-high 17 times by Miami in the Fiesta Bowl, he only scrambled once. Chambliss was still an effective designed runner and because he saw the field so well while extending plays, a scramble often felt like a last resort. Corral and Dart were much more likely to turn to that to move the chains, which was why they never even had a 2-1 split of designed runs-to-scrambles in a season (Chambliss was 3.4-to-1 in 2025).

Leavitt, on the other hand, has had a 1-2 split of designed runs-to-scrambles (43-to-79 at ASU). We know that scrambles are still going to be a part of Leavitt’s game. In his last full season in 2024, Leavitt led Power Conference quarterbacks in both scramble attempts (51) and scramble yards (429). That’s reminiscent of when Corral had 55 scrambles in 2021. As great as Corral was when healthy that season, he also got hurt in 2 of Ole Miss’s 3 losses. If you can believe it, Dart actually dialed back that part of his game in his first 2 years with Kiffin, but when Ole Miss was desperate for a run game in the Playoff-hopeful 2024 season, Dart was No. 6 among Power Conference quarterbacks with 45 scrambles.

It’s probably a bad sign for LSU’s offense if Leavitt has 45 scrambles. Not with the pieces that should be in place with the LSU ground game — retaining Caden Durham and Harlem Berry was huge — and his aforementioned pass catchers. Bigger throwing windows will come. Leavitt might make some Chambliss-like plays while escaping pressure, but if Kiffin and Weis work their magic, those instances won’t be as frequent as it felt during his time at ASU.

The skill set is there. Leavitt will enter 2026 as one of the SEC‘s most decorated quarterbacks, and understandably so. All 3 Ole Miss starting quarterbacks earned All-SEC honors in their pre-draft seasons. Leavitt could set up to be next, albeit with a different SEC program.

The path is clear.

The post Why Sam Leavitt to LSU always made sense for Lane Kiffin in Year 1 appeared first on Saturday Down South.

“Oh, so who’s your team?”

After all, even the most buttoned-up journalists/media personalities in this field went to school somewhere. If they didn’t go to a Power Conference school, chances are they rooted for some team with a national fanbase that garnered their attention from an early age. And yet, my default response never fell into 1 of those 2 buckets.

“Well, I went to Indiana, and we didn’t have a football team.”

Seeing that typed out, it borders a bit more on “harsh” than “self-deprecating.” In my defense, you’d say the same thing if you not only never saw your team in a bowl game during a 13-35 stretch with 1 victory vs. an FBS bowl team while in school (2008-11, graduated in May of 2012), but you also knew that, up until Curt Cignetti showed up, nobody in college football history had more losses than IU.

The irony is that Northwestern now holds that dubious title, and growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, that was my first college football experience. I could dig up old photos of my brother and I wearing a bunch of Northwestern gear during that 1995 Rose Bowl season, but I’d be lying if I said I rooted for the Wildcats after my baby teeth fell out.

You get it. None of what’s unfolding in Bloomington seems real. It’s a movie playing out in real time.

(Many have already pointed out that “Undaunted” makes sense for the future movie title, as long as the tagline is “Hoo, Hoo … who?”)

For those of us who lived IU football first-hand, this is an out-of-body experience

Watching IU fans turn Mercedes-Benz Stadium into Bloomington South in a blowout victory to clinch a national championship berth was beyond surreal. And while I knew that the massive alumni base meant there would be plenty of the Hoosier faithful in Atlanta — I once made that manageable 8-hour drive from Bloomington to the Georgia Dome (RIP) for the 2012 Sweet 16 matchup vs. Kentucky — seeing that on a “neutral” site compared to virtually all the pre-Cignetti iterations of Memorial Stadium crowds was mind-boggling.

When the program became a national lightning rod for its rise with a favorable Year 1 schedule under Cignetti, I would get weekly in-stadium videos sent to me from my cousin, Grace, who was a senior at IU, that felt like I was watching AI. What IU grads like she and I knew was that, before Cignetti’s arrival in 2024, there were some dirty little secrets about the student experience at football games. Or rather, call them unwritten rules.

One was that only freshmen went to IU football games. That was something I refused to believe upon hearing that … as a freshman who initially went to games.

Why? It certainly wasn’t a pricing issue with $5 or $10 student tickets available when I was in school — that’s slightly cheaper than the current get-in price for the national championship of over $4,000 — that even the brokest of broke college students could afford. The tailgate was just better than going into the stadium and inevitably leaving during the halftime band performance instead of battling an imminent hangover while hoping that IU could somehow overcome a 28-7 deficit. Nobody would mistake IU’s tailgating lots (located a short stumble across 17th St.) for “The Grove” at Ole Miss, but having experienced both, I can confirm that they weren’t as far apart as one would think, especially considering how depressing the in-stadium atmosphere always was in Bloomington.

When I wasn’t covering IU football for the student newspaper in 2010, the vast majority of my fall Saturdays with a home game followed a similar pattern. Wake up, rally the troops in our college house, tailgate, walk home, nap and turn on “SEC on CBS.” My roommates and I would watch places like “The Swamp” or “Death Valley” and fantasize about going to a school that had an actual football program worth showing up for. We obviously had that elite atmosphere in basketball at Assembly Hall, though my college career unfortunately coincided with the worst 3-year stretch in program history all because Kelvin Sampson texted recruits too often for the NCAA’s liking (not that I’m bitter).

Another dirty little secret/unwritten rule I learned about IU football came when I started covering the team in 2010. At that point, those who spent any time walking around the facility or looking at the program’s media guide would see a promotional photo of a packed Memorial Stadium with a sea of red. To the average eye, it sold a vision of a team that had a true Big Ten atmosphere. To the more skeptical eye, it was a bit misleading. Those promotional photos? They weren’t photoshopped, but they were heavily reliant on the biennial visiting Ohio State fans who gobbled up their cheapest tickets of the year to pack Memorial Stadium.

There’s a not-so-secret story about the time that former IU coach Lee Corso, who was responsible for 1 of the 3 pre-Cignetti bowl victories, took a timeout in the first half of the 1976 game vs. Ohio State so that he could take a picture of his team under the scoreboard that read “Indiana 7, Ohio State 6.” It was IU’s first lead against the Buckeyes in 20 years — it proved to be a smart photo taken in the eventual 47-7 loss — and perhaps best encapsulated the program’s seemingly perpetual uncompetitive state.

Needless to say, Corso probably had a different reaction to watching the 2025 Big Ten Championship when IU beat the Buckeyes for the first time in 37 years.

As odd as it sounds, IU grads and others might’ve still had some lingering doubt going into the Playoff

Yes, it was fair to still be slightly skeptical of IU, even as the No. 1 seed after the program’s first outright conference title since the Harry Truman administration. IU might’ve been worthy of being a touchdown favorite against Alabama, but it went into the Rose Bowl just trying to win a bowl game for the first time since 1991. And while we had seen Cignetti take aim at the SEC‘s scheduling philosophy unlike any IU ever coach ever had, it was still Alabama. Like, the program who had spent 141 weeks as the AP No. 1 team before IU finally got to that level for the first time in 2025 with its 13-0 start. As in, the program who had won 7 national titles since IU last won a bowl game. The only thing those programs shared historically was the color crimson.

Then, of course, the only thing those programs shared in Pasadena was a field … and even that might be a stretch.

I say that not to gloat. The weird part about all of this is that even as an IU grad, I’m not sure that I have the right to do such a thing.

Let’s be clear here. IU football has never ruined a fall Saturday for me. When the default feeling is “apathy,” it’s hardly crushing to watch Denard Robinson lead Michigan to a thrilling victory in Memorial Stadium like he did in 2010. It would be revisionist history for me to say that I’ve dealt with decades of suffering with IU football. At some point, plenty of us accepted that IU was too irrelevant to hurt us. Hence, why we could always casually poke fun at our alma mater’s often failed attempts to field a Big Ten football program.

But as the days count down to when I’ll make the 3.5-hour drive from Orlando to Miami to watch IU take on the Hurricanes in the College Football Playoff National Championship, I’ll speak about my school with tremendous pride. Of all the emotions that this 15-0 start has brought on, “shock” and “disbelief” are still prevalent, but I’ve never experienced sports pride quite like this. It isn’t just that IU has turned its fortunes around with this meteoric rise under Cignetti; it’s that more times than not, the Hoosiers demolish teams by making all the right plays. It’s hard to explain what it’s like to watch a team that’s seemingly always 1 step ahead when for so long, it was 10 steps behind.

I won’t pretend to have a crystal ball and tell you what awaits IU football. Lord knows I would’ve laughed you out of the room if you told me that the “Google me” guy who took over a 3-9 program was going to field a Year 2 team that’s suddenly in graphics alongside 2019 LSU. That’s where we are, though.

One day, I’ll have the right words to truly process IU’s rise under Cignetti. For now, I’ll just settle on tweaking my default response.

“Well, I went to Indiana, and none of this seems real.”

The post I’m an Indiana graduate who still can’t find the words to describe this season appeared first on Saturday Down South.

Adding quarterback transfers to start immediately has become the norm in college football. Predicting which guys will have success is next to impossible. Don’t believe that? Go back and read evaluations (or non-evaluations) of Diego Pavia and Trinidad Chambliss. Both thrived in what turned out to be ideal situations for their veteran skill sets.

Part of ranking quarterbacks (transfer or non-transfer) can be tricky because of how situation-dependent the position is. Go ask Bo Nix if he had the same surroundings at Oregon that he had at Auburn. Go ask Jayden Daniels if he had the same surroundings at LSU that he had at Arizona State. It’s often difficult to project these guys without factoring that into the equation.

With rankings, we’ll try to isolate some of that and focus mostly on who a player has been up to this point in their career. Surroundings will still come up, but it can’t be the only thing.

So, here’s how I’d rank the incoming SEC quarterback transfers (so far):

7. Landen Clark, LSU

Previous school — Elon

What’s promising — After Lane Kiffin helped turn a Division II transfer like Chambliss into one the best quarterbacks in the sport, it’s safe to say that an FCS transfer shouldn’t be seen as someone to ignore, even if he was brought in to be more of a long-term option. Mind you, Chambliss was a post-spring enrollee. Clark will get a full offseason to learn the Kiffin/Charlie Weis Jr. offense. He’s a true dual threat, having racked up double-digit TD passes (18) and rushing scores (11) in his redshirt freshman season. Accumulating nearly 3,000 yards of offense and 30 touchdowns is a promising start to a college career on any level. Arm strength isn’t going to be an issue for Clark as he transitions to the SEC.

What’s worth questioning — It’s not just that Clark did his damage against FCS competition. He also took a ton of sacks (35) and dealt with accuracy issues (67.5% adjusted completion percentage). For someone who was pressured on 38% of his drop-backs and sacked on 24.5% of those instances, he’s still learning about the mental clock needed to play the position. He knows how to buy time, but any comps to Chambliss end when you see that he had a 58.3 NFL QB rating when under pressure. Mind you, that was against mostly FCS defenses. In the SEC, that would’ve been No. 13 among qualified QBs, which would be magnified for someone who was listed at 186 pounds. Clark is a project who’ll need some key areas refined before he’s called upon to lead a Playoff contender.

6. AJ Hill, Arkansas

Previous school — Memphis

What’s promising — You’ll sense a theme with this list a bit later, but without spoiling the rest of it, know that play caller-quarterback continuity was coveted. Hill has that with Ryan Silverfield and offensive play caller Tim Cramsey. That’s an ideal positive for Hill, who played in 2 games at Memphis as a true freshman after he was a 4-star recruit. This is someone who had a vast high-level market after a high school career in which he threw for 10,651 yards and 123 passing touchdowns at Houston County High School in Warner Robins, Georgia, where he faced high-level competition. That’s extremely promising. He’s got 4 years of eligibility left, too. You can play the long game, though Hill’s size is already SEC-ready. He’s got a legitimate shot to be Silverfield’s first QB1 at Arkansas.

What’s worth questioning — It’s just a lack of experience. We got essentially 1 half of meaningful FBS football from Hill, and he was unable to lead Memphis back in a dreadful loss to a UAB team that had an interim coach. Make of that what you will. A true freshman who can’t overcome a double-digit deficit in his first career college appearance is hardly destined for failure. He’s just seen 2 career blitzes at the college level, and with surroundings that might not be built for Year 1 success, Hill has more questions than answers.

5. Kenny Minchey, Kentucky

Previous school — Notre Dame

What’s promising — Hey, there’s a reason why Kentucky poached him from Nebraska. Say what you will about missing out on the Sam Leavitt sweepstakes, but when Will Stein found his guy, he didn’t take “no” for an answer. Minchey’s appeal stems from him nearly winning the Notre Dame starting job, which ultimately went to CJ Carr who became one of the better quarterbacks in the sport in the latter half of the season. Once upon a time, that described Joe Burrow’s time at Ohio State before he hit the portal. Minchey’s skill set suggests that everything is on the table for Stein. Not only can he move, but he can throw on the move. He’s entering an offense that was bulletproof with 3 different transfer quarterbacks under Will Stein at Oregon, which is exactly why there’s more optimism than skepticism for someone who has minimal college reps.

What’s worth questioning — Minchey became to this 2026 cycle what Beau Pribula was to last year’s cycle. As in, he was talked about more nationally while he was in the portal and the issues with the system than his on-field play. Unlike Pribula, however, Minchey didn’t have a role in the offense during his time as a backup. This is someone with 32 career drop-backs through 3 years at the FBS level, and that aforementioned clip of him escaping the Navy pass-rush was 1 of 12 pressured drop-backs in his career. He’s got 2 career touchdowns, both of which were rushing scores in garbage time during Notre Dame blowouts. He’s far less experienced than Stein’s Oregon quarterback transfers, but entering Year 4 at the college level, the new Kentucky coach is clearly sold that he’s ready for the opportunity in 2026.

4. Austin Simmons, Mizzou

Previous school — Ole Miss

What’s promising — If you know Simmons’ story, you know he’s extremely unique. This is someone who graduated from Ole Miss at 19 years old. He learned to drive while he was at Ole Miss because he reclassified by 2 years and played multiple sports upon arrival. He represented Ole Miss at SEC Media Days as the heir apparent to Jaxson Dart, but then injuries and ball-security issues opened the door for the Chambliss story to unfold. The rest was history. Not being better than Chambliss was hardly an indictment of Simmons, who delivered the biggest drive of Ole Miss’s 2024 season when he relieved a briefly injured Dart against Georgia. The southpaw has been getting compared to Tua Tagovailoa since he was in middle school, and not just because they share a striking physical resemblance. He can stretch the field in ways that Mizzou couldn’t in 2025 with Pribula and Matt Zollers. That’ll be a huge asset for Doak Walker Award finalist Ahmad Hardy, who would prefer not to see 8-men boxes on every snap.

What’s worth questioning — Simmons might’ve gotten “Wally Pipped” by Chambliss, but let’s not forget that in both of his 2 favorable matchups to start the season, he had 2 first-quarter interceptions. That’s extremely atypical for a Kiffin-Charlie Weis Jr. offense. Typically, that opening script carves up opposing defenses. Simmons would’ve gotten his job back when he returned to the lineup if he had been better in those spots. At Mizzou, he’ll have an offensive coordinator in Chip Lindsey who didn’t produce a top-100 passing offense at Michigan with decorated true freshman Bryce Underwood. The Wolverines tied for dead last in the FBS with just 2 completions of 40 yards. Are we sure that Simmons, who didn’t look like a finished product in a limited sample size at Ole Miss, will have his downfield passing game maximized by Lindsey? That question will linger in Simmons’ second attempt to become an SEC starter.

3. Deuce Knight, Ole Miss

Previous school — Auburn

What’s promising — Yes, it’s promising that Knight is a former 5-star recruit. But recruiting rankings aside, we saw 1 game of him as a starter, and he got every blade of grass he wanted against FCS Mercer. His 9 rushes for 162 yards and 4 touchdowns didn’t exactly quiet the hype that the southpaw had upon arrival on The Plains. His run-game prowess, coupled with his 6-4 frame, is all sorts of promising. When he did throw against Mercer, he showed a willingness to work through his progressions and attack downfield. Given how frustrating Auburn’s quarterback situation was in 2025, many wondered if Knight being a 3rd-stringer was perhaps among the biggest missteps of the Hugh Freeze era. Needless to say, that won’t be an issue for Knight in Oxford, where he’ll work with John David Baker after he led a top-25 scoring offense at East Carolina with the mobile, but not as dynamic, Katin Houser.

What’s worth questioning — Knight has as many reps vs. Power Conference competition as you and I do, and in his lone game vs. FBS competition (Ball State was barely that), PFF charted him with 3 turnover-worthy plays on 8 drop-backs in relief. Make of that what you will. What’s clear is that we don’t know what that mental clock will look like in SEC situations yet. As promising as the Mercer game was, a year under Freeze doesn’t exactly guarantee that Knight got proper development to become a steady QB1 in 2026. Given the pending Chambliss eligibility situation, it remains to be seen if Knight will be called upon to be that guy in his new home. It’s worth noting that Knight did take his Ole Miss visit immediately after the news came out the Chambliss had his waiver for another year of eligibility denied by the NCAA, and it would now be up to an appeal process for him to return. Either way that shakes out, Knight’s development will be an intriguing topic of discussion in 2026.

2. Aaron Philo, Florida

Previous school — Georgia Tech

What’s promising — The guy who broke Trevor Lawrence’s Georgia high school football record for passing yards (13,922) is going to be entering Year 3 with his offensive coordinator, and the only thing that prevented him from being a Power Conference starter was Haynes King, AKA one of the best quarterbacks in the sport during his time at Georgia Tech. New Florida offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner recruited Philo to join him in Gainesville, where we know he’ll look different than King did. That feels obvious, though Philo did flash promise with 5.8 yards per carry on 16 attempts in 2 years. He can scramble — he had the game-winning touchdown run on a scramble in the final minute against NC State in 2024 — but he’s more likely to use his mobility to extend plays and keep his eyes downfield. We saw Philo used in a 2-quarterback system as a true freshman in the Miami win in 2024 when King was banged up and unable to attack downfield. Philo was expected to be King’s replacement at Georgia Tech, and it was seen as a massive loss when he hit the portal.

What’s worth questioning — I sound like a broken record with these quarterbacks, but the biggest knock is experience, or lack thereof. Philo earned the backup job as a true freshman in 2024 and got reps because King was a human battering ram, but he also didn’t attempt a pass against FBS competition in 2025. He’s been sacked once, so we don’t know what he’ll look like in the 4th quarter of a game in which he’s taken 4-5 sacks. There could also be some mechanical things for Faulkner to figure out with Philo, like avoiding how to not drift and throw off his back foot. Fortunately for Florida, Faulkner already knows the areas where Philo can get better, but what’s a bit more of an unknown is how he reacts once there’s a true scouting report on him. Both of those things were an issue for his predecessor, DJ Lagway. Philo’s path to becoming an upgrade includes him checking those boxes in Year 1.

1. Byrum Brown, Auburn

Previous school — USF

What’s promising — Thirteen quarterbacks in FBS history have registered 3,000 passing yards and 1,000 rushing yards in the same season (H/T The Next Round). Brown is one of them. He finished 2025 with the most scrimmage yards/game (347.2) of anyone in the FBS. On top of that, he’s working with the same offensive-minded head coach/play caller that he’s had for the last 3 seasons, the most recent of which yielded a top-5 scoring offense in the country. You won’t find a quarterback transfer with more continuity than what Brown has with Alex Golesh, who also brought over a bunch of the USF skill players. Brown only took 15 sacks and, if you take away that yardage, he racked up 1,107 rushing yards, 702 of which came after first contact. That’s no small feat for someone who was also No. 6 in the FBS in QB rating. Brown is an established, dynamic dual-threat quarterback unlike any that Auburn has had in the last decade.

What’s worth questioning — It’s lazy to just say that the competition level is the biggest question mark with Brown. We watched quarterbacks like Pavia and Chambliss take the SEC by storm upon arrival, so surely playing in The American shouldn’t be seen as some barrier to entry for Brown. I do, however, wonder what his game will look like against defenses that are better at wrapping up in space. I mentioned those rushing yards after first contact as a positive, but I wonder if he can still be as effective of a player if he’s not breaking tackles and keeping plays alive as often as he did as USF. He only had an adjusted completion percentage of 52.8% under pressure, which would’ve ranked dead last among qualified SEC quarterbacks in 2025. Under pressure, he had an NFL QB rating of 68.5, which would’ve ranked No. 11 in the SEC between Jackson Arnold and LaNorris Sellers. That’s the area of his game that’ll need work if he wants to follow in the footsteps of Pavia and Chambliss.

The post Ranking the incoming SEC QB transfers for 2026 (so far) appeared first on Saturday Down South.

“You,” in this case, is the underwhelmed Auburn fan who has an eyebrow raised with this ongoing USF migration to The Plains. Even though one could’ve anticipated this would happen the second that Alex Golesh signed on the dotted line, reality hit once these daily announcements of USF-to-Auburn transfers kept pouring in. Some scoffed, others have seemingly embraced it with open arms.

How should you feel, Auburn fans? Feel however you want, but if “annoyed,” or “bummed” is your first thought upon seeing double-digit USF transfers locked into Year 1 of the Golesh era on The Plains, well, I’m entitled to feel a specific way about you — “obtuse.”

Those who act like USF transfers aren’t good enough to wear an Auburn uniform haven’t been paying attention to a couple of things.

Let’s start with the obvious.

Fans of a team with 5 consecutive losing seasons for the first time since the Harry Truman administration shouldn’t scoff

They’re the only SEC program who doesn’t have multiple winning seasons in the 2020s, and the lone winning season was a 6-5 mark during the COVID season that got Gus Malzahn fired.

The last time Auburn could be considered respectable at football was an entirely different era of the sport. NIL wasn’t even legal yet. We’re talking about a team that just moved on to its 4th different coach of the 2020s who has an overall record of 33-40 in that stretch. The only SEC teams with fewer wins in the 2020s decade are Arkansas, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt, who still beat Auburn each of the last 2 years. During this 5-year stretch of losing seasons, Auburn’s lone 3-game winning streak vs. Power Conference opponents came in 2023 … when it faced those exact 3 SEC teams in a row.

It’s probably even more embarrassing that Auburn struggled so much despite having one of the best home-field advantages in the sport. Remember Jordan-Hare magic? In the last 5 years, Auburn is 5-17 vs. Power Conference competition at home. Since the start of 2021, Auburn has 6 wins vs. FBS teams who finished with a winning record, though since Nov. 2021, the Tigers have just 3 such victories … and 2 of them came vs. San Jose State and Western Kentucky.

You get it. Auburn fans who want to act high and mighty haven’t exactly earned the right to do so. Lord knows that crowd sold itself on plenty of those 5 teams that all finished with 7-plus losses.

It’s a new world, wherein roster construction comes in a variety of forms. I don’t need to preach to Auburn fans about the importance of the transfer portal, because for all of Hugh Freeze’s struggles, he at least understood the significance of plug-and-play guys. He just didn’t know how to evaluate the quarterback position, nor did he have any clue how to close games. When Freeze banked on continuity with Payton Thorne, it left everyone scratching their head that he doubled down on someone who had been benched repeatedly both at Auburn and at his previous stop, Michigan State.

It’s a bit different than Golesh banking on continuity with Byrum Brown, AKA the guy who just became the 12th player in FBS history to register 3,000 passing yards and 1,000 rushing yards in a season.

Mind you, Brown joined that exclusive club in just 12 games. What about the competition, you ask? The American isn’t the SEC, though one could forget that after Golesh was 1 of 3 coaches from the conference who filled SEC vacancies. Brown started his 2025 season with nonconference statement victories against last year’s Playoff participant, Boise State, as well as a historic win at Florida, wherein he racked up 329 yards of offense.

Sure, Brown didn’t ultimately play for a conference title. He suffered 3 losses in his starts. One of which was at Miami, who had a nice little season. The 2 others were 3-point losses in games in which he racked up 390 yards of offense. USF finished No. 5 in FBS with 40.5 points per game, which is why 9 of those first 10 USF-to-Auburn players came from the offensive side of the ball.

Picture the alternative. Like, Golesh looked at his top-5 offense in America and he said, “nah, I don’t want to bring any of that over with me to Auburn.” Or even worse, what if a 3-year starter like Brown and all of those skill-players didn’t want to follow Golesh? It’d be even more alarming than when Auburn didn’t sign a single transfer from Bryan Harsin’s Boise State squad because unlike when that transition took place post-2020, undergraduates can now transfer without penalty. Lord knows they’ve also got plenty of financial incentive to do so.

When Freeze came to Auburn from Liberty in 2023, some wondered if he’d bring over an established quarterback like Kaidon Salter. That never happened. Not a single player followed Freeze from Liberty, which could’ve been seen as a red flag, but it was somewhat overlooked because of how quickly he rebuilt Auburn’s high school recruiting pipeline after Harsin left it in shambles. And to Freeze’s credit, he at least got enough talent back in the door to make Auburn look like an SEC team, both at the high school and college level. Auburn was still too reliant on underclassmen, which is something that doesn’t figure to be the case in Year 1 with Golesh.

Yes, seeing decorated players like Cam Coleman and Deuce Knight leave as that USF migration took shape added to that angst

That’s at the root of some of this. If we found out that those guys never even got pitched from Golesh to stay, that’d be one thing. As far as we know, though, that wasn’t the case.

It’s not as if Golesh is entirely cleaning house and trying to copy and paste USF into Auburn. After all, he kept DJ Durkin on board to run that defense, which has already retained several key contributors from the “better-than-the-record-showed” 2025 group. This isn’t like when Scott Frost brought his entire UCF staff to Nebraska in 2018 and then questioned why a mediocre Group of 5 defensive staff didn’t translate in the Big Ten.

In an ideal world, what Golesh is doing is a whole lot closer to what Curt Cignetti did at Indiana.

No, that’s not my way of saying that the best version of this yields instantly a historic 2-year run. But when Cignetti got to IU, he brought 13 James Madison players with him in Year 1. Even at Indiana, who then had more losses of any FBS program in the history of the sport, some scoffed at the Sun Belt incomers. What many quickly saw was that they were there to lay the foundation and play immediately. Guys like Elijah Sarratt, Mikail Kamara, Aiden Fisher and D’Angelo Ponds weren’t just there so that Cignetti had some familiar faces to look at. They were there to provide the proof of concept from an 11-win James Madison program in 2023. All 4 of them then became All-Big Ten players for an 11-win Indiana program in Year 1.

Time will tell how many of the USF transfers emerge for Golesh’s Year 1 squad, whose ceiling will be determined by much more than how close Brown gets to another 3,000-1,000 season. It’s weird to be living in a world in which you can now pluck guys from a top-5 offense easier than retaining former 5-star recruits. Perhaps that’s backwards logic.

What’s clear is that this new era is taking shape at Auburn. It felt imminent that Golesh would try to bring some of the best elements of USF with him to Auburn, and so far, he’s done that. If fans want to wait and see what that looks like before assuming a turnaround is imminent, that’s fine. They’ve earned the right to temper expectations after a disastrous start to the decade.

But they haven’t earned the right to say the USF pipeline is destined for disappointment.

The post Auburn fans, don’t turn your nose up at incoming USF transfers appeared first on Saturday Down South.

It’s not just that Ole Miss‘s loss to Miami in a thrilling Fiesta Bowl clinched the 3rd consecutive year without an SEC team in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game; it’s that in that stretch, the conference is 3-7 vs. other conferences in the Playoff. Alabama (0-2), Georgia (0-1 including Notre Dame), Ole Miss (1-1), Tennessee (0-1), Texas (2-1) and Texas A&M (0-1).

(Texas losing to Washington in the 2023 semifinals didn’t count against the conference’s record because the Longhorns were still in the Big 12.)

Even worse, those wins came against 3 multi-loss conference champs (2024 Clemson, 2024 Arizona State and 2025 Tulane) who wouldn’t have qualified for the 12-team field as at-large teams.

A new era is here. The era of dominance that saw the SEC put a team in the national championship all but once from 2006-22 died once Georgia finished polishing off chicken wings in the 4th quarter against TCU. That feels like a lifetime ago.

With this new era comes a new arc. Dare I say, it’s an underdog arc. On the heels of a 2-8 postseason showing, wherein the SEC’s lone bowl victories came against a Group of 5 program on an SEC campus and a team who replaced its head coach after he went to jail, there’s no 7-page document that can spin this 3-year stretch. No NFL Draft streak, recruiting rankings or Playoff appearances will cover up the fact that when the lights have been brightest, the SEC has not shined in this new era.

Sure, Sankey can point out that the SEC wasn’t the worst league by virtue of going 12-6 vs. Power Conference foes in nonconference play, but combine that with the 1-8 mark in those games this postseason and a 13-14 record tells a tale of mediocrity.

At a time when the SEC was hoping to secure as many automatic Playoff bids as possible, the timing couldn’t be worse

After having 2 decades of data that showed not all conferences were created equal, the SEC’s 3-year pattern suggests that it really is a Power 4, and not a Power 2 in the NIL/transfer portal era. For a conference that wants to puff its chest out at the rest of the world, that’s not the development it hoped to see. For a college football world that grew tired of the regional dominance, you could argue the SEC’s era of dominance ending benefits the greater good.

You could also argue that for the first time since an undefeated 2004 Auburn squad wasn’t included in the BCS National Championship, the SEC can sell an underdog, “nobody believes in us” narrative. Granted, plenty of AP Top 25 voters will still probably believe in the SEC enough to have the conference all over the preseason polls, and if you close your eyes, you can picture no shortage of SEC representation in the first Playoff Poll of 2026.

But here’s where this SEC plot differs from the previous era — if and when an SEC team makes a postseason run, you’ll hear “team X is trying to become the first SEC team to play for a national title since 2022 Georgia.”

You heard it in 2022 when TCU became the first Big 12 team to win a Playoff game, even though it was followed by 65-7. You heard it in 2023 when Michigan became the first Big Ten team to win a national title since 2014, and it became the first non-Ohio State Big Ten team to win a national title in the 21st century. You heard it in 2025 when Miami’s end-zone interception at Texas A&M gave the ACC its first Playoff victory of the 2020s.

In some ways, Miami’s arc coincided with the SEC’s. While the SEC had its run of dominance for nearly 2 decades, Miami faded from a traditional power into obscurity. Mario Cristobal cringed at every mention of “‘The U’ being back” because he didn’t want to focus on the past. Why? Getting back to Miami’s late-20th century dominance was never his vision in this new era of the sport. Winning 5 national championships in a 2-decade stretch like Miami did from 1983-2001 would be ideal, but it wasn’t going to be realistic for Cristobal (it’s wild that Miami could win a national title before claiming its first ACC title after 21 years in the conference).

Perhaps Cristobal’s approach should be applied to SEC thinking moving forward

It’s a different era of the sport. It’s unrealistic to think that the 12-team Playoff era will ever produce anything like what we saw from 2006-22, wherein the SEC’s conference champ played for a national title all but once. Consistently having a seat at the table and being relevant is all the SEC should expect.

It’s not that the standard needs to be universally lowered, but it does need to be tweaked. Can the SEC move forward instead of flexing about the past? Will Sankey and other prominent SEC figures accept this new reality? Or will this be a point of contention?

On multiple occurrences, Sankey has publicly referenced Bob Dylan’s song “The Times, They Are A-Changin.'” He often makes quips about all the movement going on in college athletics, which is usually followed by data points that shows how the SEC is at the forefront of adapting to these new times. What if, in this changing college football world, Sankey offered up a different song and followed it with a wry smile. “I Ain’t As Good As I Once Was,” by late Oklahoma fan Toby Keith seems more appropriate for the current SEC, though perhaps a bit too self-deprecating for an alpha personality like Sankey. If he wanted, he could cheekily slip in the words that closed out the chorus.

“… but I’m as good once as I ever was.”

The SEC used to be hell on wheels. It has since faded back into the middle of the pack. That doesn’t mean it has faded into obscurity. It does mean it must accept reality.

A new era is here.

The post As the SEC is left out of another national championship, the new plucky underdog narrative is there for the taking appeared first on Saturday Down South.

The Fiesta Bowl hero wasn’t Trinidad Chambliss, though who knows if defensive pass interference had been called on Miami on the final pass attempt of this unprecedented Ole Miss run. That run wasn’t about just showing Lane Kiffin what he missed out on. That ship sailed weeks ago. This was about a team who needed 1 defensive stand to play in its first national championship since that sort of thing was actually settled on the field.

It was settled on the field on Thursday night in the Fiesta Bowl, and it was Beck who got the last laugh en route to a College Football Playoff National Championship berth.

Yeah, the guy who was seen as a walking turnover when he left Georgia on murky terms and landed at Miami. As in, the guy who still had the 4-interception games pop up without warning and was seen as the weak link of this beat-you-in-the-trenches Miami offense. Like, the guy who played the worst game of his career last year when Georgia was blown out at Ole Miss. You know, the guy who hadn’t had a rushing touchdown since Week 3.

That guy.

Who would’ve thought? Not “who would’ve thought that Miami would win on Thursday night?” The Hurricanes were 3.5-point favorites to reach their first national championship since the 2002 season, when a late defensive pass interference call against Miami in the Fiesta Bowl changed the fortunes of the program in ways that nobody could’ve predicted 23 years ago.

Ironic? Just a little. The college football gods have a sick sense of humor.

They did give us this magical story of Chambliss, from a post-spring, Division II transfer who was supposed to provide a veteran presence for QB1 Austin Simmons. And yeah, they gave us Pete Golding, who assumed the role of head coach under unprecedented circumstances and proceeded to out-duel mastermind Kirby Smart.

A less-than-fairytale ending shouldn’t take away from what Chambliss and Ole Miss did in 2025

Even if Kiffin had been on that sideline, it still would’ve been a run for the ages. Of course, it only added to the lore that he wasn’t.

Instead, that was Golding, who likely ran out of curse words watching Beck pick up key 3rd down after key 3rd down. In total, Miami converted 11-of-19 on 3rd downs (and 2-for-2 on 4th down), while Ole Miss was held to 2-for-10 in those spots. That’s magic. Beck had it, as did Malachi Toney and CJ Daniels, both of whom were difference makers. At some point, a bend-don’t-break Ole Miss defense broke.

It broke in the form of playing man coverage and forgetting about Beck.

You could argue a few things. The final glimpse of that play didn’t tell the full story. That was the byproduct of Beck working through his progressions and instead of forcing the action, a 6th-year college player recognized that he could’ve moonwalked into the end zone.

You could also argue that on the 87th Miami play of the night, Ole Miss ran out of gas at the worst time. Mental gas, physical gas, all the gas.

Including that 3-yard touchdown scramble, Ole Miss allowed 51 rushes for 191 yards. A defense that was closer to mediocre against the run than most semifinal defenses usually are picked the wrong time to be mediocre.

Sure, you could point back to the 4-point difference that came from Toney breaking the tackle of star Suntarine Perkins, and roughly 3 other Ole Miss defenders, to pick up a key first down that turned into a Miami touchdown instead of a field goal. You could point to how brutal it was that Ole Miss got that 73-yard touchdown run from Kewan Lacy, but then had to watch the nation’s leader in carries grit his teeth for just 9 more carries the rest of the game because of a hamstring injury.

But even as those moments unfolded and it seemed like Miami wouldn’t need magic, and that it simply needed to get out of its own way, Chambliss always had hope. The go-ahead drive and touchdown pass to Dae’Quan Wright was a perfect example of how poised Chambliss was in big spots.

Even in a loss, that’ll go down as one of the all-time touchdowns in program history. Down 5 with 3 minutes left and a national championship berth on the line? Are you kidding me? It doesn’t get any more clutch than that.

Well, check that. It does get slightly more clutch than that.

It’s wild that Chambliss even gave Ole Miss that instantly-controversial opportunity with a last-second heave to the end zone. Offenses with 18 seconds left and 75 yards to go aren’t supposed to have a shot.

Then again, teams without any Playoff history who enter the season ranked dead last in the SEC in percentage of returning production aren’t supposed to have a shot. They’re definitely not supposed to have a shot when their starting quarterback becomes a Division II transfer or their coach bolts for another job before the postseason begins.

Ole Miss wasn’t just magical; it defied logic.

The context of this semifinal run should never be lost. A week after an instant classic went the way of Ole Miss against Georgia, it was on the wrong end of another thriller. Some would say that was magic running out, and that the better team won. Even if that was the case, the better team still needed some magic.

The magic ran out for Ole Miss in Phoenix. It just happened on a logic-defying way.

The post Who would’ve thought that Carson Beck would have more magic than this Ole Miss team? appeared first on Saturday Down South.

Plus, the guys discuss what’s been a dreadful postseason for the SEC and what it actually means.

Michael Katz joins the show to talk all things Ole Miss.

The guys close with Lad of the Week!

Watch the full episode here:

Subscribe to The Saturday Down South Podcast here, and subscribe to Saturday Down South on YouTube for all the latest video content!

The post SDS Podcast: Semifinals! The SEC’s postseason woes, Michael Katz on Ole Miss’ wild run appeared first on Saturday Down South.

After what the Ole Miss quarterback did in a stunning victory against Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, you can probably apply that thought to a variety of situations.

Play an entire game without an offensive line? If anybody can do it, it’s Chambliss. Win a Playoff game without the use of his right hand? If anybody can do it, it’s Chambliss. Lead his team to a semifinal berth without his offensive-minded head coach? Strange as it was, Chambliss somehow already showed that he can do it. At this point, to doubt Chambliss is to scoff at his well-documented meteoric rise from post-spring Division II transfer to now “biggest thing standing in Miami’s way of playing in its first national championship in 23 years.”

The big question heading into Thursday night’s showdown is an obvious, albeit once unforeseen one – can Chambliss handle this surging Miami defense?

That remains to be seen as a slight underdog, but again, if anybody can do it, it’s Chambliss. As we’ve seen, pass rushes haven’t exactly fazed him:

Call me crazy, but yeah, that guy won’t panic.

The guy who has taken 1 sack in the last 3 games is capable of making things happen when the play breaks down

That’s not to disrespect the likes of Marcel Reed and Julian Sayin, both of whom were considered late-season Heisman Trophy candidates who’ll return as 2 of the most decorated quarterbacks in the sport in 2026. But those guys were sacked a combined 12 times. They scored a combined 2 touchdowns, both of which came from Ohio State. It felt like the Buckeyes delivered a good third quarter against the Miami defense, but outside of that, the other 7 quarters have been all about the Canes.

The defense known as “ESV” for excitement, swarm, violence has been all of that. Rueben Bain Jr. and Akheem Mesidor have led that unit to one of the most drastic year-to-year turnarounds of the Playoff era. That’s been painfully obvious in the first 2 rounds. In addition to pressuring those quarterbacks, Miami’s top-5 run defense has been on display with a combined 134 rushing yards allowed in the first 2 Playoff games.

If you’re wondering how Miami has gotten to this point while only scoring 3 offensive touchdowns in those 2 games, well, there’s your answer.

One could look at Reed and Sayin and wonder why neither one could truly settle in. After all, Reed’s mobility has been an asset all season with 50 scrambles for 391 yards (No. 9 among FBS quarterbacks) while Sayin finished his first year as a starter with a 74.3% adjusted completion percentage under pressure (No. 6 in the FBS).

What gave then? With the level that Miami is playing at up front, it’s not enough to just be 1 of those things; you have to be both of those things.

Reed only had a 61.4% adjusted completion percentage under pressure (No. 54 in the FBS) on 6.1 yards/attempt (No. 65 in the FBS) with 8 turnover-worthy plays, while Sayin had just 11 scrambles all season (No. 139 in the FBS), and they went for 48 yards (No. 167 in the FBS). It showed against Miami.

Compare that to Chambliss, who ranks No. 19 in the FBS with a 69.4% adjusted completion percentage under pressure with just 1 turnover-worthy play in those spots. And while he’s more of a designed runner than a true scrambler — he had 23 scrambles compared to 79 designed runs — he’s avoided mistakes in those pressure-packed moments in a variety of ways in ways that those 2 previous Miami opposing quarterbacks didn’t.

To be fair, Chambliss has also been pressured at the second-lowest rate on his drop-backs (21.2%) among all FBS quarterbacks

Go figure that the only FBS quarterback who has been pressured less often is his Fiesta Bowl counterpart, Carson Beck (15.8%). Why has it been so difficult to pressure Chambliss? Outside of simply holding up in pass protection, the 2 best ways to combat an elite pass rush are executing an up-tempo offense and having a dominant run game. Ole Miss does both of those things well. The latter is a key difference between this year’s team and last year’s team with Kewan Lacy. As long as his shoulder is intact, you can bet on him still being featured prominently in this offense so that the Miami pass rushers aren’t just pinning their ears back all night.

In an ideal world, Ole Miss would stay on schedule with Lacy — something that won’t be a given with Miami’s aforementioned top-5 ground game defense — and the quick-hitting passing game. Ole Miss has 6 different guys with at least 24 catches within 9 yards of the line of scrimmage (that’s as many as A&M and Ohio State combined).

Then again, go look at the most important play of Miami’s win against Ohio State. Sayin, who had just 24 incompletions all season on passes that were within 9 yards of the line of scrimmage, had one taken the other way by Miami Swiss Army Knife Keionte Scott.

The former Auburn transfer was a menace in the Texas A&M game, too, both in coverage and hunting down Reed. He’s exactly why this Miami defense is much more than just a lethal defensive line. You could argue that Scott will be the toughest guy for Chambliss to navigate because of how successful he’s been at preventing mobile quarterbacks from scrambling and moving the chains.

But as wild as it sounds, Chambliss didn’t register a single scramble against Georgia when he played the game of his life. That game and The Citadel were the only 2 starts at Ole Miss in which that happened.

Of course, Miami’s pass rush has been more consistent than Georgia’s. That could change the approach with Chambliss, who completed 5 of 8 passes for 87 yards (10.9 yards attempt) and 3 first downs when he was pressured in the Sugar Bowl. Sayin never scrambled against Miami because he took as many sacks (5) as he had completed passes on the 12 drop-backs in which he was pressured (he averaged 2.5 yards/attempt under pressure). Reed actually had fewer completions under pressure (6) than he had sacks taken (7), and while he scrambled 6 times for 46 yards, getting pressured on 34.6% of his drop-backs was too much to overcome.

Add it all up and it’s fair to say that 2 things are true at the same time. One is that Miami’s defense will be the toughest task to date for Chambliss. The other is that Chambliss will be tougher for Miami than Sayin, Reed or any other quarterback it faced in 2025.

It’s a true strength-on-strength matchup. Good. That’s what it should be with a spot in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game on the line. Anybody who points to these teams being in a 6-10 matchup as a reason why this isn’t a headliner semifinal simply hasn’t been paying attention. Chambliss against the Miami defense could end up being the premier battle of the Playoff. For all we know, the winner of that chess match will go on to take home a national title.

Is that too much pressure on a guy who was playing in front of 2,521 people the last time a championship berth was on the line?

Time will tell, but if anyone can do it, it’s Chambliss.

The post Can Trinidad Chambliss handle this Miami defense? Why he’s got a better shot than Marcel Reed and Julian Sayin appeared first on Saturday Down South.

If you’ve been casually watching Ole Miss at any point this season, there have been plenty of other things that have likely caught your attention. For starters, Lane Kiffin made the unprecedented move of leaving his Playoff-bound team for LSU. That then led to several LSU-bound assistants pulling double duty to help Ole Miss in its Playoff push.

Of course, there was also the meteoric rise of Trinidad Chambliss, who went from post-spring Division II transfer to 8th-place finisher in the 2025 Heisman Trophy voting. His highlight-reel performance fueled an upset of Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, which was followed by reports that if he gets a waiver from the NCAA, he’ll return to Ole Miss in 2026 instead of transferring to a place like LSU.

Somewhat lost in the shuffle of all of this has been Lacy’s historic season, and not just because he set the program’s single-season rushing touchdown record while becoming the first Ole Miss player to be named a finalist for the Doak Walker Award (it went to Notre Dame’s Jeremiyah Love).

Shoot, it was lost in the shuffle of Chambliss escaping 3 Georgia pass-rushers on that all-important 3rd-and-7 that if Lacy didn’t both catch that pass and absorb the contact to pick up the first down, Ole Miss wouldn’t have moved the chains to set up that go-ahead touchdown drive.

Yes, Chambliss pulled off a Houdini act, but as Sean McDonough said on the call, it was Lacy who survived the big hit to pick up that pivotal first down. That play was at the center of Chambliss earning Sugar Bowl Offensive MVP honors, and deservedly so. He was as clutch as clutch gets. Lacy’s 110 yards of offense weren’t going to outshine Chambliss, especially considering that his fumble — the first of his college career — turned into a Georgia scoop-and-score.

Still, Ole Miss doesn’t win its biggest game in over half a century if not for Lacy’s toughness

It only added to the notion that he’s in the midst of one of the best seasons we’ve ever seen from an SEC running back. Even if that had been his last performance in an Ole Miss uniform, it would’ve been one for the ages. But as we found out late Monday night, he’s set to return to Oxford for his pre-Draft season in 2026.

Let’s rewind to the Sugar Bowl again, though. He played that game while dealing with a shoulder injury, which may or may not have been the main culprit of that extremely atypical fumble. With everything on the line, he still got 24 scrimmage touches, 2 of which resulted in rushing scores.

Speaking of that, Lacy is now up to 23 rushing scores through 14 games. He’s tied for No. 3 in SEC history in that department, trailing only 2015 Derrick Henry (28) and 2020 Najee Harris (26) on that list, both of whom won the Doak Walker Award in those respective seasons. Of course, both of those stars also did that for Alabama teams who went on to win national titles. It’s to be determined if Lacy will do that. The oddsmakers would suggest that Ole Miss has the least-likely odds to pull that off of the remaining semifinal field (+550 on FanDuel).

Unlike Henry and Harris, though, Lacy didn’t even crack the top 10 of the Heisman voting, much less the top 5. While the context of his postseason didn’t factor into that, it’s fair to wonder how different Lacy’s Heisman candidacy would look if voting were held after the national championship.

Some might scoff at that notion because Kiffin’s rushing attacks were mostly prolific at Ole Miss. The up-tempo spread scheme certainly helped Lacy.

What that would ignore is the fact that Lacy has bucked the Kiffin-era trend of having a diverse backfield distribution. Through 14 games, Lacy is tied for No. 2 in FBS with 295 carries, which is a whopping 266 carries more than any other Ole Miss running back (that explains why he still got 22 carries with a banged-up shoulder in the Sugar Bowl). Logan Diggs is No. 2 among Ole Miss running backs with 29 carries on the season. Even the 2023 Ole Miss team with Quinshon Judkins still saw Ulysses Bentley IV finish with 95 carries.

On top of that, Lacy is No. 3 in FBS with 88 missed tackles forced as a runner

Just for a little perspective, here are the 10 single-season SEC leaders in missed tackles forced since PFF began tracking that in 2014:

• 1. 2025 Ahmad Hardy (Mizzou), 96
• 2. 2025 Kewan Lacy (Ole Miss), 88
• 3. 2015 Leonard Fournette (LSU), 85
• 4. 2021 Brian Robinson (Alabama), 79
• 5. 2023 Quinshon Judkins (Ole Miss), 77
• 6. 2015 Derrick Henry (Alabama), 76
• 7. 2022 Quinshon Judkins (Ole Miss), 72
• T8. 2020 Najee Harris (Alabama), 71
• T8. 2019 Clyde Edwards-Helaire (LSU), 71
• 10. 2024 Dylan Sampson (Tennessee), 70

How fitting it is for this discussion that the only SEC running back with a better total in the 12 years of the missed tackles forced stat is someone playing in the same season as Lacy. Go figure that it’s Hardy, who did his damage at Mizzou, AKA the place where Lacy left after 1 season in which he got 23 carries for 104 yards and 0 rushing scores.

Odds are that Hardy will edge out Lacy and win the SEC rushing title. It would take 186 more rushing yards from Lacy for him to pass Hardy, though even if that happened, many would point out that Lacy got the benefit of extra games … which would ignore that Lacy played a monumental role in Ole Miss earning those extra games.

That context shouldn’t be lost, either. Ole Miss entered this season without a Playoff berth. The irony is that while that box is now checked, Ole Miss has still never reached the SEC Championship. In other words, the program could play in a true national championship game before it plays for a conference title. If that happened, yes, give a ton of praise to Chambliss, Pete Golding and this coaching staff that’s probably averaging more time on private jets to and from Oxford than hours slept.

But a year after Ole Miss failed to make the Playoff with what was believed to be its most talented roster ever, look no further than Lacy to find that difference maker. Instead of being a team without a true workhorse back who could finish games, Ole Miss has had Lacy, who has carried the ball 98 times when leading by 7 points or less. That’s 22 more attempts than any other player in FBS, and it’s 18 more than any SEC running back in the last decade.

If that’s not value, I don’t know what is.

We’ll have to wait on Lacy’s final 2025 numbers to put things fully in perspective, but for now, he’s 1 of 7 players in SEC history with 1,400 rushing yards and 20 rushing scores in a season. He’s got 986 yards after first contact as a runner, which currently ranks No. 5 among SEC running backs since PFF began tracking that in 2014. Lacy’s 9 rushing scores vs. teams currently in the AP Top 25 is the most of any SEC player in the last decade, though that could change when the final AP Poll comes out.

What won’t change is that this has been a historic season for No. 5. A year that began with uncertainty in Oxford blossomed into a special season … even if the uncertainty never faded. The only certainty going into Ole Miss and its Fiesta Bowl matchup with Miami is that Lacy will be featured prominently against that loaded Canes defensive front. How he fares remains to be seen, but if Lacy’s first season in Oxford is any indication, it’ll take an all-world effort to prevent him from making his presence felt.

Only a fool would overlook him.

The post Don’t ignore that Kewan Lacy put together a historic SEC season (and he’s not done yet) appeared first on Saturday Down South.

Even if Ole Miss goes on to win a national title — something that has the longest odds of the 4 remaining teams at +570 (via FanDuel) — we’re still talking about a 4-7 mark for the SEC this postseason. Also, 3 of those wins would be from Ole Miss and 1 of them would be for Texas, who faced a Michigan team with a fired head coach with roughly a dozen players absent in the Citrus Bowl. Make of that what you will.

What anyone can take from this postseason is that it hasn’t exactly been a time in which chants of “S-E-C! S-E-C!” have been heard. Flexing has been nonexistent from the conference who has done the most of that in the 21st century. There’s not 1 specific reason for that, though there have been plenty of non-Kanell takeaways from the SEC’s disappointing postseason:

To be fair, opt-outs impacted all of those games, some more than ever. That’s not to say that “SEC teams weren’t motivated,” but for many of those games, it was a different set of circumstances than what we saw in the regular season. Some SEC teams should’ve benefitted from that, and some probably shouldn’t have. Either way, 2-7 is 2-7.

Not to put lipstick on a pig here, but it’s also probably worth noting that 5 of those 7 losses were by 1 score. That’s not including Mississippi State, who lost by 14 in the Mayo Bowl that nobody wanted to play in after it trailed by 7 with 2:16 to play. Indiana destroying Alabama was the only real example of a true bowl beatdown of an SEC team, though that’s perhaps the best place to examine the more macro issue facing the SEC that Bruce Feldman pointed out in that column. The sport has changed, and it’s fair to wonder if the SEC contenders were knocked down a peg for it.

If Ole Miss loses to Miami, it’ll mark 3 consecutive years without an SEC team in the national championship

That hasn’t happened since 1999-2002. As it stands, Alabama and Georgia have 1 combined semifinal appearance in the last 3 seasons, which is significant when you remember that they’ve won every SEC title in the 2020s. Ergo, this is the third consecutive season in which the SEC Championship winner failed to play in a national championship. From 2006-22, the SEC Championship winner played in the BCS/College Football Playoff National Championship all but once (2014 Alabama).

At this point, that’s not nothing. So does it mean the conference is nothing more than a hype machine? There are some other takeaways from the way that things have played out within the SEC this bowl season.

Let’s get to them:

Diego Pavia getting silenced by Iowa feels like the SEC’s postseason in a nutshell

To be clear, Pavia was lights out in the second half against Iowa. It was shades of his Texas performance, which still came up short after a sleepy start. The Vandy defense allowing 34 points to Iowa certainly wasn’t on Pavia, though when you say before the season “you gotta score 7 points to beat Iowa,” yeah, that’s gonna come back to bite you in a 34-27 loss.

Of course Iowa was going to clown Pavia for that after he was as vocal as anyone that the SEC was a cut above the competition. The Heisman runner-up had all the motivation to finish his college career with a bang, and instead, he couldn’t keep pace with the Iowa offense that he mocked.

(The Hawkeyes averaged 6.4 yards per play against Vandy, and if we’re being honest, it should’ve been 37 or 41 points if not for a horrendous decision to throw the ball on 1st-and-goal from the Vandy 4-yard line, which resulted in an interception. It felt like the college football gods were telling Iowa “how dare you briefly forget who you are in this all-important matchup for conference narratives.”)

It was a bad look, and while plenty of SEC fans would like to disassociate with all things Pavia, he was still the best player in the conference this year. The fact that Pavia, AKA the conference’s most accomplished and polarizing player of 2025, was part of the SEC’s ugly postseason only added to the narrative that the conference was overhyped.

But was it really overhyped?

The “2-7” anti-SEC crowd is conveniently leaving out the other piece of data

Like, records vs. Power Conference foes in nonconference play. Entering the postseason, here’s what those looked like:

• SEC: 12-6 (.667)
• Big 12: 8-6 (.571)
• Big Ten: 5-7 (.417)
• ACC: 7-19 (.269)

That played a massive part in the SEC getting 5 Playoff bids. And yeah, 2 SEC Playoff teams were eliminated by virtue of getting matched up vs. one another, though those wins and losses didn’t count for or against the conference’s postseason numbers.

I know that an ACC fan who watched the conference go 3-0 vs. the SEC in bowl season would like that to be the only piece of data. It’s not. At the same time, the ACC has had a heck of a postseason in ways that the SEC did not. It needed to because when you’re entering Year 6 of the decade and you’re still searching for your first New Year’s 6/Playoff victory — they had lost all of those games by double digits — you’re desperate. Thankfully for the ACC, Miami ended that drought with a thrilling Round 1 win at Texas A&M and teams like Virginia beat Mizzou while Wake Forest got all the Mayo against 5-win Mississippi State.

Call me crazy, but I tend to think that nonconference play matters, too. We can get into whether it matters more than the current iteration of a postseason wherein the conference with the most NFL Draft picks in each of the last 19 years is probably most susceptible to bowl opt-outs, but let’s not make excuses to conventiently negate results. Instead, let’s do this. Combine the records vs. Power Conference foes in nonconference play with the postseason records.

Here’s what those look like (through Jan. 5):

• Big Ten: 14-11 (.560) — 5-7 reg. season + 9-4 postseason
• Big 12: 12-10 (.545) — 8-6 reg. season + 4-4 postseason
• SEC: 14-13 (.519) — 12-6 reg. season + 2-7 postseason
• ACC: 15-23 (.395) — 7-19 reg. season + 8-4 postseason

It’s unpopular to say “every conference sort of finished closer to one another than anybody realized.” That doesn’t confirm narratives, though. Unless Ole Miss wins a national title, the Big 12 will finish with a better nonconference record vs. Power Conference foes than the SEC. At the same time, the Big 12 was a 1-bid league who watched its dominant conference champ get shutout in its lone Playoff game. Also, the Big 12 went 1-3 vs. the SEC this year with the lone win coming via Houston earning a 3-point win vs. LSU and the scraps of the Brian Kelly era. Whether Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark admits it or not, the Big 12 would trade places with the SEC’s 2025 in a heartbeat.

The Big Ten? Not so much. The conference has the 2 favorites to win it all heading into the semifinals, and if Indiana or Oregon do end up being the last team standing, the conference will have produced a unique national title winner in the last 3 seasons. That’s SEC stuff. Hence, why the Big Ten has had some SEC-like bravado the last couple years.

But want to know what’s crazy? The SEC could still have the last laugh on the Big Ten this season

Wait, what? How is that possible? Didn’t I watch Bret Bielema’s squad hold on to the ball for roughly the last 45 minutes of that win vs. Tennessee? And have I already forgotten about Pavia’s embarrassment vs. Iowa and that historical beatdown that Indiana dropped on Alabama?

All of that is hay in the barn. As it stands, the Big Ten’s record vs. the SEC in the 2025 season is 4-3. Perhaps that’s where the number will finish and the Oregon-Indiana winner will face Miami for a national title.

But despite this brutal postseason, the SEC can improve to 4-4 vs. the Big Ten in the 2025 season with an Ole Miss national title victory. And if that happens, well, tie goes to the conference that produces the national title winner.

That wouldn’t be the obvious takeaway from that result playing out, and maybe it shouldn’t be. After all, the Big Ten has held the title of “most dominant conference” in the eyes of the public, even though the nonconference wins vs. Power Conference foes were somewhat underwhelming outside of Ohio State’s 14-7 win vs. Texas. It held that title because it was believed to have 3 title contenders instead of 1 for the SEC while the ACC and Big 12 were merely hoping for their lone representatives to make a run.

The SEC’s hopes of sweeping an embarrassing postseason under the rug now hinges on Ole Miss, AKA the team who has never even been to an SEC Championship. It hinges on the team who watched its head coach leave in hopes of finding a national championship path elsewhere, and it hinges on a quarterback who was playing Division II football in Big Ten country in 2024.

Weird? You bet. Then again, we’re living in a world in which Indiana is the national championship favorite after a quarterfinal round beatdown of Alabama in the Rose Bowl. “Weird” doesn’t even begin to describe reality in 2025. Well, I suppose weirdness carried over into 2026. Perhaps at this point, nothing would be weirder than Ole Miss pulling off as unlikely of a national championship run as any in the 21st century. Alternatively, the SEC’s postseason will end with the conference in a weird, desperate spot in ways that it hasn’t experienced since the 21st century began.

Something tells me that the “2-7” crowd will have something to say (or not say) about that when the postseason concludes.

The post Non-Danny Kanell SEC takeaways from the SEC’s disappointing bowl season appeared first on Saturday Down South.

Seven of 16 SEC teams called on a transfer as QB1 in 2025. Mind you, that excludes guys like Diego Pavia, Blake Shapen and Taylen Green, all of whom were 2024 transfers. If we include those cases, a whopping 10 SEC teams started former transfer quarterbacks for multiple games in 2025. A team like Auburn even started 2 transfers.

It’s extremely likely that during this new lone transfer portal window (Jan. 2-16), roughly half the conference will hand-pick its next QB1. Some will fare better than others. If 2025 was any indication, we’ll have some complete failures and some remarkable success stories.

For today’s discussion, we’ll look back at the 2025 class of SEC quarterback transfers. Specifically, we’ll focus on the guys who started multiple games. That excludes guys like Air Noland and Luke Kromenhoek, who don’t factor into this discussion because they ended up being 3rd-string quarterbacks who have since hit the portal again.

Today, we’ll look back on the 8 total SEC quarterback transfers who got starts in 2025:

Jackson Arnold, Auburn — D-

Woof. Perhaps we should’ve been skeptical about Arnold when the fall camp discussion centered around building his confidence back up. The only reason that Arnold didn’t earn an “F” is because he did lead the Tigers to an important season-opening win at Baylor, and he gave his team a chance late in the reunion game at eventual-Playoff team Oklahoma. Perhaps it’s putting lipstick on a pig to say that Auburn’s 5th consecutive season could’ve been even worse. But yeah, the same issues that plagued his time in Norman resurfaced at Auburn. When he faced pressure, he took a sack 33% of the time, which was the second-worst rate among Power Conference quarterbacks. Arnold only attempted 23 passes that traveled 20 yards beyond the line of scrimmage (T-15th in SEC). Mind you, he had Cam Coleman on his team. Hence, why he was benched during a dreadful start at 2-10 Arkansas.

Arnold’s shortcomings played a significant role in Hugh Freeze’s midseason firing. A savior, he was not.

Ashton Daniels, Auburn — C

Daniels is a tough grade because on one hand, the season was essentially lost by the time he came in for Arnold in the Arkansas game. He did lead a comeback victory there, and his legs were a huge reason why Auburn had chances to pull off upsets against 10-win teams like Vanderbilt and Alabama. But it’s hard to get past the Kentucky loss, which was ultimately the final straw for Freeze. Daniels couldn’t do anything in a favorable home matchup against a 5-win UK squad. The Stanford transfer was at least willing to cut it loose in ways that Arnold didn’t (he at least force-fed Coleman targets).

Still, though. If he had been an obvious success, Alex Golesh could’ve built his Year 1 offense around him. Instead, Daniels’ decision to sit the Mercer game and remain under the 4-game threshold means he’ll take his final year of eligibility elsewhere.

Zach Calzada, Kentucky — F-

A simple “F” didn’t seem harsh enough. Not for the guy who collected 7 figures, started 2 games and then had the audacity to brag about his NIL money on social media. Calzada somehow got another opportunity to be an SEC starting quarterback even though he had failed at 2 different programs (Texas A&M and Auburn) before putting up numbers at FCS Incarnate Word. For whatever reason, Mark Stoops brought Calzada in instead of building his offense around promising homegrown quarterback Cutter Boley and giving him all the QB1 reps. Calzada registered a single touchdown, and it was a rushing score in a 1-score win in the season opener vs. Toledo. Even worse, Calzada went 1-for-17 on passes 20 yards beyond the line of scrimmage. Shoot, on passes that traveled 10 yards beyond the line of scrimmage, Calzada was 3-for-25 and when under pressure, he was 3-for-16.

If that’s not a complete failure, I don’t know what is.

Michael Van Buren, LSU — C-

What if I told you that Garrett Nussmeier would start into November, but that Van Buren would be the lone LSU quarterback to lead a 26-point effort vs. an FBS team in 2025? You’d assume that this year was a disaster and that Brian Kelly lost his job. You’d be correct. Van Buren took over for Nussmeier in a post-Kelly firing offense, so that context needs to be remembered. The Mississippi State transfer, who looked effective at times as a true freshman in 2024 when Blake Shapen suffered a season-ending injury, wasn’t exactly dealt a loaded deck. With the cards that he was dealt, Van Buren at least prevented LSU from becoming an even bigger punching bag.

But the clamoring for him to have an increased role in the offense early in the season wasn’t exactly vindicated by 13-point showings vs. Western Kentucky and Oklahoma. Van Buren only avoids a “D” because LSU had some offensive life against a 10-win Houston team in the bowl game.

Beau Pribula, Mizzou — C

On one hand, Pribula was exactly what Eli Drinkwitz hoped that he would be when he made the polarizing decision to enter the transfer portal as Penn State prepared for a Playoff run. Pribula got Mizzou off to a 5-0 start that resulted in a top-15 ranking with a masterful showing against Kansas. The questions about his deep-ball prowess faded in the first part of the season, and the injury to Sam Horn in the season opener ruled out any possibility that Pribula could lose his job. Coupled with his proven mobility and it was fair to say that Penn State might’ve picked the wrong quarterback.

But like many first-time starters, Pribula’s decision-making was a liability. Ball security was an issue, and an injury in the Vandy loss forced him to miss multiple starts. Mizzou’s passing game never really took shape and Pribula had a 105.4 QB rating vs. SEC competition (last among qualified SEC QBs). He ultimately hit the portal again at season’s end.

John Mateer, Oklahoma — B-

Before Dr. Shin became a household name, Mateer was the favorite to win the Heisman Trophy. We can’t forget that. Going into October, Mateer would’ve been considered an obvious “A.” The packaged deal with Ben Arbuckle had pushed Brent Venables off any hot-seat discussions. But post-hand surgery Mateer was a different player. In Mateer’s final 8 games, OU’s offense was held to 4.9 yards/play. It hit 27 points just once post-September, though it only did that because R Mason Thomas returned a fumble for a touchdown and Tate Sandell hit 4 field goals (3 from 50 yards) at Tennessee. Mateer showed remarkable toughness for an improved Oklahoma team that reached its first Playoff of the post-Lincoln Riley era. He deserves plenty of credit for that because he was certainly an upgrade from the Arnold/Michael Hawkins experience.

But he was No. 15 among 16 qualified SEC quarterbacks in adjusted completion percentage on 20-yard throws (35.3%) and he was No. 13 in NFL QB rating under pressure (51.6). Isaiah Sategna’s home-run play ability prevented those latter-half numbers from looking much worse than they were. Mateer ranked No. 16 in the SEC in adjusted completion percentage, and he also had the third-most turnover-worthy plays (20). That combination wasn’t what the defensive-minded Venables hoped it would be, but Mateer was still one of the better success stories in his class.

Trinidad Chambliss, Ole Miss — A++

From Division II to 8th in the Heisman Trophy voting and to the College Football Playoff semifinals. Sure. Just as we all predicted. Chambliss is 2 wins away from putting himself in the Cam Newton-Joe Burrow conversations of “best transfers in college football history.” Shoot, I’d argue he’s closer to that than many realize after leading Ole Miss to a remarkable comeback win against Georgia. Without Lane Kiffin, Chambliss showed that he wasn’t just the byproduct of that system. The off-script plays and accuracy downfield he made is off the charts. To think that Chambliss was a post-spring transfer who entered the season as a backup is beyond comprehension.

If Austin Simmons never gets hurt, does anyone even know who Chambliss is outside of diehard Ole Miss fans? That’s a fair question, though Simmons did struggle with turnovers at the start of the season, which was what helped Chambliss to have an opportunity to keep the starting job. Needless to say, he didn’t just keep the starting job. He put himself alongside the Mannings as one of the most impactful players in program history. There aren’t enough “A+” grades to hand out for Chambliss.

Joey Aguilar, Tennessee — B

Context is important. At this time last year, Aguilar was set to compete for the starting job at UCLA after transferring from Appalachian State. Then, of course, the Nico Iamaleava drama unfolded and after Tennessee whiffed on some more proven options, it ended up with a de-facto trade for Aguilar. As a post-spring transfer, Aguilar walked into a situation with 4 new starters on the offensive line. Plus, Tennessee’s top 3 receivers were gone, as was SEC Offensive Player of the Year Dylan Sampson. So yes, Aguilar leading a Tennessee team that averaged 40 points per game was no small feat. He had 3,565 passing yards and 24 passing touchdowns, along with 26 deep-ball completions, which was more than Iamaleava (16) and Joe Milton (18). On top of that, Aguilar went from having an FBS-high 25 turnover-worthy plays at App State in 2024 to having just 9 for Tennessee in 2025.

For those reasons, Aguilar helped Tennessee win the nasty Iamaleava breakup. But the Vols failed to beat an FBS team with a winning record and went 0-5 in those games. That “40 points per game” number also was inflated by 49 non-offensive points, and Aguilar’s costly turnovers vs. Alabama and Oklahoma loomed large. Aguilar provided a higher floor than we could’ve seen for Josh Heupel‘s squad this year, but he wasn’t as good as some of those early-season performances might’ve indicated.

The post Grading the SEC’s transfer quarterbacks of 2025 appeared first on Saturday Down South.

If you’re a casual college football fan who gets bored of the same teams in the field every year, well, I’ve got the semifinal for you. We’ve got 2 matchups with spreads that are less than 4 points (via FanDuel), and it’s with 4 teams who have a combined 1 national title in the 21st century. It’s 2001 Miami, which might be considered one of the greatest teams ever, but is also a team that the overwhelming majority of players remaining in the field weren’t alive to see.

It’s a semifinal field that doesn’t the likes of Alabama, Clemson, Georgia or Ohio State. That’s the first time that happened in the 12 years of the Playoff. Mind you, from 2014-22, each semifinal included at least 2 of those teams.

New blood? New blood.

It’s an improbable field. If Indiana or Ole Miss win a national title, they’ll mark the first lowest-ranked preseason AP Top 25 team to do so since Cam Newton led 2010 Auburn to a championship after starting No. 22 in the preseason poll. If Oregon wins a title, it’ll be the first ever and if Miami wins a title, it’ll do so before it won a conference that it joined 2 decades ago.

“Improbable” shouldn’t mean that these are all plucky underdogs. Lord knows they all put together remarkable quarterfinal performances to reach this point. So what should we watch for in these semifinals? Here are some early thoughts:

• Fiesta Bowl, Thursday, Jan. 8: Ole Miss vs. Miami (-2.5)
• Peach Bowl, Friday, Jan. 9: Oregon vs. Indiana (-3.5)

If there’s a guy who can handle the Miami defensive line, maybe it’s Trinidad Chambliss

Chambliss has been tough to bring down all year, but that sequence against Georgia reminded us all that he’s on a different level with his escapability. We’re well past him being some Division II transfer who could be overwhelmed by elite pass rushers.

On the season, Chambliss has been kept upright at a high rate on that up-tempo offense. Go figure that the only FBS quarterback who has been pressured on a lower percentage of his drop-backs this season is his Fiesta Bowl counterpart, Carson Beck, at 15.8%. Of course, Chambliss has been better than Beck at escaping pressure with a 13.7% pressure-to-sack ratio. Hence, why he only took 1 sack in the last 3 games even though he was pressured 21 times.

He’ll need all of that escapability after Rueben Bain and that Miami defensive front harassed Marcel Reed and Julian Sayin in upset victories. They registered a combined 12 sacks in those 2 games against units that had been solid in pass protection all season. Sayin was pressured 15 times against Miami (6 of which came from Bain), which was even higher than the 12 pressures that Indiana registered on him in the Big Ten Championship.

What Miami’s pressure has yielded is overwhelmed quarterbacks who have made pivotal, pre-determined reads that led to costly interceptions. In that 3-game stretch, Chambliss only produced 2 turnover-worthy plays. Keeping those numbers down could determine whether Ole Miss plays in its first true national championship game.

Ole Miss and Miami have elite smash-mouth running backs who could’ve played in 1995

It’s not just that both Mark Fletcher Jr. and Kewan Lacy productive. It’s that with both guys at less than 100%, they still finish runs. Yes, both had costly fumbles, but they both entered the quarterfinal round dealing with separate ailments, yet both are playing like guys who are leaving it all on the field. The numbers back that up, too.

Lacy has 98 carries when Ole Miss is leading by 1-7 points, which is 22 more than any FBS player, while Fletcher is No. 13 in FBS with 52 such carries, despite the fact that he missed nearly a month of action. In 2 Playoff games, Fletcher has a combined 10 missed tackles forced and 185 yards after first contact. Lacy, on the other hand, only has 2 missed tackles forced in 2 Playoff games, but he’s still No. 2 among Power Conference backs with 88 on the season, and he has 128 yards after first contact in those 2 Playoff games, though he missed the second half of the blowout win against Tulane with his shoulder injury. Any concerns about that being an issue subsided with how he bounced back after his fumble against Georgia.

Even Lacy’s toughness in the passing game was on full display:

Bringing down Lacy and Fletcher will take a group effort. These offensive play callers are going to lean heavily on them to slow down the respective pass rushers. Both backs could hit with 25 touches, especially in the event that this one stays competitive for 60 minutes.

My goodness, there’s a trio of daunting defenses left in this field

That sounded like a dig at Ole Miss. It wasn’t, though it’s pretty clear that unit isn’t on the same level as what Indiana, Miami and Oregon bring to the table. Those 3 are all rank in the top 10 in both scoring defense and yards/game allowed. On top of that, those 3 units allowed 3.3 yards/carry or less. And while Oregon’s raw numbers aren’t as good as Indiana and Miami’s, keep in mind that the Ducks just pitched a shutout against Texas Tech and the nation’s No. 2 scoring offense.

Look no further than the fact that those 3 defenses allowed a combined 17 points in their quarterfinal victories, 14 of which came against Jeremiah Smith and an Ohio State offense that scored 20 points less than its season average. Perhaps it’s not a surprise that Miami DC Corey Hetherman and Indiana DC Bryant Haines were 2 of the 5 Broyles Award finalists (both of whom were on Curt Cignetti’s James Madison staff). Their units have put on a clinic down the stretch. Shoot, Indiana held Ohio State and Alabama to 1 combined offensive touchdown.

And to be fair to Ole Miss, that defense has epitomized “bend, don’t break” after it had 5 players selected in the 2025 NFL Draft. Perhaps you could carry that mantra to Pete Golding, who didn’t break when Lane Kiffin left and started poaching his staff. Let’s not forget that Ole Miss just held a surging Georgia offense to less than 5 yards per play. It might not have the firepower of those other 3 units, but Suntarine Perkins and Princewell Umanmielen are more than capable of stepping up in big-time moments.

Oregon-Indiana has the better shot of being a defensive slugfest with an over/under of 46.5 compared to 51.5 for Miami-Ole Miss, but don’t rule out the possibility that the first team to hit 3 touchdowns in either one of those games could be moving on to a national championship.

Go figure that Indiana is the only team who can’t sell some sort of “revenge” angle

Well, unless you consider IU’s revenge angle to be on the entire sport of college football, which contributed to it having the second-most losses of any program ever (Northwestern just overtook the dubious top spot). In that way, sure, IU has a revenge angle.

But for everyone else, the revenge angles are somewhat obvious.

Oregon has the revenge angle of knowing its lone loss suffered in the regular season came vs. Indiana, which ended the nation’s longest home winning streak. You can bet Dan Lanning will feed into that, though it’s worth noting that 2 of his 7 career losses as a head coach came in his lone in-season rematches. That was against 2024 Ohio State and 2023 Washington, both of whom went on to play for a national title.

Miami’s revenge angle against Ole Miss is a bit more personal for Beck, who obviously missed the ultimate revenge angle when his former team lost to Ole Miss. But don’t forget that last year when he was at Georgia, he was completely dominated by Golding’s defense in a loss in Oxford. Beck played arguably the worst game of his career against Ole Miss and a rare Georgia blowout loss.

What’s Ole Miss’ revenge angle? Um, it rhymes with “pane tiffin.” It’s hard to have more of a revenge angle than a team with a coach who left them before the Playoff. That’ll continue to be a topic of conversation, but more so because Ole Miss has 6 assistants who are set to join LSU. How they continue to juggle those duties with the transfer portal window opened remains to be seen.

Revenge will be on the minds of many. Whoever harnesses it best could have a chance to play for all the marbles.

The post Early thoughts on 2 improbable College Football Playoff semifinal matchups appeared first on Saturday Down South.

Check that. The quarterfinals of the College Football Playoff weren’t fun for Alabama or Texas Tech, neither of whom scored touchdowns. But for plenty of others, the quarterfinals were indeed theater, ending with the best game of all in the Sugar Bowl.

We now have semifinal matchups between Oregon and Indiana, and Ole Miss and Miami. Sure. Just as we all predicted, right? Those teams have a combined 1 national title in the 21st century, and it was 2001 Miami. There’ll be new blood in this field of 4.

But before we spin it ahead, let’s look back at a fascinating quarterfinal round:

Ole Miss taking down Georgia without Lane Kiffin is the stuff of legend

Yes, Kiffin built that roster and he hired that coaching staff. But somewhere in Baton Rouge, Lane Kiffin watched his ex-team deliver a performance for the ages in the Sugar Bowl. That included Trinidad Chambliss playing out of his mind. The 3-play sequence he made to fuel Ole Miss late will be talked about in the Magnolia State for a long time, as will the pass to De’Zhaun Stribling to set up the game-winning field goal for Lucas Carneiro.

That doesn’t happen unless Charlie Weis Jr. calls a masterful game, which he did. Unlike the regular-season matchup in Athens when Ole Miss collapsed in the 4th quarter — Chambliss was 1-for-10 for 1 yard in the 4th quarter the first time — Georgia‘s defense couldn’t find answers late. Even after Kewan Lacy’s fumble resulted in a Georgia scoop-and-score, Ole Miss continued to feed its workhorse back. It was a resilient, confident performance for a group that looked like it was playing with house money.

Pete Golding deserves all the praise for what he accomplished. Taking down that Georgia squad was the type of thing that didn’t seem possible when the Playoff bracket was revealed. He avenged the lone regular-season loss and took the SEC Championship winner out of the field. Who knows that happens to Ole Miss beyond this 2025 team, but that can’t be forgotten.

Ole Miss is the last SEC team standing. Not Georgia, not Alabama … Kiffin-less Ole Miss. Who would’ve thunk?

It’s Indiana’s world, and we’re all just living in it

OK, it’s not truly Indiana’s world until it wins a national championship, but mercy. That was a beatdown. It was Alabama’s worst loss of any kind in the 21st century, and it was Alabama’s most lopsided postseason loss ever. It didn’t even feel like Ty Simpson’s rib injury would’ve changed that result. Of course, the play in which that happened was a fumble forced by Indiana that felt like the story of the day. IU was in total control.

It didn’t matter that to that point, teams with a bye in the 12-team Playoff era were 0-6 having been outscored 45-3 in the first quarter. The only rust that IU showed was allowing 2 sacks of Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza on the first possession.

For those who expected Indiana to fade upon arrival in its second-ever trip to the Rose Bowl, Thursday’s developments were stunning. For those who watched how Indiana got to 13-0 and why Alabama entered the quarterfinal round as a flawed team, the 2025 context was less stunning.

Mind you, Alabama entered the quarterfinal round as healthy as it had been all season. It still lost the rushing edge 215-23. The Tide didn’t hit 100 total yards until Austin Mack came in for Simpson in the middle of the third quarter. It was the type of game that reminded us that Indiana wasn’t just a fun story. It earned that 1-seed by beating Oregon in Eugene and by outlasting Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship.

Now the question is obvious — should Indiana be the overwhelming favorite to win it all? Ohio State held that title entering the quarterfinals, so naturally, IU stepped into the top spot as the new Vegas favorite at +150 (via BetMGM). A rematch against Oregon and that dominant defense will be no small feat, but it’s hard not to be bullish on IU’s chances after it handed Alabama its most lopsided loss of the 21st century.

Speaking of Alabama …

We were right to say that Alabama was flawed

Apologies for repeating myself here. It needs to be said one more time. Alabama ran into a buzzsaw. Period. In a different era of Alabama football, it could’ve perhaps handled the buzzsaw and pulled out a gritty win. This isn’t that era, though. This is the era that just produced its worst rushing offense since 1955, it had an inconsistent offensive line and it had a good, but not great, run defense.

Add it all up and you got what you got on Saturday. It didn’t matter that Alabama was as healthy as it had been all year. It still had too low of a floor to win a national title by beating 4 top-10 teams in a row.

Thursday didn’t necessarily mean that Alabama was suddenly unworthy of making the Playoff, or that Kalen DeBoer‘s future was in jeopardy. If that was the takeaway by some, it should’ve been met with eyerolls. What Thursday meant was the final piece of evidence that Alabama wasn’t in a championship tier in 2025. It was out-manned in every way. That means some tough decisions need to be made. The transfer portal window can be Alabama’s friend, as it’s been in the first 2 years under DeBoer.

Should Alabama spend big at running back? What’s the quarterback room going to look like? Are there interior linemen who can help fix the ground game?

All of those questions will be answered. A more pressing question Alabama faces is how did things get that lopsided with that much at stake? It was the third time this year that Alabama lost a game that didn’t feel particularly close. That’s happening too often under DeBoer. His job in Year 3 — the first time that he’s had a Year 3 as an FBS head coach — is to address that and prevent Rose Bowl-like flashbacks in 2026.

Miami and Oregon have championship-level defenses

My goodness. Talk about defensive statements.

Miami delivered the biggest upset (9.5-point underdogs) in Playoff history thanks to Rueben Bain and that vastly improved unit. All it did was pitch a first-half shutout and hold longtime No. 1 Ohio State to a pair of second-half scoring drives. Even on a night in which Jeremiah Smith looked like the best player on the planet, Miami dominated the Ohio State offensive line and made Julian Sayin uncomfortable all game.

The Canes have won 2 Playoff games by allowing a total of 17 points to teams who started 11-0 with late-season Heisman Trophy candidates. Don’t dismiss that significance. A year removed from having a defense that prevented the Hurricanes from getting into the Playoff, it’s now the driving force to a semifinal berth.

As for Oregon, um, do you think Dan Lanning had his team slightly motivated after that second-half performance against James Madison? Like, do you think he had his entire team convinced that it actually lost and it only got to play Texas Tech because of some sort of technicality? I’d believe it. Oregon was everywhere. It forced 4 turnovers and pitched a shutout against the No. 2 scoring offense in FBS. True freshman Brandon Finney Jr. picked off 2 passes, one of which was in the end zone.

Lanning said that challenged his team to “go get their pound of flesh.” It’s safe to say that happened. Now the question becomes whether Oregon can ride that same momentum into a rematch against Indiana. Lord knows that Lanning will be able to sell his team the revenge angle, but will the offense move the ball better against the Hoosiers this time around? Time will tell.

The quarterfinals showed that both Miami and Oregon are very much capable of winning it all when their defenses play at that level.

There’s an obvious fix for the teams with byes and their 1-7 record

It’s exactly what Lanning said earlier in the week. Stick these quarterfinal games on campus. Period. Home games are guaranteed for the top-4 seeds.

That increases the reward for one of those top-4 seeds and still puts emphasis on the regular season. That’s what the people want, right? The bowls with financial stake who don’t want to suddenly be told they don’t have an annual Playoff game would push back, but if that’s the only thing holding this up, that’s not a good enough reason. It was ridiculous that Texas Tech and Oregon were playing in Miami, and the secondary ticket market reflected that.

If there’s one thing that this quarterfinal hopefully yielded, perhaps that’s it.

The post Takeaways from a wild quarterfinal round of the College Football Playoff appeared first on Saturday Down South.

One team had the “joyless murderball” approach while the other didn’t hit 100 total yards until the backup quarterback entered the game halfway through the third quarter. One team didn’t take its foot off the gas for 60 minutes while the other seemed content just to kick a field goal and avoid a shutout. One team had a coach who refused to crack a smile amidst a blowout victory to keep national title hopes alive while the other stared off into the Pasadena sky in search of answers that never came.

Yeah, that’s the real world that we’re living in. Indiana looks like the new Alabama. It has certainly felt like it in 2025 … and at least on the first day of 2026.

That 38-3 Rose Bowl beatdown in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals was straight out of the Nick Saban playbook. The fact that Alabama was on the receiving end of that with its most lopsided postseason loss in program history (H/T Creg Stephenson) and its worst loss in any game since 1998 made it all the more surreal.

It’s one thing to get beat by Clemson in the midst of a historic run to a title. It was another beast entirely to get beat like that by a program who hadn’t won a single bowl game since 1991.

Before Thursday, Alabama had 7 national titles since Indiana’s last bowl victory

None of what transpired on Thursday suggested that was reality. Role reversal? Nah, that was an out-of-body experience for Alabama to get beat like that by a team that didn’t have some stockpiled roster of former 5-star recruits. Of course, one could point out that Cignetti came from Saban’s original Alabama staff before taking backroads on his head coaching journey. Certainly he had a front-row seat to many an Alabama beatdown. Perhaps that’s why he had as many smiles on the Indiana sideline as Alabama had touchdowns.

The Tide watched its season come to an end at the hands of a buzzsaw. One could argue that the game was over when Indiana blew up an odd 4th-and-1 sequence in which Germie Bernard was stuffed on Alabama’s own 34-yard line.

That felt … significant. It felt desperate for Alabama. Better yet, it felt like the type of play that vintage Alabama defenses used to blow up and flip fields en route to blowout victories.

But this wasn’t a vintage Alabama team in any way. Alabama’s 215-23 rushing yards disadvantage meant that the Tide will finish with its worst rushing yards/game average since 1955, AKA 3 years before the Paul “Bear” Bryant era began in Tuscaloosa. No team with a ground game as ineffective as Alabama’s had won a national title since rushing stats became readily available in 1936, so it wasn’t necessarily a surprise to see that as a weakness in the game that ended the national title path.

Still, though. This was a flawed team that got an up-close look at a 14-0 Indiana team who has yet to find its flaw.

It didn’t even matter that Kane Wommack’s plan to dial up extra pressure worked early on Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza, who had fewer incompletions (2) than sacks taken (3) with an AJ McCarron-like performance. Mendoza’s counterpart, Ty Simpson, was knocked out of the lopsided game when his costly fumble gave Indiana the ball in a 10-0 game. It halted the Tide’s only real chance at staying relevant, but it was also the anticlimactic end to Simpson’s 2025 season. Time will tell if it’s the anticlimactic end to his Alabama career.

Regardless of what that decision is, Kalen DeBoer got his own painful dose of reality. It would’ve been a different story if Alabama had been left out of the Playoff after its Georgia loss in the SEC Championship, which was humbling in its own right. But instead, he can’t sell the notion that his program was an unlucky break or a 50-50 play from winning a title. Alabama isn’t on that level.

The irony is that Cignetti got to Bloomington just a couple months before DeBoer got to Tuscaloosa. Both of them had notable public comments about one another in the offseason as it related to scheduling and making the Playoff. We didn’t get to see them battle on the field last year. We saw it this year, and it couldn’t have been more decisive.

It’s far too reactionary to say that Thursday’s script will lead to a sour ending to DeBoer’s story at Alabama. It was indeed an improvement in Year 2. A Rose Bowl nightmare shouldn’t erase winning at Georgia, getting to an SEC Championship and roaring back to erase a 17-point deficit at Oklahoma to become the first team to win a road Playoff game. Anyone who treats Alabama’s performance as a sign that DeBoer’s days are numbered is missing the plot.

But at the same place where Saban coached his final game at Alabama, this time, the Tide didn’t have a chance. Perhaps it’s Indiana who’s the best example for why a Playoff qualifier but non-national championship contender isn’t as far away as it might feel.

Alabama couldn’t have felt further away from the Saban era on Thursday. It would’ve been fascinating to get Saban’s unfiltered thoughts from wherever his vantage point was inside the Rose Bowl. Surely he couldn’t have seen that coming. After all, he picked Alabama to win on College GameDay.

Hard truths await this era of Alabama football. It couldn’t have come from a less likely source for that reality to sink in.

The post Indiana just handed Alabama a taste of its own Nick Saban era medicine with a Rose Bowl beatdown appeared first on Saturday Down South.

The timing of this move will make it different than a situation like Caleb Downs, who might’ve been the best non-QB player to transfer portal, but wasn’t part of the original window because of Nick Saban‘s retirement in January. It’s also different than Jordan Addison, who was a post-spring transfer after winning the Biletnikoff Award, but was considered a lock to join Lincoln Riley at USC (Pat Narduzzi publicly accused Riley of tampering).

Coleman announced his intentions to enter the transfer portal ahead of the new lone window opening on Jan. 2-16. That means he’ll have the ability to get a full market. Unlike Downs, who might’ve only been affordable for a select few, the right team can go all in for Coleman’s services in 2026.

For what it’s worth, it’s possible that Coleman returns to Auburn. Entering the portal just means that he has permission to openly speak to/visit other teams. If he decided to return to Auburn, he’d have a new starting quarterback and a new offense. Granted, Alex Golesh has had 4 different 1,000-yard receivers since he became an FBS play-caller in 2020. That included coaching Biletnikoff Award winner Jalin Hyatt the last time that he was an SEC play caller at Tennessee in 2022.

Lord knows that’s been part of the sell for Golesh. If Coleman returns, that won’t be lost on him. But after the 2 years of quarterback play that Coleman endured with the likes of Payton Thorne and Jackson Arnold in a Hugh Freeze offense, needless to say, he’s earned the right to explore his options outside of Auburn.

The former 5-star receiver has been a human highlight reel during his 2 years on The Plains. For a guy who turned 19 years old in August, Coleman should already have NFL scouts drooling:

Of course, that happened while he was subjected to a passing offense that barely cracked the top 100 in FBS in passing touchdowns and quarterback rating in 2025. After Freeze was fired, Coleman received the most targets he had in a 2-game stretch (20) in his career, which produced 15 catches for 208 yards. All you need to know about Coleman is that he played in an offense with a starting quarterback who attempted just 23 passes that were 20 yards beyond the line of scrimmage (No. 15 in SEC), yet he was tied for No. 2 in the SEC with 10 catches on those passes, and he finished No. 1 in the SEC with 13 total contested catches.

Any scoffing at Coleman’s less-than-jaw-dropping production of 93 career catches for 1,306 yards lacks context. He’s the real deal. Anybody in America could be better with Coleman. But the question with Coleman is where can we see the best version of him?

These 5 destinations would give us just that:

Texas

You had me at “Arch Manning’s new go-to target.” That’s not a disrespect to Coleman’s 2024 classmate Ryan Wingo, who has had nearly identical production in his first 2 seasons in Austin. But Wingo hasn’t been the contested-catch guy — he had 4 in each of his first 2 seasons — that someone like Manning’s skill set could pair well with. Wingo had just 1 contested catch on passes 10 yards beyond the line of scrimmage compared to 10 for Coleman, 9 of which were at least 20 yards. Manning struggled with short-yardage accuracy, but his downfield prowess was on display in 2025. In the regular season, he was tied for No. 3 in the SEC with 24 completions on those passes that were 20 yards beyond the line of scrimmage, and he was No. 2 in attempts (59).

After Texas lost DeAndre Moore Jr. to the transfer portal, it would love to add a dynamic play maker in the passing game that it often lacked in 2025. The Steve Sarkisian offense has been at its best when it has 2 dynamic weapons on the outside. Whether that was the Matthew Golden-Isaiah Bond duo or the Xavier Worthy-AD Mitchell duo, the Longhorns would immediately vault back to the top of the nation’s most explosive offenses if they paired Wingo with Coleman.

LSU

Are we sure that when Lane Kiffin left the Texas Bowl early that he wasn’t flying to Alabama to meet with Coleman ahead of his transfer portal announcement? Legal or not, there’s a greater than 0% chance of that. If Kiffin is getting close to unlimited resources, Coleman is the exactly the type of player that he could build his first offense around. Coleman could do all the things that we saw Tre Harris do in 2024 when he was en route to a historic season before injuries took away his final month.

While the cupboard in Baton Rouge won’t be completely bare, Kiffin will likely be on the lookout for several plug-and-play pass catchers. As someone who has been as portal-reliant at receiver as anyone in the sport, he’s had limited opportunities to land a top-tier option like Coleman. There could be a touch of hesitation on Coleman’s part until LSU‘s quarterback picture is clear, but that could be the only thing getting in the way of Kiffin having a seat at the final table.

Miami

Imagine being an ACC defensive coordinator and having to game plan for Malachi Toney and Coleman in the same offense. Mercy. Toney would be the perfect complement to Coleman because he plays the vast majority of his snaps out of the slot, and he’s lethal after the catch in short-yardage (he had 595 YAC yards on passes that traveled less than 10 yards beyond the line of scrimmage). That’s not mentioning Mark Fletcher Jr., who announced his return to the Miami backfield behind what figures to be another elite Mario Cristobal-coached offensive line. Goodness. That’s a terrifying thought. It’s an intriguing thought for someone like Miami OC Shannon Dawson, who’ll have a new quarterback to work with, though given how much Miami has been willing to shell out for a signal caller the last 2 years, one would think that position will be filled in an advantageous way for Coleman.

Much like with LSU, Coleman’s Miami prospects could be on hold until a quarterback option is finalized. But if he’s sold on everything that the Canes have to offer, a pre-draft season in Coral Gables could make all sorts of sense.

USC

All Riley has to do to sell Coleman is point to Makai Lemon. As in, the Biletnikoff Award winner who had tons of promise as a sophomore with extremely similar production to Coleman, before he became the best receiver in the sport in his pre-draft season alongside Jayden Maiava. Speaking of Maiava, he’s back in 2026 after he led Power Conference quarterbacks with 34 completions on throws 20 yards downfield. Auburn’s entire team had half as many completions … and 59% of them went to Coleman, who had a 133.4 NFL QB rating when targeted on those throws. With Lemon and his Power Conference-leading 16 downfield catches off to the NFL, Coleman and Maiava would be match made in heaven.

It remains to be seen if the Alabama native and former Texas A&M commit would sign up to play outside of the South, but if he’d be willing to leave the region and perhaps enter another situation with a coach facing a pivotal season, a destination like USC would check a ton of boxes.

And this should be illegal, but … Ohio State

Jeremiah Smith and Coleman joining forces in their pre-draft seasons with a Heisman Trophy finalist returning at quarterback would feel like cheating. It’s the type of thing that you’d pull off in a video game and then get bored because it’s too easy. If Coleman ended up at Ohio State, it would probably force the entire college football world to collectively say that a true salary cap needs to be enforced. Of course, the irony is that Ohio State currently has Carnell Tate for its Playoff run, and he’s a more advanced version of Coleman. But even with decorated wide receiver developer Brian Hartline off to USF, replacing a future first-round pick like Tate with Coleman would be enough to make Ohio State an overwhelming preseason national title favorite.

Let’s also remember that while some would treat a Coleman move to Ohio State like Kevin Durant joining the Golden State Warriors, he’s someone who hasn’t even played in a bowl game yet. The possibility of playing for a national championship with an all-world complement on one side and a preseason All-American throwing him passes could give us the scariest version of Coleman.

The post 5 ideal transfer portal destinations for Cam Coleman appeared first on Saturday Down South.

The quarterfinals, though? They matter. At least they matter more to the 8-team Playoff enthusiasts.

And for the anti-Group of 5 crowd, guess what? Your angst is a distant memory.

Here’s how I see those 4 matchups playing out (spreads via BetMGM):

Cotton Bowl: No. 10 Miami (FL) vs. No. 2 Ohio State (-9.5)

What if Miami’s defensive showing against Texas A&M wasn’t just the byproduct of Marcel Reed and some untimely College Station wind? Is it possible that too many people are discounting the possibility that Miami’s defense might be a top-2 unit remaining in the field? It’s certainly possible, and considering the last time that we saw Ohio State face an elite defense (Indiana), it struggled to string scoring drives together. With Ryan Day back calling plays, could we see the Buckeyes perhaps start off a bit slow? You bet.

But any scenario that involves Miami pulling off a significant upset would include Carson Beck making big-time throws against perhaps the top defense in the sport. Can I see that happening for 60 minutes? I can’t. Not against Caleb Downs and that Ohio State secondary that’s as good as there is. Beck will ultimately play with fire a little too much to prevent Miami from staying in this one. That sets up some short fields in the second half.

The Buckeyes overcome a quiet start and cruise late after Carnell Tate takes over.

Score prediction: Ohio State 31, Miami 14

Orange Bowl: No. 5 Oregon (-2.5) vs. No. 4 Texas Tech

This is exactly the type of matchup that a 12-team Playoff supporter can point to and praise. We obviously wouldn’t have gotten to see these 1-loss teams play in the previous version of college football. Well, at least not for a national championship. But instead, we’ll get a matchup of a pair of teams who have done everything and then some to shake off their lone blemish in decisive fashion.

Of course, Texas Tech hasn’t lost a game in which Behren Morton started. The Fightin’ Cody Campbells won all of those games by at least 3 scores. Given how much Oregon struggled defensively in the second half against James Madison, perhaps that trend can continue. Alternatively, Dan Lanning might be able to convince his team that the second half against James Madison was actually a loss. This is a bounce-back game for that unit. Of equal significance, it’s a chance for Dante Moore to show the world that these are the moments when he’s at his best.

Who do I trust late in a close game? The guy who had to rally late in hostile atmospheres at Iowa and at Penn State? Or the guy who has 19 pass attempts in the 4th quarter all season? Give me Moore and the Ducks to fend off the Big 12 champs.

Score prediction: Oregon 27, Texas Tech 24

Rose Bowl: No. 9 Alabama vs. No. 1 Indiana (-7)

Even as I sit here and see that line, it feels like a typo. Indiana as a touchdown favorite against Alabama says more about Curt Cignetti’s squad than it says about Kalen DeBoer‘s. The Hoosiers have slayed the Big Ten giants, and now, the question is whether they can slay one of the SEC giants for the first time under Cignetti in what would be program’s first bowl victory since 1991.

Yeah, that’s a lot. Indiana has shown it can handle a lot. A team that ranks in the top 4 in both scoring offense and scoring defense is well-rounded, and not just because it has a starting quarterback with both a Heisman Trophy and an active LinkedIn profile. Fernando Mendoza has been as clutch as any quarterback in recent memory. Jayden Daniels in 2023 is the only Power Conference player in the last decade with a better quarterback rating in the second half/overtime than Mendoza (min. 100 passes). This doesn’t have to be a game in which all things are clicking for him. I don’t expect they will be from start to finish against an Alabama defense that’s getting another late-season boost with the return of LT Overton.

But in the extremely likely event that Alabama’s historically ineffective rushing attack is held in check against one of the top run defenses in the country, the Tide aren’t running away from IU. This instead turns into a game in which Indiana’s resilience — not its pure dominance — is on full display. The Hoosiers don’t fall behind 17-0 like Alabama did at Oklahoma, but they’re again able to overcome a late deficit with key conversions late.

A go-ahead score from Charlie Becker gives Mendoza and Cignetti another glorious moment in a storybook season.

Score prediction: Indiana 27, Alabama 24

Sugar Bowl: No. 6 Ole Miss vs. No. 3 Georgia (-6.5)

You can make the case that Ole Miss has already taken a massive step toward winning the Lane Kiffin breakup by dominating an improved Tulane team in a rematch that had even higher stakes. You could also make the case that if the Ole Miss offense sputters against an improved Georgia team, Kiffin’s ego is the real winner. After all, his offense put up 35 points and didn’t punt until the 4th quarter. It blew a late 2-score lead in Athens, but it still checked a ton of boxes with how late it took Georgia to adjust.

Based on what Georgia showed the world in its last 5 games of the season — that included allowing 2 combined touchdowns to Arch Manning, Haynes King and Ty Simpson while recording 7 sacks — do we think more adjustments could be coming? Like, do we think there’s perhaps more of a book on Trinidad Chambliss? Sure. That bodes well for Kirby Smart and Glenn Schumann.

There’s also more of a book on Gunner Stockton than there was in this first matchup, wherein he didn’t have an incompletion in the second half. That game served as one of several examples of how Stockton has grown in massive ways since last year’s Sugar Bowl loss to Notre Dame. That game, his surroundings weren’t favorable for someone in his first career start. His climb was even steeper matching up against a top-2 defense. This time around, that competition isn’t nearly as proven. Ole Miss hasn’t shown it can keep a quarterback of Stockton’s caliber out of rhythm. Not for 60 minutes. Hence, why it allowed at least 5.7 yards per play in 6 of 8 post-September games.

Redemption will be on the mind for Ole Miss, but Stockton and Georgia getting some Sugar Bowl redemption will be had by night’s end.

Score prediction: Georgia 35, Ole Miss 21

The post Predictions for each College Football Playoff quarterfinal matchup appeared first on Saturday Down South.

The anti-SEC folks usually attempts to make their presence felt at various points in the postseason because when a target is exposed, that’s the natural time to take aim. So far this bowl season, the SEC has been exposed by virtue of Texas A&M losing to Miami, Mizzou losing to Virginia and LSU losing to Houston. Shoot, LSU was so unwatchable that new coach Lane Kiffin didn’t even want to stay for the entire game. Clearly all of those 1-score bowl losses by SEC teams should define the entire conference at a time when we know that all bowl games are created equally.

Oh, and let’s just throw in Oklahoma blowing a 17-point lead as being “exposed” while conveniently ignoring what conference the competition emerged from. Ole Miss got a lopsided Playoff victory, but that doesn’t count because it came against a Group of 5 team that wasn’t one of the best 12 teams in the country.

There. Am I doing this right?

Let’s ask the people in the replies of this post from the Reddit College Football account on Twitter:

Man, that tells the full story. It looks like Georgia was the only team that deserved to be in the field, and 11-1 teams like Ole Miss and A&M were clearly frauds because of the lack of quality wins (noted voice of reason Danny Kanell argued after the Miami loss that A&M would’ve been 8-4 in the ACC).

And hey, Alabama should’ve never made the field in the first place after becoming the first SEC team ever to win 4 consecutive games vs. AP Top 25 teams without any byes or extra rest, which included handing Georgia its first home loss at night since 2009. Alabama clearly just beat a bunch of fraudulent, overrated SEC teams. Never mind the fact that those 4 SEC teams who were part of that stretch (Georgia, Vanderbilt, Mizzou and Tennessee) went a combined 33-8 vs. non-Alabama teams and all of them won their respective Power Conference matchups.

Speaking of that, let’s rewind to the regular season. As in, that period in time in which the SEC got every benefit of the doubt because the decision makers in college football couldn’t fathom a world in which the SEC didn’t have an automatic spot reserved in the national championship.

Let’s actually turn back to Reddit, where we can all analyze each Power Conference record in nonconference play during the regular season (including Notre Dame):

• SEC: 12-6 (.667)
• Big 12: 8-6 (.571)
• Big Ten: 5-7 (.417)
• ACC: 7-19 (.269)

You see, despite the notion that the SEC can do no wrong in the eyes of the selection committee/ESPN/people with a financial stake, there’s at least some data to back up these things. Like, the SEC might’ve been called “fraudulent” based on Alabama’s blowout loss to Florida State, but it still went 6-4 vs. the ACC in the regular season.

Could you argue that Miami and Virginia evening the score vs. the SEC in the postseason has been huge for the ACC’s national reputation? Sure, but tell me this. Was a 7-19 record vs. Power Conference teams in nonconference play supposed to prop up the ACC? And was the fact that the ACC entered the 2025 postseason searching for its first Playoff win of the 2020s supposed to be ignored? You can answer that yourself. Personally, I’d say things like that and crowning a 5-loss conference champ (who also lost to that aforementioned Tulane team that didn’t count in favor of Ole Miss) probably shaped some of that discussion.

Why was the Big 12 a 1-bid league again? And should the Big 12 have been getting the love that the SEC has after an 8-6 showing in nonconference play vs. Power Conference foes?

Perhaps, but the SEC went 3-0 vs. the Big 12, which included Mississippi State beating last year’s Big 12 champion, Arizona State. Also, fair or not, we’re talking about a conference that has 1 Playoff victory in the first 11 years of this system, and it was followed by a 65-7 loss to an SEC champ … you get it. It probably would’ve taken a 12-6 nonconference showing vs. Power Conference foes for the Big 12 to have a legitimate argument about unfair treatment as a 1-bid league.

Ah, but now is the part where you tell me that the Big Ten is far and away the best conference in the sport this year

After all, the conference has the last 2 national champs and unlike the SEC, it has multiple national title contenders left in the field as the quarterfinal round approaches. Ohio State (+186), Indiana (+325) have the most likely odds to win it all, while Oregon (+1000) is 5th behind Georgia (+400) and Texas Tech (+800).

The problem is that the only real 2025 data point to judge the Big Ten and SEC side by side came back in August when Ohio State beat Texas 14-7. Alabama walloping Wisconsin wasn’t a good barometer for that discussion, and neither was Oklahoma handling Michigan in Bryce Underwood’s first career road start with a team that clearly had behind-the-scenes turmoil. Lord knows you’d hear the anti-SEC crowd speak loudly about those games if the results were flipped, but let’s instead look ahead to the Playoff, AKA the thing that’ll actually settle this debate.

The anti-SEC crowd will find a way to make sure that an all-SEC Sugar Bowl reflects how weak the conference was, regardless of how it plays out. Where it gets extremely juicy is if the Big Ten champion rolls in Pasadena. If Indiana beats Alabama in the Rose Bowl, the anti-SEC crowd will be quick to point out that the big, bad Tide will have suffered 3 consecutive postseason losses in matchups vs. Big Ten foes. It’ll argue that the SEC’s last remaining team in the field, Georgia, only got a semifinal berth because of a favorable quarterfinal draw, much like the anti-SEC crowd argued that Texas got bailed out by weird seeding when it faced off with Big 12 champion Arizona State.

Alternatively, an Alabama win against Indiana will force the anti-SEC crowd into the take that the Tide wasn’t worthy of making the field in the first place. As in, it’s the selection committee’s fault that Alabama got so many free passes to the Rose Bowl, and that it shouldn’t matter that it was the team’s 8th matchup vs. a team ranked inside the top 25 of the AP Poll (7 of which were in the top 15) because the AP Poll is SEC-biased anyway.

That’s the way this works.

The SEC cannot win this week. It can merely lose its stranglehold that it had on college football for the majority of the 21st century.

To be fair, yes, the SEC has invited detractors with its annual attempts at flexing (something every conference does), which most recently included a 7-page document to show why the Playoff needed more emphasis on strength of schedule and specifically, why the SEC gauntlet is 1-of-1. It’d be weird if nobody rolled their eyes at that. We all get that it just means more. After that cringey, self-awareness-lacking move, it also just means more opportunities to poke holes in the SEC.

Bowl-season losses — no matter what the 2025 context is — will present those opportunities for those who seek them.

That is, if you’re doing this right.

The post Tip of the cap to the anti-SEC crowd, which is out earlier than ever this bowl season appeared first on Saturday Down South.

“Because it pisses me off,” he told SDS on a recent episode of The Saturday Down South Podcast.

One could connect some dots when looking back at the summer conversations regarding the decorated post-spring transfer from Cal, and seeing that he finished his lone season at OU with 21 carries for 68 yards and 0 rushing touchdowns. To say that things didn’t work out for Ott would be like saying Sooner fans don’t care for Lincoln Riley. That’s a gross understatement. Ott was the sport’s biggest transfer portal bust of 2025.

But unlike Riley’s exit in Norman, Ott’s time with the Sooners will be equal parts enigma and cautionary portal tale.

“It’s a great mystery,” Nowkhah told SDS before the Playoff. “(Oklahoma) doesn’t talk about him. There were weeks in the season when (Brent Venables) would suggest he’s available, but he got banged up early in the fall. They still had him out there early in the season on special teams. You’d get him out there for a few carries here and there, maybe to pass-protect, which he was god-awful, horrific at. He is the most polarizing figure on the team right now.”

Nowkhah, who is an Oklahoma graduate and the lead anchor for the SEC Network, has as good a pulse as anyone on all things OU. At a certain point, he gave up hope that a former 1,300-yard rusher at Cal would fix an Oklahoma ground game that finished outside the top 100 in FBS in both rushing yards/game and yards/carry.

“I’m incredibly disappointed because I don’t think it’s a health thing. If it was a health thing, they wouldn’t put him on the field,” Nowkhah said. “We’ve seen the few carries he’s gotten. He’s slow, he’s tentative and he avoids contact. A few games, he’s been in pass protection, he’s done anything but want to make contact with the individual. It’s a lack of effort. It’s a lack of investment.

“Venables at one point midway through the season did say, ‘I just wish (Ott) was a little further along in every way.’ And I take that to mean worth ethic, effort, desire, all of it.”

Nowkhah didn’t mince words on the subject. Few did.

Lord knows that you can search Ott’s name on social media and find similar, albeit less diplomatic, critiques of him

He wasn’t featured on pre-game injury reports, yet his last carry came against Texas in Week 7. He played 75 snaps this season, though only 4 of them came after the Texas game. On those 21 carries, he forced 4 missed tackles, 1 of which came in the 42-3 win at Temple, and 3 of which came in the 44-0 win vs. Kent State. The latter was when Ott got 13 of his 23 scrimmage touches this season, and it was the only game all year in which he registered a carry longer than 5 yards.

Let’s just say his limited run-blocking didn’t exactly inspire confidence, either.

If Ott came to Oklahoma as more of a rotational player who could add depth, those developments would’ve been disappointing, but not maddening. That wasn’t the case, though. Ott was 2 years removed from a 2023 season in which he was a first-team All-Pac-12 selection after racking up 833 yards after first contact (No. 8 among Power Conference backs) with 55 missed tackles forced (No. 15 among Power Conference backs). On top of that, Ott had 90 career catches in 3 years at Cal. There was a feeling that even if a lost 2024 season in Berkeley — he played in 10 games but battled knee and ankle injuries — put some of his versatility into question, there was enough meat on the bone for him to inject life into an up-for-grabs OU backfield.

That’s why he was reportedly paid well by Oklahoma after he was a post-spring transfer.

“The overall feel, my feel, and I think from what I’ve engaged from Sooner fans is the overall feel, (Ott) robbed OU blind,” Nowkhah said. “He got roughly $800,000. That’s the number that’s been floating around. And he’s not playing. He’s not showing heart and there’s no work ethic. That’s the overall feel.

“The belief is that he simply came, he’s getting his money and he’s the first boo boo of (Oklahoma general manager) Jim Nagy’s transfer portal edition era. Hopefully he’s the only one because Jim’s done a really good job everywhere else, but this has gone awry and (Ott) is not a favorite in Norman and anywhere in Sooner nation.”

That explains why Ott didn’t participate in Senior Day activities, though it’s worth noting that he played in 7 games this season, so he’s well past the 4-game redshirt threshold that would’ve given him another year of eligibility. Even fellow transfer running back bust Mekhi Hughes preserved his year of eligibility at Oregon after his light usage in the first part of the season (Oregon also finished with the No. 13 rushing attack in FBS even though it only got 70 yards from the Tulane transfer).

It stings even more for OU that a pair of (likely cheaper) running back transfers in the SEC like Ahmad Hardy and Kewan Lacy became 2 of the 3 Doak Walker Award finalists. Meanwhile, Oklahoma didn’t have a running back hit 500 rushing yards or 5 rushing touchdowns. Even worse, perhaps the most pivotal play of the season was when open running back Xavier Robinson dropped John Mateer’s 3rd-and-3 pass that could’ve made it a 24-7 game against Alabama in Round 1 of the Playoff.

If only Oklahoma had signed someone who could’ve checked those boxes … you get it.

In a sense, Ott’s dud of a 2025 season could be a thing of the past. If Ott was climbing uphill upon arrival to OU in June, the tweaked lone transfer portal window from Jan. 2-16 will make it so that new additions get the luxury of spring ball. Whatever the case, Ott’s story could’ve still followed a similarly frustrating script even if he had gotten those extra reps.

Market correction was inevitable early in the portal era. Then again, it was ironic that Ott was the clear winner of the dubious, but unofficial title of “biggest transfer portal bust of 2025” while his former Cal teammate, Fernando Mendoza, won the Heisman Trophy after transferring to Indiana, where he led the program to its best season in program history.

Mendoza will now face the Alabama team that Ott had a front-row seat to watch in Round 1 of the Playoff. An unceremonious end to Ott’s college career, it was. We’ll all be left asking a question that loomed throughout 2025: Why did it play out like that for Ott in Norman?

Better yet, don’t ask Oklahoma fans that. Not unless you want to piss them off.

The post Jaydn Ott became the biggest transfer portal bust of 2025, so what happened at Oklahoma? appeared first on Saturday Down South.

In another not-so-stunning development, Manning is returning to Texas for 2026. Fingers crossed that means he can do so with relatively realistic expectations.

What a concept!

In all likelihood, Manning will enter 2026 as a preseason All-SEC quarterback. That’s not uncommon for someone who’ll be entering Year 4 in college and Year 2 as QB1. What’s completely uncommon was Manning entering 2025 as a preseason All-SEC quarterback after he had just 2 career starts in lopsided matchups. Even 2018 Tua Tagovailoa wasn’t a preseason All-SEC quarterback after he delivered one of the most memorable plays in college football history en route to Alabama‘s national championship in 2017.

Speaking of a national championship … just kidding. Let’s not pretend like that should be the expectation for Manning again after Texas earned its first preseason AP No. 1 ranking in program history. The last 2 decades would actually suggest that being the preseason No. 1 team means that winning a title is less likely. Manning’s Longhorns became the 20th team in the last 21 years to start as the preseason No. 1 and fail to win a national title. Go figure that Tagovailoa’s brilliance made 2017 Alabama the lone preseason AP No. 1 to accomplish that feat since 2005.

The 2005 Texas squad was who began this shift, thanks in large part to the best quarterback in program history, Vince Young. Manning came to Texas with an expectation that he could at least give Young a run for his money as the best quarterback to ever wear burnt orange. At this point, that’s not a fair expectation to judge Manning against.

Manning is still just trying to show that he can be an upgrade over his predecessor, Quinn Ewers

That’s a perfectly realistic expectation for Manning to meet (and exceed) in 2026. Say what you will about the physical differences between the two when it comes to stretching the field — both entered college as the No. 1 overall player in their respective classes — but Ewers still has the better legacy having led the program to consecutive Playoff semifinal appearances.

Did Ewers benefit from better surroundings than Manning? You could certainly argue that’s true, but what’s undeniable is that Manning struggled at a pivotal area that Ewers mastered in the Steve Sarkisian offense — short-yardage accuracy (0-9 yards past the line of scrimmage).

In 2024, a banged-up Ewers averaged 7.9 yards on those attempts, which was good for No. 4 in the SEC. Manning, on the other hand, ranked No. 22 among 22 qualified SEC quarterbacks with 5.4 yards per attempt on those throws. And while the receiver play wasn’t as good as what Ewers had to work with, Manning was No. 18 among those 22 SEC quarterbacks with a 77.8% adjusted completion percentage on those short-yardage attempts (that accounts for drops).

The positive is that Manning has at least shown that he can make those throws at this level. In 2024 as Ewers’ backup, he was No. 1 in the SEC with 9.0 yards per attempt and a 92% adjusted completion percentage on his 25 attempts between 0-9 yards. That’s why there was so much said/written/debated about the surprising mechanical woes that plagued him in the first half of the season. It’s also perhaps why there was reason to be encouraged with Manning in the latter half of his first season as QB1.

It’s not just that Manning led Texas to a trio of victories against top-10 teams by winning 6 of 7 games to close the regular season. After all, he still had some head-scratching showings sprinkled in there.

But after he had 13 turnover-worthy plays in the first 5 games, Manning had just 3 such plays in that 7-game stretch after the Florida game. The Kentucky game was the only instance in that stretch in which he posted an adjusted completion percentage (on all throws) of worse than 64%. The accuracy got better. Any world in which Manning sniffs November Heisman Trophy conversations in 2026 includes him building off that and not reverting back to his early-2025 ways. No matter what type of turnover Texas has at the skill-positions — receiver DeAndre Moore and running backs Tre Wisner and CJ Baxter already entered the transfer portal — that needs to be evident.

Let’s also remember that while Manning came up short of earning All-SEC honors at season’s end, much less stay in Heisman conversations after he was the preseason favorite, he still had 3,190 scrimmage yards and 33 touchdowns (don’t forget about his 4-yard receiving score) in a 12-game regular season. That was when Manning didn’t even really benefit in the way that he should’ve from that favorable September nonconference slate because he was a mechanical mess.

Hitting 40 total touchdowns for a more consistent Texas offense is a perfectly realistic expectation for Manning

History suggests that guys who do that, especially for winning teams, are firmly in those November Heisman discussions. Don’t get it twisted. Nobody is saying that Manning’s 2026 expectations should be “Heisman or bust.” Well, at least nobody in this column is saying that. But experience matters. Though there have been occasional examples in the 2020s of quarterbacks like Bryce Young and Julian Sayin who earned Heisman Trophy consideration as first-time starters who weren’t even draft-eligible yet, experience is a common denominator.

Manning will enter 2026 with all eyes on him, albeit with different context. Next year when Vuori or Warby Parker commercials come on in Week 1, Manning will at least have 15 career starts under his belt. Sure, he’ll still have detractors who’ll say “he hasn’t done anything” and “he’s just being talked about because of his last name,” while conveniently ignoring that after those early struggles, Manning became the first quarterback in the 2020s to beat 3 AP Top 10 teams in the regular season (that excludes conference championship weekend).

Sarkisian reminded the world that about that stat whenever he made his Playoff pitch for Texas. While that fell short, Sarkisian is ultimately getting his wish of seeing more of Manning in Austin.

He’ll be on every preseason award list, and plenty will pick Texas to get to the SEC Championship for the second time in 3 years in the conference. That will fall heavily (but fairly) on Manning knowing that the Texas defense is undergoing a significant transition in Year 1 under Will Muschamp. Now, Manning should be built better to handle that. That’s a reasonable thing to ask of someone who got all sorts of experience as a first-year starter. Year 2 will define his legacy.

What a concept.

The post Let’s set some actual realistic expectations for Arch Manning’s return in 2026 appeared first on Saturday Down South.

That’s a bit too cheesy, which is ironic when you consider how cheesy that Swinney can …. you get it. Swinney’s refusal to embrace the transfer portal until 5 years after the fact will forever make him the face of portal resistance. At the very least, Swinney should be the mascot.

Anyway, this team, whatever it’s named, is about crowning the SEC‘s best transfers of 2025. That means they had to have been transfers for the 2025 season, so it would exclude someone like Cashius Howell or Diego Pavia, who transferred to Vanderbilt in 2024.

Fingers crossed that excluding Pavia from an honor doesn’t put me even further into the doghouse.

This is meant to focus on guys who came to SEC teams and dominated. Yes, that can include intraconference transfers like Kewan Lacy (spoiler), but the vast majority of these guys came into the SEC like they owned the place.

So with that in mind, this is the 2025 SEC All-Transfer Team:

(Also, shoutout to KATV’s Steve Sullivan for saying this should exist in this era of the sport. I need to give him credit for this idea that I told him I’d steal a few months ago.)

Mansoor Delane, LSU CB

LSU hoped that when it signed Delane from Virginia Tech that the versatile defensive back would stabilize a secondary that desperately needed it. Delane didn’t just do that. He became an All-American outside corner and a future first-round pick. Delane had a 26.7 NFL QB rating when targeted in coverage, which means quarterbacks would’ve been better off throwing in the dirt as opposed to throwing in his direction (39.6 is that QB rating). Not only did Delane not allow a single touchdown in coverage, but he picked off 2 passes and broke up 9 passes while allowing just 13 catches for 147 yards all season. To say that Delane was worth whatever LSU gave him would be an understatement.

AJ Haulcy, LSU S

Lost in the shuffle of what was a disastrous year for LSU was that this was indeed the return of “DBU.” Between Delane, Haulcy and the emergence of true freshman sensation DJ Pickett, LSU’s secondary finally got back to an elite level. A big part of that was the play of Haulcy patrolling over the top and allowing just 1 touchdown in coverage all season en route to All-America honors. Haulcy had a 58.6 NFL QB rating when targeted, and he had 3 interceptions with 4 pass break-ups. Beyond the numbers, he just always seemed to come up clutch when LSU needed it most. Haulcy was a monumental addition from Houston … even if he didn’t prevent LSU’s season from getting sideways.

Xavier Atkins, Auburn LB

Speaking of LSU’s defense, Atkins came to Auburn from Baton Rouge instead of waiting his turn behind the Weeks brothers. All he did was lead the conference with 17 tackles for loss, and he was No. 3 in the SEC with 9 sacks to go with 2 forced fumbles and an interception. On top of that, he was No. 4 in the SEC with 84 tackles for an Auburn defense that was much better than what a 5-7 record suggested. Atkins might’ve come in a bit undersized, but his production showed that he was ready to thrive in a starting role. His announcement that he’s returning for 2026 was one of the biggest possible developments for Alex Golesh in Year 1. Expect to see him all over the preseason All-American teams.

Josiah Trotter, Mizzou LB

Trotter rules. Period. That’s not just because he comes from a famous football family, though if you spend 5 seconds watching Trotter, you can tell that those instincts are there. The West Virginia transfer and former Big 12 Defensive Freshman of the Year had 84 tackles and 13 tackles for loss in Year 1 at Mizzou. The inside linebacker added 7 quarterback hits, and he was the best run-game defender for a Mizzou defense that was top 20 in FBS in both yards/carry allowed and rushing yards/game allowed. While you could make a case that Georgia transfer Damon Wilson II was worthy of this spot instead of Trotter, I thought the latter was the more valuable and consistent player.

Zachariah Branch, Georgia WR

How good has Branch been in Mike Bobo’s offense after a disappointing sophomore season at USC? Well, Branch entered the postseason No. 2 among Power Conference receivers and leading the SEC with 586 yards after catch (YAC). Mind you, that’s for a Georgia team that didn’t have anyone hit 400 YAC yards in 14 games last season. He’s been lethal in space with 17 missed tackles forced (No. 3 in SEC), which is essential for someone with a 3.3-yard average depth of target. On top of that, Branch has more contested catches (5) than he had in his first 2 seasons at USC combined (3). He’s been everything that Georgia hoped he’d be for a receiver room that lacked juice (but not drops) last season. It’s not far-fetched that Branch could have 256 yards in the postseason and become the second 1,000-yard receiver in program history. Even if that doesn’t happen, he’s developed into an ideal target for Gunner Stockton.

KC Concepcion, Texas A&M WR

Branch and Concepcion were in the same class entering the 2025 season. Both came into the SEC in hopes of becoming complete receivers in their pre-draft seasons after they were electric true freshmen, but subjected to subpar quarterback play as sophomores. Well, both were even better than advertised. Concepcion might’ve started into fellow transfer Mario Craver’s shadow, but he finished 2025 as the most dynamic player in Texas A&M‘s offense. The NC State transfer racked up 1,450 all-purpose yards, 919 of which came in the passing game. Concepcion racked up 440 YAC yards (No. 9 among Power Conference WRs), which is no small feat for someone with a 12.2-yard average depth of target. Yes, he dealt with some drops issues (7 total), but he was still a play-making star who’ll be missed in College Station when he’s playing on Sundays in 2026.

Keagen Trost, Mizzou OL

The well-traveled Trost got to Mizzou by way of Morgan State, Indiana State and most recently, Wake Forest. The former Class of 2019 recruit saved his best for last. Ahmad Hardy and Jamal Roberts led one of the nation’s top ground attacks thanks in part to the help they had in the trenches from Trost, who stepped in for Armand Membou at right tackle and didn’t skip a beat. Take PFF grades for what they are, but he easily had the highest overall grade of any FBS offensive lineman. Trost also allowed just 9 pressures on 386 pass-blocking snaps for a Mizzou offense that still averaged 32.2 points per contest even though it was down to its third-string quarterback. He’ll be 25 years old by the time he’s selected in the NFL Draft, but he’s certainly made himself some money for his year in Columbia.

Ahmad Hardy, Mizzou RB

All this guy did was become a Doak Walker Award finalist and lead Power Conference players with 1,111 yards after first contact. No big deal. Never mind the fact that he’s closing in on 3,000 rushing yards at the FBS level and he’s not even draft-eligible yet. After he wasn’t recruited at the Power Conference level, Hardy’s emergence as an underclassman has been a revelation. He showed that his 1,300-yard season at Louisiana-Monroe wasn’t just the byproduct of facing Sun Belt competition. The yards after contact should debunk the notion that he’s only the byproduct of that Eli Drinkwitz zone run game, though he’s clearly been an ideal fit. After announcing his return to Mizzou for his pre-draft season, the SEC Newcomer of the Year will be a preseason All-American entering 2026.

Kewan Lacy, Ole Miss RB

If you haven’t been paying attention to the invaluable season that Lacy has had, here’s all you need to know. In addition to smashing the Ole Miss single-season rushing touchdown record and leading Power Conference backs with 87 missed tackles forced, the Mizzou transfer has had 94 carries when Ole Miss has been leading by 1-7 points. That’s 18 more carries in those spots than any FBS player, and it’s 24 more carries than any Power Conference back. The only Power Conference players with more such carries in the last decade are 2022 Chase Brown (Illinois) and 2019 Jonathan Taylor (Wisconsin). Mind you, Lacy did that for an Ole Miss team that had 5 1-score wins en route to its first Playoff berth (and victory) in program history. That was a year removed from never finding a go-to backfield option. Through 13 games, Lacy has a Power Conference-high 273 carries, which is 244 more than the next-closest Ole Miss running back. If that’s not a valuable transfer, I don’t know what is.

Trinidad Chambliss, Ole Miss QB

I’m not sure if you heard, but yes, Division II Ferris State produced one of the best transfers of the 2025 season. You could argue that Chambliss is the captain of this team after he finished 8th in the Heisman Trophy voting. Chambliss was unheard of entering the season as the backup to Austin Simmons, but ball security issues and injuries opened the door for Chambliss. All he did was plow right through it en route to the program’s first Playoff berth. Chambliss had an All-SEC season that included 3,804 yards of total offense (and counting) with the No. 2 quarterback rating in the SEC. He also added 506 rushing yards and 8 scores with his legs for a top-10 Ole Miss offense. After a strange start with Simmons, Chambliss provided instant stability to Lane Kiffin‘s offense. Go figure that in Kiffin’s absence, it’s Chambliss who’s been leaned on to keep Ole Miss’ national championship dreams alive.

And I know Tate Sandell struggled in the Playoff, but …

The dude won the Lou Groza Award and was a huge piece of Oklahoma‘s Playoff run. He’s a worthy inclusion, even if his season ended in baffling fashion.

The post The SEC All-Transfer Team: 10 elite portal players from the 2025 season appeared first on Saturday Down South.

(OK, I don’t know that for a fact. I’m basing that entirely on what was said by the police officers at the end of “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” when — spoiler alert — the Sticky Bandits were being detained after robbing a toy store and attempting to shoot Kevin McCallister on Christmas Eve.)

There’s a Michigan joke somewhere in there, but I don’t have the heart to make it. Way too soon.

After all, it’s Christmas. ‘Tis the season of giving.

Here are Christmas gifts for every SEC team in 2025:

Alabama — Entry into an ultramarathon

That would actually force Alabama to run. Lord knows the Tide haven’t exactly done that this year with a ground game that’s currently the worst we’ve seen in Tuscaloosa since 1955. Alabama fans are used to watching several different players break free and run from the pack. Maybe an ultramarathon isn’t the best place to do just that, but at the very least, it’ll ensure that the Tide have to put one foot in front of the other instead of getting stuffed at the line of scrimmage.

Arkansas — A set of horseshoes

What’s the phrase again? Being close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades? I figured the former was a more appropriate gift than the latter, though after the 2-10 season, that’s probably not a universal opinion. Arkansas needs a game that it can win by simply being close. In the Sam Pittman era, Arkansas went 7-19 in 1-score games, which doesn’t include the 0-3 mark that Bobby Petrino had in those spots. Fortunately, Ryan Silverfield was 19-15 in 1-score games at Memphis. Unfortunately, a significant rebuild awaits and being close isn’t a Year 1 guarantee.

Auburn — A magic set

Jordan-Hare Stadium was once considered the home to weird, even magical things. Whether that was the Kick 6 or the Prayer at Jordan-Hare, you could once set your watch to weird, unexplainable things happening on The Plains. Dare I say, the magic is gone. It’s not just that Auburn has 5 consecutive losing seasons for the first time since the Harry Truman administration; it’s that the Jordan-Hare magic is gone. In the post-Gus Malzahn era, Auburn‘s home record vs. Power Conference competition is 5-17. That includes an 0-3 mark vs. Alabama, who has since captured all the Jordan-Hare magic in the 2020s. While Alex Golesh rebuilds that remarkable home advantage — I ranked him as the No. 2 hire in this entire coaching carousel — Auburn can enjoy practicing magic to pass the time.

Florida — A white noise machine

Personally, I can’t sleep without one. Jon Sumrall has been getting 2-hour nights of sleep while juggling 2 jobs, so clearly, he could use that. But the white noise machine would also help Florida fans drown out the opinions of others as Sumrall begins his quest to get the program back to national relevance. That might not take shape in Year 1. But at a place that has had 4 consecutive coaches fail to reach Year 5 — I’m not sure if you’ve heard that — blocking out the noise and focusing on the long term outlook is pivotal.

Georgia — A bar of soap

I heard that NSFW leaked audio of Kirby Smart in practice. Smart, a Gen X coach who was raised by Baby Boomer parents, surely had a childhood experience in which he was punished by his parents by having a bar of soap put in his mouth. It’s an old-fashioned method that has since faded from the mainstream, but plenty of what Georgia does feels like it’s from the previous generation. For example, UGA still hasn’t discovered that Uber exists.

Kentucky — Full ownership of The Dude Perfect YouTube channel

Why would a bunch of Aggies fork over something that prints money? Simple. Mark Stoops did Texas A&M a favor by ultimately not getting that job and having it go to Mike Elko. Now, Kentucky is on the hook for a $37 million buyout to its all-time wins leader. What better way to fund that than by taking over the YouTube channel that’s earned generational wealth thanks to its billions of views and worldwide popularity. And while I have full confidence that Will Stein knows his way around an offensive playbook, Kentucky can also dig back into the Dude Perfect archives and find some improbable trick shot ideas to turn around a unit that failed to crack the top 100 in yards/play the last 2 years.

LSU — A shelter puppy that Lane Kiffin totally lives with

Hey, it helped make him likable at Ole Miss. Why not bust out the puppy immediately after LSU suffers a devastating loss next year?

Mississippi State — A stadium’s worth of sound-proofing wall panels

Wait a minute. Wouldn’t that make Davis-Wade Stadium quieter? Isn’t the whole point of having 60,000 fans swinging cowbells supposed to create an unmatched home-field advantage that leaves visitors with a week-long headache? Yes and yes. But last I checked, Mississippi State hasn’t won a home game vs. an SEC team in the post-Mike Leach era. Like, the last time the Bulldogs beat an SEC team in front of their home fans was Nov. 5, 2022 vs. Auburn, AKA the time that Leach took his own team’s chairs away as it blew a 3-touchdown lead and needed overtime to beat a 5-7 team with a first-time head coach. The cowbells are great, but it might be time to pull a 180 to change up the vibes. Being the quietest stadium in America with tens of thousands of people would be a unique home-field advantage.

Mizzou — A Ford Model T

Mizzou gets a car to match its dated passing game. Fun fact: The first forward pass completed in an organized game happened back in 1906, fittingly at Saint Louis University. Small world! Yes, Ahmad Hardy dominated for a potent Mizzou ground game and Beau Pribula showed flashes before he suffered a multi-week injury … only to finish the season and then enter the transfer portal. Only 7 FBS teams had fewer 30-yard passes than Mizzou, who was forced to turn to Matt Zollers, AKA the 3rd-string, true freshman quarterback who was 7-for-23 on passes that were 10 yards past the line of scrimmage. Zollers could return as the starter, or Eli Drinkwitz could dip into the portal. Either way, Mizzou’s passing game will try to get into the 21st century in 2026.

Oklahoma — A gift receipt on the $800,000 Jaydn Ott NIL deal

Surely Oklahoma could make a strong case to get all of it its money back for that, right? Ott was barely taken out of the packaging!

Ole Miss — A sideline punching bag

Take all of that anger out. Go ahead. Who needs a sideline basketball hoop anymore? That’s yesterday’s celebration. Instead, shift to the punching bag, and if a certain former coach’s face is featured prominently on it, well, I’m not gonna tell you what to do with your own present.

South Carolina — A Ring doorbell camera

South Carolina lacked protection in 2025. Anyone could just come onto their porch, steal their packages, sack LaNorris Sellers and walk away unscathed en route to victory. Sellers regressed, but he was also subjected to a 41.9% pressure rate on drop-backs, which was easily the highest in the SEC (it was No. 9 in the FBS among QBs with at least 50 pressured drop-backs). Sure, a Ring doorbell camera isn’t exactly Pentagon-level protection, but nobody is saying that the elusive Sellers needs that. He just needs something to allow him to sit in his living room and not have teenagers nabbing packages off his porch.

Tennessee — A moat

To be fair, Tennessee could argue that it’s already on the way to a moat because of the Tennessee River right next to Neyland Stadium. It’s the closest thing to a moat that basically anyone in college football has. But I’m talking about a full moat surrounding the stadium. Why? Call me old fashioned, but that’s the best line of defense. A moat gets the job done. Tennessee’s defense didn’t get the job done in 2025, which was why Josh Heupel fired Tim Banks. I’m not saying that a moat fixes all of those defensive issues for new DC Jim Knowles, but I am saying moats are currently undefeated (and also nonexistent) at college football stadiums.

Texas — A DVD of the movie “Yesterday”

In the 2019 film, it plays out what the world would’ve looked like after a temporary blackout erased all memories of a few key world developments, most notably “The Beatles.” Not to spoil the movie, but the main character is a musician who gets hit on his bike the second that this blackout occurs, so he doesn’t forget these key world developments in the way that 99.9% of the population does, so he then writes and performs all of “The Beatles” songs as if they’re his own. This is the exact sequence of events that Texas needed to make the Playoff, except instead of the world having no memory of “The Beatles,” we all just forget that Texas got beat by 4-8 Florida.

Texas A&M — An alarm clock

Johnny Manziel could’ve used one to get to College Station from Miami, but A&M in general would’ve benefitted from that. The South Carolina game wasn’t just a sleepy start; it was a nightmare start wherein A&M woke up at halftime in a cold sweat. And A&M’s offense didn’t wake up in the Miami game until the very last drive, which still ended with an interception in the end zone. Much like with the aforementioned McCallister family in “Home Alone,” an alarm clock would’ve solved a ton of problems.

Vanderbilt — A pause button

Of all the problems for Vanderbilt to have, let’s be real here. Getting “snubbed” for a Playoff spot isn’t a problem that Vandy was ever expected to address, nor was anyone assuming we’d ever discuss the problems with a regrettable Instagram story by a Vandy quarterback after he finished as the Heisman Trophy runner-up. Shoot, 5-star quarterback Jared Curtis flipping from Georgia to Vandy at the last minute is enough of a reason for a pause button in Nashville. But add in all the other stuff and it just makes sense. Plus, a pause button is (probably?) the only way that Pavia stays in Nashville another season.

The post Christmas gifts for every SEC team in 2025 appeared first on Saturday Down South.

Not a team was stirring, not even the fans of Tennessee

Alas, the dizzying coaching carousel had finally stopped spinning

Six new SEC coaches were hired, all in the name of winning

* * * * *

Five teams decided to give their coaches the boot

Buyouts were paid, though one coach refused to mute

Lane Kiffin opted to speak publicly as he made his decision

Once again, he plotted an exit without proper precision

* * * * *

Lane left for LSU even though Ole Miss was Playoff-bound

Wishes to stay were declined after Keith Carter held his ground

Both parties fought until they eventually came to a truce

Baton Rouge-bound for Lane, but not for Juice

* * * * *

It’s Lane’s time after Brian Kelly’s dreams died in Death Valley

Press conference tantrums were wasted on an offense that couldn’t rally

A blowout loss to surging Texas A&M was the nail in the coffin

Kelly then got 54 million reasons for the disappointment to soften

* * * * *

That was more than the $21 million Christmas gift that Billy Napier got

Buyouts like that made $15 million to Hugh Freeze not feel like a lot

Life as a fired SEC coach is not one that stinks

Grab your clubs, fellas, and let’s head to the links!

* * * * *

“NOW BILLY! NOW PITTMAN! NOW COACH FREEZE AND KELLY!

ON, MARK STOOPS! ON, SEXTON! ON, HITTING THAT CELLY!

Cash those buyout checks! Straight to the bank!

It’s Sexton’s world! It pays to tank!

* * * * *

But not everyone in the SEC fired their coach

Some won games and didn’t have to poach

None won more than Georgia as the best in the league

And no one could ignore Diego Pavia as his mom gave us fatigue

* * * * *

A&M and Oklahoma broke through to earn a Playoff berth

Texas beat ’em both but reminded us what 3 losses were worth

Alabama bounced back as everyone anticipated the fall

The Rose Bowl awaits, even though they can’t run the ball

* * * * *

The Tide, Dawgs and Rebels still have Playoff life

Watching them for many will feel like twisting the knife

Tennessee won in The Swamp but lost to UGA on a missed kick

Arkansas lost in ways that would make even the strongest stomach sick

* * * * *

South Carolina’s season went in the toilet with the offense of Shula

Though that lawsuit vs. the Texas state trooper should be worth plenty of moolah

Jeff Lebby got an SEC win, but not a winning second season

Mizzou locked down Eli Drinkwitz with an $11 million reason

* * * * *

Clark Lea’s historic 2025 also earned him a rich new deal

Pavia played his way to New York in a year that didn’t seem real

He became Vandy’s first player ever to earn a trip to the Heisman stage

That won’t be forgotten, though Pavia let the voters feel his rage

* * * * *

Bold (perhaps dumb) decisions were made by many

More than a few were willing to fork over a pretty penny

Regrets of buyouts paid haunted SEC dreams

HOW DOES JIMMY SEXTON KEEP FLEECING OUR TEAMS?!?

* * * * *

But as Lane celebrated and enjoyed his new digs

He began to feel like Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs

Regret and sweat poured over Lane as he shouted from his toga

“BLAST THE KE$HA AND TAKE ME TO HOT YOGA!”

The post ‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the SEC … appeared first on Saturday Down South.

Long gone were the days in which he’d line up and run “power” behind a road-grading offensive line, perhaps even with a fullback leading the way. It wasn’t as if Hester held out hope that LSU would turn back time and bust out the Les Miles offense. But watching his Bayou Bengals stumble into one of the worst rushing attacks in America gave Hester angst in ways that few things could.

This was the face that Hester made a month ago when he said the words “Connor, LSU football hasn’t run a power this year. Not a single power. When I was playing, we couldn’t have a series without running a power, much less an entire season … it blows my mind.”

(And yeah, that was me putting my head down in dismay.)

Enter Lane Kiffin, stage right.

Kiffin’s up-tempo, spread offense won’t exactly remind anyone of the Hester-led LSU rushing attacks, but that’s fine. What seems imminent is that he’ll jump-start an identity-less LSU rushing attack. The unit that hit 130 yards against just 2 FBS foes figures to look completely different under this new regime, regardless of who ends up playing quarterback. LSU’s season-high in the regular season was 166 rushing yards against 4-8 South Carolina. In Kiffin’s last 9 seasons as a head coach, his worst rushing attack was the 2018 Florida Atlantic squad that averaged… 166 rushing yards.

You could look at some of the raw LSU rushing numbers during the 2020s and convince yourself that it wasn’t an issue. After all, the Tigers are 2 years removed from having the No. 11 run game in the sport with a mobile Heisman Trophy winner who got seemingly every blade of grass that he wanted.

But in 6 seasons in the 2020s, the only instances in which LSU finished with a top 100 rushing attack was when Jayden Daniels was the starting quarterback. The only LSU running back to eclipse 800 rushing yards in the 2020s was when Tyrion Davis-Price hit 1,003 yards in 2021. That also came in a lost season in which Ed Orgeron was fired … and 43% of Davis-Price’s rushing production came in a 2-game stretch for a rushing attack that still finished No. 114 in the FBS (it was also No. 121 with just 9 rushing touchdowns).

Clyde Edwards-Helaire was the last LSU running back to earn All-SEC honors at season’s end

Of the schools who have been in the SEC since the start of the decade — that excludes Oklahoma and Texas — LSU, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt are the only ones who haven’t produced 1 All-SEC back in the 2020s.

Three different times, Kiffin’s offense produced that at Ole Miss. Quinshon Judkins did it twice — he was also the only SEC player in the 2020s to hit 1,500 rushing yards and 15 rushing touchdowns until Ahmad Hardy joined that club in 2025 — and most recently, Mizzou transfer Kewan Lacy did it.

It remains to be seen if Lacy, who led Power Conference backs in the regular season with 86 missed tackles forced (LSU’s entire team had 47), will follow Kiffin and that offensive staff to Baton Rouge. It helped that Kiffin reportedly poached Ole Miss running backs coach Kevin Smith. Obviously, bringing over a Doak Award finalist who set the Ole Miss single-season rushing touchdown record — he had more than twice as many rushing touchdowns (20) in the regular season as the entire LSU team (9) — would check the “fix the ground game” box in an instant. But even if Lacy doesn’t go to his third SEC school in as many seasons, Kiffin has shown that he’ll still run a ground-heavy approach with a stable of backs.

When Ole Miss had its worst ground game of the Kiffin era in 2024, it still averaged 38 rushing attempts (and 168 yards) per game. Compare that to LSU, who hasn’t averaged that many rushing attempts in a game since 2018, AKA Year 1 of Joe Burrow. That explains why LSU’s running backs have totaled just 7 100-yard games since the start of 2022, none of which happened in 2025 (H/T Zach Nunez).

An overhaul is coming, both schematically and philosophically. If nothing else in Year 1, that should be evident with Kiffin and Charlie Weis Jr. running the show.

“The foundation of (LSU’s) offense to me, it was mind-boggling to watch the tape and see the things that they weren’t doing, the things that they weren’t attacking,” Hester told me in November. “Now you’re trying to fix all of that. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

That fixing won’t include running backs coach Frank Wilson, who pulled the inverse move and left for Ole Miss. It remains to be seen how that’ll impact the current backs on the LSU roster like 2025 preseason All-SEC back Caden Durham and former 5-star running back Harlem Berry, who got double-digit carries in all 4 regular season games after Brian Kelly was fired.

Kiffin has plenty to sort out, but if there’s a safe bet for his time in Baton Rouge, it’s that he’s eventually going to make LSU’s Achilles’ heel a thing of the past. Perhaps with that, LSU can soon do something else that it hasn’t done in the 2020s. Not just run power; a different kind of run has eluded LSU.

A Playoff run.

The post Lane Kiffin’s QB decision has the attention, but overhauling LSU’s dormant ground game is paramount appeared first on Saturday Down South.

We’ve got 4 quarterfinal matchups that are loaded with intrigue and major storylines. Even the game that projects as the most lopsided — Miami (FL) vs. Ohio State (-10) — has the 23-year buildup of the controversial Fiesta Bowl defensive pass interference call that defined a national championship. It’s a phenomenal slate of quarterfinal games.

In case you need a reminder of what that looks like, here’s the slate (point spreads via BetMGM):

• Wednesday, Dec. 31 (Fiesta Bowl): No. 10 Miami vs. No. 2 Ohio State (-10)
• Thursday, Jan. 1 (Orange Bowl): No. 5 Oregon (-1.5) vs. No. 4 Texas Tech
• Thursday, Jan. 1 (Rose Bowl): No. 9 Alabama vs. No. 1 Indiana (-7)
• Thursday, Jan. 1 (Sugar Bowl): No. 6 Ole Miss vs. No. 3 Georgia (-7)

Here are some early thoughts on each matchup:

Fiesta Bowl: No. 10 Miami vs. No. 2 Ohio State — This can’t be a “why doesn’t Mark Fletcher Jr. have more carries?” game (again)

You know, like the Texas A&M game was. Like, the game in which Fletcher ripped off 172 yards on 17 carries, including a back-breaking 56-yard run that set up Miami’s game-winning drive for its biggest win in 23 years. You know. That guy. After his return to full strength after a midseason injury, Fletcher has clearly established himself of the focal point of Miami’s offense from a volume standpoint, though the title of “most electric player” still belongs to true freshman sensation Malachi Toney. While Miami would ideally want Toney to get double-digit touches in this one, he’s facing the most decorated secondary in the sport. Carson Beck navigating that against Matt Patricia’s defense seems like a mistake waiting to happen.

Fletcher needs to be given the opportunity to get in a rhythm, which OC Shannon Dawson seemed reluctant to do until that late drive. Ohio State’s been so dominant that only 2 teams all season have reached 35 rushing attempts. Fletcher has 596 yards after first contact on just 158 carries. Perhaps with some fresh legs, he can be the reason that Miami turns it into a 4-quarter game against an Ohio State team that’s had 1 close game since the calendar flipped to October.

Speaking of blowouts …

Orange Bowl: No. 5 Oregon vs. No. 4 Texas Tech — A 60-minute game with Behren Morton would be a first this year

Texas Tech’s lone loss against Arizona State happened with Morton sidelined, which means he hasn’t had to mount a late comeback for the Red Raiders. He hasn’t even played in a game with a second-half deficit this season. Here’s perhaps an even more telling stat to reflect how little he’s been needed in clutch moments late.

Morton ranks No. 22 in the Big 12 in both pass attempts (19) and passing yards (142) in the 4th quarter. There are only 16 teams in the Big 12, which means there are several teams with multiple quarterbacks who have more such attempts in the 4th quarter. Colorado has 3 quarterbacks with more passing attempts and yards in the 4th quarter than Morton. Shoot, Texas Tech’s backup, freshman Will Hammond, who started in just 2 games this season with Morton sidelined, has more pass attempts and passing yards in the 4th quarter than Morton.

You get it. Joey McGuire’s revamped squad has been lights out all season, but the unknown heading into the Playoff is what it’ll look like if this game is indeed a nail-biter, which seems most likely with Oregon favored by 1.5 points. For what it’s worth, Morton has 211 career pass attempts in the 4th quarter, so it’s not as if a close game will be a completely foreign concept. But with this team, and specifically this play caller (Mack Leftwich), that would be a new situation if it presents itself. That’s not an ideal question mark in a Playoff quarterfinal against a Dan Lanning defense.

Rose Bowl: No. 9 Alabama vs. No. 1 Indiana — How much will the loss of Stephen Daley be felt?

If the answer is “not at all,” that’s bad news bears for Alabama. It was bad news bears for Indiana that Staley was lost to a serious leg injury while celebrating the program’s first outright Big Ten Championship since 1945.

All Staley did was rack up a Power Conference-leading 19 tackles for loss for an Indiana defense that allowed 10.8 points per game. The standout defensive lineman has been a menace in opposing backfields since transferring from Kent State, but more as a run-stopper than anything else. He’s been a massive reason why IU’s run defense flipped the script after a dreadful season-opening game in which it allowed 218 rushing yards to Old Dominion. Since then, IU hasn’t allowed 4.0 yards per carry vs. anyone and it only allowed 95 rushing yards once, and it was 117 yards vs. Penn State’s decorated backfield … which was still held to 3.5 yards per carry.

Alabama, of course, has had a historic season running the football. As in, “historically bad.” That’s not hyperbole. So far, the Tide averaged 109.9 rushing yards per game. The last time that the program finished a season with that low of a total was when the 1955 Alabama squad averaged 104.5 rushing yards per game en route to an 0-10 season. That was 3 years before the Paul “Bear” Bryant era began in Tuscaloosa. It’s worth noting that in the Round 1 comeback win at Oklahoma, Daniel Hill broke free for a 30-yard run, which was the Tide’s longest run since Week 2 when AK Dear ripped off a a 56-yard run with 62 seconds left in a 73-0 win vs. Louisiana-Monroe. It’s also worth noting that the Tide finished with just 28 rushing yards, which improved the total to 25 total rushing yards the last 2 games.

If Alabama suddenly finds its ground-game identity against Indiana’s loaded, but not full-strength defensive front, Daley’s absence will be monumental.

Sugar Bowl: No. 6 Ole Miss vs. No. 3 Georgia — These are the moments when Gunner Stockton has been at his best

I’m not saying that Stockton deserves the nickname “Stetson Bennett V,” but if he’s clutch in these Playoff matchups, I’ll have a tough time arguing against it. So far, that’s what the Georgia quarterback has been. Against teams that are currently in the AP Top 25, Stockton has the best QB rating in America (162.5) among quarterbacks with at least 2 such games, and he’s got an FBS-best 13 touchdown passes in those spots. Since the start of the 2023 season, the only quarterback with more TD passes vs. teams ranked in the final AP Poll is last year’s national championship QB, Will Howard. In all games this season, Stockton has a 178.3 QB rating in the second half/overtime, which ranks No. 3 among Power Conference quarterbacks with 100 such pass attempts.

In the first matchup against Ole Miss, Stockton’s late-game brilliance was on full display in a comeback victory. He had a career-high 5 touchdowns (4 passing, 1 rushing) and a career-high 348 yards of offense in a performance that saw him throw 5 incompletions and he didn’t take a sack. Even better, he didn’t have an incompletion in the entire second half. That came on a day in which UGA trailed by 9 entering the 4th quarter.

New Ole Miss coach Pete Golding will have adjustments for Stockton. That’s the only way that Ole Miss will have any chance of avenging its lone loss of the season. Whether he can do that remains to be seen. Six of Ole Miss’s last 7 FBS opponents averaged at least 5.7 yards/play, though UGA was the only one of those teams to hit 27 points. It’s been a “bend, don’t break” unit.

Golding’s postseason run will break if his unit can’t find answers for Stockton.

The post Early thoughts on each quarterfinal matchup of the 2025 College Football Playoff appeared first on Saturday Down South.

After the first round of last year’s 12-team Playoff gave us 4 games decided by double digits, we at least got 2 games that weren’t decided until late in the 4th quarter. Cheers to that.

Was it 4 games that followed an unpredictable script? No, not necessarily. That was ambitious. There were, however, games that had significant takeaways in Round 1.

Here were the top takeaways from an eventful Round 1 of the 2025 Playoff:

“Hard to Kill” is now Alabama’s mantra after that historic comeback at Oklahoma … heads up, Indiana

Down 3 scores before picking up a first down, Alabama looked like it was dead and buried upon arrival in Norman. The team that got blown out against Georgia showed up at Oklahoma. And naturally, the team that won at Georgia back in September finished the game by scoring 34 of the final 41 points. That’s how Alabama matched the largest comeback in Playoff history.

Credit a bunch of things. Ty Simpson settled in. Lotzeir Brooks played well beyond his years. The Alabama pass rush flipped the switch. The secondary avoided the Isaiah Sategna chunk play. Even the ground game got a 30-yard rush for the first time since early September. The Tide didn’t flinch.

It was the type of complete effort that Alabama didn’t have in the final month of the season when it limped into the Playoff. Kalen DeBoer not only became the first coach to win a road Playoff game, but he moved into first place among active coaches with 4 true road wins vs. AP Top 10 teams in the Playoff era. It was darn impressive for a guy that plenty assumed was off to Michigan.

If you didn’t know any better, you would’ve thought it was Alabama’s sideline who wore “hard to kill” shirts and not Oklahoma’s. That feels like an appropriate mantra for the Tide. Say what you will about how they’ve looked in losses under DeBoer, but that was the 5th time that Alabama beat a ranked foe this season. Three of those wins were in true road games, too.

Now, DeBoer will face the Indiana program that helped him get his first FBS head coach while Curt Cignetti will face the Alabama program that was a part of on Nick Saban‘s first staff. The top-seeded Hoosiers are favored by nearly a touchdown (via BetMGM), so for once, Alabama can play the “nobody believes in us” card. At the very least, nobody can count out Alabama.

Not after that comeback.

There was no reset button for the Texas A&M offense

Or if there was a reset button, Texas A&M didn’t show any signs of finding it. It wasn’t that A&M completely failed to move the ball. But the turnovers coupled with the back-breaking plays in Miami territory told the story. That culminated with Marcel Reed throwing an interception in the end zone to close the game. It was the opposite of the Notre Dame ending. Brutal. Brutal it was to see the Aggies allow 7 sacks and 9 tackles for loss to a loaded Miami defense. Reed was ineffective for far too much of that game, but the decorated A&M offensive line didn’t step up enough to win a game that was there for the taking.

That’s the part that’ll haunt A&M fans. Losing a game 10-3 to that version of Carson Beck will sting, though Mark Fletcher Jr. and Malachi Toney did the heavy lifting down the stretch.

It was a tough pill to swallow for a team that started 11-0, but ended without a Texas win, an SEC Championship appearance or a Playoff victory. You can spin that in a variety of ways, but it shouldn’t completely overshadow the fact that Reed went into late-November as a Heisman Trophy candidate for an A&M offense that was mostly successful this year.

That’ll be easier said than done this offseason.

Hey, the ACC isn’t destined to lose every 2020s Playoff game after all!

The haters said that it would never happen. OK, I might’ve said once or twice leading up to this one that Miami was trying to become the first ACC team to win a Playoff game in the 2020s. That extended to non-Playoff New Year’s 6 Bowls, too. Shoot, the ACC hadn’t even stayed within single digits in those 8 losses.

Go figure that Miami, who has spent 2 decades hearing about that 2004 move to the ACC, was the one who ended that drought. Also go figure that it was Mario Cristobal who made that happen in his first Playoff appearance.

Cristobal enjoyed a nice moment after this game and was able to silence the pro-Notre Dame crowd, which was vocal throughout the weekend.

He’s right. Miami might not have earned its way into the ACC Championship — 5-loss Duke was the reason that James Madison made the field — but it earned a hard-fought Playoff win on the road by completely dominating that aforementioned A&M offense. Whether the Canes have the offensive balance to grind out a win against Ohio State’s top-2 defense remains to be seen. What’s undeniable is that the program earned its biggest win as an ACC member.

Now it finally has a chance to avenge the Fiesta Bowl loss to Ohio State.

Ole Miss didn’t need Lane Kiffin to beat Tulane, but it might need Kewan Lacy to beat Georgia

Let’s not call it a bittersweet win. Pounding Tulane and never having that game in doubt was a massive exhale for Pete Golding, who now has 1 more Playoff win than his predecessor, Lane Kiffin. It was a relief to see the Ole Miss offense look solid, though not perfect, in a lopsided win. The first Playoff win in program history deserved to be celebrated, even if it was against a Tulane team that Ole Miss already beat the breaks off earlier in the season with Kiffin. Nobody should take that for granted.

But one of the byproducts of winning a blowout game is that you quickly turn the page to the next matchup. In this case, that’s a rematch with Georgia, AKA the lone team who beat Ole Miss in the regular season. One of the questions leading up to that will be the health of Kewan Lacy, who left Saturday’s game multiple times with a shoulder injury. It wasn’t significant in determining the result of Saturday’s game, but Lacy has been massive for Ole Miss.

You could argue that he’s the difference between this year’s team and last year’s. It’s not just that he set the program’s single-season rushing touchdown record. Lacy entered Saturday with the most missed tackles forced of any Power Conference back, and he easily had the most carries of any FBS back while leading by 1-7 points. He’s the drive finisher. What was the issue against Georgia? Finishing. It couldn’t finish the job after it led by 2 scores in the 4th quarter in Athens.

If Ole Miss is playing with a limited version of Lacy against a top-5 run defense, it could be tough sledding in New Orleans. Alternatively, it could turn into another reminder that Trinidad Chambliss has established himself as one of the best quarterbacks in the sport, with or without Kiffin.

Whatever the case, Ole Miss would prefer to have its Doak Walker Award finalist as close to healthy as possible coming out of the 10-day break.

That wasn’t exactly the Group of 5 statement to quiet the narrative

Woof.

There was more bark in that “woof” than what we saw from the Group of 5 on the Playoff stage. Tulane and James Madison both confirmed every anti-Group of 5 narrative that they were part of leading up to Round 1. It was ugly. Even worse, it was obvious. Both teams trailed within 2 minutes of stepping on the field. Tulane coach Jon Sumrall even admitted that his team wasn’t ready for the speed that Ole Miss operated with, and that it took 20 minutes to make that adjustment. Mind you, that was in a game that Tulane still lost by 31 points.

Deep into the first half, Oregon was sitting on 17 yards per play. The Ducks got virtually every blade of grass that they wanted early on before the game was out of reach. And while James Madison dialed up some trickery and didn’t stop competing, let’s not pretend those teams belonged on the same field. They only got on the same field because 5-loss Duke won the ACC Championship and completely threw off the whole “5 highest-ranked conference champions” thing.

Will any change come of those lopsided games? It could. Lord knows the post-Year 1 tweak of no longer having the 4 highest-ranked conference champs earn byes was made. That actually aged well. If not for that tweak, Tulane would’ve had a bye and Ohio State would’ve been playing in the first round. Backwards? Absolutely. Are blowouts ever going to fade in an expanded Playoff? Absolutely not.

But given how fluid those discussions are about the future of the Playoff, we shouldn’t rule anything out.

Here’s how I’d rank the remaining Playoff QBs with the game on the line

You didn’t ask for it, but here ya go:

• 8. Behren Morton
• 7. Carson Beck
• 6. Julian Sayin
• 5. Trinidad Chambliss
• 4. Dante Moore
• 3. Ty Simpson
• 2. Gunner Stockton
• 1. Fernando Mendoza

Yes, I realize this is nearly an impossible ranking because someone like Sayin has Carnell Tate and Jeremiah Smith to throw to. It’s difficult to isolate those variables, but this is based on who I’d feel best about having the ball to lead a go-ahead drive with 2 minutes to play. Mendoza has done that at an elite rate while someone like Morton just hasn’t been asked to do that with how lopsided Texas Tech’s games have been.

Will that matter? Definitely. It could be the difference in winning a national title.

It won’t be the only thing, but keep that in mind at each stage the rest of the way.

The post Takeaways from Round 1 of the 2025 College Football Playoff appeared first on Saturday Down South.

Whipping, swirling winds or not, nothing the Aggies offense did worked consistently. The downfield passing attack was virtually non-existent outside of a miraculous Mario Craver grab, the versatile A&M ground game couldn’t stay on schedule and Marcel Reed took 7 sacks. Oh, and just in case that wasn’t enough, A&M’s field-goal kicking included a mid-game switch.

But in the moments before A&M finally completed that first pass in the end zone, there was still hope. After all, it was a home Playoff game after an 11-1 regular season. Anybody in maroon would’ve signed up for that heading into 2025. If you could’ve gone back to the moment when Jimbo Fisher was paid a $76 million buyout to go away — he returned to College Station with ACC Network on Saturday — and told anybody that in Year 2 of the Mike Elko era, the Aggies would be a 5-yard touchdown away from forcing overtime or potentially winning the game with a 2-point conversion, they would’ve contributed to that buyout.

Unfortunately for A&M, that first completed pass in the end zone went to the wrong team. As a result, A&M’s golden opportunity in its first Playoff game was blown in excruciating fashion.

Miami’s 10-3 win in College Station won’t inspire documentaries. Well, at least it won’t on the A&M side. Lord knows that Miami has already had a pair of “30 for 30” docs made, and after its biggest win since those famed teams, let’s not rule out the idea that Saturday’s 10-3 rock fight could show up in a longer format someday.

It wasn’t a storybook ending for A&M’s season; it was a torturous death by a thousand paper cuts

Where were the offensive adjustments? Remember, as bad as the Texas showing was, that was a game played 3 weeks ago on the road. This was at home with the A&M offense who yes, benefitted from a favorable schedule, but it also averaged 33.6 points vs. Power Conference competition, which included a 41-point showing at Notre Dame back in September. As talented as Miami is up front with a top-6 scoring defense, how did A&M not muster a single touchdown?

Go figure that it was Irish fans who probably felt most bitter watching Saturday’s 1-touchdown showing at Kyle Field. Then again, beating either Miami or A&M would’ve punched their ticket instead of revolting against the system.

Even if A&M felt wronged by the system to get a 7-seed instead of the 6-seed that fellow 11-1 SEC squad Ole Miss got — the meant facing Miami instead of Tulane — there was no excuse for Saturday’s inept offensive showing. And yes, you could argue that A&M’s run defense issues led to that Miami touchdown drive late. That group definitely deserved at least a tiny piece of the blame after it became a 1-dimensional Miami attack that seemingly only had success when Mark Fletcher Jr. touched the ball.

At the same time, 3 turnovers and 4.3 yards/play won’t win you a Playoff game. A&M didn’t deserve to win with that offensive effort.

It’s almost inconceivable that it was still on the table when Reed dropped back to pass on 3rd-and-goal. On that game-deciding throw, Reed was somehow late and off-target to a covered receiver.

A messy play to end a messy game.

In some ways, you could argue that anything that A&M did in the Playoff was gravy. Again, seeing that atmosphere with a national championship still on the table will be remembered by those who witnessed it. Elko looks more like a coach with a clue than his predecessor, and gone are the 8-4 jokes.

But as A&M fans know all too well, assuming anything is imminent is a fool’s errand. Reed is set to return for another season, though that took a different turn after a pair of horrendous performances to close the season. He’ll have a new play caller in Holmon Wiggins, who was promoted to offensive coordinator after Collin Klein returned to his alma mater, Kansas State, for his first head coaching opportunity. How that shakes out remains to be seen, though the pre-Playoff announcement that Mario Craver signed a deal to return for another year — a sentence that’s still weird to process at the college level — bodes well for Reed’s 2026 surroundings.

A veteran A&M defensive front will reload, but that will likely include replacing SEC Defensive Player of the Year Cashius Howell. Whether Elko’s defense can repeat the nation’s best 3rd-down defense remains to be seen, as well.

For now, all we know is that Saturday should sting. The opportunities were there, and on a stage that A&M didn’t quite reach even with Johnny Manziel, they came and went. As Cole Cubelic pointed out, teams had been 0-9 in Playoff games when scoring 10 points or less. Make that 1-9 after Miami survived Kyle Field and became the first ACC team to win a Playoff game in the 2020s. If not for Oklahoma blowing a 17-point lead last night vs. Alabama, A&M would’ve been the first team to lose a home Playoff game. The Aggies narrowly avoided that dubious distinction.

Still, though. Saturday was indeed historic. It turned out to be historic for the wrong reasons for A&M in its first Playoff game. It should top the 2 Texas losses on the unofficial, but all too real “Battered Aggie Syndrome” index. Perhaps the only silver lining is that A&M is again relevant enough to actually feel pain instead of 8-4 apathy. That’s in the eye of the beholder.

Anyone could’ve seen that A&M’s offensive showing was torture. Just a whole lot of paper cuts.

The post Texas A&M’s offense puked on its shoes in an excruciating Playoff loss to Miami appeared first on Saturday Down South.

Let’s back up a second. What got real was that Alabama‘s season was staring at a disastrous ending after it fell to a 3-score deficit in a 1st-Round Playoff game at Oklahoma, AKA one of the most hostile atmospheres in the sport. Alabama defensive coordinator Kane Wommack might’ve claimed that the Tide had been in “win or go home” mode since the Florida State game, but let’s not get it twisted. Much to the chagrin of many, Alabama got into the Playoff as an at-large team after losing 2 regular season games and suffering a blowout loss in the SEC Championship.

Was this about to be another blowout? And would this be a moment that defined DeBoer’s future in Tuscaloosa?

Well, it did in fact turn out to be a double-digit margin of victory, and as many speculated in the days leading up to the first-round Playoff game at Oklahoma, Friday night did feel like a pivotal moment for DeBoer’s future in Alabama.

Again, though. Don’t get it twisted. An epic Tide comeback — it matched 2017 Georgia’s comeback vs. Oklahoma in the Rose Bowl as the largest in Playoff history — in Norman for a 34-24 victory should all but squash the ridiculous notion that DeBoer could possibly leave Alabama for Michigan.

Yes, there’s validity in multiple outlets reporting that Michigan is pursuing DeBoer to take over its post-Sherrone Moore mess. So far, though, there’s no such validity that DeBoer would opt out of being Nick Saban‘s successor less than 2 years after he signed up for the role. Is an extension in the works? Possibly. Is super agent Jimmy Sexton’s hands all over this? Quite possibly.

But Friday night was all about DeBoer

Like, the guy who improved to 4-0 vs. AP Top 10 teams in true road games. No active coach in the Playoff era has more such victories.

And oh, by the way, all he and Alabama did was become the first team to win a road Playoff game. DeBoer did that while leading the Tide to its first victory in a Playoff game since the 2021 semifinal vs. Cincinnati.

Not too shabby. DeBoer, despite the lows during these first 2 seasons, is always capable of going out and winning a big game … even when his team is facing a 17-0 deficit on the road against a Brent Venables defense before it even gets a first down. Eventually, that came. More importantly, it came in the form of a 29-yard catch from true freshman standout Lotzeir Brooks, who then one-upped that grab by making a trio of Oklahoma defenders miss on a 4th-and-5 conversion for Alabama’s first score of the night.

Consider that one of several game-changing plays that tilted the scales in Alabama’s favor. There was the Zabien Brown pick-6 to tie the game before the half, there was the over-the-top Germie Bernard catch to help Alabama make it a 2-score game in the middle of the 4th quarter, there was the dropped punt attempt by an atypically awful Oklahoma special teams unit that also watched Lou Groza Award winner Tate Sandell miss multiple kicks, etc.

You could argue that John Mateer’s decision to throw downfield instead of pick up a 3rd-and-3 with his legs was pivotal, though if that ball was caught instead of dropped, it’s likely a 24-7 ballgame late in the first half. Either way, it was a break that worked in Alabama’s favor during that furious comeback.

Pick whatever pivotal moment, and ask yourself this. Do you honestly think that would’ve swayed DeBoer’s future in Tuscaloosa? If the answer is “yes,” and you really do want to pretend that Michigan is hiring a coach under normal circumstances, remember something else. DeBoer never been fired from a coaching job. In his previous 2 stops as an FBS head coach, he got better jobs at the end of Year 2. At the end of Year 2 at Alabama, the jury is still out on whether DeBoer will end up leading the Tide to a championship. Call me crazy, but it would make sense if all parties wanted to see where they stood instead of hearing about hot-seat rumors entering Year 3.

Something tells me that this all ends with either a raise or an extension. Friday night’s result didn’t change that.

What Friday night’s result changed was potentially how a talented Alabama team approaches a daunting, but not impossible matchup against Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza and No. 1 seed Indiana in the Rose Bowl. Was Brooks’ brilliance or that pick-6 the timely exhale that the Tide needed to round into form and storm through the rest of the field? We don’t know that yet. All we know is that Alabama could be playing with house money against an Indiana team that’s in the midst of a historic season, but is also just trying to win a bowl game for the first time since 1991.

A New Year’s Day matchup in the quarterfinals means that Friday was the last time that Alabama played a game in 2025. It should also be the last time that actual DeBoer-to-Michigan speculation is discussed.

If it’s not, somebody has it twisted.

The post Alabama roared back in historic fashion at Oklahoma, which should squash this ridiculous Kalen DeBoer-to-Michigan speculation appeared first on Saturday Down South.

SEC Network’s Dari Nowkhah joined the show to discuss all things Oklahoma, including John Mateer’s postseason outlook and what happened with Jaydn Ott, as well as the CFP and the transfer portal QB that he’d want.

The guys close with Lad of the Week!

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The post SDS Podcast: Playoff?!? Round 1 preview! Dari Nowkhah talks Bama-OU, Jaydn Ott mess & CFP appeared first on Saturday Down South.

Any sort of discussion about the Sooners’ potential in this field has to include a question or 2 about the lackluster offense that we saw in the latter half of the season. It’s a unit that only averaged 123.8 rushing yards per game, which is 1 yard better than 1999 FSU, who had the worst rushing attack among teams who have won a national title in the last 90 years. There’s a reason why the Sooners, even with perhaps a top-3 defense in the sport, are only ahead of a pair of Group of 5 teams with +5000 odds to win a national title (via FanDuel).

OU is barely inside the top 100 in the FBS (No. 93) with 5.4 yards/play, and it only hit 8.0 yards/pass attempt in the bookend games of the regular season. That only happened in the regular-season finale because of a coverage bust with a true freshman corner, which allowed Isaiah Sategna to waltz in for a 58-yard, go-ahead touchdown in a 17-13 nail-biter against 7-win LSU.

Had that not happened, there’s a good chance we’re talking about OU in the Gator Bowl instead of hosting a home Playoff game on Friday night against Alabama. That is, in fact, happening. Those outside of Norman might’ve forgotten about OU amid all the discussion about Alabama’s Playoff-worthiness, as well as Kalen DeBoer‘s name being linked to the Michigan job.

But in a game that’s seemingly a coin flip — different oddsmakers have had both teams as 1-point favorites leading up to Friday — we should probably be asking a question or 2 about the lackluster offense that we saw in the latter half of the season.

What if a 3-week break was exactly what the doctor ordered for John Mateer?

Specifically, what if a 3-week break is something that Dr. Shin ordered for a guy who hasn’t quite been himself since his expedited recovery from thumb surgery? Lord knows that’s not as groundbreaking of a message-board discussion as the original Dr. Shin news that Mateer was set to return for the Red River Rivalry. Dare I say, however, it’d be an even greater development for Oklahoma in Round 1 of the Playoff if the veteran signal caller came out looking like his pre-injury, Heisman odds-leading version of himself who fueled the 4-0 start.

Let’s not assume that’s imminent. Let’s instead just play out a not-so-crazy scenario that he’s as healthy as he’s been since September after getting his cast removed.

Mateer got hurt ahead of the Kent State game, and then had the bye week to return before Texas. That wasn’t really a bye week for Mateer because of surgery/recovery/rehab. The only other time that Mateer had extra rest was ahead of the Alabama game. Like, when Mateer — and the leg of shorts-wearing All-American Tate Sandell — did just enough for the OU offense in a monumental win in Tuscaloosa. Of course, it helped that a defense without R Mason Thomas harassed Ty Simpson and forced 3 turnovers. On that day, Mateer didn’t turn the ball over and his gritty 20-yard touchdown run reminded everyone of the guy that we saw in the first month of the season.

With extra rest, we at least got flashes of Mateer’s play-making ability against Alabama. During OU’s late-season Playoff push, those flashes have been overshadowed by his accuracy issues, some questionable decision-making (that Tennessee interception was as bad as you’ll see from a team protecting a late lead) and a rushing attack that’s struggled to find consistent non-Mateer options. It doesn’t take an offensive savant to realize that the Sooners have been limited since his return, and with a defense that’s more than capable of doing the heavy lifting, there’s clearly been an emphasis from Brent Venables for Ben Arbuckle to have a more conservative offensive approach. OU has done a good enough job of seizing those rare opportunities for a chunk play, usually by way of Sategna.

Against Alabama, OU would prefer to not rely on that blueprint. That is, having a low offensive success rate and praying that a chunk passing play bails the offense out. The Tide have allowed the second-fewest 20-yard passes of any FBS defense. It’s not that the Sooners will opt out of taking downfield chances. But given how Mateer has struggled with 13 turnover-worthy plays post-surgery — he had 6 in the Texas game alone — could we perhaps see more of those gap-designed QB runs? That’s where Mateer has been at his best. In the 3 games with at least 7 gap-designed runs (Michigan, Tennessee and Mizzou), Mateer has had at least 75 rushing yards. Yes, 2 of those games came during OU’s rough offensive showing after Mateer’s return, but focus on that Michigan game.

If Venables can draw up a winning blueprint, it’s repeating what worked against Michigan

That might be a weird thing to say consider that OU beat Alabama in November, but that game saw OU win the turnover battle 3-0 and it got a massive kicking advantage in a game that was decided by 2 points. How repeatable is that?

The Michigan game, however, was total domination by Oklahoma. Outside of allowing that 75-yard touchdown run to Justice Haynes to kick off the second half, it was exactly the type of blueprint that OU fans envisioned when Venables took over for Lincoln Riley. Sure, the Oklahoma defense dominated a true freshman quarterback in his first career road start, but the offense was the headliner. Mateer’s greatness that night went beyond the box score. He was shifty, decisive and precise in a game that was seemingly never in doubt.

I’d love to know how much emphasis Venables and Arbuckle have put on getting back to that version of Mateer now that Oklahoma is in the Playoff and coming off some extra rest. Quite simply, OU cannot win a national title with the offense that we saw the majority of the latter half of the season. If Mateer is indeed as healthy as he’s been since September, the Sooners would be foolish not to put it on full display. Yes, that could be risky to unleash someone with 10 turnover-worthy plays on 10-19 yard throws, but you know what else is risky? Having a limited playbook with the season on the line.

Oklahoma has a chance to be the Playoff fly in the ointment in ways that nobody is discussing. That only happens if Mateer is truly back.

A 3-week break still might not be long enough to yield that. Time will tell. It’s time to see if Mateer is capable of putting a new question on the table.

Who wants to play the best version of Oklahoma?

The post Nobody is talking about (or scared of) Oklahoma because of the offense, but are we ignoring something obvious? appeared first on Saturday Down South.

Starting Friday night with Alabama traveling to Oklahoma, the 2025 College Football Playoff will begin. We’ve got 2 Round 1 matchups that are nearly coin flips with 2 Round 1 matchups that are … not. Even if that plays out, it’ll give us 2 more competitive games than we had last year when Round 1 games were decided by an average of 18.8 points, and all of them were double-digit margins.

Of course, the post-Year 1 tweak of changing the byes with the 4 highest-ranked conference champs no longer earning automatic quarterfinal berths could impact that. For all we know, we’ll get 4 down-to-the-wire games that’ll make even the greatest 12-team Playoff skeptics grateful that the field expanded.

So what’s in store for Round 1?

Here’s a prediction for all 4 of those games (odds via BetMGM):

No. 9 Alabama (-1) at No. 8 Oklahoma

There’s a chance that the takeaway after the first Playoff game is that Brent Venables simply has Kalen DeBoer‘s number. A 3-0 record against the Alabama coach would indicate such a trend, especially if DeBoer’s offense once again looks like it’s stuck in the mud. While you could argue that kicking was the difference in their matchup earlier in the season, it feels like we need to see significant adjustments made from DeBoer and Ryan Grubb to jump-start an offense that faded down the stretch. Doing that against perhaps a top-3 defense in the sport in what figures to be a hostile atmosphere could change that.

So what suggests that Alabama could actually flip the script? That Oklahoma offense is the weakest unit of any that’ll take the field on Friday. The OU faithful, while glad to be back in the Playoff for the first time since 2019, could grow restless if that group is ineffective at home once again. The Sooners got into the Playoff because they could occasionally hit on that chunk pass play and wipe away a slew of 3-and-outs. Who has allowed the second fewest 20-yard pass plays in America, you ask? Alabama. That proves to be a huge asset working in the Tide’s favor.

And on the other side of the ball, Jam Miller’s potential return doesn’t necessarily turn the Alabama offense into a juggernaut, but a healthier unit does what DeBoer said it would do moments after the blowout loss in the SEC Championship. It takes advantage of the opportunity. DeBoer improves to 4-0 vs. AP Top 10 teams in true road games, and Alabama earns a trip to the place that hosted the final game of the Nick Saban era, the Rose Bowl.

Score prediction: Alabama 24, Oklahoma 20

No. 10 Miami at No. 7 Texas A&M (-3.5)

History is working against Miami in a couple ways. For starters, Mario Cristobal has 1 career true road win vs. an AP Top 10 team. It was back in 2021 when he led Oregon to an impressive win at Ohio State (it was also in early September). But this is perhaps the more startling reality entering this matchup. Miami is trying to become the first ACC team to win a New Year’s 6/Playoff game since 2019 Clemson. Don’t believe me? Read ’em and weep:

• 2020 Rose Bowl: Alabama 31, Notre Dame 14*
• 2020 Sugar Bowl: Ohio State 49, Clemson 28
• 2020 Orange Bowl: Texas A&M 41, UNC 27
• 2021 Peach Bowl: Michigan State 31, Pitt 21
• 2022 Orange Bowl: Tennessee 31, Clemson 14
• 2023 Orange Bowl: Georgia 63, Florida State 3
• 2024 CFP First Round: Texas 38, Clemson 24
• 2024 CFP First Round: Penn State 38, SMU 10

*Spent 2020 COVID season as ACC team

To recap, that’s an 0-8 mark with 0 games decided by single digits and an average margin of defeat of 22.6 points. Woof. That’s why the ACC will be a 1-bid league until further notice. So how is it that a team that couldn’t even play for an ACC title in a league that crowned a 5-loss conference champ have any chance of going on the road and winning in front of 108,000 people?

Well, that’s far from a given, but there’s a path. Miami’s ground game is the key to this. Specifically, a healthy Mark Fletcher Jr. is the key after he was banged up mid-season, but is expected to be good to go for Saturday after he forced 40 missed tackles on 141 carries. Miami would prefer not to let Cashius Howell and that Texas A&M pass rush pin its ears back against Carson Beck, who has benefited from the lowest pressure rate among FBS quarterbacks (14.7%). What’s the best way to do that? Run the football. Like, run the football against the A&M run defense that surrendered over 200 yards on 4 different occasions, 3 of which were in the latter half of the season.

Miami can lean on A&M and take the Marcel Reed-led offense out of rhythm. That leads to a couple of timely mistakes by A&M. Instead of this being a coronation for the promising start to the Mike Elko era, it turns into a painful reminder that ascending into Tier 1 in college football is no small feat. Miami ends the ACC drought.

Score prediction: Miami 31, A&M 24

No. 11 Tulane at No. 6 Ole Miss (-17.5)

We all want to know how big of a difference it’ll be for Ole Miss without Lane Kiffin. That storyline will be evident considering that this was a 45-10 Ole Miss beatdown when these teams met in Oxford back in September. The context that’ll be lost is the fact that Kiffin wouldn’t necessarily be guaranteed to lead another 35-point victory against a Tulane team that Ole Miss seeing for the second time. BYU transfer Jake Retzlaff now has more experience in this offense, and like we’ve seen with plenty of Jon Sumrall teams, that defense has been much improved since the calendar turned from October to November even amid speculation that their head coach was off to his next job.

You get it. This doesn’t feel like it’ll be another 45-10 game. That’s not an indictment of the Ole Miss offense, which won’t have Kiffin but will still have Charlie Weis Jr. and several members of that offensive staff to guide Trinidad Chambliss and Co. It’s more a testament to a Tulane defense that allowed an average of 18 points and 60.4 rushing yards/game in its last 5 contests. Will Tulane suddenly shut down an Ole Miss offense that averaged 8 yards per play in the first matchup? No way. Tackling Kewan Lacy is still going to be a tall task after he forced the most missed tackles of any Power Conference running back, and getting pressure on Chambliss will be an uphill battle after he had 419 scrimmage yards (307 passing, 112 rushing) in the first matchup.

There’s too much of an established identity on the Ole Miss side of the ball to think that Kiffin’s absence will flip a 5-touchdown result, but much like we’ve seen throughout this season, it’s perhaps another game in which things are never truly out of reach. Ole Miss survives its first game of the post-Kiffin era.

Score prediction: Ole Miss 28, Tulane 17

No. 12 James Madison at No. 5 Oregon (-21.5)

Let me get out ahead of something here. We don’t need to bang the drum for change if James Madison is blown out in Eugene. I already outlined how much the ACC has struggled to be competitive in the biggest games in the 2020s. Even if Notre Dame, Vanderbilt or Texas would’ve given us a better game, this still only happened this way because the ACC had a 5-loss conference champ. We don’t need to gate-keep JMU just because there could be a 2-hour stretch in our lives in which we realize that 2 teams aren’t on the same level. Shoot, we forget how many moments that we had that in semifinals of the 4-team Playoff.

OK, that’s out of the way, right? Good.

Yeah, I don’t think this will be particularly close. Among the Playoff quarterbacks, Alonza Barnett III has the worst adjusted completion percentage (54%) under pressure. That’s advantage, Oregon. This year’s version of the Ducks hasn’t had a dominant pass-rush, but in a 1-game scenario against an inferior opponent, Dan Lanning can dial up some pressure. Meanwhile, Dante Moore’s biggest improvement since his arrival at Oregon has been throwing under pressure. His 73.5% adjusted completion percentage ranks No. 3 among those Playoff quarterbacks, and he’s only taken 13 sacks this season.

Oregon has a better chance of staying on schedule, which will open things up for those chunk plays. For a team that was No. 2 in America in 20-yard scrimmage plays per game, that bodes well. Yes, there’s some concern that Oregon’s Playoff outlook took a hit with both coordinators, Will Stein and Tosh Lupoi, taking Power Conference head coaching jobs. But in this matchup, I fully expect Lanning’s team to show up prepared and look the part in a lopsided home win.

Score prediction: Oregon 45, James Madison 21

Get in on the action this weekend by checking out our list of the best real money betting apps ahead of kickoff.

The post Predictions for each Round 1 Playoff game appeared first on Saturday Down South.

Where will DJ Lagway be in 2026?

That question ramped up after Billy Napier‘s firing, though it reached a fever pitch on Monday when the former 5-star quarterback announced that he’ll be entering the transfer portal. Ultimately, that means that unless Lagway has a change of heart, he won’t be the face of Buster Faulkner’s first offense at Florida. Considering how Haynes King was used in Faulkner’s offense at Georgia Tech, it’s not a surprise to see someone who has dealt with multiple injuries during the first 2 years wasn’t an obvious fit.

But where would Lagway fit after a lost season wherein Florida’s 4-8 record fell well short of what we expected to see from the preseason All-SEC quarterback? Is someone with 23 interceptions in essentially 1.5 seasons worth of starts going to scare teams off? Or is there still enough meat left on the bone to make some premier programs pursue Lagway? Both things can be true.

What’s clear is that Lagway will indeed have a market. But today, let’s tackle the new most intriguing question.

Where could we see the best version of Lagway in 2026? Here are 5 fits that would make a ton of sense:

LSU

I mean, Lane Kiffin retweeted the initial Pete Nakos report of Lagway’s decision to enter the portal, which would suggest that he could be a target for the new LSU coach:

Whether that was just Kiffin being Kiffin in some attempt to troll Florida — let’s not forget that Kiffin’s “spot the ball” post was a not-so-subtle jab at the Gators’ mantra — or actual interest remains to be seen. From Lagway’s perspective, all he could do is look at what Kiffin and Charlie Weis Jr. did with Trinidad Chambliss, who entered the season as a Division II transfer and became the No. 8 vote-getter in the 2025 Heisman Trophy voting. Kiffin’s track record with transfer quarterbacks also includes Jaxson Dart, who became an All-SEC quarterback and a first-round pick in the 2025 NFL Draft.

Both of those things were once considered likely boxes for Lagway to check, but a combination of poor decision-making, injuries and Napier’s play-calling have gotten in the way of that. Kiffin didn’t tolerate Austin Simmons’ interceptions, but it’s worth remembering that he stood by Matt Corral in 2020 when he had multiple Lagway-like games with 5 interceptions, and that yielded a 7th-place finish in the 2021 Heisman voting. It’s also worth noting that Chambliss had the lowest pressure rate in the SEC at 20.5%, and No. 2 on that list was Garrett Nussmeier at LSU, who figures to have several offensive linemen returning.

Nobody should be surprised if Lagway, who ended Kiffin’s Playoff hopes as a true freshman in 2024, crosses enemy lines.

Tennessee

I swear this isn’t just a list for Florida’s rivals. Do I think this is an obvious destination? I don’t, but after my Saturday Down South Podcast co-host Will Ogburn threw out this idea nearly a week before Lagway’s transfer announcement, I thought about it more. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the potential fit.

While there would definitely be a scheme adjustment for Lagway to make, Josh Heupel‘s offense just took a mistake-prone guy like Joey Aguilar and turned him into the leader of the No. 7 scoring offense in America. Mind you, that was as a post-spring transfer in an up-tempo offense. Aguilar only took 17 sacks on the season thanks in part to that tempo, as well as a new-look offensive line that found its groove early on. That included paving the way for a ground attack that averaged 175 yards per game. Lagway won’t be tasked with scrambling in that offense, and a handful of designed runs aren’t going to make him a weekly injury risk.

Let’s remember that while Faizon Brandon’s signing with Tennessee has him billed as the “quarterback of the future” in Knoxville, he’s 17 years old. Heupel starting a true freshman doesn’t seem like it would be his ideal choice to appease that talented group of skill players, which included SEC Freshman of the Year Braylon Staley. Heupel has typically favored more experienced signal callers, and while some might compare Lagway’s skill set to the talented but often underwhelming Joe Milton, a 45.5% adjusted completion percentage on deep throws in 2 years at Florida (Milton was No. 15 in the SEC with 32.8% on those throws) would suggest otherwise.

The Vols could do much worse than Lagway to address their 2026 quarterback situation.

Texas Tech

The fightin’ Cody Campbells would have a whole lot to sell Lagway on. There’s the obvious. That is, the transfer portal spending at Texas Tech was unprecedented, and it resulted in unprecedented success in 2025. No matter what happens with guys from the 2025 Texas Tech squad who leave for the NFL, one would think it’s not going to be a situation wherein Lagway is looking around and wondering where the help is. With the benefit of that offensive line restructuring, Behren Morton had a 23.6% pressure rate on drop-backs, which was No. 3 in the Big 12, and he also took just 17 sacks in Mack Leftwich’s run-and-gun offense that didn’t ask him to be Superman.

In a conference that saw former blue-chip SEC quarterbacks like Conner Weigman and Sawyer Robertson become the best versions of themselves, Lagway could follow a similar path. After the gauntlets that he saw in his first 2 years at Florida, perhaps there’d be some appeal to joining the Playoff team from a 1-bid league.

But I suppose I buried the lede here with the other thing that Joey McGuire could offer that the other programs on this list cannot. That is, an opportunity to return to the state of Texas. Lagway’s Lone Star State roots were a popular topic of conversation both during his recruitment and after he arrived at Florida. The ability to play closer to his tight-knit family, albeit 7 hours west of his hometown of Willis, Texas, could give Lubbock a geographical boost.

Texas Tech figures to be a major player in the portal market for its next signal-caller. If 2025 was any indication, a household name like Lagway could covet a situation like that.

Miami (FL)

Tell me that Lagway didn’t look across that sideline and think about how favorable Carson Beck had it with Shannon Dawson at Miami, where former transfer Cam Ward spent his final season before he became the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft. That appeal isn’t just living in South Beach or joining the more favorable ACC, which sent Miami to the Playoff as its lone participant. Shoot, it wouldn’t even just be throwing to Malachi Toney, who could be the best non-Jeremiah Smith receiver returning in the sport in 2026.

All of that has to be appealing. But you know what else should be part of that sell? Beck had games where he didn’t even get touched. He only took 9 sacks in 12 games, and he only got sacked multiple times twice. His 14.7% pressure rate is easily the best in FBS among quarterbacks with at least 50 pressured drop-backs (the aforementioned Chambliss is No. 2 at 20.5%). That’s what a Mario Cristobal-coached offensive line combined with Miami’s spending will do for a quarterback.

Miami pursued Beck even though he dealt with ball-security issues in a regressed 2024 season in which he had 20 turnover-worthy plays. In a regressed 2025 season in which Lagway had 18 turnover-worthy plays, he could seek a similar reset with more advantageous surroundings on the other side of The Sunshine State.

Kentucky

You had me at “Will Stein offense.” Bo Nix, Dillon Gabriel and Dante Moore all became the best, most well-protected versions of themselves after transferring to Oregon, where they got to learn from and play in Stein’s offense, which has since migrated to Lexington. Yes, Cutter Boley remains the most natural choice for Stein’s first offense, but let’s remember that Stein has earned the right to hand-pick his quarterback, and not necessarily default to the one that Mark Stoops hand picked. If that’s Boley, that’s fine. If that’s the guy who had mixed results in a pair of showings against Kentucky, that’s fine, too.

At Kentucky, Lagway could hit the reset button at a place that opened the season with 3 consecutive disappointing transfer quarterbacks (I’m including Week 1 QB1 Zach Calzada in that discussion after Stoops somehow hand-picked him). They’re starving for decent quarterback play. Lagway might not guarantee that, but if anyone can turn his fortunes around, it’s Stein.

And if he ends up following Billy Napier to James Madison …

Well, let’s just say he won’t be getting a play-calling upgrade.

The post 5 places where we could see the best version of DJ Lagway appeared first on Saturday Down South.

After the Vanderbilt quarterback became the 27th player in SEC history to earn a top-2 finish in the Heisman Trophy voting, the runner-up simply could’ve enjoyed a night out in New York City with his family, friends, his offensive line and seemingly anyone else who wanted to partake in the Pavia party. He could’ve celebrated the fact that the college football masses decided that he needed to be in New York on Saturday night, and if not for the similarly improbable run by Heisman winner Fernando Mendoza, Pavia would’ve been enshrined into the ultimate fraternity. Pavia could’ve literally raised a glass to his supporters and finished off a toast at a private party with “f— the voters,” continued on warpath to national relevance and nobody would’ve had any reason to change their opinion of him.

Instead, Pavia did the worst possible thing — he posted that message on his Instagram story.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Pavia made a dumb decision that could cost him dearly at this critical juncture in his life, wherein the margin for error for a sub-6 foot quarterback with more of a wrestler’s build is razor thin. It’s even thinner for those who don’t want to take the high road.

Yes, Pavia apologized 24 hours after he finished as runner-up. Clearly, someone told him that what he did was immature, petty and altogether, dumb.

What a shame. What a shame it is that people who gave Pavia the benefit of the doubt no longer have any reason to do so. You could forgive bravado because Pavia, in nearly every way, backed it up. Because kids do dumb things, you could even forgive Pavia for urinating on the New Mexico logo while he was the quarterback at New Mexico State, which didn’t make the final cut of his Heisman story while millions waited to see if he was about to win college football’s top individual honor.

But f— the voters? Nah. You see, 189 of those voters did indeed believe that Pavia was the best player in America and worthy of the Heisman. Another 352 penciled in Pavia as the No. 2 spot.

Personally, I was in that second group. I debated Mendoza and Pavia for multiple weeks, but ultimately went with Mendoza after he led Indiana to its first outright Big Ten Championship since 1945, and did so with the No. 2 QB rating in the second half/overtime among all Power Conference quarterbacks in the last decade (2023 Jayden Daniels was the only one who was better). Voters had no reason to “gate-keep” a player like Pavia because the winner came from Indiana, AKA the school with more losses than anyone in the history of the sport.

Pavia’s bitterness doesn’t stem from some in-depth breakdown he did of Mendoza’s play; it stems from his competitive ways. You can argue both that you, reader of this column, believed that he deserved to win the award and that Pavia’s edge is what has gotten him to this point, which comes out in everything he does.

You know where Pavia’s competitive edge didn’t have to come out, though? In a bitter Instagram story.

It’s equally concerning that he not only hit “send,” but that there was nobody close to him who advised against him hitting “send.” Coming from a Vanderbilt school that’s known for being smart, everything about that was dumb.

If Pavia wants to tell anyone he encounters for the rest of his life that he deserved to win the 2025 Heisman, that’s his right. Lord knows the late Pete Rose did his own version of that in his remaining days, and he had plenty of people who encouraged him to do so. But unlike the bitter Rose, Pavia’s story is supposed to have plenty more chapters.

Taking the high road, even with a not-so-subtle reference to the voting results, could’ve been posting that picture with all of his offensive linemen that read “never daunted.” We would’ve all had the reaction of “well, Pavia is telling himself that he got snubbed by Heisman voters and he plans on using it to motivate him with whatever his next chapter of football looks like.” That would’ve been on-brand while toeing the line between competitiveness and bitterness.

That didn’t happen, though. Instead, a guy who has already rubbed plenty of people the wrong way did something that even his closest allies probably didn’t approve of.

What do you think Clark Lea‘s reaction was when he saw that the guy he’s been banging the drum for posted “f— the voters” on his Instagram story? Dismay? Disgust? Humiliation? All could apply. After all, Lea is the same coach who responded to Vandy’s Playoff exclusion like an adult.

That’s what maturity looks like. Or rather, that’s what the high road looks like.

Pavia’s apology won’t erase what was an unnecessary blunder that could give potential partnerships pause to work with him. You don’t have to go back very far to see examples of NFL Draft stocks plummeting for backup quarterbacks who come with baggage. This goes beyond Pavia’s bank account and his NFL Draft stock, though. This is someone who has made a legitimate case to have a statue built for him outside of Vandy’s newly renovated stadium. His legacy at Vandy could last decades, but not if he makes dumb decisions like the one he made after he didn’t get the award he coveted.

Pavia has earned the right to respond confidently in any situation that presents itself. If he just followed the status quo throughout his life, he probably would’ve spent Saturday night coaching in a high school wrestling tournament somewhere in New Mexico instead of celebrating a Heisman Trophy invite in New York.

But Pavia’s celebration will now be part of his story. The high road means owning that dumb decision.

The post Diego Pavia’s bitter runner-up reaction — even with an apology — was dumb on every level appeared first on Saturday Down South.

Forecasting potential candidates comes with a few obvious caveats. Being a Heisman candidate often means being on a team that’s relevant, and history suggests that playing quarterback usually matters. That’s obvious.

What we don’t know is whether certain draft-eligible players will return, so there’ll be a heavy emphasis on underclassmen in the crystal ball. What’s also less obvious is who can actually emerge as a candidate. Don’t believe that? Then ask yourself if you would’ve predicted Diego Pavia would earn a trip to New York.

This is tougher than it looks. But hey, let’s take a crack at it.

These are the SEC‘s top 5 Heisman candidates for 2025:

5. Ahmad Hardy, Mizzou RB

This last spot was for Hardy or Jadan Baugh. As much as I love Baugh, I question if Florida will put together a season that’ll covet that type of consideration with a Year 1 coaching staff. Hardy, on the other hand, will have the benefit of staying in the same scheme with the same elite proven rushing attack. All Hardy did in his first year at Mizzou was run for an SEC-high 1,560 rushing yards, 1,111 of which came after first contact, which was the best among Power Conference players. Hardy is a decent bowl game from surpassing 3,000 career rushing yards before he’s even draft-eligible. The guy has already had 4 games with 200 rushing yards, so having a Heisman moment is always on the table.

The only reason that Hardy isn’t even higher on this list is because he’s got a tougher bar to live up to. He’s already such an accomplished player that he might be working against himself. We’re now a decade removed from a running back winning the Heisman, so it might take a 2,000-yard season from Hardy to get there.

4. Kewan Lacy, Ole Miss RB

Similar to Hardy, Lacy was a monster in his new home. The former Mizzou transfer led Power Conference players with 86 missed tackles forced (Hardy was right behind him with 85), en route to shattering the Ole Miss single-season rushing touchdown record (20). If Ole Miss gets 2 more games, he could realistically get to 24 rushing touchdowns and 1,500 yards. The only other SEC player to ever check both of those boxes in the same season was … the last running back to win the Heisman, AKA Derrick Henry.

Lacy took on more carries than any Power Conference back, so you don’t have to question what his workload will look like. What’s fair to question is what potentially new surroundings will look like. John David Baker is returning to Ole Miss after he ran a prolific rushing attack at East Carolina. Is there a possibility that Lacy joins Lane Kiffin at LSU? That remains to be seen. Either way, Lacy is poised to get a ton of work and be the face of a potent offense.

3. Arch Manning, Texas QB

I know, I know. You don’t want to hear about more Manning hype. Hey, he’s only at No. 3 on this list. But let’s put some context on this. Manning didn’t live up to monstrous preseason expectations. Duh. The only way he would’ve done that would’ve been if he had been in New York. So what makes us think that he could have a chance to get there in 2026? Didn’t he struggle with accuracy? And didn’t he have a 121.0 QB rating in true road games? You bet. That’s what we call “meat left on the bone.”

Manning had a disappointing season, yet he still racked up 33 touchdowns (24 passing, 8 rushing, 1 receiving) and 3,190 scrimmage yards in a 12-game regular season. He made plenty of next-level throws and showed plenty of the traits that made him such a decorated recruit. Kevin Jennings was the only FBS quarterback who had more touchdown passes under pressure than Manning (8), and he had 11 touchdown passes on throws 20 yards beyond the line of scrimmage. The problem was that he wasn’t consistent enough and he left too many of the easy yards on the table with just 5.4 yards/attempt on passes 0-9 yards from the line of scrimmage. Manning has to clean up his accuracy issues and get better offensive line play, but even if that’s not a drastic improvement in Year 2 as a starter, a 40-touchdown season for a Playoff-bound Texas team is a fairly realistic bar to reach.

2. Marcel Reed, Texas A&M QB

Reed was a legitimate Heisman candidate heading into the final weekend of the regular season, and if he had made it to Atlanta, he likely would’ve followed it with a trip to New York. That’s more than anybody else on this list can say. Reed had 31 touchdowns and 3,398 yards in a 12-game regular season. He’s a dual-threat quarterback, which seems to be a prerequisite in the Playoff era. There’s a feeling that Reed is already one of the nation’s best quarterbacks, but he’s still got room to take his game to another level.

One of the challenges facing Reed will be adjusting to a new offensive coordinator after Collin Klein’s return to Kansas State. We also need to see what happens with a veteran-laden offensive line, which played a massive role in Reed getting sacked just 9 times. Those could hinder a progression, but Reed’s ability to develop as a downfield passer will determine if this is on the table. At the very least, Texas A&M will have the most decorated quarterback it had since … well, you know.

1. Gunner Stockton, Georgia QB

It’s possible that we’re just scratching the surface with Stockton’s statistical potential. We’re already seeing all the intangibles of his game play out in a scary, who-wants-to-face-Georgia sort of way. Stockton had 3,133 scrimmage yards and 31 touchdowns for the SEC champs. Beyond filling up the stat sheet as a dual threat with a nose for the end zone, Stockton had a 162.2 QB rating vs. teams that are currently in the AP Top 25, which is No. 1 among quarterbacks with 2 such starts. He’s been every bit as clutch as Georgia hoped he’d be.

We saw Stockton post a 17-1 TD-INT ratio when blitzed, yet he could burn teams that turned their back on him in man coverage. That’s an elite combination for someone who broke the mold of a Kirby Smart era quarterback because of all the designed runs. Stockton had an improved group of Georgia pass catchers to work with in 2025, but he was still subjected to 6 drops on passes of 20 yards, which was the most of any SEC quarterback. Those types of throws only made up 13.2% of Stockton’s attempts (No. 10 in the SEC), yet he had a 46.5% adjusted completion percentage on those throws and he had the SEC’s best adjusted completion percentage (71.4%) on intermediate throws. Oh, and he led the FBS with a 78.7% adjusted completion percentage on throws under pressure. In other words, he can attack downfield and that can become an even bigger part of Georgia’s offense next year.

If that happens, we could be talking about the first Georgia Heisman winner since Herschel Walker.

My guess is that Ty Simpson and Trinidad Chambliss will be gone, but if they’re not, they’re replacing the RBs on this list

I just wanted to note that in case somebody missed the intro and lost their minds that I didn’t include those 2.

The post The SEC’s top 5 Heisman Trophy candidates for 2026 appeared first on Saturday Down South.

My Saturdays aren’t spent traveling to various campuses, wherein my full attention is only on 1-2 games. Don’t get it twisted, though. Being at a game in-person is second to none, and I try to do that at least once during the regular season, as well as the SEC Championship and a bowl game.

But filling out a Heisman ballot, to me, means watching as much football as humanly possible during a given fall Saturday. YouTubeTV Multiview — when it isn’t involved in disputes with Disney — has made that responsibility much more manageable. Oh, Texas Tech is playing West Virginia? Throw it on the Multiview. Ah, Ohio State travels to Washington? Multiview. Ole Miss is hosting LSU? Multiview for the next 12 hours, please and thank you.

I try to watch as much football as I can so that I’m not relying on the opinions of others to help crown college football’s ultimate reward. In my unbiased opinion, the prestige of the Heisman tops any individual award in sports. It deserves people who approach it that way. My annual goal is to make sure I’m always one of those people.

I preface this annual column that way because again, there’s a good chance that you’ll disagree with how I filled out my ballot, and that’s totally fine. But any perceived disagreement won’t be from a lack of watching these guys on Saturdays.

So, here’s what my 2025 Heisman ballot looked like (we get 3 spots and we rank them 1-3):

I didn’t have Julian Sayin or Jeremiyah Love on my ballot

Why not?

Let’s start with Sayin, who has been every bit as advertised as a former 5-star recruit who left Alabama in the wake of the Nick Saban retirement and has blossomed into the next great Ohio State quarterback. Outside of a having a back like Love to hand the ball off to, I’m not sure how Sayin could have better surroundings to operate in. Jeremiah Smith is the best receiver in America, and there are plenty of fall Saturdays in which I think Carnell Tate is worthy of that title. Sayin has arguably the best defense in the sport, too, so short fields and second-half leads are something he benefits from.

Sayin is unbelievable under pressure — his 78.1% adjusted completion percentage on throws under pressure is No. 2 in the FBS — so it’s not as if he’s only seen clean pockets and open receivers. But I do look at how much he benefits from ideal surroundings, and how noticeably different it was for Sayin in that Rutgers game when he didn’t have those 2 elite receivers. If I think a guy is the 3rd-best player on his own offense, I can’t pick him to be 1 of the 3 best players in the sport.

As for Love, I’d probably argue that he’s the best running back in the sport. The eye test tells me that, and not just because he hurdles in-position tacklers more casually than I take out the trash. Love is a walking, talking highlight-reel play waiting to happen, which is why he tied for the FBS lead with 7 runs of 40+ yards. He’s awesome, and it would’ve been awesome to watch him in the Playoff again.

But ask yourself this — what did he definitively do better than any running back in America? He was No. 4 in FBS in rushing yards, which is hardly the only metric to evaluate elite running back play, but it’s not like he had some 1,800-yard season. The efficiency was exceptional at 6.9 yards/carry, but among Power Conference backs with at least 100 carries, that was No. 3. He was No. 2 among Power Conference backs in both rushing touchdowns (18) and yards after first contact (896). Love had 56 missed tackles forced, which is a solid number, but it was No. 8 among Power Conference backs and a reminder that he benefitted from an experienced offensive line. Sure, he added value as a pass-catcher, but that felt like more of an afterthought in the last 2 months of the season. He’s an exceptional player who didn’t quite warrant a top-3 spot for me.

Love and Sayin both had tremendous seasons, and it was perfectly fine that they got an invite to New York. I just would’ve rather seen Jacob Rodriguez there.

3. Jacob Rodriguez, Texas Tech LB

It ended up being 21 teams, 2 of which are in the Playoff.

Wait, I thought you asked the question, “How many teams forced fewer turnovers than Rodriguez did this season?”

It’s an absurd stat to think about. Forcing 11 turnovers (7 forced fumbles and 4 interceptions) is the type of thing that some All-Americans don’t do in an entire career. Yet Rodriguez did that for a Texas Tech team that won the Big 12 Championship for the first time ever, thanks in large part to a defense that’s No. 3 in the FBS in both scoring defense and yards/play allowed. There’s playmaking, and then there’s whatever Rodriguez was in the middle of the Red Raiders’ defense.

It’s not just the turnovers, either. He had 104 tackles and 10 tackles for loss, but more importantly, PFF had him tied for the Power Conference lead with 65 defensive stops. Rodriguez is omni-present, and not just because he also got a pair of rushing touchdowns on offense (he also had a bad interception when Joey McGuire got a little too cute). That’s remarkable production for someone who has been so dominant that he’s spent plenty of 4th quarters on the bench for a Texas Tech team that won all 12 of its games by at least 3 scores.

Yes, part of the appeal of Rodriguez is his story. You can’t watch one of his games without hearing about how he’s a former Virginia quarterback who walked on at Texas Tech, and then married a Black Hawk helicopter pilot. But even if you’ve got a little bit of fatigue from that weekly broadcast staple, he’s undoubtedly been the best defensive player in college football. It’s a shame that he didn’t get a chance to hear his story told another time in New York.

2. Diego Pavia, Vanderbilt QB

Hate Pavia’s swagger if you want, but don’t deny his place among college football royalty. It’s not just that he led Vanderbilt to its first 10-win season in program history; it’s how he did it. He might not have had the statistical profile that most Heisman finalists have in their first 2 months of the season, but you could make a case that he was the best player in America in November:

• 465.5 yards of offense/game (No. 1 in FBS)
• 373.5 passing yards/game (No. 1 in FBS)
• 24 20-yard passes (T-No. 1 in FBS)
• 10.8 yards/pass attempt (No. 1 among Power Conference QBs)
• 189.9 QB rating (No. 1 among Power Conference QBs)
• 9.1 yards/play (No. 1 among Power Conference QBs)
• 368 rushing yards (No. 1 among Power Conference QBs)
• 92 rushing yards/game (No. 1 among Power Conference QBs)
• 12 TD passes (T-No. 2 in FBS)

Pavia’s late-season rampage to New York included a 3-1 record, wherein he lit up the scoreboard against the likes of Texas, Auburn, Kentucky and Tennessee in Neyland Stadium. On the season, Pavia led the most efficient offense in America at 7.5 yards/play. Against conference foes, Vandy averaged 7.0 yards/play, which was easily the best mark among Power Conference teams (it was also half a yard better than any SEC team).

Besides being a king of efficiency with the most yards/game among Power Conference players (334.8 yards/game), Pavia turned into the grim reaper. He faced 9 Power Conference teams, and 6 of them eventually fired either a head coach or a coordinator. You could argue that Pavia broke teams and that Vandy’s victories didn’t age well enough to give the program its first ever Playoff berth. After all, the 2 losses came against the 2 highest-ranked teams on the schedule (Alabama and Texas). If there’s a separator between Pavia and Fernando Mendoza, that’s part of it. Mendoza has been that dude from start to finish this season and has shown up with every clutch play possible, whereas Pavia and the Vandy offense hit a tiny lull in October, albeit a month in which Vandy beat a pair of top-15 teams (at the time of the matchup).

There are plenty of years in which Pavia would’ve been No. 1 on my ballot, including 2024 and 2022. I won’t deny that. But unfortunately for him, Mendoza pulled off an equally improbable feat without any blemishes.

1. Fernando Mendoza, Indiana QB

As I sit here today, I’m still searching for any sort of knock against Mendoza. Should he have scored 40 points against the nation’s best defense? Is it his fault that trips to Iowa and Penn State were a grind and he didn’t win by 28? Should he have thrown for 20 more yards to get to 3,000 pre-Playoff passing yards? Was his defense too good and perhaps he benefited more than others? Did Indiana play-caller Mike Shanahan scheme too well and make life too easy on him?

Those are all questions, some of which are obviously more tongue-in-cheek than others. But what I kept coming back to was the only one that mattered — was Mendoza the best player in college football this year? My answer, after plenty of internal debate the last few weeks, was an emphatic “yes.”

Perhaps that reality sank in on that 3rd-down throw to help close out Ohio State for the program’s first outright Big Ten Championship since 1945. Maybe it won’t be remembered as quite the “Heisman moment” that the Omar Cooper touchdown pass at Penn State was, but it should come as no surprise that among FBS quarterbacks with 100 passes in the second half/overtime, Mendoza had the best quarterback rating at 199.98. The only Power Conference quarterback with a better mark in the last 10 years was fellow Heisman winner Jayden Daniels. That’s not an accident. It’s also not an accident that Mendoza led IU to wins away from home against the likes of Oregon and Ohio State, both of whom are a combined 23-0 in games not against the Hoosiers.

Curt Cignetti is the reason that Indiana has gone from being the program with the most losses in the history of the sport to earning consecutive Playoff berths, but Mendoza is the reason that IU got over the hump against elite competition to earn that No. 1 seed.

You can’t knock him. All you can say is that he was the best flippin’ player in America in 2025.

The post How I filled out my 2025 Heisman Trophy ballot appeared first on Saturday Down South.

That’s not necessarily the best way to predict how something will play out, but BetMGM has Pavia on an island at No. 2 in the odds leading up to Saturday’s ceremony (this was when betting was last made available on Tuesday):

• Fernando Mendoza -2000
• Diego Pavia +1000
• Jeremiyah Love +15000
• Julian Sayin +50000

Someone with 10-to-1 odds after voting closed doesn’t seem likely to win the award, but it would be stunning if Pavia finished outside the top 2.

Let’s put some perspective on that. With Pavia, all additional perspective is valid. We need to stack Pavia up against some SEC legends because that’s the category he put himself in.

You can pretty easily make the case that he’s been the best SEC player during his 2 years in the conference. Why? Last year, nobody in the SEC finished in the top 10 of the Heisman voting. Pavia might not have been a Heisman finisher, but he was at least an All-SEC quarterback in his breakout season. In fact, he was the first SEC quarterback ever to transfer directly from an FBS school and earn All-SEC honors in his first season in the conference. This year, we know that Pavia is guaranteed to be the highest SEC finisher in the Heisman voting.

Not all Heisman winners are created equal. At the same time, being considered 1 of the 2 best players in the sport is a lofty feat in any year, much less one in which the group of SEC quarterbacks was so decorated that Pavia didn’t even earn preseason All-SEC honors.

At this point, you know the SEC’s 21st century Heisman winners by heart. Tim Tebow, Mark Ingram, Cam Newton, Johnny Manziel, Derrick Henry, Joe Burrow, DeVonta Smith, Bryce Young and Jayden Daniels all did it. Perhaps it’s unfair to say that Pavia deserves to be remembered like those 9 guys if he’s only a runner-up. That’s fine. There’s a different discussion we can circle back to with those guys.

Look at the SEC’s Heisman runner-up group of the 21st century:

• Tua Tagovailoa, 2018
• AJ McCarron, 2013
• Darren McFadden, 2006-07
• Rex Grossman, 2001

That’s a group of 13 players that Pavia will be part of, and he won’t stand out. Will he be remembered in the same regard as Tebow? No, let’s not oversell here. Of those 13 guys, 8 of them also paired their Heisman win/runner-up with at least 1 national title. Pavia, unless he finds another year of eligibility buried deep in the couch cushions, won’t be able to do that.

But there’s perhaps a better question that we need to ask with Pavia to put proper context on his legacy.

How many players in the 21st century were more valuable to their program than Pavia?

If we’re expanding this to all of college football to determine the most valuable individuals to their respective universities in the 21st century, I’d concede the likes of Tebow, Manziel, Newton, Burrow, Robert Griffin III, Vince Young, Deshaun Watson, Baker Mayfield and Stetson Bennett IV. Outside of that, you can argue Pavia against the rest of the 21st century crew. The “rest” would include guys like Lamar Jackson, Jameis Winston, Reggie Bush and Ndamukong Suh. But even then, if we’re looking at what a program was before their arrival and how much they changed the conversations about their program, how can one do more than Pavia?

Even if fellow Heisman finalist Fernando Mendoza wins the award, he won’t be viewed as quite as valuable of a player to Indiana because of what happened in Year 1 under Curt Cignetti before he transferred from Cal. Pavia, on the other hand, was part of the foundation year at Vanderbilt, which was assumed to be a flash in the pan. Like, the foundation year that included a win against No. 1 Alabama.

“Most valuable” is perhaps a difficult thing to quantify until we’re years removed from it. As dazzling as a player like Jackson was, Bobby Petrino was fired a year after he left Louisville for the NFL. Bush was among the most electrifying players in college football history, but fair or not, there’s a part of his legacy that’s probably tainted by the NCAA violations that he brought his school. Some would argue that guys like Winston, Manziel and Watson brought certain levels of negative attention to their schools, albeit for very different reasons.

The odds are favorable that somewhere next to Vandy’s newly renovated stadium, Pavia will eventually have a statue. Maybe they’ll wait a few years to make sure he doesn’t bring any negative attention to the university, or perhaps the hay is in the barn with his legacy.

What’s undeniable is that Pavia is a 21st century SEC legend. He deserves to be viewed through that lens as someone who was part of a New Mexico State migration to 2-10 Vandy, and ultimately flipped the script for the most dire situation in the SEC. Since Pavia made his mark, Clark Lea got a new contract and in between his national media appearances talking about Vandy’s Playoff chances, he flipped 5-star quarterback Jared Curtis from Georgia. Those things don’t happen without Pavia. Period.

Nobody could’ve predicted that Pavia would even sniff All-SEC consideration once (he earned that twice), much less become the 27th player in the history of the SEC to finish in the top 2 in the Heisman voting. No matter what happens the rest of Pavia’s football career, he’ll deserve to be remembered as SEC royalty.

It wasn’t long ago that those odds were nonexistent.

The post The oddsmakers suggest that Diego Pavia will at least be a Heisman Trophy runner-up, which would put him among SEC royalty appeared first on Saturday Down South.