2023 SEC Football Media Day 2: Georgia seeks to threepeat as national champion

SEC Football Kickoff Media Days are set for July 17-20 at the Grand Hyatt in Nashville, TN. It will be the first time the event is held in Nashville and the third time it will be held outside of the Birmingham, AL metro area. It was in Atlanta in 2018 and last year.

No school has won three straight major poll national championships and despite losing 41% of its overall production, according to ESPN’s Bill Connelly, the Georgia Bulldogs seek to become the first to accomplish the feat.

As for winning the SEC Football championship, ESPN Analytics gives Georgia the highest chance of winning the conference title. The Bulldogs are seeking their second straight league crown and third since Kirby Smart took over in 2016 (2017 & 2022).

The ESPN Analytics numbers align fairly closely with Caesars Sportsbook, which has Georgia as the odds-on favorite to win the conference (-115) with Alabama (+240) and LSU (+450) the only other schools with better than 10-1 odds.

The 2023 season will be the final one with divisions for the SEC as the conference will eliminate them in 2024 with the arrival of the Oklahoma Sooners and Texas Longhorns to the league.

Georgia and Alabama are the ESPN Analytics favorites to win the SEC East and West, respectively, and reach the conference championship game.

Seven SEC Football teams are in the FPI top 25, the most of any conference.  Twelve of the SEC’s 14 teams have a better than a 50% chance of reaching bowl eligibility according to ESPN Analytics.

As for recruiting, Alabama and Georgia have the top-2 ranked signing classes for this season with LSU coming in at No. 6. Oklahoma and Texas, which will join the SEC in 2024, also have top-5 classes.

Monday: LSU, Missouri and Texas A&M
Tuesday: Auburn, Georgia, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt
Wednesday: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida and Kentucky
Thursday: Ole Miss, South Carolina and Tennessee

I will be doing previews all week for every team.  Today I will preview Auburn, Georgia, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt.  More on this later on Shemon and Sheppard.

After posting back-to-back losing seasons for the first time since 1998 and 1999, Auburn brought Hugh Freeze back to the SEC after four years at Liberty. Freeze was the head coach at Ole Miss from 2012-16, where he posted a 39-25 record on the field (27 wins were subsequently vacated).

Freeze is one of five head coaches to beat Nick Saban multiple times in his 16 seasons with the Crimson Tide and the only one who is active in the SEC. The others are Les Miles (three), Gus Malzahn (three), Urban Meyer (two) and Dabo Swinney (two).

It may not take Freeze long to turn things around at Auburn. The Tigers return the third-most production in the SEC according to ESPN’s Bill Connelly.

The top three players in receiving yards last year return, as do two of the three 500-yard rushers and two of the four players with at least 50 tackles.

Freeze has also done well on the recruiting trail, flipping several ESPN 300 prospects to land the No. 21 incoming freshman class according to ESPN Recruiting and the No. 4 incoming transfer class according to 247 Sports.

After winning its first national championship since 1980, Georgia fans didn’t have to wait another four decades to celebrate another title. The Bulldogs finished 15-0 in 2022, matching LSU in 2019 for the best record in SEC history.

Georgia became the seventh school to win back-to-back outright national championships since the AP Poll debuted in 1936; no school has won three straight titles in that span.

The Bulldogs’ 29 wins over the past two seasons are tied for the most in major college football history. Georgia capped the season with a 65-7 win over TCU in the national championship game, the largest win by a team in *any* bowl game in major college football history.

One of the reasons for Georgia’s continued success under Kirby Smart has been its dominance on the recruiting trail. The Bulldogs have the second-best incoming class according to ESPN Recruiting (Alabama has the No. 1 class). This is the seventh straight season that Georgia has finished with a Top-3 class.

Zach Arnett takes over the Mississippi State football program after the death of Mike Leach last season.  Arnett served as the defensive coordinator for the Bulldogs from 2020-22. Over that span, they ranked 3rd in the SEC in Int (36), Defensive TD (7) and Opponent Rush YPG (124.8).

Mississippi State will move away from the Air Raid offense and into a pro-style playbook this season as Kevin Barbay comes over from Appalachian State. In his system, the Mountaineers led the Sun Belt with 28 Pass TD.

They also got it done on the ground, averaging 5.2 yds/Rush with 27 Rush TD. App State was one of the more balanced offenses in the country as just one of 16 teams in FBS with 27 Pass TD and 27 Rush TD last season.

Last year, Vanderbilt showed improvement. The 5 wins equaled the team’s totals from the 3 previous seasons combined and won twice as many conference games (2) as it did in the three previous seasons combined.

One of the biggest reasons for Vanderbilt’s improvement last season, was making the most of its opportunities. The
Commodores scored touchdowns on 86.4% of their goal-to-go situations last year.

That ranked 18th in FBS and 4th best in the SEC (ahead of Alabama and Georgia) They also converted 68.6% of their red-zone trips into touchdowns, good for 7th in the SEC.

However, the Commodores defense allowed 461.3 yards per game (9th-most in FBS) and did so by allowing 6.95 yards per play (4th most in FBS). Their biggest hole of all was their rush defense, and not just because they were often trailing in games. Vandy allowed an SEC-high 5.2 yards per rush last season.

The slow college football offseason drip is about to be opened up into a full flow. College football can't get here soon enough. But this week we get some soundbites to react to with SEC Media Days. This got me thinking; what is the biggest question for each of the SEC teams? 2023 will be the final season of the SEC as we've known it for the last 15 years. This is the final season with an East and West division before Oklahoma and Texas come into the conference in 2024.. There have been two coaching changes in the conference this off season. Hugh Freeze is back in the SEC, now with Auburn. And Zach Arnett takes over in Starkville after Mike Leach tragically passed away following the 2022 season.

Programs at the top of the conference are breaking in new quarterbacks. Alabama has serious question marks. Georgia is replacing the only quarterback to win a national championship in Athens in the last 40 years. And will a change of scenery help former 5-star Graham Mertz match his skillset with results. Will Tennessee keep their offensive production up with Hendon Hooker gone and Joe Milton taking over. I'm going to stay away from quarterback question marks for SEC programs. That's always going to be the biggest question mark when the position is unanswered. Ahead of the SEC Media Days let's look at the biggest question for each SEC team heading into the 2023 season.

The first decade of Alabama's dominance under Nick Saban was predicated on  elite defense. College football has changed to where you can't win exclusively with defense, but a good one makes like a lot easier. Georgia has flown by Alabama on the defensive side of the ball. I think that's been the biggest difference between the two programs the last couple of years. I wonder if Nick has looked at what Kirby has done with his defense and is going to try to push his program back towards a defensive dominant force.

Last season the pass defense was atrocious in Fayetteville. The Hogs ranked dead last in the the nation in pass defense last season. Last season's Freshman All-SEC CB Quincey McAdoo is rumored to miss the season with injuries from a car crash this spring. They went transfer portaling to bring in a pair of corners to help fill the void. The defense needs to improve if Arkansas is going to push for a middle of the pack finish in the West.

The last couple of seasons have been tough on the plains. Last season there were only 2 conference wins (both 3-point wins at home). Hugh Freeze knows how to win in the SEC and I have no doubt Auburn will be much better after a few years in charge. But was the problem in Auburn a coaching problem or a talent problem? Freeze will get the best out of the roster, but I don't know what that means.

The Bill Napier era in Gainesville got off to a great start with a win over Utah opening night. Close losses to Kentucky and Tennessee dampened to mood around the program. The rest of the way the Gators beat who they should have and lost to who they should have. Until the last SEC game of the year when they lost at Vanderbilt and the trashing from Oregon State in the bowl game. There was a lot of circumstance around the program that led to the late season dip. But the Gators have the most difficult schedule in the country this season, and will have one of the most difficult next season. The Gators need to get some early season wins if they want to have some momentum going into the back half of the schedule which is very difficult.

There are not any real questions in Athens this season. They are in that upper echelon of programs that just replace NFL draftee with 5-star prospect. Alabama, Clemson, and Ohio State have all been on this level at some point in the last decade. The Dawgs have a really easy schedule by SEC standards in 2023. Every other team in the East has serious question marks, and their crossover opponents are Auburn and Ole Miss. I have no doubt they will be playing in the SEC title game for a 3rd straight year. Their opponent (LSU or Alabama most likely) will be the most talented roster they will have played all year. Will their lack of elite opponents come back to bite them when it matters most?

When Kentucky is playing it's best football under Mark Stoops, the offensive line is playing at a really high level. That was not the case in 2022. They've brought in two transfers for the offensive line, and running back Ray Davis from Vanderbilt to help reestablish the running game.

LSU won the SEC West in Brian Kelly's first season in Baton Rouge. I think that came as a surprise to most non-LSU fans. It was not a perfect season for the Tigers though. They lost SEC games to Tennessee and Texas A&M before getting spanked in the SEC Championship Game. LSU loses Tennessee and replaces them with Missouri this year. If LSU can get back to Atlanta, they'll be going into the new look SEC with all the momentum in the world.

Unfortunately this is the biggest question around the Bulldogs this offseason. Mike Leach was one of the greatest characters in college football. But he was also one of the best offensive minds in the game. The Bulldogs promoted DC Zach Arnett from within to take over for Leach. I really want Will Rogers and the Mississippi State offense have a season for the record books as an homage to the former coach. But it's impossible to know what the offense will look like for an entire season without Leach.

Go back and look at the Tigers 2022 season. They had 6 losses, but fumbled the game at Auburn away late, was the only team to stay in a game with Georgia in the regular season, and lost by 1 possession to Florida and Kentucky. Mizzou was really close last season but could not figure out a way to win games. The Tigers bring back 13 starters from last season- tied for second most in the conference.

Only Colorado has brought in more transfers the last two offseason than the Rebels. And that's because they brought in 51 new players this year alone. Ole Miss has been the one program to embrace the portal in the SEC the most. They have 25 transfer portal players coming in for 2023. Ole Miss has never been able to "legally" compete with recruiting high-school talent against the blue bloods of the conference. But they have shown an ability to go after, and land, big fish in the transfer portal.

Not the Virginia Tech version that was dominated by special teams. The South Carolina version of winning close games. 2022 ended with a loss, but there is still a ton of momentum around the Gamecocks program. They blasted Tennessee at home, followed it up with their first win over Clemson since 2013, and lost a close bowl game to Notre Dame. Can South Carolina take the momentum from 2022 and springboard themselves to a successful 2023.

Since Josh Heupel showed up in Knoxville, the offense has been humming. The defense has had issues at timed though. Alabama was on the ropes last season early on and the defense let them back in the game. The offense scored 38 at South Carolina and they got blown out because the defense allowed 63 points. And an early season game against Pitt last season was pushed to OT because the defense couldn't come up with a stop at the right time. If Tennessee wants to take the step from fun team who can beat anyone because of their offense to elite program with national championship expectations, that side of the ball will need to improve.

Since Josh Heupel showed up in Knoxville the Vols offense has been rolling. But when looking at the best offenses in the SEC Alabama has been the most consistent team on that side of the ball

The Aggies were the most disappointing team in all of college football last season. The offense looked stale for most of the season. The program decided to bring in Bobby Petrino for some new thoughts on that side of the ball. But both the offense and defense were problems last year. Texas A&M has been recruiting at the level of Alabama and Georgia, and should be competitive with them on the field. If 2023 is another down year, the momentum will be gone in Aggieland.

Clark Lea has been at Vandy for a few years now and we are starting to see the fruits of his labor. The Commanders ended 2022 with wins in 2 of the last 3 games with the wins coming against Kentucky and Florida. They lost a close game against Missouri as well. If they get the right breaks the Commodores could be looking down at someone in the East.