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).
SEC Football Fun Facts
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.
SEC Football Team Schedules This Week
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.
Auburn Tigers
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.
Georgia Bulldogs
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.
Mississippi State Bulldogs
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.
Vanderbilt Commodores
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.