SEC Football Insider: Cocktail Party And Cam Newton Set Up Exciting Final Month

It took a few weeks, but things appear to have settled down a bit in the SEC. All the teams that were supposed to win this week won. There were no upsets to note, few statistical abnormalities. While the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party had SEC East championship ramifications and a thrilling ending, it still didn’t tip the scales in the kind of unexpected ways that South Carolina’s win against Alabama or Florida’s three straight losses reshaped the road to Atlanta. The weekend went somewhat according to form.

Somewhat. There was still the exciting conclusion in Jacksonville, which officially sets up the South Carolina-Florida game as the de facto Right to Get Creamed by Auburn Game SEC East divisional title bout. Cameron Newton made a touchdown catch en route to a blowout win against Ole Miss. And Tennessee made things interesting in Columbia before the Gamecocks managed to win the game. Even when things are going according to plan, they aren’t really what you would call boring.

All of which sets the stage for the final month of SEC football in 2010. There are still some huge games to be played, and almost no one seems to know exactly where things go from here.

IT’S STILL THE WORLD’S LARGEST OUTDOOR COCKTAIL PARTY, TO GEORGIA’S DISMAY
Florida 34, Georgia 31 (OT)

In a more rational world, this game would have been over by halftime. Florida held a 21-7 lead. One 63-yard pass had given the Dawgs their only score of the game, and that play was 26 yards longer than any other drive Georgia had mounted. Georgia has not won a game all year in which they trailed at the half. And Florida had won 17 of the last 20 games in the rivalry.

But Florida wasn’t done. This time, the Gators drove 75 yards in five plays, the last a 51-yard touchdown run by Trey Burton. Surely that was the back-breaker for Georgia. Not so much. A Brandon Boykin 51-yard kickoff return put the Dawgs at the Florida 43, and Murray and Co. handled things from there; 31-31.

The score stood there until the end of regulation. Georgia went on offense and quickly showed why college overtime is in turns exciting and infuriating. After a pair of plays gained only one yard for the Dawgs, Murray dropped back and passed on third down. The pass was deflected by one Florida defender and picked off by Will Hill, who appeared to take it 93 yards for the game-winning touchdown. That is, until replay officials looked at the play and determined Hill had stepped out of bounds inside the five.

Once again we go back to this being a sane world. For the record, your humble correspondent loves college overtime. But it would stand to reason that if a player intercepts a pass and returns it to the four-yard line, the team should begin its next drive at the four-yard line. But this being college overtime, every drive begins at the 25-yard line. And so Florida had to back up 21 yards before being allowed to try to win the game, which the Gators did on another Chas Henry field goal.

That left Dawg fans feeling more than a little bit dispirited, as what might very well be the worst Florida team of the Urban Meyer Era won yet another edition of the World’s Largest Cocktail Party.

We never catch these guys when they have key guys out, the way Mississippi State caught them; they invariably catch us at the most inopportune times (i.e., during the one game D.J. Shockley was injured in 2005). For crying out loud, Florida benefited from its own false start penalties, which erased positive Georgia plays on more than one occasion in a game in which the Orange and Blue were penalized nine times to the Bulldogs’ two. The ludicrous extent to which random chance favors the Gators would be comical, if it weren’t so gut-wrenching.

Florida fans like those at Alligator Army are decidedly happier with the outcome, which officially eliminates Georgia from the race for the SEC East and allows the Gators to focus on South Carolina, provided they take care of the next game on their schedule.

Aaron Murray’s three interceptions and fumble are ultimately what gave the Gators a chance to win. Aside from the overtime pick, UF scored another 14 points off the quarterback’s mistakes. UGA moved the ball, gaining 439 yards of offense, but as has recently happened in this series, the Gators was the team that made the plays. It wasn’t a pretty win, especially the Dawgs comeback and two 100-yard receivers, but it was a win.

Florida now heads to Nashville for a game that will, barring a loss and a South Carolina win against Arkansas, merely be the next step before the division showdown in Gainesville. Georgia goes home to play Idaho State, a game that is the only guaranteed win left on the schedule for a team that needs two victories to go bowling.

BUT CAN HE LEAP TALL BUILDINGS IN A SINGLE BOUND?
Cam Newton Auburn 51, Ole Miss 31

This game started out as usual for Auburn on offense, with Cameron Newton running for a touchdow--

I’m sorry, what was that? Oh, he caught a touchdown pass on the first drive of the game to tie things at 7-7. Oh, well, that is something different. For those of you keeping track, that’s now 30 touchdowns of some sort for Newton: 15 passing, 14 rushing and one receiving after the game against the Rebels. That puts him on pace for 40 touchdowns of some kind or another by the team the season is over, and that’s without accounting for a likely SEC Championship Game and a certain bowl.

The most surprising part of that is that Newton had just 45 yards rushing on the day. Instead, he showed off his ability to pass the ball: 18-of-24 for 209 yards, 2 TDs and 0 INT. And of course there was the whole 20-yard touchdown catch thing.

And even though they gave up two of the scores after the offense had built a 27-point lead, there are still issues on the Auburn defense. They allowed 407 yards of total offense to Ole Miss. In fairness, the Black Bear Rebel Alliance Admiral Ackbar Somethingorothers have looked pretty good on offense this year. Still, allowing an opponent five drives of 65 or more yards is still not something that screams “SEC Championship,” even if the opponent is Houston Nutt. But surviving a game against Nutt is something that more than one SEC champion would like to say they’ve done, so give Auburn that much.

While you do, Auburn fans like the guys over at Track Em Tigers are just going to enjoy watching Newton score touchdowns any way he can.

Auburn next faces the might Mocs of Chattanooga, while Ole Miss faces off with Louisiana-Lafayette, which really ought to be offered some sort of honorary membership in the SEC at this point.

AND THEY’RE OFF
Arkansas 49, Vanderbilt 14

Admit it: There was a point when you saw that Vanderbilt led Arkansas 14-6 early and thought, “What if?” But then you remembered that this is Vanderbilt we’re talking about, and apparently so did they. After the Commodores took that eight-point lead, Arkansas unleashed a blizzard of points that only ended when the Razorbacks took a 49-14 lead early in the fourth quarter.

One of the reasons Vanderbilt started out so well was a pretty solid ground game; on their first two scoring drives, the Commodores ran the ball eight times for 104 yards. They would attempt 23 more rushes for 13 yards the rest of the game, which is not an ideal strategy when your opponent is trying to set a new land-speed record for touchdowns scored by a team without wings on its uniforms. Vanderbilt had seven first downs in the first quarter, but just one in the final three.

Not that the passing game worked much better for Vanderbilt, whose quarterbacks went a combined 6-of-17 for 36 yards, 1 TD and 2 INTs. That’s a passer rating of 48.96, which doesn’t even happen to Georgia Tech that often, and really doesn’t happen anywhere without an offensive coordinator getting fired or demoted. Oh, Vanderbilt already tried that. Then never mind.

If there is one thing Arkansas might want to work on, it would be trying to hold down the number of penalties. Despite what you might have heard, penalties don’t often cost a team the game. But Arkansas is going to test that theory if they keep on at the going rate, adding another 13 for 130 yards against Vanderbilt on Saturday. So far, Arkansas has more penalties (71) and penalty yards (593) than any other team in the SEC, and it’s not even close. The Razorbacks are the only conference team with more than 500 penalty yards, and the next one or two fouls will make them the only one in the league with more than 600.

For now, though, there’s plenty for fans to be happy about. Arkansas Expats knows that the conference championship is out of the question, but is enthusiastic about the goals that remain.

But 11-2, a January 1 bowl, and a top ten finish are all still out there waiting for a team that can avoid penalities, execute on offense, clamp down on defense, and not turn over the ball. Even if it was just against Vanderbilt, I am encouraged that of those things we did all but the first one last night. Here is hoping we do all of them next weekend. We’ll certainly need to do so. The slayer of Alabama is no Vanderbilt.

Ah, yes, “the slayer of Alabama.” Arkansas heads to South Carolina for a game that will likely have more influence on the polls than the SEC championship picture, while Vanderbilt welcomes the Gators to Nashville to try an upset that could actually change all that.

THE 2010 LANE KIFFIN MEMORIAL MORAL VICTORY
South Carolina 38, Tennessee 24

The good news for Tennessee fans about this Saturday: Their team did not get absolutely dismantled by a team that is actually in the running for the SEC East. The bad news: The Vols still lost by two touchdowns, the second straight time that’s happened against one of the remaining divisional contenders and the fifth time they’ve lost by at least 14 points this year.

Statistically, though, the Vols did pretty well in Columbia. They were only outgained by 31 yards, 435 to 404. They actually had 21 first downs to South Carolina’s 20, and held the ball for more than half the game. But when you lose three fumbles and throw an interception, even the most even game in the box score is probably not going to end well for you. And yet again, it did not end well for the Vols.

The flip side of that, of course, is that the Gamecocks never should have trailed Tennessee in the fourth quarter. The Vols have tested good teams through the first half, even kept things close through the fourth. But with the exception of the bending of the space-time continuum that was the LSU game, the Vols have not lead an SEC game in the fourth quarter all year. This would not be a concern if South Carolina were the old South Carolina, just hoping to win seven games and play in a bowl game somewhere. For an SEC contender, though, it’s a troublesome sign.

Only once since Spurrier took over in the 2005 season have the Gamecocks ranked outside the Top 25 in both passing yardage and passing efficiency defense, and only once more have they ranked outside the Top 25 in either. (That would be last year, when they were the 26th-ranked defense in terms of passing efficiency.) Ironically, the one year they did was also the only year so far in which a Spurrier-coached team has won at least eight games, so whether this statistic actually has anything to do with the team’s success in an open debate.

For now, Garnet And Black Attack is not going to get too down about that.

After all, this was only the fourth time that we’ve beaten the Vols since joining the SEC, and that means something regardless of whether or not the Vols are down, because it’s important for us to achieve a sense that we’re the third best team in the division. We also beat them by a fairly convincing margin; although the game had some tense moments, the final margin of victory was the second-largest for us in this series in the modern era.

There seems to be even more enthusiasm over at Rocky Top Talk -- fans of the team that actually lost the game.

Bottom line, the team looked better this week. We scored more points on offense, and the defense at times stood strong. Would the outcome have been different if not for those 21 points South Carolina got off our turnovers? No one knows for sure, but you’d think so. The game against Alabama last week deprived us of any evidence of progress or improvement, but this one did not.

Next up for South Carolina: A game against Arkansas, during which the Gamecocks will either find a way to fix their passing defense or stand by and watch as Ryan Mallett breaks 27 SEC records. Tennessee travels to Memphis to face a Conference USA game on the road, for reasons that no one really understands.

OH, YEAH, THEY ALSO PLAYED
Mississippi State 24, Kentucky 17

One of the bad things about the SEC deal with ESPN has been the advent of the weekly ESPNU game -- a game that few people in the conference ever remember, because few people in the conference actually see it. It tends to start at the same time as bunch of games that are frankly just better, and of course some of the conference’s fans don’t even get ESPNU at all.

Not that this particular ESPNU game wasn’t important in a way. Both Mississippi State and Kentucky have had some highlights this year -- especially the Western Division Bulldogs, who now rank 21st in the country and sport a 7-2 record. Kentucky’s results have been a bit more uneven this year, but the upset of South Carolina had at least opened the door to hopes that the Wildcats might have a special year.

After a second straight loss to an SEC team with a canine mascot, that door appears to be slammed shut. The best Kentucky can hope for is a 7-5 record and another midtier bowl bid, and that requires sweeping Charleston Southern and Vanderbilt before ending a lengthy losing streak against Tennessee.

The third interception came at the end of a 17-play, 70-yard drive at the end of the fourth quarter that would have tied the game.

All of which is pretty “frustrating” to A Sea Of Blue.

This football team has so many weapons, yet they are incapable of sustaining effort throughout an entire game. For the defense, that is understandable -- they are very young, and youth is punished in the SEC. But the offense had a chance to win this game, and failed utterly by error, not by overwhelming opposition.

Kentucky is next opposed by Charleston Southern, which promises to not be overwhelming at all. Mississippi State has the traditional bye week before heading to Tuscaloosa to face the Tide.