Tuesday morning buffet

Kibbles and bits:

• If I grok Phil Steele, Florida will surprise this season because some second-year coaches have kicked righteous ass.
• Stay classy, young Gator.
• If you’re gonna be a Tennessee football blogger, you might as well embrace sarcasm.
• In his mailbag opener, ESPN‘s Ed Aschoff manages to riff off a dumb question with an even dumber SEC speed, baby! answer.
• If you’re interested, ESPN posts some SEC title odds.  (Georgia’s are third best.)
• Mmmm, cupcakes:  “The SEC has 14 teams each playing four non-conference games, so that’s a total of 56 matchups. We have the SEC projected to be favored in 51 of those 56 games by an average of a whopping 23.8 points.”
• Shakin the Southland‘s DrB puts on a run blocking clinic.

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Friday morning buffet

Just like George Costanza, the buffet is back, baby!

• Sonny Dykes doesn’t think Ole Miss and Mississippi State have better players than his Louisiana Tech team.
• Here’s something I did not know:  in 1989, the American Football Coaches Wives Association was created to provide “camaraderie, support, information and service.”
• Patrick Garbin points out something I think most of us suspected – Phil Steele isn’t that hot a predictor of how teams fare nationally.  (Although Steele’s been better on calling the SEC East’s pecking order.)
• I’d love to hear Jimmy Sexton explain the difference between college and pro coaches contracts.
• Sometimes, I wonder if I’m missing something.
• “No offense,” he said, “but this will be perfect for the bathroom.”  I’m not sure if that’s a metaphor for something, but it probably ought to be.
• Here’s a follow up on that story about the Memphis player who’s overcome reading challenges to be on the verge of earning a degree.
• Mark Emmert isn’t worried about a “splintering of the NCAA”.  Blissful ignorance or informed opinion?  You tell me.
• TAMU’s Kevin Sumlin talks about transitioning to the big, bad, fast SEC.
• Brian Fremeau thinks three teams in the SEC East have a shot at a national title this season.
• How do schools pay for improvements to their athletic facilities?  Kristi Dosh counts the ways.

Steele on Georgia

You can read his preview here.

Basically, he ranks Georgia eighth, but picks Florida to win the East.  Why?  I’d say look here:

SPECIAL TEAMS – I was shocked at where UGA finished in my ST rankings in ’11. In the L10Y UGA has had 8 Top 24 ST finishes (5 top 7). K Blair Walsh (#6DC MIN) was a 2-time Groza semi and P Drew Butler (Ray Guy ’09) both ret’d along with some dangerous RM like Brandon Boykin (24.3 KR) and Brandon Smith (14.3 PR). They finished #7 in my ST rankings in ’10 and I called them the best ST unit in the country. It was shocking as Walsh (55-68 car FG’s) hit just 21-35 (L56). Butler still avg 44.2 but his net dropped from 40.6 in ’10 to 35.8. UGA avg 6.7 on PR before a 92 yd td in the bowl and avg 21.6 on KR. They all’d 4 return td’s and Richt said “Our ST’s were mostly average to scary.” UGA plummeted to #81 and TY lose their K/P combo plus their top RM and could drop even further.

By the way, Steele ranks Florida’s special teams as the best in the nation.

To understand how bad he thinks the Dawgs’ special teams play could be, in his national rankings Steele notes that Georgia was the only team in the country with six of its individual units finishing in his Top 6 (QB, RB, Receiver, D-line, LB and DB).  That, plus a favorable schedule, wasn’t enough to overcome the special teams weakness.

A couple of interesting sidenotes to bring to your attention are (1) Georgia isn’t the only upper tier SEC team with weak special teams, as he ranks Alabama 11th in the conference and South Carolina a slot behind Georgia at 14 and (2) Steele ranks Georgia as fourth-best in improved defensive points, a level of improvement I find difficult to meet if special teams play is even worse than it was last year.

Steele ranks the SEC coaches.

I got my copy of the 2012 Preview this weekend.  I’ll dribble a few things out, but you really should go get your own.  344 pages of small print (“This [use of small type and abbreviations] is done so I can put as much information in this magazine as possible.”) can eat up a lot of the dead time between now and the start of fall camp, you know?

Anyway, for starters, I thought I’d share his ranking of the SEC coaches.  It’s a little different.  Here’s the order:

• Alabama
• LSU, Auburn (tied)
• Georgia, South Carolina (tied)
• Mississippi State, Missouri (tied)
• Florida, Vanderbilt (tied)
• Tennessee
• Kentucky
• Texas A&M, Mississippi (tied)
• Arkansas

I think I’ll throw this one out for general discussion, although Chizik at number two and Phillips ahead of Sumlin certainly raised my eyebrows.  What do you guys think?

This is a good thing, right?

According to Phil Steele, Georgia returns a higher percentage of tackles than any other major program in the country.  In the context of finishing fifth in total defense last year, I’d call that grounds for optimism.

The riddle of Georgia’s offense, in two charts

Per Steele, Georgia returns the 17th best percentage of offensive yardage in the nation… and the 110th best number of returning career offensive line starts.

Figure out which matters more, and you’ve probably got a decent handle on Georgia’s chances for success this year.

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UPDATE:  Steele adds some context about Georgia’s returning yardage.

% of Yards Returning is today's blog. Georgia is tops among AQ schools while Boise St is at the bottom. tinyurl.com/7jzaqlh—
phil steele (@philsteele042) May 29, 2012

Memorial Day buffet

The twelve-pack is optional.

• Sun, fun and the SEC meetings this week.  Here’s a look at the agenda.
• Michael Adams on that agenda:   “This is one, sort of like coaches’ salaries and contracts, that kind of gets the presidents’ blood moving a bit.”
• And Spurdog intends to be divisive.
• There’s a job opening at Arkansas.  And you don’t have to sleep with anybody to be a candidate.
• Here’s Phil Steele’s returning lettermen chart.  Georgia just squeaks into the top quarter.
• Nick Saban’s coaching tree isn’t as impressive as you might expect.  It’s not bad, though.
• Urban Meyer gets a message from a recruit.
• Gus Malzahn breaks down Alabama’s defense.
• Jones and Rambo make Steele’s preseason All-American first team; Jenkins is on second team.

Steele on South Carolina

Surprisingly, he’s a little down on the ‘Cocks, ranking them 23rd.  Honestly, it’s a little hard to see why, at least from a talent standpoint.  But I’m wondering if he sees SC’s 2011 season as a bit of an overachievement, based on a few items he mentions:

• Garcia, in 2009, was the first and only of Spurrier’s South Carolina quarterbacks to start for an entire season.
• Last year, South Carolina started out 7-1 and ranked #10 but hadn’t scored first in any of the 8 games.
• Last season marked only the third time in 118 years that the Gamecocks recorded double-digit wins.

Add to that SC only returns 11 starters and you may have an explanation for his ranking.  If Lattimore’s healthy, I think Steele’s on the low side there.

Phil Steele’s 2012 Preseason All-SEC teams

Without any further ado, here they are.

COMMENTS

• As to Georgia, if you blink fast, you’ll miss that Steele only has a total of three Dawgs on all four of his offensive squads:  Murray, Crowell and King.  That is sobering.  It’s a better story on defense, as the Dawgs tally eight total, including three first-teamers.  (I was going to bitch about Ogletree being third team until I saw Clowney only made second team, so I’ll just shut up.)  I’m not surprised at the Dawgs being skunked on special teams – heck, they had everybody on last year’s list and look where that got ‘em.
• More broadly, it’s interesting that Steele left Tyler Bray off his list entirely.  And it’s probably because of the injury, but in my humble opinion Justin Hunter’s a first teamer all the way.
• TAMU placed five offensive players on the list and two defensive players.  Missouri:  two on offense, two on defense.  For comparison purposes, that’s better than Kentucky, Vanderbilt and Mississippi did (each with two) and similar to Mississippi State (four) and Auburn (five), and Tennessee’s and South Carolina’s (somewhat surprisingly low) six.
• For all the talk about how Corch left the cupboard bare for Muschamp, Florida has nine players on the list.
• And you know you want to know this.  Total offensive and defensive players:  LSU 13, Alabama 12.

I’ll probably have more after I chew on it some.

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UPDATE:  Year2 does all the comparative math I was too lazy to do.  With nice looking charts, to boot.

The new covers are here! The new covers are here!

Steele’s, that is.  Here’s what graces the SEC edition.

Lookin’ good, Mr. Jones.

And don’t get too bent out of shape about Alabama getting its own version.  It’s a special edition – more pictures, less content.  Think of it as a sort of Playboy in reverse.