Ed Aschoff discusses what he calls the SEC’s “Year of Finding the Quarterback”:
At least five teams — Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Ole Miss and South Carolina — will be breaking in new quarterbacks, while three others — Florida, LSU and Vanderbilt — could potentially have new signal-callers under center thanks to intriguing quarterback battles. Then, you have Arkansas and Missouri, which must have better play at quarterback if those teams are going to make championship runs in 2015.
Ten SEC teams have some sort of serious quarterback question, but there’s good news for most: There are quality running backs to help carry the load. Those backfield bulls are back to help push when quarterbacks can’t. There are safety nets all around the league that could help quarterbacks needing a boost this fall.
To use a criminal justice analogy, a lot of SEC programs have both motive and opportunity to rely on strong running games to get through next season. I expect them to take advantage of what they’ve got.
The interesting question will be how SEC defensive coordinators who have slowly been gearing up to handle spread passing attacks manage to deal with this.