Take an early look at the SEC title showdown
SEC title game participants were dominant in divisions
This hardly comes as a surprise.
Alabama and Georgia were overwhelming picks in July to win their respective Southeastern Conference football divisions and collide this Saturday in the league title game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Nick Saban’s topranked Crimson Tide (120) and Kirby Smart’s No. 4 Bulldogs (11-1) punched their tickets to Atlanta on Nov. 3, with each ultimately finishing ahead by multiple games in the standings to validate the lofty expectations that have accompanied them all season.
Saturday’s encounter will occur less than 11 months after Alabama rallied past Georgia for a 26-23 overtime triumph in the College Football Playoff’s national championship game, which also took place inside Mercedes-Benz.
“I think Kirby has done a fantastic job, and it’s no surprise to me,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said late Sunday afternoon. “Georgia has always had a pretty good program, and he has taken it to the next level. They have done an outstanding job of recruiting good players, but they have also done a good job of developing those players and getting them to play at a high level on a consistent basis.”
Alabama and Georgia didn’t meet in the first 20 SEC title games before producing a classic in 2012, when Saban’s Tide outlasted Mark Richt’s Bulldogs 32-28 in what essentially served as a national semifinal in the former Bowl Championship Series format. The Tide had a much easier time several weeks later during a 42-14 waxing of Notre Dame for the national title.
Smart was Alabama’s defensive coordinator in 2012 but replaced Richt after the 2015 season. He didn’t need long to assemble the chief challenger to Saban’s Tide, with his Bulldogs having gone consecutive seasons of sweeping their East opposition by 14 or more points.
Alabama has performed at an even higher level, becoming the first program in NCAA history to complete a 12-0 regular season with all 12 wins coming by more than 20 points. Georgia’s lone hiccup was its 36-16 loss at LSU in a
cross-divisional matchup Oct. 13, but every other SEC team sustained at least three league losses this season.
So why is the current league landscape Alabama, Georgia and everybody else?
“The common things would be quarterback play, third-down conversions and protecting the ball,” Smart said. “Neither one of us are turning the ball over a lot, so those are some similarities. We’ve both got a good set of backs and a good set of receivers, and both teams are scoring points.
“The biggest difference between us is that they’re playing better defense than we have, and we’ve got to improve upon that, but both of these teams continue to get better.”
There certainly was no looking ahead to this clash, as Alabama and Georgia took care of their rivalry games against Auburn and Georgia Tech, respectively, this past weekend by the combined score of 97-42.
Alabama’s closest game this season by final margin was a 45-23 win over Texas A&M on Sept. 22, a contest the Tide led 45-16 through three quarters. The Tide’s closest games in terms of staying tight into the third quarter occurred the past two weeks, when Alabama turned a 10-10 halftime deadlock with The Citadel into a 50-17 rout and transformed a 17-14 halftime advantage against Auburn into a 52-21 coasting.
“Both are extremely talented teams with great coaches, and they’ve got their teams playing their best right now,” Missouri coach Barry Odom said. “When you get two great teams playing each other, it ends up being a matchup a lot of people are interested in, and I know this one will be a great game.”
A game that could be the second of several between Saban and Smart.
“Those guys and those teams know each other, but at the end of the day it’s about who can execute and who can get their guys in the right place,” said Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher, who worked with Smart under Saban at LSU. “A lot of times you can know what the other guy is doing, but their players can be better than you or can out-execute you.”
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress. com or 423-757-6524.