SEC's Nightmare of Missing Playoff Prevented by Yet Another Miraculous Play
On Saturday night in Oxford, Mississippi, chaos somehow prevented even more chaos.
With a here-goes-nothing toss from a falling tight end's here-goes-nothing toss and an improbable bouncing catch by a hard-running teammate's improbable bouncing catch on a do-or-die fourth down in overtime, the SEC took one huge step toward locking down a spot in the second College Football Playoff.
Arkansas tight end Hunter Henry's wild lateral back to running back Alex Collins—and the subsequent conversion on the 4th-and-25 miracle play—kept the Razorbacks alive in their upset bid of No. 18 Ole Miss.
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Two plays later, quarterback Brandon Allen found Drew Morgan for the signal-caller's sixth passing touchdown of the game, making it 52-51 in favor of the Rebels. Then, after a facemask call bailed him out of a game-ending sack, Allen plunged into the end zone on a gutsy two-point conversion to give Arkansas a 53-52 victory.
The win was monumental for the 5-4 Razorbacks, who moved closer to locking down bowl eligibility in a season that looked doomed after a 1-3 start.
But, for the much-larger picture, the shootout upset almost completely eliminated the SEC's worst nightmare of being shut out of the all-important final four.
Ole Miss entered Week 10 with total control of its path to the SEC Championship Game in Atlanta on Dec. 5, despite its loss to fellow playoff contender and newly crowned SEC East champion Florida last month.
While the upset defeat at Group of Five foe Memphis virtually killed the Rebels' playoff hopes, they still had a shot at being the SEC West's ultimate spoiler.
A Week 3 road victory at now-No. 4 Alabama gave Ole Miss the all-important tiebreaker over the Crimson Tide. With a win over Arkansas on Saturday, the Rebels would have headed into a crucial bye week before their home matchup against No. 2 LSU.
Victories against LSU and Mississippi State to end the regular season would have punched Ole Miss' ticket to Atlanta to face Florida.
LSU and Alabama, no matter their overall records, wouldn't be able to get a shot at the conference title that the playoff committee presumably wants to see in its entrants.
However, Arkansas' unbelievable overtime performance erased that possibility and made Saturday night's heavyweight collision between LSU and Alabama even bigger. Athlon Sports' Braden Gall and SB Nation's Brandon Larrabee expressed the same sentiments, respectively:
Ole Miss now has to beat LSU and Mississippi State, have LSU drop another game on its schedule and have Alabama lose another SEC game in order to get to Atlanta.
To make matters even more complicated, Arkansas now holds the tiebreaker over Ole Miss and has the same number of SEC losses (two).
| SEC Record | 4-1 | 4-0 | 4-2 |
| Overall Record | 7-1 | 7-0 | 7-3 |
| vs. LSU (in progress) | at Alabama (in progress) | vs. LSU | |
| at Mississippi State | vs. Arkansas | at Mississippi State | |
| at Auburn | at Ole Miss | ||
| vs. Texas A&M |
The Rebels making a miracle push is not impossible—especially in such a crazy college football season—but it's highly unlikely. Perhaps the toughest part of achieving that scenario would be Ole Miss winning back-to-games over LSU and Mississippi State.
The Rebels allowed 605 yards, with 442 coming through the air, against Arkansas on Saturday evening.
They gave up more than 300 passing yards in two of their previous three games heading into Week 10, and now they'll have to face LSU's much-improved quarterback Brandon Harris and Mississippi State's excellent quarterback Dak Prescott.
Ole Miss' offense can put up points and yards with the best of them, but the defense ultimately let the Rebels down in a playoff push and now an SEC West run. Head coach Hugh Freeze agreed that his defense's Saturday performance was a letdown (h/t Ole Miss Spirit's Ben Garrett):
Most eyes in the conference and the entire nation were already firmly on Tuscaloosa on Saturday night.
Now they'll be fixed more intently on the winner of that game, which will control its own fate on the road to Atlanta and the College Football Playoff.
Things are much simpler now for the SEC—even though the path to get there was extremely complicated.
Game statistics courtesy of StatBroadcast. Unless otherwise noted, other statistics courtesy of CFBstats.com. Justin Ferguson is a college football writer at Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @JFergusonBR.
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