SEC Football Q&A: Can Bowl Season Salvage a Miserable 2016 Season?
If the downfall of the SEC wasn't apparent before championship weekend, it is now.
SEC East champion Florida got stomped by West champ Alabama 54-16 in the SEC Championship Game, and the only other team from the artist formerly known as "the nation's toughest football conference" to land in a New Year's Six bowl is Auburn—which finished 8-4.
Gross.
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
Can bowl season bring happiness to the SEC over the holiday season, or will the slide continue into the doldrums of the offseason? That question and more are answered in this week's edition of SEC Q&A.
"@BarrettSallee What if SEC wins bowl trophy? Will that change it"s perception?
— Will Hallman (@willhall79) December 5, 2016"
No, bowl season shouldn't do anything to change the perception of the SEC one way or the other.
Last season, after the SEC went 8-2 in bowl games (prior to the Alabama-Clemson title game), I wrote that you shouldn't let the bowl record fool you, and that the conference was still incredibly flawed. That became apparent this season, when no team other than top-ranked Alabama finished with fewer than four losses.
Bowl season is a celebration. A dessert. A fun way to wrap up the year with games engineered to pit two similar teams together for your enjoyment and reward the players for their hard work throughout the season.
That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.
When it comes to this season, seven of the 12 SEC bowl teams are favored, according to OddsShark, so another successful bowl season should happen. If underdog Auburn (+4.5) gets healthy and runs through Oklahoma's defense en route to a Sugar Bowl upset, would that somehow indicate that the SEC is better than we all thought?
Of course not. It would just indicated that Auburn's rushing attack is strong when Kamryn Pettway is healthy, and Oklahoma's defense isn't that stout against the run (55th nationally in run defense heading in).
If underdog Arkansas (+7) springs a Belk Bowl upset on Virginia Tech, that doesn't speak to SEC power. It would mean that Arkansas grew up a bit during bowl practices.
Let's stop making snap decisions on conference power one way or the other based on bowl season. Like regular-season games, it's all about matchups between the two teams on the field—not how the conferences stack up.
If we've learned anything from Florida State winning the 2013 national title and Ohio State doing the same in 2014, it's that good teams can come from anywhere—even "down" conferences. They should be judged accordingly.
Here's one who might not even get the pub on his own team—Georgia wide receiver Riley Ridley.
As a freshman this season, the younger brother of Alabama star Calvin Ridley developed a chemistry with true-freshman quarterback Jacob Eason despite the Georgia offense going through massive lulls that played a big part in five regular-season losses.
But Ridley was awesome in key spots for the Bulldogs.
He got open and hauled in a 47-yard touchdown from Eason with 10 seconds to go in the Tennessee game, only to see his heroics overshadowed by Vols quarterback Joshua Dobbs and receiver Jauan Jennings, who connected on the "Dobbs-Nail Boot" Hail Mary as time expired to send the Bulldogs to a devastating home loss.
Against Auburn, Ridley caught three passes for 89 yards and looked like a potential game-breaker both in possession situations and over the top of the Tigers defense.
This is exactly what Eason needs: a reliable, big-bodied (Ridley is 6'2") weapon who is capable of going over the middle or burning defensive backs deep.
If those flashes of brilliance that he showed in 2016 translate to more consistency and familiarity with Eason in 2017, it can vault Georgia back into the SEC East race and take a ton of pressure off a running game that might lose Nick Chubb and Sony Michel early to the NFL draft.
I mentioned on Twitter during the bowl game that it might be worth burning the redshirt of Florida quarterback Feleipe Franks after Austin Appleby turned into an interception machine against Alabama, and I stand by it.
If I'm in the minority in that camp, that's fine.
Many of Appleby's mistakes—including the pick-six to Minkah Fitzpatrick—were all on him. There were open receivers everywhere for Florida. Appleby just flat-out missed them.
"We've got to make sure that happens sooner or later, and that's my responsibility, and it will get done," head coach Jim McElwain said of developing quarterbacks after the SEC Championship Game.
McElwain told us earlier in the week that the true freshman Franks would serve as the true backup, and injured former starter Luke Del Rio would only be the "in case of emergency" quarterback who came in if Appleby's helmet came off and Florida just needed a guy to hand off for a couple of plays.
If Franks is good enough to be the true No. 2 down the stretch, letting him loose in the bowl game versus Iowa is a great idea. Florida opens next season with Michigan at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, and has a home date with Tennessee in Week 3.
Does McElwain want Franks taking his first career snaps against Michigan in what is a critical year for offensive improvement for the Gators, and then following it up with a massive conference showdown in The Swamp two weeks later?
Maybe not.
"That's one of those deals I think we have to sit down with them and their parents and handlers and all that," McElwain said. "I'm not sure it's fair, but at the same time, I know they want to play. So we'll see."
As was the case with Shea Patterson when Ole Miss burned his redshirt in November, if highly touted quarterbacks are as good as the recruiting rankings indicate (Franks was a 4-star prospect from Crawfordville, Florida) and McElwain can develop that talent, they aren't sticking around to be redshirt seniors anyway.
After I just got finished telling you that Florida should consider burning Franks' redshirt, I'm going to contradict myself.
No, Auburn shouldn't consider burning freshman Woody Barrett's redshirt.
The reason is quite simple—Sean White is the starting quarterback of the present and potentially the future for Auburn.
Before White got hurt at the tail end of the Ole Miss game, he was one of the SEC's best. He completed 65.2 percent of his passes, posted a passer rating of 146.87 and was a big reason why Auburn's offense became a force during the middle part of the season.
What's more, those stats got skewed by games against Vanderbilt and Georgia in which he played hurt.
Del Rio (who will be back) and Appleby (who will be gone after the bowl) are and were stopgaps for Florida. Auburn can win big with White if he stays healthy. The problem is that he's been banged up in each of his first two seasons, and it's hard to trust him navigating through a full 12-game schedule.
He will be Auburn's starting quarterback heading into next season's opener against Georgia Southern. Even if he's banged up or there's a better option—perhaps a graduate transfer—head coach Gus Malzahn can use that game against the suddenly downtrodden Eagles to get Barrett or another replacement comfortable with the offense.
If White can't go against Oklahoma in the Allstate Sugar Bowl, that's fine.
Unlike Del Rio, White has the confidence and experience to be successful next year.
Quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. Statistics courtesy of cfbstats unless otherwise noted.
Barrett Sallee is the lead SEC college football writer and national college football video analyst for Bleacher Report, as well as a host on Bleacher Report Radio on SiriusXM 83. Follow Barrett on Twitter @BarrettSallee.
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