Offseason Checklist to Make the SEC Great Again in 2017
During mid-January, the echo of "S-E-C" chants from the past season normally rings throughout the South.
This season, it was replaced with a whimper.
The once-proud SEC embarrassed itself in 2016 by taking a major step back as a football conference to a point where it sent an Auburn team with four losses to the Sugar Bowl—a game reserved for the best non-playoff team in the league.
How can the SEC become great again?
Develop Quarterbacks
Part of it was due to injuries around the SEC, but the quarterback play in the SEC was abysmal to the point where Tennessee's Joshua Dobbs—who's not exactly known as a prolific passer—led the league with 27 touchdown passes.
That has to change.
There's reason to believe that it will.
Four true freshmen showed promise this year—Georgia's Jacob Eason, Alabama's Jalen Hurts, Ole Miss' Shea Patterson and South Carolina's Jake Bentley. While all had ups and downs, they'll have an entire offseason to fine-tune their respective offenses and expand upon freshman seasons that should serve as foundations for future success.
Eason has to become more consistent. He completed just 53.9 percent of his passes against conference foes, threw two critical picks in the loss to in-state rival Georgia Tech and didn't exactly live up to the 5-star hype that followed him to Athens from Lake Stevens, Washington.
Hurts was dynamic on the ground en route to the SEC title and the national title game but didn't stretch the field deep all year—something that came back to bite him and the Crimson Tide in the loss to Clemson.
Bentley and Patterson had their redshirts unexpectedly burned and showed flashes of brilliance. Bentley capped off his season with 390 passing yards against South Florida in the Birmingham Bowl, and Patterson's first career game saw the Louisiana native overcome a two-score deficit in the fourth quarter in a win at Texas A&M.
Add in new Auburn quarterback Jarrett Stidham to the mix of newer faces who need to be developed, as well as the possibility of Arkansas' Austin Allen and Missouri's Drew Lock building off their 2016 seasons, and the future of the quarterback position in the SEC looks bright.
It has to be developed, though.
Significantly Improve Offensive Line Play
The biggest reason for the SEC's regression this year stemmed from offensive line play that was less than stellar. Seven teams finished outside of the top 50 nationally in sacks allowed, according to CFBStats, and that led to quarterback ineffectiveness and injuries.
Or, to put it simply, it was a recipe for disaster given the depth and experience of opposing defensive fronts that these offensive lines were going up against.
As former Auburn center and current SEC Network analyst Cole Cubelic noted on Twitter, things must change up front.
The quarterbacks will get better, but how much better hinges on the ability of the big men in the trenches to keep their uniforms clean.
Luckily for them, Jonathan Allen, Carl Lawson, Caleb Brantley, Myles Garrett, Derek Barnett and a host of other defensive studs are no longer playing on Saturdays, which means things will be a little bit easier in 2017.
That improvement needs to begin right now in the weight room and in March when spring practices open up around the conference.
Replenish and Recharge
Defensive line play was filthy around the SEC in 2016, but it now has more holes than a slice of Swiss cheese.
The SEC doesn't need history to repeat itself and have the defensive fronts around the conference to consistently frustrate opposing offensive coordinators and quarterbacks, but it doesn't need teams to fall off a defensive cliff either.
Otherwise, the conference's pendulum will swing from defensive power to offensive prowess in the blink of an eye.
Talent along the defensive line in the SEC in 2016 limited what offenses could do.
Even when Garrett was banged up for Texas A&M, teams shied away from his side of the field. The only exception was against Tennessee, when he was so banged up that he could only go on third downs and was too hurt to be effective late in the game.
Lawson would routinely line up in different spots for Kevin Steele's defense at Auburn and force offensive lines and quarterbacks to change schemes on the fly at the line of scrimmage. That opened the door for other players, including tackle Montravius Adams, to shine.
Allen had two players devoted to blocking him on virtually every play, which let guys like Dalvin Tomlinson, Ryan Anderson and Tim Williams to have stellar seasons.
The next potential stars, including Florida's Cece Jefferson, Auburn's Marlon Davidson and Georgia's Trent Thompson, need to become studs in the weight room and in spring practice.
Coaches Need to Earn Paychecks
They'll never admit it, but an element of complacency developed among the coaches in the conference.
The offense didn't evolve into a bruising rushing beast like it needed to at Texas A&M under Kevin Sumlin and first-year offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone; Auburn's Gus Malzahn can't decide if he wants to be hands-on or hands-off; offensive genius Jim McElwain has been anything but during his first two seasons as the head coach at Florida; and Tennessee's Butch Jones led a team last year that looked like it expected to win simply because of the T on its helmet and didn't bother earning it during offseason camps and training sessions.
All four of them top the $4 million mark in annual salary, according to the USA Today coaching salary database, and their athletic directors need to see returns on their investments now.
For Malzahn, it meant getting a little bit of a different perspective offensively with new coordinator Chip Lindsey. Lindsey worked as an analyst for Malzahn at Auburn in 2013 but is hardly a Malzahn clone.
For Jones and Sumlin, it's about weathering the storm, cooling their seats and not buckling under mounting pressure for them to be fired.
For McElwain, it's about finding an offensive line that can keep the quarterback clean, replace missing stars on defense and develop a Plan B at quarterback in case a midseason change is required for the third straight season.
All of that starts now with preseason conditioning, will continue with spring camp and last through August.
It's up to the coaches to make that happen.
The SEC wasn't the best conference in the game in 2016. That title went to the ACC thanks to Clemson's title run, Florida State's win over Michigan in the Orange Bowl and Lamar Jackson's incredible Heisman Trophy run for Louisville.
But there's plenty of room to grow, and that growth needs to begin right now.
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