None of us know much about Coker other than he has the talent to be a Good 1st year starter and we NEED him to be just that.
I'd say we have a 33% chance to win the West because preseason AL, LSU, and AU are pretty equal in terms of who could win it. It will be a very competitive tight race where scheduling may make the difference.
The toughest games we COULD lose are FLA, Ole Miss, LSU, and AU. We have issues to fix on the O-line, D-Line, Secondary, Special Teams as well as correcting Turnover problems from fumbles at the RB position and finding the best guy to QB the team.
I think realistically we will be 10-2. I think we absolutely lose to LSU unless we correct all of our problems. FLA or Ole Miss could knock us off early if we are struggling to gel on both sides of the ball and I'm not EVER counting AU out EVER again in Iron Bowl matchups.
So we could be anywhere from 8-4 to 12-0 but I'm splitting the difference at 10-2. I'll say either FLA or Ole Miss upsets us early, then LSU wins but we get revenge on AU. With as much rebuilding we are having to do at key positional groups I will gladly take a 10-2 season with wins over Tenn and AU.
I actually think LSU wins the West if pressed to make a prediction. I think they were the best team last year that had bad breaks/luck. They lost a gut wrenching shootout to UGA to open the season, then threw up all over themselves against Ole Miss, and were tied at halftime with us before we inexplicably played our best football of the entire season for 1 half to pull away.
I think a healthy LSU team w/ Mettenberger would have CRUSHED FSU worse than they CRUSHED AU. The season just did not pan out for them.