What Went Wrong: SEC West-sds
With just two weeks left in the regular season, there’s still plenty of football left to play. The SEC West hasn’t quite been sorted out yet, with three teams still alive to earn the division’s SEC Championship bid: Alabama, Ole Miss and Mississippi State.
The rest of the field — Arkansas, Auburn, LSU and Texas A&M — have been eliminated from divisional contention and instead fight it out for bowl bids. Three of those teams had dreams, both realistic and not, of taking down the rest of the West and moving on to Atlanta, while Arkansas surely expected more of a rebound this season following a winless 2013 SEC campaign.
What’s gone wrong with each of these also-rans? Here’s a breakdown of each team’s biggest failure in 2014.
ARKANSAS: Late-game execution
The Razorbacks are 5-5, and just 1-5 in the SEC, but they’ve been right at the brink of victory all season. If a few plays went their way, they
might be as good as 8-2 this year. In three of Arkansas’ SEC losses, the Razorbacks either held a lead or were within a score of coming away with a victory. Against both Alabama and Mississippi State, quarterback Brandon Allen tossed an interception on a would-be game-tying or -winning drive. Against Texas A&M, the offense inexplicably went away from running the ball, giving the Aggies a window to crawl through to win the game.
AUBURN: Turnovers
The Tigers are 2-3 in their last five games, and they’ve gotten sloppy during that span. In a marquee showdown with Mississippi State, Auburn coughed the ball up on its first two possessions, falling behind 14-0 just 3:30 into the game. The turnovers came back with a vengeance against Texas A&M, a game the Tigers absolutely had to have. After rallying from a big halftime deficit, Auburn had two chances to tie or go ahead in the final minutes. On both drives, they fumbled the ball away to the Aggies, their second and third giveaways of the afternoon. While the defense has regressed as the season has progressed, the offense has enough firepower to overcome that. If only they would stop turning the ball over, that is.
LSU: Quarterback play
Earlier in the season, this would have been handed to LSU’s run defense, which gave up 600 combined yards in the Tigers’ first two SEC games. That area has shored up though, making LSU’s quarterback deficiency even more jarring in comparison to the rapidly improving defense. Anthony Jennings, who has started 10 of LSU’s 11 games, is completing just 47.9 percent of his pass attempts and averaging just 7.0 yards per attempt, both figures among the worst of Les Miles’ decade in Baton Rouge. Fans have clamored for freshman Brandon Harris, who has been
riding the pine for the last month, but he was dreadful in his only start of the season against Auburn. Quarterback has long been a thorn in Les Miles’ side, and he’s yet to recruit anyone above average for the position outside of Zach Mettenberger, who came from junior college.
TEXAS A&M: Tackling
Just about the only thing the Aggies do well on defense is rush the passer, thanks to exquisite freshman Myles Garrett. Unfortunately, with the way they fall behind in games, there aren’t a whole lot of opportunities to get after the quarterback. Teams are able to shred Texas A&M’s defense on the ground, as it seems no one is able to come up to clog the lane or make a tackle. Missed tackles are common, but just as frequent is a ball carrier parading into the second level without so much as the defense laying a finger on him.
