In the SEC’s ‘Year of the Quarterback,’ can anyone stop Alabama and Georgia?

Of the many virtues of Southeastern Conference football, parity at the top is not one.

Over the past five years, Alabama is 38-4 in regular-season SEC contests; Georgia is 36-5.

Nick Saban’s Crimson Tide have won six of the past eight SEC championship games.

The “Alabama 2.0” program that Saban’s ex-defensive coordinator, Kirby Smart, has built at Georgia has played in four of the past five SEC title tilts.

Last year, Alabama and Georgia met in the SEC championship — won by the Crimson Tide, 41-24. Then, Alabama and Georgia faced off again in the College Football Playoff championship game — won by the Bulldogs 33-18.

It was the second time in five years that Saban and Smart, Alabama and Georgia, played each other for the national championship.

Over the past five recruiting classes, Georgia has been ranked No. 1 in the country by Rivals.com three times and Alabama has been first once and in the top three four times.

That’s why, even though Georgia has the fewest returning starters (10) in the SEC East and Alabama (12) is tied for second-fewest starters back in the West, the overriding question in SEC football in 2022 is one that has become a hardy perennial:

Does anybody have anything for ‘Bama or the Dawgs this year?

Year of the quarterback

SEC football stadiums will be lit up this fall by the star power emanating from the quarterback position. The reigning Heisman Trophy winner (Alabama’s Bryce Young); the defending national championship QB (Stetson Bennett IV of Georgia); and the nation’s leader in passing completion percentage (Mississippi State’s Will Rogers at 73.9) are three of the seven starting quarterbacks returning to the league.

Also back are the SEC’s best dual-threat QB (K.J. Jefferson of Arkansas); a quarterback whose upside has drawn NFL Draft first-round buzz (Kentucky’s Will Levis); and a QB that has directed two different Power Five schools to bowl games (Tennessee’s Hendon Hooker, a transfer from Virginia Tech).

With so much potential for fancy passing, here are five especially-compelling SEC quarterback matchups for 2022:

▪ Sept. 10: Kentucky’s Will Levis vs. Florida’s Anthony Richardson.

The 6-foot-3, 232-pound Levis transferred from a reserve role at Penn State to the starting job at Kentucky last season. Levis threw for 2,826 yards and 24 touchdowns and ran for 376 yards and nine TDs.

A 6-4, 238-pound dual threat, redshirt sophomore Richardson wears No. 15 in honor of a former Florida QB and has shown enough promise in limited duty to have Gators backers hoping he can produce Tim Tebow-like numbers.

What is a crucial early-season SEC East showdown should launch the winning QB into the national college football conversation.

▪ Sept. 17: Georgia’s Stetson Bennett IV vs. South Carolina’s Spencer Rattler.

A former walk-on, the 5-10, 190-pound Bennett went from eight TD throws and six picks in 2020 to 29 touchdowns vs. seven interceptions last year. In doing so, he defied a nation of social-media skeptics and led the Bulldogs to their first national championship in 41 years.

South Carolina’s Rattler began last season at Oklahoma considered a Heisman Trophy candidate. Instead, the 6-1, 200-pound Rattler ended it on the bench, having been beaten out by true freshman Caleb Williams. For Rattler, the defending national champs represent a chance to restore his reputation as an elite college QB.

▪ Oct. 1: Alabama’s Bryce Young vs. Arkansas’s KJ Jefferson.

All the 6-foot, 194-pound Young did last year in winning the Heisman as a sophomore was throw for 4,872 passing yards on 66.9 percent completions with 47 touchdown passes vs. only seven interceptions.

The 6-3, 245-pound Jefferson was no slouch himself last season, throwing for 2,676 yards and 21 touchdowns (vs. only four picks) and running for 664 yards and six scores. In a “fastest gun in the west” context, facing the Heisman Trophy winner is a huge opportunity for Jefferson to make a national statement.

▪ Nov. 5: Tennessee’s Hendon Hooker vs. Georgia’s Stetson Bennett IV.

Volunteers Coach Josh Heupel inexplicably began last season with Michigan transfer Joe Milton starting ahead of the more-accomplished Hooker, Virginia Tech’s starting QB in its 37-30 loss to Kentucky in the 2019 Belk Bowl. Once torn ligaments in his ankle sidelined Milton following two starts, the 6-4, 218-pound Hooker took command of Heupel’s up-tempo offense and put up massive numbers — 68 percent completions, 31 TDs. vs. only three picks.

Against Bennett and the defending champions, Hooker gets a chance to lead UT to the kind of nationally-resonant victory it has not recorded in eons.

▪ Nov. 26: LSU’s Jayden Daniels or Garrett Nussmeier vs. Texas A&M’s Max Johnson.

As LSU’s starter last year, the 6-5, 219-pound Johnson was productive (2,815 passing yards, 27/6 ratio of touchdowns to interceptions) but not especially accurate (60.3 percent completions).

To beat his old school, Johnson will either have to outplay his former backup, the 6-2, 172-pound Nussmeier (329 passing yards in four games in 2021); or Arizona State transfer Daniels, a 6-3, 185-pound senior who ran for 710 yards and six touchdowns last season for ASU but also threw as many interceptions as touchdowns (10 each).

Coaching hot seat

With 10 of the 14 SEC head men having been at their current jobs for three years or less, there does not appear to be much heat under coaching seats in the league in 2022.

With one exception.

Unless the head man at Auburn is coming off a national championship season, he should likely always be considered to have a rather tenuous hold on his job at a school where coaching intrigue always seems to be churning.

Though set to begin only his second season at Auburn, Bryan Harsin is already feeling the heat.

In his first year leading the Tigers, Harsin directed Auburn (6-7) to its first losing season since 2012.

A potential season-altering upset of archrival Alabama got away when the Tigers surrendered a last-gasp, 98-yard, game-tying TD drive to the Tide that led to a four-overtime loss.

Then came an offseason filled with turmoil, marked by player and coaching defections that led to the university retaining a Birmingham law firm to investigate its football program.

Harsin managed to survive all that to return for year two at Auburn. But such a contentious offseason would not seem a great setup for the kind of “bounce-back” season the coach needs.

Unlucky four

As the Southeastern Conference is currently structured for football, there are two, seven-team divisions. The way league scheduling is presently conducted, each team plays all the others in their division; plays one permanent opponent from the opposite division every year; and then one rotating foe from the other division.

What that means every year is that there are four teams that have to play both league titans Alabama and Georgia. This year’s unlucky four include:

From the SEC West:

▪ Auburn plays the power duo every year, with the Bulldogs being the Tigers’ permanent inter-division foe from the SEC East.

▪ Mississippi State this year draws Georgia as its rotating opponent from the East.

From the SEC East:

▪ Tennessee plays the power duo every year, with the Crimson Tide being the Volunteers’ permanent inter-division foe for the SEC West.

▪ Vanderbilt this year draws Alabama as its rotating opponent from the West.

Of the “Unlucky Four,” the most intriguing might be Mississippi State. Mike Leach’s Bulldogs are not getting much preseason love, picked sixth in the West by the assembled reporters at SEC Media Days.

Yet State returns more starters (17) than anyone in the SEC off of last season’s 7-6 team.

Predictions

▪ No one in the SEC will have anything for Georgia and Alabama.

▪ The Bulldogs will win the SEC East, the Crimson Tide will win the SEC West.

▪ Alabama will beat Georgia in the SEC championship game.

▪ Alabama will beat Ohio State in the College Football Playoff championship game.

This story was originally published August 26, 2022 at 6:30 AM.

Mark Story

Lexington Herald-Leader

859-444-4731

Mark Story has worked in the Lexington Herald-Leader sports department since Aug. 27, 1990, and has been a Herald-Leader sports columnist since 2001. I have covered every Kentucky-Louisville football game since 1994, every UK-U of L basketball game but three since 1996-97 and every Kentucky Derby since 1994. Support my work with a digital subscription