There is certainly — at least for this week — a new beast in the SEC East. And no, it’s not the Gators, Vols or Gamecocks. It’s the Tigers — of Missouri that is.
Missouri’s 41-26 upset of Georgia opened the door to the SEC East lead, which pleases several teams — Gary Pinkel’s squad and South Carolina chief among them. The Florida Gators would have been pleased, but their trip to Baton Rouge exposed their flaws and hung another loss on Will Muschamp’s team.
Missouri’s win, however, came at a price when quarterback James Franklin separated his shoulder. He will be out for at least six weeks. The Tigers will rely heavily on their pounding ground game of Henry Josey, Marcus Murphy and Russell Hansbrough, while Maty Mauk fills in for Franklin.
“I said it in August and I said it in May that there is something about these guys that is really special,” said Missouri coach Gary Pinkel. “There is no question that one of the goals for this team is to get back to Mizzou’s winning ways. It is a big deal to them. They came in and inherited a lot of winning and it’s important for them to leave the same way. They want to get back to competing for championships.”
That goal could be in jeopardy with the loss of Franklin, but Mauk was impressive when he came in for Franklin.
“I came in, and everybody just told me to keep calm and do what you do,” said Mauk. “So I came in and got the plays to our guys. We executed well at the end. One of them we got stopped, but we scored when we needed to and we came out with a victory so that’s all that matters.”
South Carolina celebrated getting back in the race with a romp over Arkansas in Fayetteville.
Steve Spurrier said the difference in the game beside the obvious difference in talent was that the Gamecocks were able to play their game.
“We just started calling our ball plays. I told the team at halftime, we’re going to keep calling our ball plays. We throw interceptions? Get a sack? That’s too bad. We’re going to play,” said Spurrier. “Fortunately we hit the middle on that long one from about midfield, and our defense stopped them just about every time there. A couple of long runs after that, they fumbled. Sometimes this is all a little misleading. We’re not this good and they’re not that bad, but it really worked out for us today.”
In the SEC West, the top teams avoided the upset bug that took a bite out of Georgia, Oklahoma and Stanford, although Texas A&M had to get a last-second field goal to finally put down Ole Miss.
The Aggies and Rebels were tied 38-38 but Josh Lambo’s 33-yard field goal took the life out of Ole Miss, who has now lost three games in a row, and lifted Texas A&M to 5-1 overall and 2-1 in SEC play. The Aggies are 6-0 in SEC road games since joining the league. The 41-38 win gave the Aggies a streak of nine consecutive games of more than 40 points, the longest streak in the country.
“Both teams didn’t always do everything right. It was great efforts by both sides,” said Aggies coach Kevin Sumlin. “Somebody has to win. Fortunately it was us.”
Sumlin watched his ace quarterback Johnny Manziel go down with a knee injury but it didn’t keep him down long. He just put on a knee brace and continued to do what he always does.
“Just like any other player that goes down, I am concerned about them,” Sumlin said. “This has happened before and we have talked about it. I didn’t see what happened but we communicated about it and he said he was ready to go back in.”
Lambo calmly kicked the game-winning field goal. He was probably the only person in the stadium who was calm at that moment.
“Surprisingly enough, I really wasn’t that nervous,” he said. “It feels so great, not to kick the game-winning field goal, but to do something to help my teammates and reward their effort. They’re the guys that are out there getting beat up and getting knocked down and tackling people, making big plays. Just the fact that I got to do anything to help that out, that was the best part about it.”
LSU’s win over Florida was keyed not by Zach Mettenberger as much as it was by LSU’s defense, which did not allow Florida to cross its goal line.
Tiger linebacker Lamin Barrow had a career-best 13 tackles in helping the Tigers to a 17-6 win over Florida. Barrow teamed with safety Craig Loston, who had nine tackles, to help the Tigers hold an opponent without a touchdown for the first time in 18 games.
“We’re getting off blocks, we’re tackling line-of-scrimmage plays, we’re getting in predictable third-down situations and we’re rushing the passer,” said Miles. ”When that happens, you’re not going to score a lot of points against us.”
Alabama cruised past Kentucky on the strength of a 359-yard passing performance from AJ McCarron, a 124-yard rushing game from T. J. Yeldon and a 106-yard effort by Kenyan Drake.
“We’re just trying to do things the Bama way and that’s what we’re trying to get our guys to do. Play physical, play with effort and play with more toughness,” said Bama coach Nick Saban. “We need to improve and try to dominate the competition, I think we did that tonight, but I also thought we made a lot of mistakes. We turned the ball over a couple times, dropped some passes. If you want to be the best, you can’t be satisfied with that, so there are some things we definitely need to improve on. I was really proud of the way we dominated the line of scrimmage.”
“We got some work to do still but at the same time our offense and defense did great. Our offense wanted to come out and basically create an identity for ourselves,” said McCarron. “It is just another win and that’s the way we are gonna take it. We will celebrate for 24 hours and continue to progress as an offense.”
The Auburn Tigers had a big win 62-3 over Western Carolina and rolled up 712 yards of total offense, a school record. The biggest story is the play of true freshman Jeremy Johnson, who was to be redshirted this season until an injury to Nick Marshall. Johnson was 17 of 21passing for 201 yards and four touchdowns.
“I thought Jeremy did a solid job. I think he made some good decisions early. The line protected him extremely well. He’s been playing very well in practice and that carried over today,” said Gus Malzahn.
Malzahn insisted that Marshall is still the starting quarterback but Johnson gives the Tigers a strong insurance policy.
“He’s been in the mix for a couple of weeks now and our starter was not 100 percent healthy. We felt like it was a great time to get him in there. We feel like he’ll help us the rest of the season,” Malzahn said. “I want to make this clear, Nick Marshall is our starting quarterback. When Nick is 100 percent, he will be back. We feel very good about Jeremy and it was great to get him some in-game experience.”