The Monday morning meltdown (Sec mean tweets edition)
GEORGE SOMERVILLE – THE TOUCHDOWN SEC CORRESPONDENT
Well…..where to start this week!!??
Week Four brought us more than our fair share of chaos and incredibly this week’s meltdown does NOT, I repeat does NOT include Florida…… can you believe it?
Yes! Billy Napier faces a reprieve at the very least from these pages but also from the Florida fans and administration for another week with a 45-28 win over Mississippi State.
Speaking of Hail State they now seem to be in freefall which isn’t helped with the news that QB1 Blake Shapen has suffered a season-ending injury. As the saying goes….it doesn’t rain but it pours!
Even so, its not Jeff Lebby and his Bulldogs who sit atop the fan fury rankings this week! No Sir, that award goes to the trio of Jackson Arnold, Brent Venables and the Oklahoma Sooners!
Sheesh! As I will go into in more detail on this page, Sooner fans laid into Arnold and Veneables big time after their lacklustre defeat to Tennessee on Saturday. Of course the situation was not helped by the return of the prodigal son, Josh Huepel to Norman as head coach of the Vols.
And all of that is before I get to Hugh Freeze and his Tigers!!!
So, onto the madness of the meltdown. Please don helmets and flack jackets from here on in. Disclaimer, those easily offended should not pass beyond this point as you enter the fury zone!
Jackson Arnold benched!
OK! (see what I did there!!) – first up are the Oklahoma fans who had a tough time on Saturday. Not as tough a time as Sooners QB, Jackson Arnold who found himself benched before halftime (if you saw that coming, buy a lottery ticket today).
To the surprise of the entire Sooner and lets be honest College Football world, the Oklahoma offense had a terrible game. The much-hyped Arnold was 7 for 16 passes for only 54 yards with two fumbles and one interception in less than one half of football.
So no surprise then that the Sooners’ fans – making their SEC debut – are todays first bunch of very unhappy customers.
Of course head coach, Brent Venables and his coaching staff aren’t immune to the fans criticism and it remains puzzling just why the Sooners didn’t have a plan to counter the Vols offense. However, even Venables could not have envisaged a situation where Arnold played such a bad game.
Now Venables has a decision to make ahead of the Sooners visit to Auburn on Saturday. Does Michael Hawkins – who looked a much better fit at QB than Arnold – keep his place? Or, do the Sooners try to rectify Arnold’s issues and regrow his confidence?
Look at the state of Mississippi
I wrote last week of the honeymoon period being over for Mississippi State new head coach, Jeff Lebby. One week later and Lebby is surprised and shocked at the performance his team gave against Florida. Yes, the very same Florida Gators who have graced these pages since the start of the season,
“I’m surprised I’m sitting here and record is what it is” said Lebby post game. “That was never the expectation. That’s was never the plan. That’s surprising to me”.
Well Jeff, it has also taken your fanbase by surprise, big time. The Starkville Stands were empty at the end of the defeat to the Gators, which is frankly a shame given this is SEC football.
Hail State fans had been boosted (pardon the pun) ahead of the game with news of a $8m donation to the Athletics department and good news on the recruitment front. But then came the capitulation to the Gators. Next up for the Mississippi State Bulldogs? Texas in Austin. Ouch.
hell hath no fury like a QB scorned
We know that Auburn Tigers fans aren’t happy.
Now we know that Tigers head coach Hugh Freeze isn’t happy….with his quarterbacks. First Payton Thorne – yes, he that Freeze double-downed on to be QB1 from last season – was dropped because of poor performance. Next up, wonderkind Hank Brown was thrown to the Razorbacks. Then we were back to Thorne on Saturday. Welcome to the Auburn QB carousel!
With the Tigers capitulating to the Razorbacks 24-14 in Jordan Hare, Hugh Freeze came out swinging post game letting everyone know that it all landed on his quarterbacks shoulders.
After turning the ball over five times in the loss to Arkansas, Freeze said:
“we’ve got to find a guy that won’t throw it to the other team. And we’ve got to find running backs that hold onto it.”
While this might just have been frustration boiling over for the head coach, one of his former quarterback’s saw a familiar, if ugly, trait in Freeze’s response.
Bo Wallace was Ole Miss quarterback in 2014 under Coach Freeze. Wallace took to X expressing his unhappiness with Freeze criticising his players.
“We’re approaching the point that he’s thrown so many QBs under the bus , that maybe no one wants to play for him?? His offense helped me tremendously put numbers up when I blew my shoulder out…. But why is it someone else’s fault every time there’s a loss ??”
Wallace continued with quite the tirade..
“But that dude has never helped me a day in his life…. It was always only about getting a win for him so he could collect his extra 100 racks a win. If y’all knew the medications and shots I was taking to get that man his money you wouldn’t believe they would let you walk on a field like that. And with all that , I still feel the tires from the bus”.
I am particularly looking forward to the Finebaum show his week as Tiger fans lose their minds on air.
GEORGE SOMERVILLE
COLLEGE FOOTBALL WRITER
GEORGE IS A LONG STANDING FANATIC OF LIFE AND FOOTBALL IN THE DEEP SOUTH AND WRITES HIS WEEKLY COLUMN CALLED “IT’S ONLY SEC” FOR THE TOUCHDOWN. HE IS ALSO CO-HOST AND ONE THIRD OF THE COLLEGE CHAPS PODCAST, THE UK’S FIRST PODCAST DEDICATED TO THE COLLEGE GAME.