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SEC football picks: Shakedown Saturday has arrived, and no team is safe
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- SEC football picks: Shakedown Saturday has arrived, and no team is safe
We're halfway through the season, and it may be time to embrace the reality the biggest, baddest conference in the land isn't so bad after all.
But the SEC is still full of drama. Like Top 15 teams on high upset alert ( Texas A&M , LSU , Oklahoma ) or playing as significant underdogs ( Ole Miss , Tennessee ), and two coaches potentially fired by the end of the weekend ( Florida's Billy Napier and Auburn 's Hugh Freeze).
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Or as they say in the SEC, just another fall week.
There's a whole lot of good, but not great, teams picking off each other week after week. If you think we've already seen carnage ( Florida over Texas , Texas over Oklahoma, Alabama winning at Georgia ), it could get all kinds of crazy on Saturday.
How crazy, you ask? The heat turning up on Brian Kelly at LSU, unbeaten and Top 5 Ole Miss exposed at Georgia, and South Carolina 's last stand for the 2025 season.
And once the carnage is cleared, there are still six weeks remaining of this weekly rock 'em, sock 'em ride.
On to this week's picks. As usual, it's picks (not necessarily predicted winners) in bold.
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LSU at Vanderbilt (-2.5): The LSU defense has been phenomenal much of the season, with the one exception of dealing with Ole Miss dual threat QB Trinidad Chambliss .
The Commodores have had two weeks to game plan and prepare for LSU, and two weeks to realize just how close they were to beating Alabama again — but for fixable flaws. QB Diego Pavia (see: dual threat, Chambliss, worst LSU defensive performance of the season) has been stewing for two weeks about the loss, which included his two red zone turnovers that Alabama turned into 10 points.
Two key things: this is a strong Vanderbilt team that can trade blows on the lines of scrimmage with LSU, and the Tigers' offense is averaging only 19.7 points in SEC games (not including defensive touchdowns).
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Mississippi State (+9.5)at Florida : Bulldogs have had two weeks to prepare for a Florida defense that played its worst game of the season last week at Texas A&M.
Mississippi State's defense, meanwhile, has the advantage of the Florida offensive coordinator/play caller (that would be coach Billy Napier) not embracing the best player on the field (that would be WR Dallas Wilson ) against the Aggies. The Gators had 61 plays last week, and Wilson had seven targets (three catches).
I'm not going out on a limb when I say that's probably not good coaching.
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Missouri at Auburn (-1.5): I want to pick Auburn, I really do ― because it has the better team.
But Missouri has the better coach (Eli Drinkwitz). And a more functional (at times) pass game. Let's be brutally honest: these teams may not combine for 30 points.
Auburn's offense is a tragic comedy, Missouri's offense can't get away from RB Ahmad Hardy like it did in last week's loss to Alabama.
Oklahoma at South Carolina (+5.5): South Carolina was a preseason trendy pick for the College Football Playoff. The Gamecocks are now a loss to OU from everything going south.
And by south, I mean five straight losses (LSU, Oklahoma, Alabama, at Ole Miss, at Texas A&M). So yeah, this is a wildly important game for a team that hasn't played complementary ball all season.
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South Carolina needs a giant game from talented QB LaNorris Sellers , who hasn't had a takeover-the-game performance this season.
Ole Miss at Georgia (-7.5): The team that's barely hanging on to its former self (Georgia) vs. the team that has no business being in the Top 5 (Ole Miss).
We've waited six games now for Georgia to flip the switch, and at some point, we just have to admit the Dawgs are what they are. And that's nothing like the 2021-22 national champions, much less the 2024 SEC champions.
But it will take a Heisman Trophy-caliber game from Chambliss, and a multiple turnover game by the Georgia offense, to keep the Dawgs from rolling the Rebels.
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This is the game where Georgia plays like the boogeyman again. If only for a week.
Tennessee (+7.5) at Alabama: There's this narrative Alabama QB Ty Simpson has made a huge jump from the first game of the season. One problem: he didn't play poorly in the loss to Florida State, the offensive line was the issue for the Tide passing game.
Alabama had more loafs than drops against FSU, but just barely. The offense has been strong all season, and it gets better with each week. So let's now use some simple addition.
The worst pass defense in the SEC (Tennessee) plus the best pass offense in the SEC (Alabama) equals a whole lot of cigar smoke in the home team's locker room.
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Texas at Kentucky (+12.5): I have this thing about double digit home underdogs in SEC games. I love 'em. This is UK coach Mark Stoops' line in the sand game, with two weeks to prepare. The Wildcats are 14th in the SEC in scoring offense and scoring defense, yet something tells me take the points.
UK with two weeks to prepare, and Texas coming off an emotional and physical gut-check win over bitter rival Oklahoma, this thing screams take the points. Even with Texas QB Arch Manning 's improvement.
Texas A&M at Arkansas (+7.5): Here you go, Bob Petrino. You want the Arkansas job? Go get it in Fayetteville, in front of a packed house, and against a program that has beaten the Hogs 12 of the past 13 years.
Show your offensive play calling and game plan chops, and use dynamic QB Taylen Green (17 total TDs) and a pumped crowd to hand the Aggies their first loss of the season and turn the SEC race into a free-for-all.
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Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB .
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: SEC football predictions: Week 8 is full of top-10 drama
