Monday Thoughts, July 27th

Ok everyone, I’m going to try something a little different. I’m going to start posting on a somewhat daily basis now that we are starting to get some real substance due to SEC Media Days being wrapped up and the beginning of fall practices beginning in just a little over a week.

My take on Media Days is that nothing un-expected came out of it, as it rarely ever does. It would have been fun if Coach Steve Spurrier would have either A) said his vote against Tim Tebow was intentional, or B) if he would have flat out denied that he didn’t vote for Tebow putting all the pressure squarely on Coach Lane Kiffen to defend himself with him being the next and last coach to speak and having everyone believing that he had not voted Tebow on the All-SEC “Pre-Season” team. That would have made for some good entertainment worthy of popcorn to sit back and watch Kiffen squirm.

As far as Coach Chizik, I thought he did himself proud by being well spoken and a good representative of our favorite University. Coach Chizik did leave the door wide open that a True Freshman, especially Tyrik Rollison would have a shot to come in, compete and win the starting QB job this fall. He also seemed to be upbeat about our offensive line, which we will need to step up dramatically compared to last season if we are to have a winning record this season. He also brought up our most concerning weakness on this team, and that is its depth in general. For us to be successful this year, we are going to have to win the turnover battle and not sustain major injuries. Those two keys seem to be a must in my mind for this year to be a decent year.

As far as my SEC predictions, I have the obvious in Florida winning the East and I have LSU winning the West setting up a rematch in the Georgia Dome for the SEC Championship. In the championship game, I have Florida beating LSU, but I will caution you here to that whoever wins the regular season matchup is more than likely to lose the rematch. I’m really high on LSU going into the season. I feel that they have resolved their QB position on an offense that ranked #4 in scoring last season with subpar quarterback play until the last two games when Jordan Jefferson took over the reigns and the LSU defense will be much improved by them simply hiring John Chavis, who lead the Volunteer Defense to the #1 ranked total defense last season while having an offense worse than Auburn’s at the time to compliment it. As far as Bama goes, I just don’t believe they can lose their SR QB, top RB and three offensive linemen without some kind of impact that doesn’t involve losing a game you shouldn’t lose. For more information about my picks and other resident “experts”, please check my Podcast Co-Host Jay Skipworth’s column on Blog Critics, linked below:
http://blogcritics.org/sports/article/southeastern-conference-preseason-predictions/

There you have it, my new try before you buy daily affirmations. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section.

War Eagle!