DALLAS -- From projected College Football Playoff contenders with the welcoming of Texas and Oklahoma to scuttlebutt surrounding a bevy of hot-seat coaches, SEC Media Days offered a smorgasbord of items this week to highlight talking season ahead of fall camp in August.
Hot takes stemming from intel learned about every team are here, many of which will be bookmarked and resurface later this fall.
The SEC will boast as many as nine teams in next month's preseason top 25, with most of the schools being considered playoff hopefuls, but is that realistic?
With the Big Ten flexing several top-end programs, the unpredictability of the Big 12 and the ACC hoping to tout its best, the expanded postseason may not be as SEC-dominated as most of us expect.
Alabama
Hot take: Positive early returns on Kalen DeBoer are not premature
The first-year Alabama coach is cleaning up in recruiting, but most in Dallas this week kept pounding the question -- how will the Crimson Tide look on the field? As if DeBoer's career track record isn't enough to warrant an automatic successful translation to big-boy football in the SEC with better talent, he gets an opportunity early to make believers out of everyone. Alabama will beat Wisconsin by a couple touchdowns in Madison.
Arkansas
Hot take: Landon Jackson develops into Razorbacks' first Day 1 NFL Draft pick since 2008
You have to go back more than a decade to find the last Arkansas defender to be selected in the opening round (Jamaal Anderson). Jackson has steadily improved as his career has matured, establishing a personal-best last fall with 13.5 tackles for loss and 6.5 sacks last fall. He's this team's headliner.
Auburn
Hot take: Payton Thorne is not Auburn's starting quarterback by year's end
Hugh Freeze was quick to compliment each of his four scholarship quarterbacks coming out of spring, including his incumbent, but the belief around Auburn is 2024 signee Walker White is the future of the program under center. Could he be the guy for Auburn later this year if Payton Thorne has another up-and-down campaign?
Florida
Hot take: Billy Napier keeps his job
Say what you want about the Gators' all-time tough slate this season, but Napier will be the leader of the program in 2025. Florida's coach has the second-highest hot seat ranking possible per CBS Sports, but that does not mean he will lose his job this fall. Napier enters his third season with the Gators and would be owed 85% of the salary for each season left on his contract ($25.5 million after the upcoming campaign). He just signed a top 10 recruiting class that included five-star quarterback DJ Lagway and has outward support from Scott Stricklin, his athletic director.
Georgia
Hot take: Georgia doesn't miss Brock Bowers too much
Remember the names Oscar Delp and Ben Yurosek. Quarterback Carson Beck raved about both players this week and revealed the Georgia passing game has a number of targets at the position the Bulldogs are anxious to reveal this fall. Delp is a former elite-level recruit while Yurosek is a West Coast transfer who was productive at Stanford. Coveted Class of 2023 signee Luckie Lawson will get some burn, too.
Kentucky
Hot take: Kentucky's losses all come vs. top 15 teams
This is life in the SEC for Mark Stoops. And he'll have this job in Lexington as long as he wants it or until super agent Jimmy Sexton floats his name to enough elite programs that one finally bites. The Wildcats face a grueling league slate this season, which includes showdowns with with Georgia, Ole Miss, Tennessee and Texas, among others.
LSU
Hot take: LSU again tops SEC in explosive plays allowed
Credit Brian Kelly for landing Missouri's Blake Baker to overhaul his defense this season. It was a necessary move after last year's embarrassing effort on that side of the football and especially at the back end. However, the personnel is not at a championship-level yet on defense and a reliance on transfer portal acquisitions in the secondary is worrisome.
Mississippi State
Hot take: Mississippi State's defense will be team's calling card
That's right. Jeff Lebby was hired as coach for the work he can do with his veer-and-shoot offensive playbook, but I think it's the defense that gets the acclaim in 2024. Bulldogs linebacker John Lewis said this season's unit is "different" and there's no worry about being on the field too long if there's any first-year hiccups offensively with Lebby's pass-heavy scheme. Lewis pointed to several transfers as immediate impact players and said defensive coordinator Coleman Hutzler has an attacking mindset that's welcomed by players.
Missouri
Hot take: Missouri takes big step back defensively
After losing Blake Baker, the commander of the defense, to LSU this offseason, the Tigers will slide on that side of the football. Changes in personnel at the back end is another factor. The mission doesn't change, according to Eli Drinkwitz and Tigers defensive lineman Kristian Williams, but it's difficult to project Missouri to finish in the top 4 of the conference in total defense for the third consecutive season given the changes.
Oklahoma
Hot take: Oklahoma finishes season unranked
Florida's all-time tough schedule has garnered much of the noise, but the SEC did Oklahoma no favors in 2024, either. By season's end, we're expecting seven opponents to be ranked inside the top 25 and all but one of those -- Tulane -- will likely be ranked when the Sooners play them this fall. By comparison, Oklahoma has played seven ranked teams combined during the regular season since 2021. Bummer, Sooners.
Ole Miss
Hot take: Jaxson Dart leads SEC in passing
It's debatable, sure, but no player in Dallas this week exuded more confidence behind the microphone than the Ole Miss veteran quarterback, who is coming off an 11-win season as Lane Kiffin's chief facilitator offensively. Given the new weapons around him, including the arrival of former South Carolina star Juice Wells and talented Miami tailback Henry Parrish Jr., and what's coming back for the Rebels, Dart should flourish.
South Carolina
Hot take: 5-star Dylan Stewart will be Gamecocks' best pass-rusher by midseason
At times, coaches scale back the expectations a bit when a five-star arrives on campus. Shane Beamer has not taken this approach. After saying publicly in April he was pleased with Stewart's progress throughout spring practice, the Gamecocks' fourth-year coach reiterated those points this week and then some. Beamer said Stewart was "freakishly talented" and has looked "as advertised" since arriving on campus ready to work.
Tennessee
Hot take: Vols are SEC's most underrated team
Tennessee's player reps all said versions of the same thing this week: they're using the lack of summer love in various polls and power rankings as serious motivation. Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Ole Miss, LSU and Missouri have all been slotted ahead of Tennessee in most preseason projections across the conference, but only three of those schools have consecutive top-20 finishes like Josh Heupel's program. Tennessee is used to getting love in the offseason, so this is a strange change of pace.
Texas
Hot take: Horns have nation's best WR room
Considering talented slot threat Silas Bolden from Oregon State may not start at Texas this season, that should tell you the amount of riches Steve Sarkisian has at the wideout spot. This is the best group he's had since 2020 at Alabama when he helped DeVonta Smith win the Heisman as his offensive coordinator under Nick Saban. Former five-star signee Johntay Cook II is battling Bolden for one of those three starting spots, while Alabama transfer Isaiah Bond and former Houston star Matthew Golden are expected to be first on the field elsewhere. And you figure five-star freshman Ryan Wingo factors in somewhere.
Texas A&M
Hot take: September to remember is on tap
Few are taking Texas A&M as a playoff team this fall, and neither are we, but this program will be one of the opening month's top stories when they start 4-0 with wins over Notre Dame and Florida entering the neutral site battle against Arkansas at AT&T Stadium on Sept. 28.
Vanderbilt
Hot take: CJ Taylor earns first-team All-SEC honors
Let's hope voters make sure to watch the games this year when filling out their ballots rather than just listing notable players on the top teams, because we expect senior safety CJ Taylor to be one of the best players in the SEC.
A multi-year starter on defense for the Commodores, Taylor is one of the vocal leaders Clark Lea is counting on this season to help pull Vanderbilt out of the SEC cellar with his play on the field and command of the huddle. And since Lea is calling plays on that side of the football after making various staff changes this offseason, Taylor will get a chance to roam and freelance a bit as an instinctual player, perhaps in a similar way Lea once used Kyle Hamilton at Notre Dame.
