Cornballer Bad Hands Play of the Week

This week's Cornballer Bad Hands Play of the Week is awarded to LSU safety Jamal Adams.

As an LSU punt bounced out of bounds, Adams got up in the grill of Florida receiver Andre DeBose and decided to throw out some trash talk.

DeBose, not interested in the exchange, took action, and something incredible happened.



I don't know what you guys just saw, but DeBose appears to a) possess super strength, b) be one with The Force, or c) be susceptible to Les Miles-like trickeration. My money's on B.

But seriously, do we have a flop of the year candidate here, or what?

And the worst part of this plan is that actually worked. The refs actually pushed Florida 15 yards back for a personal foul penalty. But at least the kid sold it.

I think the referees are the ones most at fault here. Seriously, is Kristen Stewart their standard for good acting? Because this LSU safety is giving her a run for her money.

It didn't matter in the end, as LSU pulled off the fourth quarter comeback to win 30-27. I do, however, think this is evidence of Les Miles sending his players to acting classes in lieu of football workouts.

Podcast: Section 27 Guest Appearance

Today, I was a guest on Section 27, the podcast of my good friend and coauthor, Matt Donaldson. Matt and his co-host, Randall Robinson, discuss all things Auburn through analysis and sarcasm (my favorite kind of humor).

They bring it every week, so if you feel that your Auburn knowledge isn't up to snuff, I promise you'll learn something new every time you listen in!

Podcast: Around the SEC Week 7

After a memorable and wild week six in college football, we began to get a better picture of where each team in the SEC stands.

This weekend, more important matchups are headed our way, and in this week's edition of Around the SEC, I weigh in on and predict the scores of these matchups.

Georgia Cannot Afford to Lose Gurley

I can’t emphasize this enough: Georgia cannot afford to lose Todd Gurley.

Whatever success they were expecting this season is ultimately tied to the best player in college football, whether they realized it or not.

Through its first five games, the strength of the Bulldogs’ offense has been the running game, as they continue to ease longtime backup Hutson Mason into filling SEC all-time passing leader Aaron Murray’s shoes.

And in those five games, Gurley has been nothing short of spectacular. He has been the spark that makes Georgia’s offense go. Without him, it’s hard to see that unit performing well down the stretch.

In their four games against SEC competition and Clemson (we’re excluding Troy because Gurley was out by halftime and Georgia won 66-0), the Bulldogs averaged 437 yards of total offense per game.

In those games, Todd Gurley averaged 201 yards of total offense. That’s good for 46 percent of Georgia’s offense.

Georgia scored 18 offensive touchdowns in those games; Gurley had eight of them. Against Clemson, Georgia had its only kickoff return for touchdown. Guess who ran it back.

From the start of his career, Todd Gurley has been dazzling us with stunning displays of power, speed, quickness, and angry, downhill running. He can do it all: run, catch, and even throw.

All that’s missing from his stat line now is a field goal.

He’s the best running back in the nation, maybe even the best player, and Georgia’s chances of winning the SEC East drop dramatically without him.

If Gurley were to miss significant time this season, Georgia has Nick Chubb and Sony Michel waiting to take over backfield duties. The problem is that they’re both freshmen.

Both young men have run for roughly 230 yards this season, but they’ve only combined to carry the ball 54 times. Gurley has 94 carries on the year by himself.

And that number is skewed by the fact that Gurley only carried the ball six times against Troy, while Michel had 155 yards on ten carries.

These two freshmen are very talented, but they aren’t Todd Gurley.

So Georgia will just lean more on the passing game, right? If they do, I’m not so sure how far that’ll get them.

In his five games as starter, Hutson Mason has been rather underwhelming. He’s completing 68 percent of his passes, and has thrown seven touchdowns against three interceptions, but he’s only throwing for 137 yards a game and has yet to complete a pass longer than 44 yards.

He hasn’t shown a propensity for making plays downfield, and hasn’t shown that he can be trusted to win a game for Georgia.

His best performance of the season was a 191-yard outing with two touchdowns against South Carolina, but the Bulldogs lost that game because they couldn’t come up with a score at the end of the fourth quarter.

Mason got them close, but couldn’t close the deal.

Is Georgia hopeless without Todd Gurley? Of course not. For all we know, one of those freshman running backs in Athens is even better than Gurley, he just hasn’t been let loose yet. I find that extremely unlikely, but stranger things have happened.

But he has proven time and time again to be a difference maker for Georgia, and they’ve come to rely on his big play ability.

It’s time for Hutson Mason to step up and rally this team behind him. If they lose tomorrow against Missouri, their East title chances take a significant dip.

The best case scenario for Georgia now is that Gurley will only miss a couple of games.

Because if they lose Todd Gurley, they lose their game-breaker. They lose their superstar, and they lose the key piece to their championship run.

And that pass Gurley completed? It was Georgia’s longest of the season.

Alabama Falls Short In Another Big Moment

That’s three now. Three straight losses to ranked opponents, dating back to the 2013 Iron Bowl for Alabama.

Before that, the Crimson Tide were 28-10 against ranked opponents since Nick Saban’s arrival in Tuscaloosa in 2007. And if you take away 2-3 mark from Saban’s first season, Alabama has been steady against ranked competition the past six seasons.

Until last November, at least.

Alabama’s loss to Ole Miss on Saturday was shocking, if for no other reason than Ole Miss’s inability to beat the Crimson Tide since the early 2000s.

It was also shocking because of what Mississippi State had done to Texas A&M earlier that afternoon, putting both the Bulldogs and the Rebels at the top of the SEC West.

But the biggest shock was for third straight time, Alabama has shown a disturbing inability to finish close games against quality opponents.

Ever since a once-in-a-lifetime play ripped a victory out of the hands of the Crimson Tide, they seem to have lost their edge.

After the loss to Auburn, it was a convincing loss to Oklahoma, and now an early defeat at the hands of Ole Miss.

I’m about to take credit for something that I said after Alabama’s surprisingly close victory over West Virginia: this is the weakest Alabama team we’ve seen since Saban’s first season.

Now before you jump down my throat about how dominant and amazing Alabama is, I’m not saying that they aren’t a talented team, I’m just saying that they don’t appear as dominant as they did back in the 2009 through 2012 seasons.

I’ll use the West Virginia game as an example. The Mountaineers were 25-point underdogs. They lost by ten, and they made Alabama nervous in the process.

Against a defense that had been an unholy terror in the SEC for six years, Clint Trickett threw for 365 yards, and the Crimson Tide never forced a turnover out of him. He threw multiple passes of ten yards or more, helping the Mountaineers pick up 22 first downs along the way.

Midway through the fourth quarter, West Virginia was only down 30-23 before a final field goal put the game out of reach.

Alabama overpowered West Virginia in the end, but should it have been that close in the first place? That’s when I realized that maybe this Alabama team wasn’t the same one we were all used to seeing.

Last season, Auburn gashed Alabama for almost 300 rushing yards, only putting the ball in the air when they needed to. A few weeks later, Oklahoma rolled up 429 yards (348 through the air) on them.

And then last Saturday, Dr. Bo showed up for Ole Miss, leading the way with three touchdowns in the second half, including 14 unanswered points in the fourth quarter.

The last time Alabama lost this early in the season was back in that 7-6 season in 2007. Since then, the Crimson Tide have put up at least ten wins each of the past six seasons, and have not lost as early as October since losing on the road at South Carolina in 2010.

That season, Alabama finished the season with three losses, its second-highest total under Saban.

They also finished fourth in the SEC West, behind undefeated Auburn, and Arkansas and LSU, who each finished the regular season with ten wins.

So now the Crimson Tide find themselves in a similar situation, but with a dimmer light at the end of the tunnel.

Whether they actually are the most talented teams in the conference, Auburn, Mississippi State, and Ole Miss separated themselves from the pack. Much like the 2010 season, Alabama could find itself in fourth place in the SEC West with ten wins at season’s end.

But 4-1 approaching the middle of October isn’t a bad place to be. In this year’s SEC West, anyone really can beat anyone, and if Alabama wins out, there’s no reason a couple of losses from other teams can’t help them out.

The question is whether or not they can win what are now becoming bigger matchups.

It certainly helps that they get Auburn, Mississippi State, and Texas A&M all at home, but what about a trip to Fayetteville to square off against a resurgent Arkansas team?

The bottom line is that Alabama is facing tough schedule the rest of the way, as is everyone in the SEC West this year. And so far, they have not proven that they can put the game away against quality opponents.

Alabama is still tremendously talented. They have a Heisman candidate in receiver Amari Cooper, two dynamic running backs, and a formidable front seven on defense.

They have the talent and coaching to compete with anyone, if they get out of their own way.

Eventually, they’re going to have to let Blake Sims win a game for them. He’s a good quarterback, but he hasn’t completed a difficult throw in a real critical situation yet. In fact, the one that he did try ended the game.

They’re also going to have to fix the holes in their secondary. Against their two quality opponents this season, Alabama has given up a total of 593 yards, almost 300 per contest.

Alabama’s usual strategy is to simply put the game out of reach in the first half. That way, they don’t have to worry about making big plays in high-stress situations.

But against teams like Auburn and Mississippi State, that won’t always be an option.

Turns out it wasn’t an option against Ole Miss, either.

In its three biggest games of late, Alabama has not been able to make the plays it needed to in the fourth quarter. They haven’t been able to come up with a stop or complete the pass that will win them the game.

In this year’s SEC West, that could put a season in serious jeopardy, no matter what kind of talent you have.

And that should worry the University of Alabama.