SEC Talent Rankings

The most objective way I could think of to get a sense of the general talent level of our SEC brethren was to average the national recruiting rankings from 247 over the last 5 years. It seems that the 247 rankings are the most respected and I picked 5 years to cover redshirt seniors through true freshman on the 2015 teams:

SEC Rank - Team - Average National Ranking

1 Alabama 1.0

2 LSU 7.0

3 Georgia 8.0

4 Auburn 8.4

5 Florida 9.6

6 Tennessee 13.8

7 A&M 15.2

8 South Carolina 18.6

9 Ole Miss 21.2

10 Arkansas 24.8

11 Mississippi St. 26.8

12 Kentucky 36.2

13 Missouri 39.0

14 Vanderbilt 43.4

I wanted to post this for a few reasons. I have heard a lot of people say this week that LSU has just as much talent as Bama. I feel that our starters are pretty even talent wise, however the difference is depth. With the top recruiting ranking every single year, they have a few more guys than us that can come off the bench and not suffer a drop off; especially in the defensive front 7. On the flip side, I think our superior depth is a big reason why we beat Miss St. this year.

The second reason I posted this is to emphasize the importance of this week’s game against the pigz. Looking at the rankings above, you can see the difference in talent between Arky and LSU. Additionally, Arkansas had ZERO players on Phil Steele’s pre-season All-SEC 1st, 2nd, 3rd, OR 4th team defenses or special teams.

I understand that Toledo, who likely would be ranked lower than Vandy in the above rankings, beat Arkansas, as well as Jacksonville St. playing with AU for 4 quarters. This puts the emphasis on Miles and this coaching staff to earn their salary, motivate this team, and avoid the embarrassment that was last year’s Arky game. Between Bielema’s post-game comments last year that “we beat’em like yard dogs” or whatever he said, and the Boot trophy, we have no reason not to be up for this game. We have no buisness loosing to an inferior program and a team with inferior talent two years in a row.