The dog days of summer are upon us, and SEC Media Days is literally right around the corner.
It starts Monday in Atlanta at the College Football Hall of Fame — marking the first time it will be held outside of the Birmingham, Alabama, area since 1985.
As always, there will be plenty of interesting storylines to follow there this week, but coaching changes will be the overwhelming focus this week.
No conference underwent more head coaching turnover this cycle than the SEC. Six of the league’s 14 programs made changes, one of which involved a sitting head coach in the Western Division filling a vacancy in the East, and another of which included an embarrassingly haphazard search process following vigorous social media pushback to a potential hire.
Here’s a list of the new guys: Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher, Ole Miss’ Matt Luke, Mississippi State’s Joe Moorhead, Arkansas’s Chad Morris, Florida’s Dan Mullen and Tennessee’s Jeremy Pruitt.
Some of these new leaders are well positioned to succeed right away, while others may need a season or two before providing tangible signs of improvement.
Fisher replacing Kevin Sumlin is fascinating to me.
It’s obvious the Aggies are confident Fisher can turn Texas A&M into an SEC power as they handed him a $75 million contract running over 10 years and celebrated his arrival with a scene befitting a head of state’s visit to an allied nation.
It’s highly unlikely Fisher will have the Aggies competing for a conference championship or a College Football Playoff berth in Year One. Fisher inherits some talented pieces, like big-play running back Trayveon Williams and sophomore wide receiver Jhamon Ausbon.
There’s a solid foundation here, but for this season at least, it probably won’t be enough for Texas A&M to keep pace with the heavyweights in the SEC West. The Aggies face a brutal non-conference matchup with Clemson on Sept. 8, and they have to travel to Alabama (Sept. 22), Mississippi State (Oct. 27) and Auburn (Nov. 3).
In Oxford, Luke had the interim tag removed as an underwhelming conclusion to a job search that included mentions of coveted candidates like South Florida head coach Charlie Strong and Florida State head coach Willie Taggart.
He guided the Rebels to a 6-6 season with a 3-5 SEC record following the embarrassing Hugh Freeze ouster.
Nobody outside of Oxford believes the Rebels will return to their Freeze-era peak of 2014-15. Ole Miss almost definitely won’t get there this season, but it could be one of the most entertaining teams in the Power 5.
Senior Jordan Ta’amu acquitted himself well at quarterback after transfer Shea Patterson went down with a knee injury last October, and he’ll have a dangerous crop of pass catchers at his disposal led by projected first-round NFL draft pick A.J. Brown, plus another projected first-rounder protecting his blind side in junior left tackle Greg Little.
The Rebels are probably going to have a hard time consistently getting stops against SEC opponents — the first of which is reigning national champ Alabama in Oxford on Sept. 15 — but those same opponents are probably going to have a hard time figuring out how to slow down Ta’amu and Brown in Phil Longo’s up-tempo offense.
For rival Mississippi State, the short-term upside for first-year coach Joe Moorhead is clear. He has a talented dual-threat quarterback, senior Nick Fitzgerald, who should take well to Moorhead’s fast-paced system, and a capable backup to take the reins in sophomore Keytaon Thompson if the ankle dislocation Fitzgerald suffered during the Bulldogs’ Egg Bowl loss last year lingers into the fall.
There’s also a fearsome defensive line tandem, junior tackle Jeffery Simmons and senior end Montez Sweat, and four returning starters on the offensive line.
This is Moorhead’s first go running a Football Bowl Subdivision program, but his stints as Fordham’s head coach from 2012-15 and Penn State’s offensive coordinator from 2016-17 left no doubt that he was ready to make the jump to the SEC this offseason.
The Bulldogs are getting a lot of preseason love, but only time will tell if Moorhead can handle the pressure.
