It's nice to finally beat our top two divisional rivals again, but to be honest it would've been almost criminal if we hadn't, given the scenario...and, yet, we could've easily lost to both of them. That's the part that is disconcerting to me, in retrospect. The East is incredibly weak this year, the weakest it's ever been, and we could very easily be 0-3 against SEC East teams right now.
Those recruiting compilations argue that we are even with UF and UGA, making the fact that we beat both of them in the same year a major feat. It is a significant accomplishment, given what those games have traditionally meant to us, but those compilations don't tell the whole story. Poor recruiting by Muschamp left UF with what seemed like a stocked roster on paper but with no offensive firepower. McElwain still doesn't have the horses in place to run his system. The result is the weakest offense we've seen from a Florida team since the Spurrier era began -- and actually since several years before the Spurrier era began. UGA has a talented team but is still stuck firmly in transition mode. First-year head coaches are always going to have hiccups, no matter how good they are. Alabama lost to one of the directional Louisiana teams in Saban's first year. And, frankly, UGA's current struggles look like they're more serious than transitional pains. The early verdict on Kirby Smart is that he's going to go into the same basket as so many of the other rotten fruits from Saban's coaching tree.
The SEC East is 1-9 against the SEC West this season, with the lone win being Kentucky's 40-38 win over Mississippi State. In the other nine games, the West has outscored the East 233-121. Take away our game against Texas A&M and no team from the East has scored more than 16 points against a team from the West this season.
Those are abysmal numbers. They're made worse when you look at how much the East has struggled against non-Power 5 opponents. Missouri struggled to beat Middle Tennessee (51-45), South Carolina struggled to beat UMass (34-28) and East Carolina (20-15), Vandy struggled to beat Western Kentucky (31-30) and even a lowly Tennessee State team from the FCS (35-17). Kentucky lost to Southern Miss, giving up 44 points. We struggled against Appalachian State (overtime) and Ohio (28-19). Georgia struggled against Nicholls (26-24). Florida struggled against UMass (24-7).
It's hard to take much pride in anything we've done against East teams this year. I hope we win the division. The program needs it, we need the exposure, and I would like to see if we can do any better against Alabama with a semi-healthy team. But the fact that we're struggling so much against a division that is so weak makes the fact that we're sitting here in November hoping for someone else to lose even more frustrating.
I agree with most of what you say, but what I am pushing back against a bit is the part that is bolded. I don't think it would be "almost criminal" to not beat both Florida and Georgia. Frankly, I expected us to lose to Georgia, though I did expect a win against Florida.
Beating both exceeded my preseason expectations.
Having said that, I was also on record as saying beating Florida was pretty much a "must do". Also, given how Georgia has struggled this year, beating them is not as impressive.
I still don't think it's a cakewalk against those two traditional powers, no matter who the coach is.
I will give you this....if we had blown out both Georgia and Florida, it would be clear evidence that Butch is a much better coach than Donkey and Smart, and as it is, based on this year alone, I would say he's only slightly better. Maybe that's what folks are disappointed about, but given that the talent is about even, I don't expect us to just walk all over either one of them.
