Is the Best Defense an Elite Offense in Today’s SEC Football?

For years SEC Football was the conference that took pride in punching you in the mouth with a grinding rushing attack on offense and a brutalizing defense that was disgusted at the thought of giving up a touchdown.

The best example of this era are the two Alabama-LSU games from the 2011 season. LSU defeated Alabama 9-6 in “The Game of the Century” that had a combined 534 yards of total offense (for context, the LSU-Alabama game from 2019 with Joe Burrow and Tua Tagovailoa had a combined 1,100). In their national title game rematch, Alabama won 21-0 and famously didn’t let the LSU offense cross the 50 yard line.

These types of games were what the SEC did best. The conference and its fans looked down on the Big 12 and Pac-12 shootouts that were happening seemingly every week where teams were scoring and giving up 40-50 points every game . They would say those types of offenses would never work in the SEC because those other conferences don’t play defense like the SEC.

My how the tables have turned.

Is the Best Defense an Elite Offense in Today’s SEC Football?

Every single game involving an SEC member this past weekend but one featured a final score in which a team scored over forty points. Three of the six matchups had over 1,000 combined total yards and LSU-Florida came pretty close to joining them with 923 yards. It wasn’t like these were “cupcake”, non-conference games either. With the exception of Arkansas-BYU, every single game this past weekend was an inter-conference matchup.

If you compare last weeks SEC scores and Big 12 scores they don’t look too dissimilar. Your writer isn’t saying that’s a bad thing. It just means that the SEC realized they have more explosive skill players than most other conferences and said, “we’re just going to outscore you. Can you stop it?”

Lately, that answer is no.

The beginning of this offensive takeover in the conference can be dated back to when Nick Saban brought in Lane Kiffin to help his Alabama offense in 2014, but for the sake of brevity, let’s focus on the here and now.

There are five SEC Football teams in the Top 20 of total offense this year. Those teams are Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Ole Miss, and Arkansas. The Volunteers lead the way averaging 543.7 yards of offense per game and have a 100% red-zone efficiency. If you look at the flip side, there are only two SEC teams in the Top 20 in total defense and one of those is Alabama who just gave up 52 points and 567 yards to Tennessee. Even with some of the best defensive talent around, there was no answer for the most high powered offensive attack in the country.

Speaking of the Vols, let’s talk about the hottest story in college football.

Tennessee is now 6-0 and ranked No. 3 in the AP Poll, and with the exception of the LSU game, have done it without playing a lick of defense. While the Volunteers have the No. 1 offense in the country, they have a putrid 105th ranked defense that is giving up 425.3 yards per game.

But it hasn’t mattered whatsoever.

The Volunteers have played in and won (at the time) three straight Top 25 SEC Football matchups. In those games, they punted a grand total of THREE TIMES. It doesn’t matter how bad your defense is, because if your offense is that efficient, you’re not going to lose many games.

While all the talk is on Tennessee, we can’t forget about an Ole Miss team coached by Lane Kiffin with another explosive offense either. The Rebels are 7-0, and while their defense is a little more reliable than Tennessee’s, Kiffin’s offense is more than capable of dropping fifty any given day if they need to.

Another interesting comparison between the two schools is the way in which they’ve been scoring. Tennessee has largely done it with the passing attack while Ole Miss has done it with a high-powered rushing game. This makes it so hard for defenses to scheme on a week-to-week basis when teams are so contrasted stylistically, and the same quandary applies to other offenses in the conference as well.

It remains to be seen whether Tennessee and Ole Miss can keep this up. The Volunteers offense could fall apart against Georgia or Kentucky, and Ole Miss could get stifled by LSU or Texas A&M. But after this past weekend the winds, of change are blowing in the SEC.

Tennessee showed in their win against Alabama that enough offense can take Nick Saban down (plus a raucous Neyland Stadium) and rest assured, the rest of the conference took note of it too.

It’s a copycat league and no matter what happens to these high-powered offenses the rest of the way, expect to see more SEC schools adjust their offenses in the hopes of having Tennessee-like success.

Is an explosive offense the best defense?

No one can really say for sure, but it sure can go a long way.