Rating the units: Clear winners, surprise runners-up in this year’s ratings matrix

After a year in which we were not able to produce our regular preseason guides due to the abbreviated and accelerated schedule, it’s nice to be able to take a longer look at SEC teams and how they measure up.

Reviving a feature more than two decades in the making, we present “Rating the Units,” a scoring system that allows each of the 14 SEC teams to be judged against the other teams in its division – and then against all 13 other teams together, regardless of division – so as to remove some of the subjectivity out of the rankings.

What follows is a ranking of every position group of every team in the SEC, and we try to make the results as objective as we can.

You’ll notice eight unit divisions – quarterbacks (QB), running backs (RB), wide receivers and tight ends (WR), offensive line (OL), defensive line (DL), linebackers (LB), defensive backs (DB) and kickers, punters, return men and coverage units (ST, for special teams).

Prior to 2004, ratings were doled out to each team during the individual previews. The only way to compare teams was for the reader to manually swap back and forth between two separate reports. In the individual reports, ratings are assigned as follows: Excellent (Ex), Very Good (Vg), Average (Av), Fair (Fr) and Poor (Pr). It also bears mentioning that teams can have a great starter at a particular position, but if depth is poor behind that starter, the ranking for the unit as a whole can be affected. These are unit rankings, not rankings of individuals.

In this first comparison box, you’ll see the 2021 SEC teams compared against each other within their respective divisions. The team with the highest score is ranked first. At the end of the report, we’ll summarize.

Summary

In this first graphic, a numerical value is assigned – seven points for first place in the division, six for second and so forth. Here’s each team’s point total after the first comparison:

You don’t have to look far to find the big surprise, which is Kentucky sitting second in the SEC East with 43 points. For now, that’s the third-highest score on the board (before we throw all 14 teams together and compare them, irrespective of divisional alignment). Missouri third in the SEC East with 34 isn’t a tremendous surprise until you find Florida sitting fourth at 32. The Gators have been a lot of prognosticators’ alternative pick to win the SEC East division.

For once, though, our Rating the Units scores back up what we predicted in the narrative versions of the SEC East and West previews: We had Kentucky winning the UK-UF game and taking the tiebreaker for second in the SEC East. In the West, we had LSU knocking on Texas A&M’s door.

Other mild surprises include Auburn ranking 4^th with a solid 32 points even though in the narrative, we picked the Tigers to go 5-7, 2-6 in 2021. It isn’t such a surprise that South Carolina outranks Vanderbilt – the Commodores are notoriously hard to judge because of the talent differential between them and the other SEC schools – but it might be a surprise that Mississippi State ranked so poorly here. Georgia outscoring Alabama 50-47 isn’t much of a surprise given the Bulldogs’ talent, but things change a bit when we go to the 14-team rankings below:

Divisions combined, the scores begin to track more closely to where and how teams were picked. Kentucky and Florida are still the outliers; Kentucky scores solidly within the second tier at 75 points, while there is a 16-point gap back to Florida, which heads the third tier. Missouri falls back under Florida, and while Auburn is still ahead of Ole Miss and Arkansas, the gap closes considerably, to where it’s a pick-em situation between the three teams. South Carolina manages to make a slightly better showing, but it’s debatable whether either the Gamecocks or the Tennessee Volunteers are part of the third tier or the fourth.

The record score for a team in the 14-team SEC era is Alabama with 98 points in 2018. Just like in 2019, when Alabama also netted 96 points overall, the special teams category was the biggest culprit keeping Alabama from a score of 100 (a perfect score is 112). But Alabama ranked seventh overall this year, grabbing 8 points – not a bad showing for a team replacing its punt returner and punter.

So what does this all mean? Over the years, TideFans.com/NARCAS has typically been quite accurate in its preseason predictions, both in regards to subjective analysis and in our Rating the Units feature, which almost always produces different results. This year might be the closest the two methods have tracked since we began paying close attention to the numbers around 15 years ago. Since the 2020 season was more or less a washout for everyone at the start of the season – it seemed pointless to do a lot of deep dives into the content when entire conferences were opting out for part or all of the year – we’ll go back to the last full analysis in 2019. In that year, we enjoyed one of our best years ever.

While we missed on Alabama winning the SEC West (our second-place team, LSU, won it instead), there were no big surprises on either side of the ledger. We correctly predicted Florida’s ascendance, picking the Gators second in the SEC East with the third-most points of all SEC teams (Florida finished the year ranked No. 6 in the country). The only team we seemed to overvalue was Missouri.

The most obvious choice for an overvalued team this year is Kentucky, especially since the Wildcats haven’t settled their quarterback situation yet. And if you’re looking for an undervalued team? It may wind up being Missouri if the Tigers can piece together a competitive secondary.

As always, take this research for what it really is – entertainment.