Rating The Units: A New Era in the SEC

You’ve heard sportscasters use the phrase “throw out the record books” for years when discussing upcoming matchups which, allegedly, are bigger than they’ve ever been before, thus relegating past comparisons to the dustbin.

In this case, it holds true.

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The Southeastern Conference will move from 14 to 16 teams for 2024 and more importantly, will jettison the divisional concept that has been employed since 1992. In doing so, for the first time in TideFans.com’s 28-year history, our method of plotting teams against each other for analytical purposes will change.

In prior years, the SEC West and SEC East teams would be judged against each other, then thrown together for an analytical ranking of the conference as a whole. The intradivisional analysis is now out the window, but we’ve kept the all-conference comparisons in order to generate a single list, ranking teams on how their eight unit sets – QB, RB, WR and OL on offense; DL, LB, DB and special teams for defense – compare to one another.

An added twist in 2024 is our SEC Tier Rankings. The conference is broken down into four tiers of four teams each. This allows us to give a subjective ranking to each program that takes into account differences in schedules. Unfortunately for the SEC as it moves forward, there is no longer a way to generate a fair schedule for all teams using just an eight-game block of intraconference matchups. Compare the schedules of, say, South Carolina and Ole Miss to see the difference the scheduling draw has made.

In the end, TideFans.com now will use three methods of placing teams in the preseason: simple won-loss record, Tier Rankings, and our Rating The Units (RTU) feature, now solely dealing with how each of the 16 teams compare to one another unit-by-unit.

First of all, here is our preseason prediction for the 2024 SEC season:

There are likely to be some raised eyebrows here in a few places, but recall our previous comment about scheduling. Is Texas A&M a 10-2/7-1 team? Probably not, based on the Aggies working through a coaching change, questions in the running game and on defense. But A&M has a chance to put up more wins than it might otherwise deserve if the Aggies are able to take advantage of a passable schedule.

Oklahoma at 6-6 is another outlier; the Sooners are probably better than those numbers, but are essentially replacing both their offensive and defensive depth charts with transfers. Auburn at 8-4 also assumes the Tigers will have their usual good luck in managing games in which they’re somewhat evenly matched – although it won’t all be smoke and mirrors; AU has improved its defense and OL play.

The Ole Miss pick at No. 2 is based off both a manageable schedule; and a veteran quarterback, talented skill players and a motivated Lane Kiffin. Kiffin has two paths in front of him that he can chase simultaneously: With Nick Saban gone, he’s within reason to believe he can finally get around Alabama. But there is also a likely job opening next offseason in Gainesville (which will happen if the Florida Gators finish 4-8, as predicted), a job Kiffin is said to covet.

Now that we’ve talked about our purely subjective ratings, let’s move on to our newest feature, the 2024 SEC Tier Ratings:

This is somewhat a combination of our subjective rankings for each team, an analysis of their schedules and a more holistic review of the state of these programs as a whole. For that reason, Texas A&M swaps places with Alabama in Tier I. It wouldn’t come as much of a surprise to Alabama fans if the Crimson Tide were to lose a game it shouldn’t, which would be normal considering the amount of turnover the Tide is dealing with at the moment. But the same could be said for Texas A&M, especially if the Aggies can’t solve the quarterback. Perhaps no team has a wider range of possibilities before it than does Texas A&M, which could legitimately go anywhere from 5-7 to 11-1 depending on a bounce here or there or just a handful of critical injuries.

And that brings us to our annual Rating The Units feature. Here, we compare each school in the conference to the other 15 by evaluating eight separate team units, scoring them, then giving points in each category. Teams get 16 points for finishing first in a category, 15 points for second, 14 points for third and so on, down to 1 point for a finish of 16^th in a category.

First, here’s how the units of all teams were evaluated, all on one sheet, in alphabetical order (Ex=Excellent, Vg=Very Good, Av=Average, Fr=Fair, Pr=Poor):

And now, here is that same chart, represented numerically, still in alphabetical order:

And finally, here are the teams ranked in order of their unit ratings, from highest-scoring to lowest-scoring:

Now’s where the fun starts – parsing the data. The most obvious thing to jump off the page is Texas A&M sliding all the way down to 11^th in overall strength with a final total of just 59 points. While the Aggies might not finish 10-2 as we predict in our narrative analysis, we don’t anticipate the Aggies finishing 11^th in the SEC. This one will bear watching closely in the season’s early going.

As for the rest, LSU takes a big jump up, Alabama seems to defend its Tier I ranking, and Ole Miss settles in at 5^th, which is probably about where the Rebels really should rank if all schedules were of equal strength. Oklahoma fans are sure to be happier with this analysis than the first one, and Auburn fans will be delighted, as an improving defense shows up on this chart in clear fashion.

At the other end of the spectrum, there is poor Vanderbilt, which ranked dead last in seven of the eight evaluation categories, a feat that speaks volumes about the state of the SEC’s most ne’er-do-well program. Unfortunately, if this chart holds up, it will likely lead to the firing of at least three head coaches and possibly a fourth, depending on how charitable South Carolina’s administration is feeling. Clark Lea at Vanderbilt, Sam Pittman at Arkansas and Billy Napier at Florida are all likely out the door if this list proves correct.

2023: A Review

So how did TideFans.com fare in its predictions last year?

In the narrative section, we mostly got the big stuff right. We took Alabama to win the West (by a tiebreaker over LSU), while picking Georgia to go undefeated and win the SEC East. Georgia was as advertised; Alabama didn’t need the tiebreaker over what ended up being a third-place LSU team.

Our biggest misses were in the teams picked to finish third in their respective divisions: Texas A&M in the West (8-4/5-3, instead of 7-6/4-4 and a regime change) and South Carolina in the East (7-5/5-3, instead of 5-7/3-5). We also missed badly on the quality of Missouri (4-8/1-7 vs. 11-2/6-2) and Arkansas (8-4/4-4 vs. 4-8/1-7).

On the positive side, we hit the disaster that was Florida right on the bullseye (5-7/3-5), liked but didn’t love Kentucky, and hit Auburn correctly as well (6-6/2-6 vs. 6-6/3-5). We also saw the Mississippi State train wreck coming, picking them to finish last in the West.

As for the more objective RTU method, it turned out to be both more and less accurate, somewhat wildly so. In fact, once things got beyond the Georgia-Alabama-LSU trio at the top, it went a little bit haywire.

RTU did overrule our subjective rankings and more correctly placed Missouri (6^th overall, in a tie with Tennessee) and came closer to giving accurate valuation to Arkansas (11^th out of 14 teams), but it saw Mississippi State and Texas A&M finishing fourth and fifth, respectively, which neither program came close to doing. We spent some time wondering about this in the introductory article last year, noting that we were not buying what RTU was selling on Mississippi State. Perhaps RTU actually knew what it was talking about, though, which would explain why State was quick to part with single-year head coach Will Arnett, and Texas A&M finally shut the door on the Jimbo Fisher bus.

In the end, we’re not surprised by the somewhat erratic year for our RTU process, as all evaluators are having to learn to deal with the transfer portal and modern roster management. It has made our work much harder than it used to be, and would-be accuracy is something that comes far too late in fall camp for us to present this to you editorially. We have to make the best call we can with what we think will happen, which includes not just trying to analyze hundreds of new SEC players, but also figure out how they fit in with their new teams, and how those teams now fit in a college football landscape that is ragged around the edges and largely left to its own devices.

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

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Follow Jess Nicholas on X at @TideFansJessN