If the SEC is to return to its perch at the top of college football, the league's longtime staples of strong running games and even stronger defenses will have to do the job.
Because its quarterbacks simply won't.
For a league that prides itself on football superlatives, the 2015 crop of quarterbacks the SEC is about to put forward could be positively dismal. We know little to nothing about what half the league will start under center, because seven of the league's 14 teams enter fall camp this week in search of an answer at the position: Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, Alabama, LSU, Ole Miss and Vanderbilt. And the schools that have an answer don't necessarily have a good one.
The league's torch-carrier at the position is Mississippi State's Dak Prescott.
He's a legitimate star talent, a senior with experience and skill who, nine months ago, had the Bulldogs at 9-0 and ranked No. 1 in the nation. Yet, at SEC Media Days two weeks ago, those same Prescott-led Bulldogs were picked to finish dead last in the SEC West. You read that correctly: the best quarterback in the league is expected to have a view from the standings cellar.
Prescott's a fine player, but had he come through the SEC in 2012, he'd have been no better than the fourth-best quarterback in the league behind Johnny Manziel, Aaron Murray, AJ McCarron, and maybe behind Zach Mettenberger, too.
Beyond Prescott, the drop-off is steep.
Missouri's Maty Mauk was wildly inconsistent last year, completing less than 50 percent of his passes in six of the Tigers' last 10 games. There are high hopes for Tennessee's Josh Dobbs, and rightfully so, but what does it say that the most promising quarterback in the SEC East sat on the bench for the first seven games last year?
Like Dobbs, expectations are high for Auburn's Jeremy Johnson and Texas A&M's Kyle Allen. Like Dobbs, neither has played a full season. That's not to say someone won't emerge and surpass expectations. Alabama's Blake Sims came out of total obscurity last year to break school records for total offense and lead the Crimson Tide to the College Football Playoff. But here in August, we can only judge what's been proven -- and what's been proven isn't much.
By the end of the season, the league's second-best quarterback might be Arkansas' Brandon Allen, who had a TD-INT ratio last year (20-5) that any coach in the league would sign up for tomorrow. The top two quarterbacks in the SEC coming from Mississippi State and Arkansas would be like the top two passers in the Big Ten coming from Purdue and Illinois.
As good as SEC football is, it's never been known as a quarterback's league.
Even in a year where the SEC failed to place a representative in the national championship game for the first time since 2005, and had a positively awful bowl showing, the league still managed to deposit 54 players into the 2015 NFL Draft. That was more than any league in college football for the ninth consecutive draft, but not one of those 54 was a quarterback.
Don't expect much this year, either.
Follow Chase Goodbread on Twitter @ChaseGoodbread.
