Front Porch Football

Week 2 Grades in the SEC West

by Brendan Paschal

Week 2 was always a dangerous time for my grades. Classes settled in, homework started to pile up, all the while I began to develop bad habits. Cramming in 75 pages of reading thirty minutes before class quickly turned into skipping it altogether; my class participation grade drastically dropped; and I somehow managed to use at least one unexcused absence in week 2. However, one semester I managed to maintain a quality routine, coincidentally that was the one semester I managed to make the Dean’s List. Much like my performance in the classroom, Week 2 in the SEC reveals a lot about how the rest of the season should go.

Week 2 Grades in the SEC West

Alabama: A

Final Score: New Mexico State 10, Alabama 62

The University of Alabama had to pay New Mexico State 1.7 million dollars to show up in Tuscaloosa. Nobody wants to take the physical toll that comes with playing Bama. They’re like that one kid in chess club who nobody wants to play because it ends after he takes all of your pieces before hitting you with that “checkmate.”

Arkansas: D

Final Score: Ole Miss 31 , Arkansas 17

Chad Morris is making improvements and taking the proper steps in the right direction. Unfortunately so is Matt Luke at Ole Miss. Both Luke and Morris were handed programs is shambles, but Luke had a head start. However, there were two major things that left me scratching my head after the game.

First, the secondary was horrendous. The Reb’s receivers had 150+ yards after completion, which was a combination of poor coverage and even worse tackling. Nowhere near SEC level of play. Second, the quarterback situation continues to worry me. Right when fans were starting to think Ben Hicks was their guy Morris replaces him with Nick Starkel at halftime. Neither impressed, but Starkel technically had a better game. But it’s hard to perform well when you can’t establish the run.