What happened to them? If you look at the 5 bowl games lost by SEC West teams, there is one common denominator: Their defensive lines got manhandled by the opponent's offensive lines, which just about never used to happen:

Alabama vs. Ohio State: Ohio State rushed for 281 yards/ 6.7 YPC
Ole Miss vs TCU: TCU rushed for 177 yards/ 4.2 YPC
Mississippi State vs Georgia Tech: Tech rushed for 452 yards/ 7.4 YPC
Auburn vs Wisconsin: Wisconsin rushed for 400 yards/ 7.4 YPC
LSU vs Notre Dame: Notre Dame rushed for 263 yards/ 5.2 YPC

In 4 of the 5 bowl games, the SEC West team was slaughtered at the line of scrimmage for more than 250 yards on the ground, and in two of them they gave up an ungodly 400 (!!!) rushing yards.

Granted, three of these teams (Ohio State, Wisconsin, and Georgia Tech) were among the top 10 in rushing. But all still gained significantly more yards on the ground than their average. Ohio State and Wisconsin ran over Alabama and Auburn as if they were just B1G also-rans or MAC fodder, and Notre Dame plowed through LSU for rushing yards than they did against Navy or Purdue.

At the epicenter of the SEC West's bowl meltdown was the colossal weakness of their defensive fronts.

I saw a great analysis last year on who makes the NFL from each conference. The biggest difference was the SEC had an insane number of defensive lineman drafted compared to the other conferences. They also had the highest number of offensive lineman as well. The other positions were pretty comparable. The SEC has been dominating in the trenches and that helped drive their string of titles. Your post just reminded me of that article. It not SEC speed that drove their dominance, its the SEC Beef.

(01-18-2015 09:46 PM)jhawkmvp Wrote:  I saw a great analysis last year on who makes the NFL from each conference. The biggest difference was the SEC had an insane number of defensive lineman drafted compared to the other conferences. They also had the highest number of offensive lineman as well. The other positions were pretty comparable. The SEC has been dominating in the trenches and that helped drive their string of titles. Your post just reminded me of that article. It not SEC speed that drove their dominance, its the SEC Beef.

And they had a big number of people leaving early, many of them defensive linemen.

(01-18-2015 10:16 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(01-18-2015 09:46 PM)jhawkmvp Wrote:  I saw a great analysis last year on who makes the NFL from each conference. The biggest difference was the SEC had an insane number of defensive lineman drafted compared to the other conferences. They also had the highest number of offensive lineman as well. The other positions were pretty comparable. The SEC has been dominating in the trenches and that helped drive their string of titles. Your post just reminded me of that article. It not SEC speed that drove their dominance, its the SEC Beef.

And they had a big number of people leaving early, many of them defensive linemen.

And the early departures to the NFL will happen again this year. More scholarships are going to have to be dedicated to DL and DE in the coming years if the depth that built that dominance is to continue. We need to spend money on QB coaches and not spend so many slots on QB's and athletes. We need dominant fullbacks and linemen and need them in a rotational depth that counts on 3 years of service rather than 4 to build the depth. Our quarterbacks possess skills they just are not being coached in a manner that enhances skills and corrects bad habits and the understudies suffer reps at practice. Ohio State's depth at that position and each QB's readiness to play is a coaching coup, not blind luck.