SEC Power Rankings after week 4: Vols near bottom

Ed Orgeron’s team is another one of these teams in the top half of our SEC Power Rankings by default right now. After all, the LSU Tigers haven’t beaten anybody significant yet, and the one decent team they played trounced them 37-7.

That team had a bad loss this week to make LSU look even worse. However, nobody else in the SEC did anything to jump over them.

So the Tigers are a worse team but maintain their position in our SEC Power Rankings, which speaks volumes to the state of the conference right now.

An ugly win over the Syracuse Orange doesn’t prove anything, especially when Syracuse lost to Middle Tennessee.

Danny Etling and Derrius Guice were at least able to show much more balance in their offense this past weekend. But the defense remains a concern.

The best thing we could say about them is they probably weren’t excited to play the Orange, so this isn’t as embarrassing as we could make it out to be. In fact, while this win was ugly, it also wasn’t too much of an indictment against the team.

But Coach O has a lot of redeeming he needs to do going forward if the Tigers can remain among the elite of college football.

He’s got a break with the Troy Trojans this week, but then he faces the Florida Gators on the road and the Auburn Tigers at home in back to back weeks. And that’ll determine just how able Orgeron is at leading a powerhouse program.