SEC Power Rankings following Week 9 of 2018: Vols stay in place

After a close loss on the road, the Tennessee Volunteers did not move in our SEC Power Rankings following Week 9 of the 2019 college football season.

We always circled last weekend as the Saturday to truly shake things up in our SEC Power Rankings, and it did not disappoint. Circular logic no longer applies, even if records do, and the way the teams stack up against each other looks a bit more like we thought it would. Tennessee football losing a heartbreaker was just part of a major story last weekend.

Don’t get me wrong. There are still a few surprise. And with four teams not playing last weekend, we didn’t get the full potential of things changing around. But it was enough for us to rearrange a lot of programs.

This week’s SEC Power Rankings now has two teams in each division who control their own destiny to win the conference, and in a perfect scenario, they play each other this weekend. Three of them are in the same tier, while one is in a tier significantly above them.

Below that, you have three other teams in the conference who are Top 25 caliber with nothing to play for. Then you have four teams who are all in a fight to try to reach a bowl game before getting to a clear-cut bottom tier team. Yes, at this point, there’s a team clearly at the bottom and clearly at the top. Then there are three tiers in between them.

This weekend, the two divisional games to basically decide the East and the West are among five conference games overall, making for another exciting weekend, while two teams have non-conference opponents. So yes, things will change around once again when we’re here next week.

With all but two teams having their bye week behind them and November set to begin, let’s see what the league looks like right now heading into the stretch run of the season. These are our SEC Power Rankings following Week 9 of the 2018 college football season.