That sound you just heard was pads popping from coast to coast.
Fall camp is back, and soon, fall Saturdays will be back. One could argue that we should celebrate 2026 even more knowing that the possibility of more Playoff expansion looms, but we can save that discussion for another day.
After all, we’ve got actual football to talk about.
Fall camp is the time when tough decisions are made and questions are answered. Granted, seasons are defined in the weeks and months that follow fall camp. As much as this sport continues to change, that remains the same.
But as camps open up and real developments unfold, now is the perfect time to ask some SEC questions that we’ll hopefully get answers to before Week 1 kicks off.
1. Will Austin Mack or Keelon Russell take Alabama’s first snap of 2026?
If you read what I wrote in my SEC predictions column last week, you know that I’m a Russell believer. I picked the guy to win SEC Freshman of the Year. That won’t necessarily change even if Mack gets the first start as the elder statesman in that room (Mack is entering Year 4 of college in that offense, and he was still only 19 at the end of spring camp).
But one would think that Kalen DeBoer and Ryan Grubb would like to have a starter named well before Week 1, knowing that these guys need reps with the first-teamers. Yes, it’s a favorable start to the schedule, but you still have to travel to Kentucky for an SEC road game in Week 2. You’re not treating that game as a continued tryout for QB1. That tells me that we’re going to know who Alabama’s starter is at some point in August.
2. Are multiple SEC true freshmen going to open as starting quarterbacks?
Speaking of quarterback battles, there are a couple unfolding in the state of Tennessee. The post-Diego Pavia world figures to include a heavy dose of Jared Curtis, AKA the five-star recruit who flipped from Georgia to Vanderbilt at the 11th hour. The true freshman is expected to edge out Pavia’s fellow New Mexico State-to-Vandy transfer Blaze Berlowitz, but don’t dismiss what it means to have familiarity in Tim Beck’s offense.
Tennessee, like its in-state counterpart, also could have a five-star freshman locked in at QB1. Faizon Brandon has been getting more buzz than redshirt freshman George MacIntyre, but it’s hard to tell if that’s just fans trying to manifest the future or a real lean. What we know so far is that Nico Iamaleava was the lone underclassman who started for Josh Heupel. Familiarity in his system matters, but it’s not like MacIntyre and his nine pass attempts last year gave him an automatic edge.
What feels entirely possible is that both Tennessee schools become the first SEC teams to start a true freshman at quarterback in Week 1 since 2020 Vanderbilt started Ken Seals.
3. Is Ahmad Hardy good to go for 2026?
I don’t even know that Eli Drinkwitz has an answer to that question yet. It’s a big question. As in, will perhaps the SEC’s best returning player be his normal self after he was shot at a concert over the summer? Drinkwitz provided an update at SEC Media Days that Hardy had just been medically cleared. We then found out that he wasn’t going to be available for the first week of fall camp.
It’s worth noting that Drinkwitz also brought his backfield mate, Jamal Roberts, to SEC Media Days. Make of that what you will. What I make of Hardy’s current situation is that I can’t assume that he’s going to be at 100 percent. Besides the good news that Hardy survived and is focused on playing football, Mizzou won’t face a Power Conference team who won six games until it hosts Texas A&M on Oct. 10. The bad news is that someone who has shown to be excellent working through contact (he had 1,181 yards after first contact alone last year) is dealing with a significant, life-altering injury before the season begins.
4. Which 5-for-5 guys will join an SEC camp?
We’ve already seen notable standouts like Stephen Daley, Desmond Reid and Tommy Castellanos make a push to play in a fifth season after the district court ruling in Colorado. Shoot, Daley is already at camp for the defending national champs at Indiana. Texas offensive lineman Cole Hutson already filed a lawsuit against the NCAA seeking a fifth year to join the Longhorns.
Surely several more players will look into what that means, and even those who spent time in NFL minicamps will likely attempt to go against the NCAA. Of course, roster spots aren’t unlimited, and it’ll take a two-way street for those guys to take advantage of the recent ruling. What feels inevitable is that a handful of SEC teams will benefit from it.
5. What’s the sense of Sam Leavitt’s readiness to become Lane Kiffin’s first QB1 at LSU?
I don’t care about the mental reps that Leavitt has in the Kiffin/Charlie Weis Jr. offense. I care much more about the actual reps that we’ll see from the Arizona State transfer coming off the Lisfranc injury that sidelined him throughout spring camp. How limited is he in fall camp? Does it look like LSU is getting fellow transfers Landen Clark and Husan Longstreet more and more reps with the first-teamers?
That stuff matters for an LSU team that’ll host Clemson to kick off the season. Leavitt wasn’t a finished product as a player, despite what that reported NIL deal suggested. It’ll be fascinating to see how his fall camp progresses as he takes on the highly scrutinized role of Kiffin’s first QB1 on the Bayou.
6. What’s the buzz for the SEC’s lone first-time play-caller Holmon Wiggins?
So here’s a strange thought. As far as I can tell, Wiggins will be the lone first-time play-caller in the SEC this year. That’s right. We’ve got six SEC programs with new head coaches, yet in terms of play-callers, there’s a ton of experience in the conference.
Mike Elko promoted Wiggins after Collin Klein got his first head coaching opportunity at Kansas State. That allowed Marcel Reed to stay in the same system with a familiar voice in his ear. Granted, that’ll come with some tweaks. A more spread-out offense with tempo could yield the best version of Reed. Fall camp reports — you came to the right place for that — on how Wiggins fares against Elko’s defense will carry more weight than most of those unit battles across the SEC.
7. Which slo-mo video will yield the biggest overreaction and why will it be a Cam Coleman catch from Arch Manning?
Come on. This is a question, but you already know that Coleman hauling in some one-handed, toe-tapping grab from Manning is the answer. Coleman is special. Whether he can be special for an entire season on the Forty Acres remains to be seen, but what feels inevitable is that we’ll get some perfectly curated clips of him that’ll make us think we’re watching Randy Moss.
If seeing a slo-mo video of anyone changes your opinion of a player, you probably need to take a deep breath and return to the internet when your heart rate calms down. And by the way, I’m not saying that as a jab at Texas. I just know that Coleman has the most potential to yield that because of his new surroundings.
8. Who suffers that unfortunate season-ending injury?
We don’t predict injuries, but we do need to address the likely possibility that a significant player will be lost for the season in fall camp. Last year, A&M lost Jerome Myles to a season-ending injury just before the start of the season. The year before that, promising Texas running back CJ Baxter suffered a torn ACL in fall camp. It’s an unfortunate but inevitable development that we’ve seen play out, even as practice restrictions have ramped up.
I’d argue that those developments are felt in a bigger way now because of how challenging it is for premier programs to have depth. A&M overcame the loss of Myles last year, and Texas still produced a potent ground attack without Baxter in 2024, but be mindful of which Playoff contender is snake-bitten by the injury bug in fall camp.
9. Who wins the Oklahoma RB1 job, AKA the SEC’s most intriguing non-QB position battle?
This is the type of position battle that, in theory, would continue into the regular season at most places. But at Oklahoma, where the non-John Mateer ground game options need to be established immediately with a daunting early schedule — nobody in America has a more challenging first half slate than OU — there’s a sense of urgency to right last year’s wrong.
Xavier Robinson looked like he was emerging as the bell-cow back in the middle of 2025, but then he got banged up down the stretch and then dealt with an injury in spring camp. Tory Blaylock flashed as a true freshman, but he wasn’t elusive enough to establish himself as the main option. After last year’s failed Jaydn Ott experiment, OU needs one of those guys — or perhaps freshman Jonathan Hatton — to take some pressure off of Mateer.
10. Have we heard the last of this Arion Carter ruling?
As in, the standout Tennessee linebacker who got suspended two games for taking a $427 flight to work out at a pre-NFL Draft facility. Heupel was, um, not pleased that the NCAA picked that completely outdated rule to drop the hammer. The words of the Tennessee coach were strong enough to suggest that there could be some real pushback on the part of the Vols to get their defensive captain eligible, at least for Game No. 2 when Tennessee travels to face Georgia Tech.
In this era, we can’t rule out the possibility of Tennessee acting as if the NCAA ruling was hot air. If there was ever an instance in which a team could deliberately ignore the NCAA, this is it. Something tells me that Heupel and the Vols aren’t about to let the NCAA have the final word.
