3 Thoughts On The Early 2026 SEC Win Totals

Which fanbases should be excited, nervous or should have no idea what to think?

We have a long way to go before Week 1 of the college football season, yes, but, thankfully, we have things like FanDuel’s win total projections for the SEC next season. Indeed, with the conference electing to move from eight conference games to nine, it should come as no surprise to see zero of the sixteen total schools with a double-digit projected win total.

So, which fanbases should be excited about these early odds? Which fanbases should be concerned? Which fanbases, honestly, should have no idea what to think?

Let’s dive in.

Who Should Be Excited?

Let’s start positively. Tennessee fans should be excited that their win total is up to 7.5 from 6.5, where it was when the projections came out a few days ago. With a redshirt freshman or true freshman under center, I’ve long maintained this offseason that the goal, or hope rather, is eight wins for the Volunteers. Young quarterback, new defensive coordinator, new strength & conditioning coach, thirty-plus true freshmen, compounded with nine conference games and a real road test at Bobby Dodd Stadium against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. If the Vols reach nine wins, Tennessee head football coach Josh Heupel is your Coach of the Year in the SEC. If the Vols reach eight wins, I suspect it will look and feel very different than Tennessee’s eight wins last season.

Another school with a projected win total of 7.5 is Florida. If you are a Gators fan, you should be really excited about that number. Florida, Auburn, LSU, Arkansas, Ole Miss, and Kentucky all will have new head football coaches this fall, and only the Bayou Bengals go into next fall with a higher projected win total than the Gators at 8.5.

Florida was able to pry Jon Sumrall away from Tulane, where he went 20-8 and made the College Football Playoff last season. Across his four seasons as a head football coach in the FBS, Sumrall has gone 7-1 in conference play every year. He’s won at multiple stops, has played in this conference at Kentucky, where he was the Wildcats’ leading tackler in 2004, and hired a heck of a staff around him. Buster Faulkner as offensive coordinator and Brad White as defensive coordinator is a strong duo, particularly the former.

The Gators retaining star tailback Jadan Baugh could prove to be a huge offseason win for Sumrall’s staff, with the Jackets under Faulkner sitting in the top-10 in yards per carry on the ground in two of the last three seasons, per CFBStats. Like Tennessee, the Gators have a true quarterback competition on their hands between Aaron Philo, who followed Faulkner from Atlanta, and roster holdover Tramell Jones Jr, a Jacksonville native. Whoever wins the QB1 battle will have a star tailback behind him and a litany of playmakers out wide to throw the ball to in Dallas Wilson, Vernell Brown III, and Eric Singleton Jr.

Outside of Kiffin at LSU, no fanbase that hired a new coach this offseason in the SEC should be more excited than Florida fans.

Who Should Be Concerned?

This will probably be a yearly deal for Kalen DeBoer, unfortunately. Even if he wins a championship at Alabama this year or next, the pressure never ceases at a place like Alabama. That’s both a blessing and a curse for the head football coach and the fans. Georgia and Texas are tied atop the win-total projections at 9.5 wins. Alabama is right below them, tied with Texas A&M and LSU. Those five schools should be the favorites to make the CFP this season out of the conference. If you're a Bulldog fan, you feel the best out of this group, but if you’re a Crimson Tide fan, you’re already a little anxious about next season.

You would like to be at the 9.5 win total where the Longhorns sit alongside the Bulldogs. You missed the CFP last season, and there is all sorts of pressure in Tuscaloosa for that not to happen in back-to-back seasons. However, Ryan Grubb is back for Year 2 as offensive coordinator, so that continuity should help on the offensive side of the ball. It’s unlikely the Tide could run the ball any worse than they did a year ago. Ryan Coleman-Williams, Lotzeir Brooks, and Rico Scott at wideout have lots of potential with two young, blue-chip wildcards behind them in Derek Meadows and Cederian Morgan.

Like Tennessee and Florida, there is a real quarterback competition happening in Tuscaloosa. The floor for the Tide is safer than the Vols or the Gators if the wrong quarterback wins the job to start the season, but if you’re a fan of the Tide, you hope the right guy wins and runs with it, whether that’s Austin Mack or Keelon Russell. While the latter is still just a redshirt freshman, the CFP expectations will remain whether he or Mack wins the competition. If Alabama bests its projected win total in March, that still may not be enough to reach the CFP at 9-3. It’s a march to double-digit wins, with a new quarterback and a nine-game conference schedule that includes trips to Knoxville, Baton Rouge, and Nashville, along with Georgia and Texas A&M coming to town.

Who Should Have No Idea What To Think?

Several schools fit the bill here: LSU, Ole Miss, Oklahoma, and Vanderbilt.

For the Tigers, 8.5 is a nice first-year number for Kiffin, but the school also just brought in the No. 1-ranked transfer portal class, highlighted by a big-time, win-now quarterback in Arizona State transfer quarterback Sam Leavitt. In four of Kiffin’s final five years in Oxford, he won double-digit games every season except one. With more talent in Baton Rouge, you feel great, but it’s still Year 1, and you aren’t sure what the fairest expectations are for Kiffin this fall. It’s probably just make the 12-team field, something LSU has not done yet, and go from there.

Assuming star quarterback Trinidad Chambliss is under center for the Rebels, 7.5 seems awfully low. Sure, Kiffin is gone, and Pete Golding is in. The latter was awesome in the CFP under brutal circumstances, but Ole Miss will have a different offensive coordinator with John David Baker coming in from East Carolina. Like Kiffin and LSU, the Rebels reeled in another elite transfer portal class on paper. How Syracuse transfer wideouts Darrell Gill Jr. and Johntay Cook come in, and mesh matters a great deal, and you still have five-star, in-state product Caleb Cunningham waiting in the wings behind Deuce Alexander.

Oklahoma broke through and made the CFP with arguably the toughest schedule in all of college football last year. Heisman hopeful John Mateer is back. And yet, Sooners fans see their win total at 7.5, alongside the Gators and the Vols. The Sooners were 79th in offense last season in scoring. Ben Arbuckle is back for his second season in Norman. The passing game in particular has to have more juice if the Sooners are going to hit the over and expect to win multiple games in the CFP. Isaiah Sategna III is back as Mateer’s safety net, and transfers Trell Harris and Parker Livingstone need to be plug-and-play guys right away.

The defense finished 7th in scoring defense last year, and under Brent Venables calling the shots, it’s hard to see a major drop-off there, so their floor is high. The offense has to click across the board a lot better, so OU is in one of the stranger spots in the conference.

Finally, the Vanderbilt Commodores. They won double-digit games last season, led by a quarterback who probably deserved the Heisman. Even though they missed the CFP, Vandy fans watched their school trounce the Volunteers in Neyland. They beat LSU and Missouri at home. They trounced South Carolina and Kentucky. They fell to the Longhorns on the road by three. A whole lot went right for Clark Lea’s team in Nashville last year.

Now, Diego Pavia is out, and true freshman Jared Curtis is in. Across the state, rival Tennessee is dealing with the same dramatic shift, going from Joey Aguilar to either George MacIntyre or Faizon Brandon. Like Tennessee, though, there is a belief in the ‘Dores with a young quarterback under center. You should feel good about the 6.5 if you’re a Vanderbilt fan, but you have to wonder what the offense will look like with such a dramatic change from Pavia to Curtis, even with offensive coordinator Tim Beck back. It’s already going to be weird to see Curtis in black-and-gold after being a longtime Georgia commit the Commodores flipped late in the process, but how will last year’s success and offensive dominance shape Vanderbilt fans’ likely up-and-down nature of this year’s team?

I can’t wait to watch how it all plays out, in, well, six months.