Week 1 SEC Reactions: Points Galore, Hot Seats Heat Up

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With all 16 Southeastern Conference teams playing in Week 1, there's plenty to take away. Week 1 may not have featured a ton of exciting matchups, but there is still a litany of storylines to look at as the conference forges ahead to Week 2.

Points Aplenty

Five SEC teams scored at least 60 points in Week 1 action, with nine teams putting up at least 50. Of course, none of these teams played elite competition, but it's never a bad day when an offense clicks on all cylinders.

Auburn, Ole Miss and Arkansas put their scoreboard operators through the most pain in Week 1, with the Razorbacks putting up 70 points on 10 drives in Bobby Petrino's first game as offensive coordinator. Lane Kiffin's Rebels scored 76 in a season-opening win over Furman, while Payton Thorne led Auburn to a 73-3 beatdown over in-state foe Alabama A&M.

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Dart, Green Start 2024 With a Bang

Speaking of Ole Miss and Arkansas, their quarterbacks put together two of the most impressive performances in the conference in Week 1. Arkansas' Taylen Green led the Hogs on seven straight scoring drives, giving them a 49-0 halftime lead on Aug. 29, while Dart put up 418 passing yards and 52 points for the Rebels in just one half of action on Aug. 31. Arkansas Pine-Bluff and Furman don't boast elite defenses, but both quarterbacks seem primed to put up big numbers in 2024.

SEC Hot Seats Get Hotter

There may not be a coach under more pressure to win games in 2024 than Florida's Billy Napier, who enters 2024 on the heels of two consecutive losing seasons in Gainesville, Fla. A collapse down the stretch in 2023 and a horrendously difficult schedule in 2024 already put Napier behind the eight ball, and an uninspiring 41-17 home loss to Miami on Saturday did little to quell the fears of Gator fans. Florida has a get-right game on Saturday against Samford, but their final 10 games of the season include eight SEC contests and non-conference games against UCF and Florida State. It might be a long season in Gainesville, but Napier's 2024 campaign could come to an end well before Nov. 30.

Five hours north in Columbia, S.C., Shane Beamer faces a litany of his own problems. Like Napier, Beamer is coming off of a 5-7 season in 2023 and has a difficult schedule ahead of him. The only real difference between the two men after Week 1 is that Beamer is 1-0, but South Carolina's season-opening win wasn't very convincing. A 23-19 win over Old Dominion was only made possible by an ODU fumble deep in its own territory, and the Gamecocks' offense was anemic for much of the second half. In a conference where life comes at you twice as fast, it's time for Beamer to regain some of his signature swagger, or he too could be packing up his office before Thanksgiving.