Alabama Football: 2020 preseason SEC power rankings
By Dakota Cox
SEC football power rankings: Another former Alabama football assistant
8. Kentucky Wildcats
Kentucky will be without Lynn Bowden in 2020, and that will make things tough. The good news for the Wildcats is that they actually have healthy quarterbacks on the roster. Despite Bowden having been one of the best offensive weapons that Kentucky has seen in a while, he wasn’t even playing his natural position last year.
Kentucky is a gritty team with a lot of promise, but they are still in the second tier of SEC East teams. They had some back luck with the schedule, and they will now have to play Alabama football. That’s not ideal for them, but at least they have reasons to be optimistic about the future. If they keep inching their way through progress, they can at least stay in the second tier of SEC teams.
7. Tennessee Volunteers
Will Jeremy Pruitt be the first Alabama football assistant to leave and beat Nick Saban? We’ll have to see. Pruitt keeps recruiting well, but the upcoming year will include plenty of challenges. We all saw how much the Vols struggled to begin the 2019 season. If Pruitt gets off to a sluggish start again, things will not be near as rosy in Rocky Top.
Tennessee is the third-best team in the SEC East, but there is a clear gap between them and the other top opponents. It will take even more progress to keep things moving in the right direction.
The Vols are trending up, but they haven’t peaked just yet. There is still plenty of work to do before they are in the same realm as Alabama, Georgia, and Florida.