Joel Klatt picks Alabama as the biggest threat to Georgia, Texas in the SEC

With Georgia and Texas perceived as the top pair of teams in their conference now, who is most likely to oppose them in the SEC? Well, Joel Klatt provided a pretty obvious answer.

Klatt answered a question during his show about the biggest threat to the Bulldogs and Longhorns in 2024. For him, that team would clearly be Alabama.

“Who’s the threat? So, like, which team do we believe here can go up there and be a threat to those two? The answer is Alabama,” said Klatt.

We all understand the change that took place in Tuscaloosa this offseason after the retirement of Nick Saban. A dominant 17-year run ended with the program hiring Kalen DeBoer as his successor.

However, while that may be true, the Tide still have that past resumé behind them in this conversation. Enough players are back from the end of Saban’s tenure to know who they are, what they’re about, and where their standard is. That’s why they won’t both bothered with coming across top-tier teams like Georgia and Texas, especially since Alabama is the only team that has beaten, let alone opposed, the ‘Dawgs at all over the last three seasons.

“The answer is Alabama whether I have them ranked there in the preseason or not. Like, I have got Ole Miss in fifth and ‘Bama behind them but the threat is Alabama and it’s in the similar vein as the threat in the Big Ten being Michigan. That’s because, there, they believe they’re the threat,” said Klatt. “They’ve done it. They’ve done it.”

“Listen, say what you will about Kalen DeBoer coming in and it’s a new this and new that. Georgia is still the one that has an Alabama problem. I know Bulldog fans are not going to want to hear that but they have had – you can call it a Nick Saban problem if you want. It’s a Tide problem. They don’t do well with the laundry if you know what I mean,” Klatt continued. “‘Bama is never going to feel outmatched. Their roster is built to play at the highest level. Their players have played at the highest level. They just beat Georgia last year, they just played in the playoff, they just had a fourth down in The Rose Bowl to beat the eventual national champion. They will not back down at any moment.”

This is unlike other options that Klatt considered in Ole Miss and Missouri. Neither of those teams have fully proven to handle the best of the best just yet. Meanwhile, DeBoer and Alabama have each shown they’ve been able to do so in their respective histories before ever coming together.

“You can’t say that about the other two teams that I considered here, which is Ole Miss and Missouri,” Klatt explained. “The problem is neither of these teams have done it against those teams.”

“Are they legitimate threats to those top two? I’m not sure. I’m not sure because I haven’t seen it. They’re going to have to get over something, they’re going to have to do something that they’ve never done before. Alabama is not, even with Kalen DeBoer,” said Klatt. “Kalen DeBoer just won a conference title. Even as a head coach, he can say I’ve won national titles at Sioux Falls, I’ve won the conference in the Pac-12, and I just played for the national championship. Alabama players can sit there and say we just beat Georgia in the SEC Championship.”

The Crimson Tide are not necessarily going to be the same as they were under Saban. That’s a fact until they prove otherwise to begin their era under DeBoer.

However, of all the other possibilities this year in the Southeastern Conference, Alabama has enough of a been there, done that factor still to be who Klatt believes will challenge Georgia and Texas in 2024.

“They believe that they can. That’s why they’re the biggest threat in the SEC,” said Klatt.