2023 SEC football head coach rankings: Kirby Smart steals the top spot from Nick Saban

It’s that time of the year again. Offseason coaching rankings!

Over the next six weeks, I’ll release rankings for each Power 5 conference and the Top 10 Group of 5 coaches before a final Top 25 coaches in all of football.

Remember, this is a fun exercise and even if your favorite coach is ranked near the bottom of his conference’s list: A) He’s still considered a damn good football coach to have said job and B) That doesn’t mean I hate your team!

With that, this list is totally subjective. It’s my rankings. Some might weigh the overall body of work for a head coach. I take that into account, but college football has become the ultimate what-have-you-done-for-me-lately-business with the carousel constantly spinning. 

The job of a head coach has changed in recent years, too. So for my rankings, I take into account recent performance, recruiting chops, hiring quality assistants, sending players to the NFL, working the transfer portal, etc. 

Nick Saban is the GOAT, but for now, Kirby Smart is the Top Dawg with back-to-back national championships. 

Entering the 2023 season, the SEC has just two new head coaches in the league, but the rankings look quite different than the ones I did last offseason.

No. 1 Kirby Smart, Georgia

Georgia lost a record-15 players to the NFL Draft last season … and promptly turned around and went 15-0 to become the first program in a decade to win consecutive national titles.

After a 8-5 Year 1, Kirby Smart has won at least 11 games in five of six seasons with the Bulldogs. He’s 29-1 over the last two years. Georgia recruits as well as any program in the country, but Smart has built the best organization of developers, motivators and coaches, too.

Smart has managed to manufacture grievance and doubt at a school that has a realistic chance to three-peat. That’s top-spot worthy in 2023. 

No. 2 Nick Saban, Alabama

Is it blasphemous to slot Nick Saban behind Kirby Smart? Not for now. This isn’t an overall career achievement ranking. It’s for 2023. Nick Saban is still one of the best two coaches in America, but for now, the apprentice has leapfrogged the master.

Saban has an unparalleled track record of success (see: a ridiculous seven national titles), and it speaks to his brilliance that he nearly won a championship in a “rebuild year” in 2021 and finished 11-2 in a “down-season” last fall. 

However, the 2022 Tide had the nation’s best roster, per the Blue Chip Ratio, and the returning Heisman Trophy winner at quarterback, but their statement season went kerplunk in large part because of coaching. 

The Tide did not look well-prepared in multiple games last fall, as the team was riddled by penalties, an obvious lack of development at certain positions and iffy in-game decision making by Saban and his staff. Saban clearly identified changes needed to happen, so Alabama enters the fall with two new coordinators as the GOAT looks to return back to the sport’s mountain top. 

No. 3 Brian Kelly, LSU

After going 10-4 in Year 1 at LSU, Brian Kelly won at double-digit games for the 14th time as a head coach in 2022 — including six consecutive seasons. LSU, which had won a total of 11 games the previous two years combined, wasn’t supposed to even compete for the SEC West in Kelly’s first year in Baton Rouge, but the Tigers won the division and upset Alabama in a classic. 

The Bayou Bengals have the makeup of a College Football Playoff contender this fall, as Kelly has assembled a roster — with a Top 5 recruiting class and one of the nation’s best transfer portal hauls — and a staff — both coordinators return — good enough to win the SEC. 

No. 4 Josh Heupel, Tennessee 

Josh Heupel inherited a smoking crater at Tennessee, and within two years, was puffing cigars inside Neyland Stadium after upsetting Alabama. Tennessee finally has its man at head coach, as Heupel delivered the Vols their best season in close to 25 years with huge wins over the Crimson Tide, Florida, LSU and Clemson. 

Heupel has shown an ability to produce high-flying offenses with various quarterbacks (Top 10 scoring units in all five seasons as a head coach including No. 1 nationally in 2022) and his staff at Tennessee has been a model of player development (see: Hendon Hooker). The next step for Heupel is to start recruiting at a Top 5 level if the Vols want to compete for championships on an annual basis. 

No. 5 Mark Stoops, Kentucky

Mark Stoops is one of the trickier coaches to rank because of the body of work versus recent performance comparisons. He’s the best Kentucky football coach since Bear Bryant, elevating the program with multiple 10-win seasons for the first time in more than four decades. Overall, he’s done more with less and has some of the greatest job security in all of college football. 

And yet, you can make real arguments that the next few coaches I rank below Stoops could be slotted above him entering the 2023 season. For one thing, both Shane Beamer and Lane Kiffin beat Mark Stoops in 2022. Meanwhile, sandwiched between a 10-3 year in 2021 is a 5-6 season in 2020 and a disappointing 7-6 showing last season after the Wildcats talked “Atlanta or bust” all summer.

Still, Stoops’ program is renowned for its player development and sending prospects to the NFL, and they’ve recruited at a respectable showing, too. He quickly moved on from a poor OC hire last offseason and brought back Liam Coen to Lexington.

No. 6 Shane Beamer, South Carolina

One of the biggest risers on this list, Shane Beamer has out-performed expectations in hist first two years with the Gamecocks. 

They went bowling when no one thought they would in 2021, and last season was a rollercoaster ride that ended with a wild finish. It hasn’t always been pretty or efficient, but Beamer has delivered results in Columbia. The Gamecocks beat a pair of Top 10 teams (Tennessee and Clemson) in back-to-back weeks for the first time in school history and then went out and inked their best recruiting class in a decade. South Carolina is off to a fast start in the 2024 class, too. 

Beamer has carried on his father’s legacy of his teams playing outstanding special teams. Consistency on defense and a significant uptick offensively (that 94-point barrage to end the season was a massive outlier during his tenure) will prove if the Gamecocks can be an annual Top 25 program under Beamer, though. 

No. 7 Lane Kiffin, Ole Miss

Kiffin and Heupel are the best two Xs and Os offensive coaches in the SEC, but while Heupel has already racked up multiple marquee Top 25 victories at Tennessee, the Portal King has mostly won the games he was supposed to in recent stops at FAU and Ole Miss … but no more. 

I don’t know if that’s worth $9 million annually, but Kiffin has at least raised the Rebels’ floor. Ole Miss started the season 7-0 last season before the schedule toughened and Kiffin was mired in coaching rumors with the Auburn opening. Kiffin does deserve credit for being one of the forebears on how best to use the transfer portal, and he did deliver Ole Miss its first 10-win regular season in school history just two years ago. 

Is that the best he’ll do, though? The Rebels are unlikely to ever to truly compete for a conference title unless Kiffin can find a way to balance the roster and build a more competitive defense.  

No. 8 Jimbo Fisher, Texas A&M

I gave Fisher the benefit of the doubt in this very piece a year ago, but in the words of Roberto Duran, “No mas.” Fisher is one of three coaches on this list who have won a national title, but he’s also the same coach who’s failed to win 10 games once in five seasons in College Station.

Last year was a disaster for Fisher’s Aggies, somehow signing the greatest recruiting class in modern history only to get in an offseason back-and-forth with Nick Saban and the fail to even make a bowl game. Fisher finally relinquished offensive coordinator duties this offseason, but who knows what sort of fireworks the Bobby Petrino paring will produce. 

Texas A&M’s offenses have been mired in mediocrity, and while more than 30 players hit the transfer portal, Fisher did retain key pieces from the starry 2022 recruiting class (Conner Weigman, Evan Stewart and a host of 5-star DL) he believes will be the foundation for the program’s turnaround this fall. 

No. 9 Hugh Freeze, Auburn

Freeze is the hardest coach on the list to rank. He comes to Auburn with more baggage than Willy Loman, but he’s previously proven he can win and recruit in the SEC. Expectations are higher now at Auburn, though. Even a couple monumental upsets over Alabama won’t be enough to satisfy the fan base on the Plains. The Tigers expect championships. Freeze has done well mining the transfer portal and quickly undoing some of the poor recruiting strategies from the Bryan Harsin regime. 

While Liberty failed to win more than eight games the last two years, Freeze gets the slight nod over Sam Pittman here because he’s done more in the SEC before and beat Arkansas in Fayetteville just last season. 

No. 10 Sam Pittman, Arkansas

Pittman is someone who’s tumbled a bit in the rankings after a mostly-miserable year with the Hogs in 2022. Arkansas went 7-6 last fall, losing four games by nine points thanks to some poor luck (see: the field goal attempt against Texas A&M) and questionable in-game coaching. There was friction on the staff, and the locker room didn’t have the same chemistry, either. 

At least 26 players have left the program this offseason, and Sam Pittman completely overhauled his staff with a new OC, DC, strength and conditioning coordinator and several position assistants as well. Pittman has done a really good job bringing talent to Fayetteville from the transfer portal, and the Hogs return star quarterback KJ Jefferson, too. 

Pittman lauded his program’s continuity and culture just last offseason, but since the results had grown stale, we’ll see if change was the right answer. 

No. 11 Billy Napier, Florida 

Billy Napier secured a signature win in his first game as Florida’s head coach, but he’s been swimming in a swamp pretty much ever since that thriller over Utah. 

With a quarterback who might go in the Top 5 of the NFL Draft in April, the Gators went 6-7 in Year 1 under Napier — one that included losses to rivals Georgia, Tennessee and FSU for the first-time ever in the same season. They were also beaten by Vanderbilt. And yet, a second-straight losing campaign in Gainesville almost felt like the appetizer to an even spicier offseason for Napier & Co. 

The Jaden Rashada saga was a fiasco, and while Napier was unfairly blamed, we don’t know the future repercussions from a very public NIL embarrassment for his program. Florida has lost close to 30 players to the draft, transfer portal or dismissal. Multiple staff members left for the NFL, too, and even if a couple were nudged out that door, that’s a sign Napier didn’t assemble the right staff in the first place. And yet, Napier did win 40 games and two Sun Belt titles at Louisiana-Lafayette. He’s recruiting well at UF, and the early returns from the 2024 cycle are even more promising. Florida can’t be a slow-burn rebuild, though, so Napier is going to have to kick it into high-gear if the Gators want to return to championship contention anytime soon.

No. 12 Clark Lea, Vanderbilt 

Clark Lea inherited an impossible situation at Vanderbilt, and yet, in less than two years he’s at least steered the program’s ship back in the right direction. After a challenging Year 1, the Dores nearly went bowling last fall — upsetting Kentucky and Florida in November. 

Vanderbilt was also competitive in losses to Missouri and South Carolina, and now it enters Year 3 with the type of continuity (just one transfer left the program this offseason) and identity Lea believes is the foundation for future success with the ‘Dores. They bring back sophomore quarterback AJ Swann, and the rest of Lea’s ballyhooed 2022 class is a year older, too. The next step is for Lea to lead the ‘Dores out of the cellar of the SEC and take the program bowling for the first time since 2018 — fixing Vandy’s defense would be a big help.

No. 13 Eli Drinkwitz, Missouri 

Drinkwitz is a good guy, and probably a good football coach, too, but he’s a victim of circumstance at Missouri. He’s recruited better than many expected, and he’s hired rising star assistants like DC Blake Baker, but the wins and even the offensive development (QB churn, failure to average more than 29 points per game in any season) simply hasn’t been there for a coach who’s been lauded for his offensive acumen.

The Tigers are 17-19 with one bowl win in three seasons under Drinkwitz. He’s 11-15 in the SEC — with eight of those victories coming against Arkansas, Vandy and South Carolina —  three teams that won’t be on Missouri’s schedule annually starting in 2024. Drinkwitz received a contract extension as a sign of good-faith by Missouri last November, but we’ll see how long that “confidence” truly lasts if the results don’t start to change.

No. 14 Zach Arnett, Mississippi State

This is a prime example of a TBD ranking. Arnett was a well-regarded defensive coordinator and recruiter, and now we’ll see how he fares as a first-time head coach. He’s hired an interesting staff, especially pivoting hard away from the Mike Leach Air Raid attack by tabbing Kevin Barby as his offensive coordinator.

Arnett got the job under unique circumstances, and the roster isn’t positioned for MSU to run a true run-first, pro-style attack, so we’ll see if the Bulldogs can mesh the two philosophies into a winning style this fall.