In the opening weeks of SEC play, only twice in six league games have teams scored more than 30 points.

That happened last Saturday, when Alabama handled South Carolina, 37-14, and Vanderbilt beat Ole Miss, 31-23.

There hasn't been a heck of a lot of offense, and that may be attributed to the fact that it's still early.

But there's also been a trend in the last several years that defenses in the SEC are catching up to the sophisticated offenses.

One reason is that in the mid-90s, the SEC started recruiting better athletes on defense. Why? Because then-Florida coach Steve Spurrier was torching the league with an unstoppable passing game, and other SEC teams began taking parts of Spurrier's offense and adding it to their packages.

"When I started here, our focus was to get the defensive line and defensive backs up to the standards of some of the offenses we were facing," Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer said. "In the past, we had been good at times, but not consistent.

"Defenses have done a job of taking the next step. You can be ahead of the offense in certain areas if you have the personnel, especially on the corners. If they can lock up receivers one-on-one, it allows you do a lot of things defensively. It's why you see those type corners make so much money in pro football."

That type of press-man coverage, the old NFL bump-and-run technique, was brought to the SEC by former NFL defensive assistant Nick Saban at LSU.

It took a couple of years for his players to learn Saban's complicated system, but once they did, some of his schemes spread through the SEC just like Spurier's offensive ideas did in the '90s.

In the last seven NFL drafts from 1999-2005, the SEC has had 23 defensive players taken in the first round. The previous eight drafts dating back to 1991, the league had 17 first-round picks on defense.

Some of the draftees in the last few years have become some of the best defensive players in the NFL, like Georgia's Richard Seymour and Champ Bailey, Tennessee's Shaun Ellis, John Henderson and Al Wilson, Florida's Jevon Kearse, Auburn's Takeo Spikes and Kentucky's Dewayne Robertson.

Florida coach Urban Meyer, three games into his coaching career with the Gators, is seeing in person what he long suspected by looking at film.

"The athleticism and speed in this conference is unmatched," he said. "That's why I have my second-team players, not my scout, simulate opposing offenses. We want some of the best players running those plays 15 to 20 minutes every day. You can't get that speed from a scout team."

Spurrier, who is now at South Carolina, has noticed a change in SEC's defenses.

"There's very few teams ripping up and down the field," he said. "I don't see any teams really doing that like they did in the past."