Playoff Prediction:
#4 Seed: South Carolina: South Carolina is the current favorite to win the SEC East. With a generally favorable schedule (road games against Auburn, Clemson and Florida, but the rest of their tough games at home) and a defensive switch to a 3 front, the Gamecocks should be able to weather losing Clowney, Ellington and Shaw. Spurrier returns four starters from his great offensive line of 2013 and new QB starter Dylan Thompson was blooded-in by defeating Clemson on the road in 2012. If they can beat Auburn in late October, they should be the favorite to win the SEC.
(Author’s Note: This writer is a licensed and registered with the federal government Gamecock alum and fan. Yours truly did everything he could to try and talk himself out of this prediction, but looking at it purely objectively, if South Carolina beats Auburn in October, they should be able to cruise to their first SEC title.)
#3 Seed: UCLA: Returning Hundley and Myles Jack make them dangerous and while they lost a lot to the NFL, they won’t see Oregon or Stanford until the 5th week in the season, so they have time to get the lineup to gel. Look Devin Fuller get the ball and make the offense move from “Hundley alone makes us good” to “shades of Manziel/Evans 2013.” Their season may come down to the final regular season game against Stanford, but beating Texas is a must for their playoff hopes.
#2 Seed: Oklahoma: Travis Knight, a veteran offensive line and a dangerous defensive front 7 return. Their biggest question will be finding an effective RB since they lost so many of them in the offseason. They’ll be leaning on Knight and Bell to drive the offense and hope that Eric Striker’s Sugar Bowl was just a preview of his performance to come. One factor that could hold them back is a relatively weak schedule (Tennessee is their hardest non-conference game).
#1 Seed: Oregon: They return just about all their offensive starters from 2013, which is scary but their defense still has issues to work through. So if they reach this lofty perch it will be because they won a lot of 44-28 games. Look that second game against Michigan State, they’re a tough matchup for the Ducks, so their meddle will be tested early. During summer ball and in the early games, the coaches will be looking for defensive front 7 talent emerging so that their offense doesn’t have to score 6-7 touchdowns a game.
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Rose Bowl: 2 - 3. UCLA 18-Oklahoma 32. Oklahoma just has too much for UCLA. Hundley is stifled by the Sooners’ pass rush, the UCLA defense gets spread out too thin to cope with the Oklahoma offense. This would be a game where the score is much closer than the game was on the field.
Sugar Bowl: 1 - 4. South Carolina 35-Oregon 45. South Carolina could only win this game thanks to turnovers, but they’ll keep it respectably close. Oregon just has too much firepower for them, but the Oregon defense will let Davis run enough to make it interesting.
Title Game: Oklahoma 42-Oregon 38. The Sooners have just too much defense for the Ducks in the end. That’s a bit odd to say for a game predicted to feature 80 points scored, but here we are. The Sooners will slow down Oregon somewhere, just enough to get over the top again in the Stoops era.
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Cotton Bowl: Stanford - Alabama
Stanford: Completely ravaged by graduations and NFL entries, Stanford still has Hogan, Fleming, and a great coaching staff. They really are counting on Barry Sanders stepping up in 2014 and carrying the offense however. On defense, they lost a ton of talent, especially in the front 7. It is only due to the respect had for David Shaw and his staff that they’re ranked this high.
Alabama: Another team that has a ton of holes to fill and with a great coaching staff that gives them the benefit of the doubt. As always, everyone is high on the players coming in to replace the stars of last year, except at the QB position. There is a lot of concern about who will step up and replace the legend AJ McCarron, so it is very plausible that Saban went with Lane Kiffin as the offensive coordinator because he intends on hiding this hole by running the ball far more. With Yeldon and Derrick Henry, they have the talent to pull this off to some extent but this won’t be one of those great Bama squads.
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Fiesta Bowl: Baylor - Michigan State
Baylor: Baylor returns enough talent on both sides of the ball (and more importantly Art Briles) to make them a threat in the Big-12. The problem is that Oklahoma just has more and Baylor has five question marks on their offensive line. They’ll avoid anyone tough until October, when they play Texas, so they’ll have time to make it gel.
Michigan State: They’ll be a quality team in 2014, perhaps good enough to win the B1G title over a rebuilding Ohio State. Unless they get a surprising number of defensive starters developing quickly, they just won’t be a team that can win 11/12 games. Dantonio will have a fine, but boring squad that will punish sloppy teams all season long.
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Orange Bowl: Florida State - Ohio State
Florida State: Florida State returns Crazy Crab Legs Winston at QB and has a great recruiting class coming in, but they lost too much on both sides of the ball. They’ll still have a great season, as they’ll still cruise in the ACC to a conference title and the fans will hope and pray that Crazy Crab Legs will come back for his junior year (keep praying) to make another title run. Right now, they just don’t have the firepower and their schedule won’t be tough enough to leapfrog a stronger conference winner.
Ohio State: They’re in a similar boat to FSU, as the Buckeyes return their star QB in Braxton Miller, but he returns to a team that's rebuilding. Replacing the top two RBs, four offensive linemen, and three starters at defensive back won’t be easy, so this becomes even more pivotal season for Miller. Either he’s going to finally take that next step to become a truly elite QB (he’s never seriously been in the Heisman discussion), or he’ll always be what he was in 2013: a star but never a superstar. The one thing working in their favor is that they don’t have a tough schedule this year, especially early. Virginia Tech and Maryland are their toughest games before late October.
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Peach Bowl: Auburn - Louisville
Auburn: They’re the trendy pick for the SEC champion right now, and it’s easy to see how pundits can talk themselves into it. Auburn came out of nowhere to win the SEC, beating Texas A&M, UGA, Alabama and Missouri last season. Their coaching staff is largely intact and they return Nick Marshall at the held of that offense. However, this is incorrect analysis. Auburn’s sudden rise came on the back of two factors: Lady luck and a trio of starters who turned into elite players in 2013. First, Lady luck. Auburn won four games on scores inside of two minutes left: UGA, Miss State, Alabama and Texas A&M. Two of those could be considered extremely fluky score also with the quasi-hail mary against Georgia and the infamous FG return as time expired against Bama. The odds of seeing a repeat are slim. As for #2: losing Greg Robinson, Tre Mason and Dee Ford seems very tough for them for overcome, at least early in the season. Teams are going to dare Marshall to throw far more now (FSU did that with good success after Robinson disappeared in the Title Game) and are going to make Carl Lawson step up quickly from injury or teams will be running all over Ellis Johnson’s quick but smaller defense.
Louisville: He’s back. Bobby Petrino is stopping at the River City for a cup of coffee and a danish before he tries to break back into a big time college conference. The Cardinals, hopefully, realize the temporary nature of this arraignment and are just using him to get the program to stay at the levels Charlie Strong took them to. There’s no doubt that Petrino will blitz his way through the AAC and should be the clear favor for that conference title (and a playoff Group of Five berth). The question will be how many players leave with him for whatever school he leaves for.
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Crash And Burn List:
Texas A&M: They would have made this list even if they just lost Manziel, Matthews Jr and Evans. But then they kicked off two of their five best defenders off a defense that struggled in 2013. And early reports from College Station is that none of the QBs vying to replace Manziel look ready to fill his paid autograph sessions. They have a brutal schedule which includes visits to Alabama, Auburn and South Carolina. 7 wins at most.
Clemson: They were relevant last year even though they never were a contender. Now they have massive shoes to fills and are predicating the season on “Vic Beasley goes from a great ACC player to a great national player” and “Mike Williams replaces Watkins’ production.” Good luck with that. Enjoy the Music City Bowl.
Missouri: They just lost too much and while kicking Dorian Green-Beckham off the team was the absolute right move for the team, it means that your win total dropped. Another SEC team with a brutal schedule(trips to the Swamp, South Carolina, College Station and Rocky Top) and is hoping players come out of nowhere. Have fun playing Clemson at the Music City bowl.
Oklahoma State: They’re still playing musical QBs and are praying that someone steps up to replace Justin Gilbert at CB. If a CB can't lock down one side, then their entire defense is structurally flawed. Starting off with Florida State and ending with Baylor and Oklahoma is brutal. 7-5 might be a good season for them.
Ole Miss: Every year under Freeze we hear about how great their recruiting class has been and that they could be the “surprise team” in the SEC. And they had another great recruiting class this past winter. However, they need to do better than 6-10 in the SEC-and another 3-5 SEC season seems likely.
Notre Dame: They get Everett Golson back from his year off, but they have to rebuild an offensive line which their two key starters and a defensive line which now will be switching to a 4 front. They’ll need all the help that they can get with their quasi-ACC schedule (UNC, FSU and Syracuse) along with their usual opponents (Stanford, Southern Cal and Michigan).
Virginia Tech: Vegas has them pegged at 8-9 wins. This is largely a function of Beamer scheduling William & Mary and Western Michigan. Beamer ball crashed in 2013 when they finished 7-6. It’s hard to see how and why they bounce back to their usual 10+ wins in 2014 unless Trey Edmunds becomes the 2014 Mike Davis and several defenders emerge as quality college players.
Florida: Semantically, maybe it’s hard to crash from 4-8 to becoming a worse team, but Muschamp might pull it off. They had a talent poor roster in 2013 and it’s getting worse. They lose the cream of their defensive backfield and are counting entirely on Driskel and Dante Flower Jr carrying the team all season. This could get ugly quickly and Muschamp looks unlikely to survive the season.
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Teams Making A Positive Leap In 2014:
Texas: Strong is a good coach and Mack Brown isn’t. Simple as that. Brown was soft, lazy and bored with that job. He wasn’t recruiting hard, he was locked in a fallacy that he was right about every ATH prospect (like telling Manziel and RG3 to switch positions) and he never replaced the talent that they lost each season. And on Manziel/RG3: since McCoy went off to the NFL, when have they gotten quality QB play? Strong is a breath of fresh air, and will get them on the right track.
Washington State: They won’t contend for a Pac-12 title. They will contend for a good bowl game however. Leach has them buying into his system and mindset, and when you have an easy non-conference schedule each season it’s easy to rack up 7-9 wins.
Houston: They play in a godawful conference and have a relatively easy schedule. If they can make it past BYU on Sept 11, then their 17 returning starters should get them to a later bowl game.
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Hot Seats:
Dana Holgorsen, WVU: Let’s be completely honest, if Holgs didn’t have a massive buyout clause in his contract for 2013, he would have been fired after the disastrous 2013 season for the Mountaineers. There’s some conflicting information on how long his buyout clause is good for, but if WVU can dump him for a smaller payment then they won’t hesitate if they struggle in 2014.
Mark Richt, UGA: The fans love Richt but even they and the admin is wondering when he’s going to take the next step and become a contender. As long as they beat Florida (or South Carolina) and pull off a couple big wins each season to being a top two team in the SEC east, they’ll be satisfied. However, if they drop in wins then expect that seat to get very hot for Richt.
Will Muschamp: He has a brutal start to the schedule, facing Alabama, LSU and U-T in the first six weeks. It’s very possible that Muschamp doesn’t survive to the World’s Largest Cocktail party to start November.
Brian Kelly: He’s out of excuses at Notre Dame. With Golston back and his recruiting classes now making up the majority of the starters, he has to make a playoff or playoff-related bowl game or the grumbling will begin.
Dabo Swinney: Dabo defenders will point to his Orange Bowl win last season. In reality the boosters and AD’s office would like to get rid of Dabo after five straight defeats at the hands of their nemesis South Carolina. Spurrier is, as higher ups at Clemson say, living rent costless inside of Dabo’s head. He has to make the playoff structure this year to keep his job (there’s a reason Chad Morris didn’t leave this past winter), and that’s fairly unlikely now.
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Heisman Prediction (Darkhorses):
Since 2005 when Reggie Bush won the Heisman trophy, the Heisman trophy winner has been a relative dark horse headed into the season. One can make the case that Tebow (2007) and Bradford (2008) were mentioned as potential winners before their Heisman winning season, but neither was a favorite (side note: Bradford did have a good 2007 season, but didn’t even finish in the top 10 of Heisman voting). Let’s discuss some potential dark horses that you should consider as the next Winston, Manziel, etc., and some that you can safely dismiss.
Ameer Abdullah, RB Nebraska: He’s a darkhorse for it, but it’s becoming harder and harder for RBs to win the Heisman with the rise of the inverted veer and read-option attacks. Also RBs in college don’t want to rack up 1000+ carries or the NFL scouts will write them off as physically spent. He had 1600 yards in 2013. He needs to top that, but he’s capable of doing it. He’s a darkhorse.
Myles Jack, LB/RB UCLA: He would have to be an All-American at LB and have 600-1000 yards rushing to get considered. That’s possible but its extremely unlikely. The odds are that he’ll focus on playing LB and just be used in a sub package at RB. He’s dismissible as a Heisman candidate.
Marquise Williams, QB UNC: He played a significant amount of time in 6 games in 2013 and he had 2100+ combined yards (passing/rushing) and 21 TDs. Fedora’s offense was designed for a player like him, so look out. He’s a darkhorse you’ll hear a lot about in 2014.
Mike Davis, RB South Carolina: He barely saw the ball in the final four games in 2013 and still finished with over 1500 combined yards. With a new QB at the helm of Spurrier’s offense and a big, experienced offensive line to open holes for him, it’s easy to label him as a Heisman contender. Spurrier has another very talented RB to use in David Williams, and they’ll split a lot of playing time in 2014. He’s not a Heisman darkhorse.
Travis Wilson, QB Utah: He’s coming back after a scary concussion in 2013. Wilson looked like a passing QB who could run when need-be and has the Utes fans excited for his Heisman chances. If Utah can go into UCLA, Michigan and Stanford and win, then that changes things. Right now his Heisman chances will fizzle out.
Dak Prescott, QB Miss State: He had nearly 3000 combined yards last season with literally nothing around him in the SEC West. If they can find a RB/WR combo to work with him, Mullen might have found a read-option QB to contend for a Heisman. He’s a darkhorse Heisman contender in 2015.
Nick Marshall, QB Auburn: Auburn fans think that this is their year. We’ll see about that, but if they’re going to contend in the SEC, they’ll need Marshall to move from “emerging star” to “superstar.” He’s a darkhorse contender.
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Heisman Prediction:
1-Marcus Mariota, QB Oregon. It’s his year and they won’t take their schedule lightly like they did last season. If he disappoints, it's solely because he lacks that killer instinct that the true great players all have.
2-Marquise Williams, QB UNC. He should be good for 4000 total yards and 30 TDs barring injury. Fedora is a smart offensive mind and Williams was born for that offense.
3-Bryce Petty, QB Baylor. He’ll be good, not great. 4000 passing yards gets him this far.
4-Crazy Crab Legs Winston, QB Florida State. It’s almost impossible for him not to take a step back after last season, but it will be largely due to the drop in talent around him.
5-Brett Hundley, QB UCLA. Another good, but not great guy but his unselfishness will lead the Bruins to the playoffs.