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6/18 Roundtable - The Most Overrated Teams
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Ole Miss DE Greg Hardy
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CollegeFootballNews.com
Posted Jun 18, 2009
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Who are the most overrated teams going into the season? It's the Thursday topic in the CFN Daily Roundtable Discussion.
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CFN Daily Roundtables
 June
18
The Most Overrated Team Will Be ... ?
Over the next several weeks, as part of the CFN 2009 Preview, we'll
examine some of the key questions going into the year with a
daily discussion of the big topics.
Pete
Fiutak,
CFN
Yes, I'm part of
the problem. You can check me out at
twitter.com/CFN_Fiu and find
out future roundtable topics and other random musings.
Q:
The most overrated team will be ... ?
A: Ole Miss. The love has been off the charts following
a surprise season. Everyone will have the Rebels somewhere in the top
ten, and the Sporting News has them No. 5 overall, but I'm not
buying in quite yet.
When gushing about Ole Miss, everyone seems
to point out the relatively favorable schedule. First of all, ranking
teams in the preseason should be about how good the teams are and not
where they'll end up (this is the fundamental flaw in how many do
rankings, but that's for another time). Second, the schedule is going to
be tougher than it looks.
Don't assume wins at South Carolina
and Vanderbilt to start the SEC season. The Commodores are going to be
almost as strong as last year, and certainly better on offense, while
the Gamecocks will be strong among the starting 22. Just because
Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee and LSU have to come to Oxford, that won't
guarantee wins.
The defensive back seven will be decent, but not
elite. It'll get helped immensely by the pass rush, while the offensive
line isn't going to be consistent enough to hold up week in and week out
against the top SEC defensive fronts. And then there's the pressure
factor.
It's one thing to have no real expectations and
to come out of the blue in a down year for the SEC, but it's another to
have the bull's-eye on your back. Everyone in the SEC West will be
better, and Tennessee and South Carolina, also on the schedule, will
have improved. Of course, everyone points to the win over Florida as
evidence of how good the team was, and will be, but 1) about six things
had to happen, from just missed post patterns to a fourth down
stop to a missed kick to a blown coverage, to beat the Gators. No
excuses, Ole Miss made plays when the Gators didn't, but that was a
strange sort of perfect storm upset. 2) Ole Miss lost the two games
following the win in Gainesville.
Don't get me wrong, this is a
very, very good team, but it's not among the five best in America, and
for those who try to project, this won't turn out to be one of the five
best in the country.
Four of my other top five overrated teams
...
2. Virginia Tech - Unless there's some semblance of a passing
game unearthed over the next two months, the Hokies are going to get
swarmed over by the Alabama run defense in the season-opener. The O line
isn't good enough for the team to be in the top ten.
3. Boise
State - I always get yelled at whenever I dare to suggest that playing
in the WAC is the main reason for the great record over the years, but
this isn't a top 15 based on talent with lines that aren't top 20-worthy
and a suspect receiving corps. Would you take Boise State over Georgia,
who's ranked lower in almost every preseason poll, on a neutral field in
the season opener? Of course you wouldn't.
4. Ohio
State - If you're going by what the record will be, OSU is a top ten
team. It'll finish up 10-2, 9-3 at worst. If you're going by how good
the team is going into the season, it belongs around 15-to-20.
5.
Texas - It's all relative. Everyone feels bad about what happened to the
Longhorns last year so they're the automatic No. 2 pick over Oklahoma. I
have a gut feeling that the Sooners, rebuilt O line and all, are better,
and I have another gut feeling (or maybe it's the burrito I ate) that
there will be at least two losses (OU and Oklahoma State). Again, it's
all relative. Of course this is a top five team.
Richard
Cirminiello/span>,
CFN
Q:
The most overrated team will be ... ?
A:
Oregon. I sort of hate to finger them because the Ducks are one of
college football’s guilty pleasures, a high-octane, wide-open offense
decked out in 22nd century uniforms. They’re fun. They’re just not going
to live up to last year’s finish or this year’s preseason ranking.
When it comes to the Ducks, too many people are getting confused by
the shiny objects, like QB Jeremiah Masoli and RB LaGarrette Blount.
Yes, the Ducks will score points, but you can’t pencil in double-digit
wins on that alone. Digging deeper reveals that long-time head coach
Mike Bellotti is no longer on the sidelines, the offensive line is
undergoing an extreme makeover, and the defensive line has a bunch of
holes. Chip Kelly has proven to be a genius as an offensive coordinator,
but being the head coach brings a whole new set of challenges and
pressures. Is he ready? No one really knows.
While Oregon will
still be fun, it’s not going to win as many games as most are
anticipating. In fact, with a schedule that begins with Boise State,
Purdue, Utah, and California, the Ducks might very well be out of the
Top 25 before the end of September.
Matthew
Zemek, CFN
Q:
The most overrated team will be ... ?
A:
USC.
The Trojans will go 11-2, but that probably won't get them
the top 5 ranking they've been assigned in most quarters. It will also
fail to get the Men of Troy another Pac-10 title, which Oregon will
snag.
Don't get all riled up, Angelinos. This is the law of
averages entering the arena. Sometime, the uninterrupted string of
trophies is going to come to an end. This looks like the year, and it
shouldn't be hard to understand why.
1) No Mark Sanchez (or
quarterback continuity) means no two-year run under center. Matt Leinart
was around for three years, John David Booty two. Had Sanchez returned,
USC would have been ready to rock once more. Now, that's in question.
2) Linebackers. Who's gonna replace the likes of Maualuga, Cushing,
and Co.?
3) Kickers. Gone. They weren't unreal, but they were
solid. What if the new booters go bust in biggies?
4) The
schedule: At Oregon. At Cal. At Arizona State. Not what you want in a
season when the Trojans will be replacing so many bodies, and a new
quarterback will have to handle raucous road environments for the first
time as a USC starter.
11-2 would be a solid season for this
club. It really would. It simply seems that the preseason rankings
suggest a 12-1 finish instead.
Jon Miller,
Publisher, HawkeyeNation.com
Q:
The most overrated team will be ... ?
A:I think you also have a few definitions of overrated. If a team starts the year in the Top 10 and finishes 22-25ish, I think that team is more overrated than a team that start's out in the teen's and doesn't make it into the final BCS standings. Others might feel differently, but that's where I am going. I love Phil Steele's magazine. It's my favorite every year. I agreed with him last year when he didn't have Illinois in his Top 50, and he backed off the Kansas love. Phil and I both missed on Wisconsin being overrated, but a friend and colleague told me last August that he felt Wisconsin would be lucky to be in a bowl game, and they were. This year, Steele has Penn State ranked as the
No. 5 team in the nation. I just don't see them finishing inside the Top Five and I think they will be fortunate to finish inside the Top 15. They have one of the weakest non-conference schedules of any team in any BCS conference, something I pointed out months ago before ESPN started writing about that fact, and something that caused Penn State fans to email me all sorts of nasty comments, suggesting that since I cover Iowa, I am biased. Color the worldwide leader in black and gold then, right? If a team other than USC, Ohio State, Florida or Texas was losing three first team all conference offensive linemen, their top four pass catchers, two NFL defensive ends and all four members of their secondary, plus productive kicking specialists, they would be lucky to be ranked 25th, much less fifth. Penn State is not those four programs, circa 2009. They have a great and rich tradition, but somehow their fans forgot the first five years of this decade, which is the majority of the decade, and their 26-33 record between 2000-2004. Northwestern had more wins during that time. So did Syracuse, Iowa State, Minnesota, Arkansas, Virginia and several other programs that can't hold a candle to Penn State's history since Joe Pa took over. Since then, they have been very good, but they were also getting really good recruiting classes during that five year stretch of poor results. I am not yet convinced they are back to reloading, even in a Big Ten that is not all that great. In addition to their four out of conference wins they will post, they play Indiana and Purdue, so there is six wins right there. Perhaps I am being nuts here, because winning nine or ten games doesn't seem like a herculean feat, so perhaps they will finish the year ranked inside the Top 15. But they will be posers, a point that will be proven in the bowl game. Also, anyone that picks Missouri in their preseason Top 25 is in for a letdown; they probably struggle to make it to a bowl game .
Hunter Ansley,
Publisher,
DraftZoo.com
Q:
The most overrated team will be ... ?
A: I don’t
receive enough hate mail as it is, so why not
remedy that right quick? The
answer is Alabama. Look,
I’ve learned never to count Nick Saban out, and it’s not like he doesn’t
have loads of talent ready to step in and return the Tide to glory, but
I’m starting to wonder why everyone last year thought that this team was
a year away. I don’t think
Alabama will be bad by any stretch of the imagination, but I have my
doubts about the deservedness of their possible top five preseason
ranking.
Remember last year?
All those close wins.
17-14 at home against Kentucky.
24-20 at home against Ole Miss.
A 20-6 win over Tulane in Bryant-Denny.
Even the overtime victory at LSU lost some luster as the season
went on. Well, a lot of the
guys responsible for those victories are gone.
You can say that Andre Smith’s absence was the reason that Utah
loss, and I’ll agree. But
he’ll be absent for every game this year.
So will center Antoine Caldwell.
That’s going to hurt the offense more than most people think.
And even if John Parker Wilson didn’t win many games on his own,
he definitely didn’t lose many either.
Greg McElroy may grow into a great quarterback, but you can’t
discount the fact that most first-year SEC passers struggle.
Which brings me to the Alabama defense.
Sure, getting nine starters back is a huge deal, and the defense
will again be scary. But one
of the two graduates was free safety Rashad Johnson, who Saban called
him one of the most intelligent players he’s ever coached.
That’s hard to replace in any scheme, but losing the free safety
is an especially big blow to a Saban squad.
It certainly hurt his defenses at LSU.
Don’t get me wrong, Alabama isn’t going to lose
five games, but this could still be a disappointing team.
.
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