My Surprise Team This Year

Lol... not what I expected when I opened this up. I like it though!

Not as out there as SJSU, but I look for Kentucky to be a variable in the SEC East. All this talk about Florida being back, the resurgence of Tennessee, etc... and Kentucky quietly returned plenty of talent and has Terry Wilson returning for another year.

Gam

Yo DAWG..... You read my mind lol... hope all is good w you buddy!

Yeah Kattar Love really was a Gem ... kept Sparty competitive in most of their games... going into Fayetteville out-dueling Nick Starkel early on was great... I think they would have been an even bigger money maker if they hadn't pulled such a dramatic upset so early on... they went from top 30 passing team in '18 to top 5 last year and would have sunk 8 of the last 9 against the spread getting just a slightly bigger line in some of their games...    

....   unfortunately for SJSU Nick Starkel is the projected starter for them now (at least in a preview mag) which I can't say is a sign of improvement lol.... They were grooming Nick Nash at QB last year and he saw action in the first 6 games before injury... and he wasn't just playing in garbage time they had him making plays at critical moments and looked good. 

Assuming the Cali schools end up playing football I think an angle we can hope for for w SJ is Starkel gets the nod to start the season and proceeds to stink it up bad (again) for a few games .... its an ABSOLUTELY BRUTAL start to the year with @CMU, @PennSt, @ BoiseSt, AirForce ... once expectations are back to normal SJSU levels like 120th on offense they swap Stark out and we see if Nash can let'er rip!... 

Good luck

I'll add mine too... couple teams might surprise this year and a possible dud I'm looking at.... 

Surprise ... 

Western Kentucky... Replacing awesome QB Ty Story... (also an arkansas xfer lol)... so that's kinda the question is how does so-so offense of LY get back to the WKY way of doing football... need improvement in running and OL / RB back might help... but the guy to look for might be Tyrell Pigrome xfers in from MD... it was tough sledding in the B1G for that style of run first dual threat QB especially with inferior talent / coaching around him ... if Piigrome works out the ground game might be a real strength and he's flyin under the radar, not even mentioned in Athlon .... could be a fun team because defense looks SUPER STOUT... 

SDSU... they were a half way decent MW offense away from running the table 12-0 last year.... 3 losses by a total of 13 points and SD could only score 17, 13 and 11 points in those losses... woof...maybe coach change to some former Rocky alums is not a bad thing...  D is gunna be SICK once again and we saw Carson Baker hit 80% of his shots in his one game LY vs BYU for a big win and apparently he's already got the nod ... offense regressing to the mean would be a big step... defense or even turnover margin regressing might make things tough... 

VT - I think Hooker & Co will remind us a little of Utah last year.. they started looking really tough when things started clicking in the ladder half LY ... Penn St might be in for a surprise week 2 in blacksburg... but even if that's not to be I like both sides of the ball to be a notch better and think they'll knock out fan fav UNC again and get a title shot this year....

Fade..... 

SMU... Ponies keep the QB and get Reggie back at WR after an amazing turnaround year... makes sense they have quite a bit of hype ... but prosche and top two really solid RB's gone I don't think the O will look the same w ~3k yards and 45 TD's leaving even with a few of their playmakers leftover .... Run Defense had a few moments last year but thats deceiving when every game sooner or later devolved into a shootout .... the D loses it's best pressure/TFL guys, 30 outta 50 sacks gone and could drop to one of the worst D's in CFB ... Ponies start off with TX St, FCS and N.Tex.... I'm hoping 3 big wins to start out should set us up well for a fad-o-rama from there ... RSW Under 7.5 might be worth a look.... there's the 3 wins but then there's 5 (road-heavy) tossup games ... @tulane, @temple, @tulsa, @ECU, Navy and each one will have either a decent O or D .. win all 5 and they hit it but I'd expect at least one slip up in there... then gotta win at least one of the tough games..... TCU, Memp, Cincy, Houston.... they'll all be really tough this year.... I'm thinking its a 6 win year for them...