Burning Questions Continued
Can LSU find a few more chunk plays? Heading into 2022, I labeled Brian Kelly's first LSU team as unprojectable. Kelly inherited from Ed Orgeron a robustly talented team that had underachieved since winning the 2019 national title. He spent his first offseason briefly trying on a Southern accent, then roped in key contributors for virtually every position: quarterback (Arizona State's
Jayden Daniels), running back, receiver, offensive guard, defensive tackle, safety, cornerback (
especially cornerback) and even punter and long snapper.
Early results of this grand chemistry experiment were inconclusive. After six games, the Tigers were 4-2 and just 25th in SP+.
Five wins and six weeks later, they were 13th. That's where they'd finish. Driven primarily by the electric Daniels, the Tigers jumped to third in rushing success rate, and Daniels found a solid rapport with wideout
Malik Nabers. The offense overachieved projections for six of the final eight games, the defense in five of seven. After going 11-12 in Orgeron's last two years, LSU went a solid 10-4, good enough to steal the West title from Bama but also flawed enough to leave room for improvement. And then Kelly hopped right back on the talent acquisition horse, signing
the No. 6 class in the country and adding another batch of intriguing transfers.
The 2023 LSU roster overflows with experience. Eighteen offensive players saw at least 200 snaps last season, and 13 return; nine of 18 return on defense too, including breakout edge-rushing star
Harold Perkins Jr. Tackle
Maason Smith, one of 2021's better defensive pieces, returns from injury, and Kelly brought in 10 players who were at least part-time starters at other FBS schools, including Notre Dame running back
Logan Diggs, Texas defensive end
Ovie Oghoufo, West Virginia defensive tackle
Jordan Jefferson and Oregon State linebacker
Omar Speights. Alabama signed a more highly ranked overall recruiting class, but the number of LSU's instant-impact transfers, it could be that Kelly signed the most
useful class as far as the 2023 season is concerned.
With a challenging schedule that starts with Florida State and includes eight opponents projected 27th or better, the depth Kelly has created will be tested. And if the Tigers can unearth a few more big plays, that would help immensely. LSU ranked sixth in success rate last season, but in my marginal explosiveness measure -- which looks at the magnitude of a team's successful plays and adjusts for down, distance and field position -- they ranked just 101st. The defense had a similar dynamic: 20th in success rate but 50th in marginal explosiveness. Both units were excellent in the red zone, but easy points are a big-game panacea, and LSU often didn't win that battle.
(And as you might recall from the blocked PAT that ended the season-opening Florida State loss, special teams could use some fine-tuning as well.)
Kelly is an efficiency-based coach, and it has won him lots of games from Division II to FBS. His 2023 Tigers will likely be even more efficient than the 2022 edition, but explosiveness might be the key to them taking a step toward genuine top-five status.
Does Bobby Petrino have the answers for Texas A&M? It's become an almost baked-in piece of the college football narrative: A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher is going to field a wonderfully talented team, his defense is going to be top notch (or close to it) and he's going to put way too much on his quarterback's plate and underachieve because of it.
In five seasons at A&M, Fisher has fielded top-20 defenses with increasingly disappointing offenses. After tumbling from 28th to 65th in offensive SP+ in 2021, Fisher faced some pressure to upgrade what was increasingly feeling like a retrograde attack. Instead, he doubled down on what he knew. A&M fell even further, to 71st, lost five of seven one-score games and finished a shocking 5-7.
The coach with
the most gaudy contract in college sports has started with the preseason No. 6 team in the country and finished unranked for two straight years. This offseason, he went off to finally search for answers to his offensive problems, and he came back with ... Bobby Petrino. Cantankerous birds of a feather stick together.
A former Louisville and Arkansas head coach, Petrino has authored quite a few outstanding offenses in his career, and while he's also burned plenty of bridges, he could at least briefly
come up with snappy answers in College Station. Having
Conner Weigman will help. The five-star sophomore quarterback had his moments of effectiveness despite last year's degree of difficulty.
Weigman's supporting cast will feature not only sophomore
Evan Stewart, junior
Moose Muhammad III and sophomore tight end
Donovan Green, but also
Ainias Smith, who has scored 22 career touchdowns but missed most of 2022 with injury. The running back corps is mostly unproven but boasts recent star recruits and big Colorado State transfer
David Bailey. Up front, 10 Aggies linemen started at least one game last season -- the odds of having to start that many different guys and
not fielding a disappointing offense: about 0.2% -- but nine of them are back, along with a pair of experienced transfers.
Even last year, with extreme youth up front and no help from the offense, the A&M defense ranked 18th in defensive SP+. It's got top-10 potential now. The line returns countless former star recruits, including tackles
McKinnley Jackson and
Walter Nolen, who combined for 10 tackles for loss and 23 run stops in 2022. The pass rush is unproven, but it should be difficult to run on the Aggies, especially with linebackers
Chris Russell Jr. and
Edgerrin Cooper roaming.
The secondary was a strength last season and has to replace corner
Jaylon Jones and nickel
Antonio Johnson, but like-for-like transfers
Tony Grimes (North Carolina) and
Josh DeBerry (Boston College) will help, as will further maturation from some of last year's star recruits.
Fisher makes too much money and has far too many former blue-chippers to struggle the way he has of late, but A&M will be better on both sides of the ball and should flip some of those close losses. A top-five schedule, which includes trips to Miami and Tennessee in addition to the West gauntlet, will keep the win total tamped down. But the Aggies should at least get back to 7-5 or 8-4.
Can Ole Miss find stability in instability? We're only a couple of years into college football's transfer explosion, and we're already accustomed to the archetype of a first-year coach loading up on players from the portal. It makes sense -- chances are, if you're a freshly hired coach, you're going to be looking at a depth chart with holes to fill. Of the six coaches who reeled in at least 16 transfers in 2022, three were first-year guys (including Brian Kelly), one was a second-year guy and one was desperate (Georgia Tech's Geoff Collins). The other was Ole Miss' Lane Kiffin.
This year, five coaches have brought in at least 25 transfers. Three are first-year guys (led, of course, by Colorado's Deion Sanders) and one is second-year SMU coach Rhett Lashlee. The other ... is Lane Kiffin.
Kiffin has put together a 0.639 win percentage in Oxford thus far, the best for an Ole Miss coach's first three seasons since John Vaught successor Billy Kinard started (and ended) 16-9 from 1971 to 1973. Kiffin has embraced portal life from
what he felt was an analytical viewpoint. "The whole theory of signing a ton of high school kids because you have them for five years, that's not true anymore," he said last year. "What's gonna be the percentage that leaves now that they can?"
Last year's transfer haul brought him a starting quarterback (
Jaxson Dart), a 900-yard rusher (
Zach Evans), a 900-yard receiver (Malik Heath) and six defenders who saw at least 395 snaps. (Funny enough, the best newcomer was actually a freshman, running back
Quinshon Judkins.) But the defense regressed from 25th to 49th in defensive SP+, and after a great start, the offense underachieved SP+ projections in five of the final six games. Ole Miss fell by two wins and eight spots in SP+ (from 10th to 18th), and Kiffin's response was to load up on even more transfers.
Coaches will preach about how much culture matters to a given program -- how important it is to have long-serving upperclassmen preaching the gospel to younger players and reinforcing a program's values. It's difficult to establish such a culture when you're signing more than 20 transfers per year, and the coming seasons in Oxford will tell us just how important that is. But there's no denying the amount of talent the portal is providing the Rebels.
On offense, Kiffin's 2023 haul includes two quarterbacks (including Oklahoma State veteran
Spencer Sanders), mid-major receiving stars
Zakhari Franklin (UTSA) and
Tre Harris (Louisiana Tech) and all-conference linemen in UAB guard
Quincy McGee and Washington tackle
Victor Curne). On defense, Kiffin added ace pass-rusher
Isaac Ukwu (James Madison), havoc-heavy linebacker
Monty Montgomery (Louisville) and, to address a pretty passive pass defense, five defensive backs who defended at least seven passes last year. And with all these new, disruptive pieces, he added a transfer coordinator too: Alabama's Pete Golding.
Top to bottom, from offensive tempo to a liberal fourth-down strategy to portal usage, Kiffin has an aggressive program. We'll see how the Rebels' fast and reasonably culture-free roster responds to both last year's late fade and trips to both Alabama and Georgia. This is quite an interesting experiment.
Does Zach Arnett need a transition year? I wasn't looking forward to writing this section. This is a preview, and it's time to talk about Mississippi State and how Zach Arnett might perform as a rookie head coach in the SEC. And no matter what, it's going to feel terribly awkward.
Arnett moved to head coach when the legendary pirate, Mike Leach, passed away in December at the age of 61. Leach was one of the few active coaches who could legitimately claim to have changed football; first with mentor Hal Mumme, then as head coach at Texas Tech, Washington State and Mississippi State, he did more to normalize the forward pass in the college game than pretty much anyone. And he did so with enough personality -- and the stories that came with said personality -- to fill a library's worth of books. (I would read them all.) He was cranky and stubborn and distractible and frustrating and hilarious. College football is not the same without him. And the entire framing of MSU's 2023 season will be based around how it responds to his absence and what Arnett attempts to change.
At first glance, he might be changing quite a bit on offense. He hired Kevin Barbay as offensive coordinator; Barbay's 2022 Appalachian State offense was very good but ran the ball more frequently than the national average -- Leach's offense, of course, was the most pass-heavy in the country -- and set up solid vertical passing with a mostly mistake- and loss-free run game. Even if there is a slow shift from old offense to new, there will be a shift.
Arnett also brought in Vanderbilt dual-threat quarterback Mike Wright to compete with or complement returning starter
Will Rogers, plus,
gasp, a pair of tight ends in
Geor'quarius Spivey (TCU) and
Ryland Goede (Georgia). He also lost six receivers, including last year's top three, to the portal. A veteran-heavy line is going to be learning almost a completely new job, as is Rogers, who might,
double gasp, take snaps under center.
There is far more familiarity on defense. MSU ranked 20th in defensive SP+ with Arnett's Rocky Long-inspired 3-3-5, and the Bulldogs return two-thirds of a dynamite linebacking corps --
Jett Johnson and
Nathaniel Watson, who combined for 22 TFLs, 8 sacks and 32 run stops -- plus an excellent tackle duo in
Nathan Pickering and
Jaden Crumedy. There's concern in the secondary, where four of last year's top five are gone and transfers such as corners
Chris Keys (Indiana) and Raydarious Jones (LSU) might be relied upon. But last year's backups were veterans and are mostly back in 2023; this unit isn't starting over with freshmen by any means.
After a couple of mediocre seasons in Starkville, Leach's Bulldogs broke through in 2022 with a lovely nine-win season against a top-10 schedule. They were 0-3 against SP+ top-15 teams and 9-1 against everyone else. They're projected to regress a bit, and with six opponents projected between 16th and 33rd in SP+, they could find themselves in quite a few close games. But with not only the change but the
type of change they're dealing with, it's fair to figure variance levels are pretty high here.
Can the transfer portal fix Arkansas' defense? Shine can wear off pretty quickly in the SEC. After a nine-win breakthrough in 2021 -- a season that included wins by double digits over Texas and Texas A&M and a tight loss at Alabama -- Sam Pittman's Razorbacks entered 2022 ranked 19th in the AP poll and quickly moved to 10th in September.
A dismal performance against Bobby Petrino's Missouri State team -- the Hogs trailed by 10 in the fourth quarter before surging back to win 38-27 -- was a warning sign. Inconsistent offense and a downright mediocre defense prompted a run of six losses in eight games. A 21-19 defeat to Hugh Freeze and Liberty was a low point, and only a wild bowl win over Kansas salvaged a winning season.
After the season, Pittman lost both coordinators -- offensive coordinator Kendal Briles to TCU, defensive coordinator Barry Odom to the UNLV head coaching job -- and went in two different directions with the replacements. Veteran Dan Enos takes over on offense; once Bret Bielema's Arkansas OC, he hasn't really led a good offense since he left Fayetteville in 2017. On defense, Pittman turned to the relatively young Travis Williams, Gus Malzahn's DC at UCF for the past two years. He engineered a couple of decent top-50 defensive SP+ finishes in Orlando with a defense that forced the issue but got burned quite a bit.
Nine of the 17 defenders who played at least 300 snaps last year are back, but Pittman added an entire lineup's worth of transfers -- four linemen, two linebackers and five DBs. Nickelback
Alfahiym Walcott (Baylor) could be an exciting addition to pair with ultra-aggressive corner
Dwight McGlothern and safety
Hudson Clark. End
John Morgan III (Pitt) will be key to avoiding regression in the pass rush.
Enos is a pretty big departure from the tempo- and run-heavy Briles. Quarterback
KJ Jefferson will theoretically be passing more this fall, and he'll be doing so without the top five members of last year's receiving corps. Running back
Raheim Sanders is the only returnee who caught more than 12 passes. Of course, Enos isn't stupid; he'll likely lean on the strengths of both Jefferson and Sanders, who combined for 2,242 rushing yards (not including sacks) and 19 scores. They are a uniquely big duo -- Jefferson is 6-foot-3, 246 pounds; Sanders is 6-foot-2, 237 -- though they'll be running behind a line that is replacing three starters, including all-conference tackle Dalton Wagner.
As is the case for everyone in the West, the Hogs' schedule is rugged. After a reasonably soft nonconference slate, their Week 4 trip to LSU is the first of seven straight games against projected top-30 teams. If the offensive coordinator change doesn't stifle Jefferson's unique strengths, and a couple of transfers stick in the receiving corps, the offense has top-20 potential. And the defense should improve enough to keep Arkansas in lots of close games. Winning them will determine if Pittman gets his shine back or if he finds hot-seat status.
How long will it take Hugh Freeze to craft something at Auburn? What happens when your main rivals are Alabama and Georgia, aka winners of the past three national titles and eight of the past 14? You make irrational decisions sometimes. Your boosters do, at least.
Before Bryan Harsin, each of the six Auburn head coaches since Shug Jordan had a history of top-15 seasons and recent success when they were ousted. Gus Malzahn had two top-10 finishes and a $21 million buyout, and the school still pushed him out after an up-and-down 2020 season. Two years later, they spent $22 million to run Harsin out of town. If
ESPN's recent "dead money" project became a book, Auburn would have a spot on the cover.
Harsin was by no means effective on the Plains, of course. The former Boise State head man never seemed comfortable in the job, and by Year 2 his team played like it knew he was doomed. The offense was explosive but one-dimensional and the defense never really showed up in a 6-7 campaign that saw Harsin ousted at the end of October.
Auburn shelled out eight digits to declare it could do much better than Malzahn, and instead it did worse. To try to catch back up to Alabama and Georgia, it hired
a guy who beat those schools three times in the 2010s: Hugh Freeze.
Freeze is a very good football coach. In 10 years at Arkansas State, Ole Miss and Liberty, he went 83-43 with three 10-win seasons and three ranked finishes. His offense is fun and flexible, and he can win the occasional big-time recruiting battle. You'll end up
on the NCAA's radar the moment you hire him, you might end up with
some social media harassment issues to deal with and you might end up
firing him for pretty embarrassing reasons. But you'll win some football games.
A soft nonconference slate should assure bowl eligibility or something close, but it's still hard to tell how many games Auburn might win in Freeze's first season. The roster had to be spackled together after imbalance and attrition issues. Auburn's 2022 offense could only run, so Freeze brought in Michigan State quarterback
Payton Thorne and five receiver transfers. The offensive line lost six of last year's top seven, so he inked four transfers there. The run defense was dreadful, so he signed nine defensive line and linebacker transfers.
Freeze and veteran offensive coordinator Philip Montgomery should know what to do with the speed this new offense possesses -- running backs
Brian Battie (South Florida) and holdover
Jarquez Hunter each averaged at least 6.4 yards per carry (dual-threat QB
Robby Ashford averaged 6.6, not including sacks), and all-or-nothing North Texas transfer
Jyaire Shorter averaged 27 yards per catch. But the O-line doesn't have much depth, and while the secondary was mostly awesome last year and returns intact (
D.J. James and
Nehemiah Pritchett comprise one of the league's best cornerback duos), we'll see if there are setbacks after a total reset in the pass rush.
