Transfer portal’s lure involves more than just a big payday for players
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Dan Murphy
EMOTIONS TUG AT Clayton Powell-Lee as he pulls open the doors to the Georgia Tech football team facility a few minutes before noon on Monday. The 21-year-old strong safety has spent some sleep-deprived nights for the past month searching for an answer to perhaps the most consequential choice of his life: Stay put on his current team or transfer in search of a bigger payday.
Decision time has arrived.
If he stays at Georgia Tech for his final season of eligibility, he can build on his 53 tackles as a starter last season, after which he landed a six-figure name, image and likeness contract with the school. But Powell-Lee says he’s worth more. His agents — Jacob Piasecki and Jason Bloom of A&P Sports Agency — and his mother agree.
Earlier that morning, Georgia Tech had declined to negotiate an increase, Powell-Lee’s agents said. But the market for defensive backs is booming, they told him, and chances are good he could double his current payday. Provided, that is, he was willing to set aside his notions of team loyalty, leave his hometown Atlanta and abandon the school where his father, Gary Lee, had caught touchdown passes for the Yellow Jackets in the 1980s.
Sitting outside the team facility moments before entering, Powell-Lee dials into a conference call with Piasecki, Bloom, and his mother, Rometta Powell. All had agreed to let ESPN listen in.
“They need to be shook awake,” Rometta Powell says to the group. “They’re trying to play games. They’ve got the money.”
The pressure is building on Powell-Lee. The next step, they tell him, is to go upstairs and get the paperwork from a compliance officer to enter the transfer portal. Powell-Lee agrees with the others on the call, hangs up and pulls open the doors. But instead of the compliance office, he soon finds himself standing in the doorway of head coach Brent Key.
“I told him I had an offer on the table,” Powell-Lee said. “I have an offer on the table, and it’s sitting there in front of me.”
THE TRANSFER PORTAL — a phrase heard often in the NIL era but perhaps little understood by the general public — is extinguishing any remaining pretenses of amateurism in college football. Twice a year, players are set loose in an untamed, largely opaque marketplace to seek new teams and increasingly large sums of money. There are few, if any, universal truths or safe blanket statements that fully describe how this emerging world operates, but during the 10-day opening of the portal starting April 16, ESPN received an inside look at how some agents and general managers work with athletes and their families to sort through their options.
The player. The agents. The recruiter. All come together at the portal. This is a glimpse of the frenzied new reality of how college football rosters are formed.
The construction of a college football roster has changed dramatically in the past several years thanks to the introduction of NIL deals that serve as de facto salaries and a federal court order that allows players to transfer with almost no restrictions. The portal serves as a formal declaration that athletes are interested in hearing from new suitors.
The transfer market moves with the force of a riptide. Coaches act fast to fill the gaps in their rosters. The waves of players who enter risk losing their spot if they hesitate to pick a new school. To speed things along, the nitty-gritty aspects of deal-making in the portal are often sorted between two relatively new creatures to the college football universe: a team’s general manager and a player’s agent.
Gone are the days of predictable rosters and lengthy recruiting courtships where coaches sat in prospects’ living rooms to make their pitch. While many players will still visit campus and meet the coaching staff before officially signing with a team, most of their decisions are made in a matter of days through an onslaught of text messages, phone tag and two-minute calls that reach ,pitch on the day the portal opens.
JACOB PIASECKI HAS his phone pressed to his ear when he arrives at A&P Agency’s offices in Austin, Texas, shortly after 9 a.m. on April 16. Six of his agency’s roughly 120 clients have already declared their interest in transferring as of the portal’s opening day, and by the sound of the current call, another player is eager to join them.
The SEC player on the other end of the line just finished his post-spring-practice meeting with his coaches. The player has learned he’s not a guaranteed starter and therefore isn’t likely to receive a pay bump from his current $50,000 NIL contract.
Piasecki waves Bloom, A&P’s general manager, into his glass-walled office from across the hall. They both believe the player can command first-stringer money if he decides to transfer, which would mean making between five and 10 times what he currently makes.
The player’s parents have already called the coach to ask for more information. Are the coaches playing games to keep his value down? Parental intervention is exactly what Bloom and Piasecki don’t want. The agents’ goal, they say, is to serve as the sole point of contact with teams and move forward strategically. They coordinate with the player and his parents, setting up a plan to ask his current team for a raise before exploring options. By the end of the day, that player will be in the portal, but for now the morning’s first brushfire has been extinguished.
The corridor leading to Piasecki’s office is lined with boxes of promotional merchandise soon to be mailed to clients. The decor consists of posters and footballs signed by players A&P has represented. On one bookshelf along with memorabilia are two thick textbooks: “Astrophysics” and “Quantum Mechanics.” They are the last vestiges of the physics degree he was wrapping up at Texas A&M when he decided to launch his agency alongside co-founder Stefan Aguilera.
That was 2021, the first year college players could make money from NIL deals.
They have since built a six-person team and partnered with a fellow Texas A&M alum, attorney Tony Buzbee, whose law firm reviews the contracts A&P players sign. The agency says last year it generated roughly $1.25 million in revenue, a number they say should grow this spring as they represent a number of highly ranked players in the transfer portal. Physics class is mostly a distant memory.
“Physics teaches you to take really complicated problems and break them down into smaller pieces to solve one at a time,” Piasecki said. “And that’s pretty much what we’re doing here. It’s just piecing together a ton of small problems.”
POWELL-LEE MET with Piasecki and Bloom in early March to discuss what he wanted to get out of his last season of college football. That’s when the emotional tug became apparent. On the one hand, Powell-Lee said he wanted to finish his career and get his degree at Georgia Tech. On the other, he wanted a showcase to maximize his NFL draft potential.
He told the agents he would consider other schools if he couldn’t get a better deal from Georgia Tech.
“Obviously when you’ve been in a place for so long and coaches know you, you don’t necessarily want to leave,” Powell-Lee told ESPN. “But at this point, college football is a business. Decisions have to be made with money and playing time in mind. … Jacob and Jason have a lot of connections, so it’s about just letting them be my ears in the market.”
A&P’s team spends most of the spring working phones or traveling to meet with general managers from as many teams as possible, the agents said.
In mid-March, Piasecki and Bloom visited the University of Virginia. The Cavaliers’ recruiting director, Justin Speros, told them his coaches’ wish list included one or more defensive backs. The agents mentioned Powell-Lee among others who might be interested in transferring.
Coaches and staff members are prohibited from contacting any player who has not yet formally entered the transfer portal, but there are no rules against contact with agents to register a team’s needs. Schools, generally, won’t make any specific promises before a player is in the portal, but the current system provides ample gray area to make it clear to agents and their athletes what kind of money they could stand to make in the portal. So Powell-Lee’s “offer on the table” would have been more conceptual than literal during his meeting with his coach.
Speros says he did not make any specific offer to Powell-Lee or other players who were not in the portal. The interactions ESPN witnessed appeared to stay within NCAA rules.
“I might say ‘Hey, I need corners, so if you’ve got a guy, call me up once the portal opens,'” Speros told ESPN. “This past winter was really the first year that if you weren’t talking to the agent, you weren’t really recruiting a kid. You’re eight steps behind if you don’t know about a kid before he hits the portal.”
Bloom calls Speros at 12:36 p.m. on April 16, hours after the portal has officially opened. As the phone rings, he and Piasecki scan through lists and spreadsheets. One includes estimates of each client’s potential market value, calculated using their recruiting rankings, college experience, Pro Football Focus rating and current demand at their position, among other factors. Another lists teams and their current needs, based on information the agency gained from contacts earlier this spring.
Every past offer any team has made to one of its players is also recorded, along with contract comparisons organized by position and conference to get a sense of the market. Unlike in the NFL, player contracts are not public in college football. Good data is hard to find.
Using an agent — especially those who represent scores of clients — can help athletes get access to a better picture of the market. But that comes at a cost. A&P takes an 8% cut on most of the deals for Power 4 conference players it represents. That number can go as high as 15%, especially for young players or FCS-level players who won’t generate as much attention in the portal on their own.
It’s not clear how many of the thousands of athletes who entered the transfer portal this year are represented by agents, but several industry experts estimate that more than half have no representation.
Throughout the first day, Bloom and A&P’s director of scouting, Will Scott, constantly monitor online lists of players who have just entered the portal. A new listing is a new potential client. Scott has data on around 200 players he has evaluated ahead of time and A&P would like to represent if they want to transfer.
They reach out to players via direct message on Instagram to gauge their interest. Bloom calls to pitch prospects, usually citing the agency’s relationships with general managers throughout the country and unique brand endorsements its agents have arranged for athletes in the past, such as an arranged visit with celebrity jeweler Johnny Dang.
Most of the agents’ day, though, is consumed in a barrage of brief, unemotional phone calls. Some players receive raises from their current teams. Others jump in the portal and start to generate offers.
By 9 p.m., the A&P team is slouched in chairs around a conference room table covered with takeout trays of barbecue. People scroll through social media and text messages while making a plan for the next day, cracking jokes that are a better fit for locker rooms than boardrooms.
Most of the A&P team is not yet 30 years old. None of them had experience in the sports agent industry before joining A&P. But on just the first day of portal season, the group generated nearly $1 million in new money for clients. That’s the goal, Bloom says: a million dollars a day while the portal remains open.
“It is a little wild,” Piasecki says to the room, “that we’re just six guys in an office in Texas but we’re shaping a market for these institutions that bring in millions and millions.”
IT’S LATE THURSDAY morning and Day 2 of the 10-day sprint. At UVA, recruiting director Speros says he’s happy with his progress hunting for tackles and defensive ends, but defensive backs are proving to be an elusive, rare commodity in this spring’s portal.
Bloom and Piasecki are on the phone pitching Speros with prospects from their growing list of portal-declared clients. The agents offer defensive ends, a tight end and a running back.
Speros cuts them off. “I’m wasting my breath right now if I’m not talking about DBs, guys,” he says.
He tells ESPN that, for any position where he needs one or two players to fill out a depth chart, he knows he’ll need roughly 10 “hooks in the water” to make it work. Sometimes the players scouted will choose another team. Others come with too high of an asking price.
“We prefer not to be transactional, but it just is what it is,” Speros says. “There are things we need to do to keep pressing forward. And what that means is a lot of either just getting to a number or not getting to the number and moving on.”
Speros and Tyler Jones, a deputy athletic director, oversee the budget for building out their roster. For this spring, their total spending power is a somewhat flexible number that combines the money the school is expecting to be able to share with players directly starting this summer along with contributions from the school’s booster collective.
Speros and his staff have done months of scouting hundreds of players across college football to get a sense of what they’re willing to pay. As new players who might fit Virginia’s needs enter the portal, a group of interns creates short film cutups of their highlights so the coaching staff can evaluate the players based on about a dozen plays. Virginia also uses multiple data analytics programs to rate players and get a sense of their market value.
With one of the team’s starting cornerbacks out for the season with an ACL tear and a lot of interest in defensive backfield players, Speros acknowledges he’ll have to act fast and potentially pay high rates to fill that gap on the depth chart.
Bloom tells him that Powell-Lee is scheduled to meet with his coaches at Georgia Tech the following day and will make a decision about the portal soon after. Speros expresses interest. Enough interest, in fact, that he’s willing to sit tight on a few other options at safety until he hears about Powell-Lee’s decision.
A long weekend passes, and Powell-Lee is still unsure of how he wants to proceed. During spring practice, he told reporters he had developed a new sense of chemistry with his fellow defensive backs at Georgia Tech and felt a duty to help the younger players get settled into their new positions.
He hasn’t heard the answers he wants from coaches when he has asked about a raise, but now, with less than a week before the portal window closes, ambivalence sets in as he approaches the team facility to start the portal registration paperwork.
His agents say it would be crazy for Powell-Lee to pass up the money he could get in the portal. His mother, Powell-Lee says, has been supportive throughout the process but also tells him not to shy away from getting what he’s worth.
Still, he says, something doesn’t feel right.
“I was just sitting there, I was just thinking to myself, like, something in my heart and my gut is just telling me not to go grab those papers right now but instead go up there yourself and tell them that you want to talk to them,” Powell-Lee said a few days later.
He said his discussion with Coach Key went well. And later that night he discovered some new information that made his decision much easier: Virginia will accept only up to 60 credit hours of previous coursework for any transfer student. For Powell-Lee, that would mean essentially erasing a year’s worth of credits he has earned at Georgia Tech, making it impossible to graduate in the same academic year that he wraps up his college football career.
“I had to really just sit there and ask myself, is that really worth losing all those credits to make however much money?” Powell-Lee said. “Personally, I was like, no, it’s not fully worth it, honestly.”
Powell-Lee declined to say how much money he was potentially leaving on the table other than to say it was “a lot.”
By Wednesday, Powell-Lee had officially decided he wasn’t going to enter the portal. Virginia and Speros had already moved on to search for new options on defense. Piasecki and Bloom said Georgia Tech agreed to provide Powell-Lee with a relatively small increase in pay after learning about some of his other options — but nothing that compared to what other schools thought they might be willing to pay him.
“It just is what it is,” Bloom said. “That’s the business we’re in.”
Even though the transfer portal often makes it seem as if money trumps all other considerations, sometimes there are refreshing surprises. For Powell-Lee, at least, academics ultimately tipped the balance.
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Bill Connelly
Last we saw the SEC on the gridiron, it was underachieving dramatically.
Well, sort of. SEC teams went 8-7 in bowl/playoff season, falling short against the spread by only 1.6 points per game (which is to say that the spreads were pretty accurate on average). But they underachieved by more than that against Big Ten teams, and for the second straight season — gasp! — an SEC team failed to win the national title. The league still comfortably had the best average SP+ rating in the nation thanks primarily to the small number of genuinely bad teams, but it certainly didn’t finish the 2024 season in a great mood.
With the Big Ten’s Penn State and Ohio State, Notre Dame, and the ACC’s Clemson all looking at potential top-5 hype, there’s a decent chance that the SEC’s title-free run reaches three years. But try to hold back your sympathy tears — the league still has at least three of the most talented teams in the nation and the largest selection of upper-middle-class teams with dreams of 10-2 records and playoff at-large bids. In Arch Manning, LaNorris Sellers, DJ Lagway, Marcel Reed and maybe Austin Simmons, it has the most fascinating set of young quarterbacks in the sport. It has the most under-pressure Alabama head coach in a generation. It has Diego Damn Pavia. And if last year is any indication, it might have a few more shocking, playoff-turning upsets too.
This league never lacks for talent, grievance or storylines. I don’t see why that would change in 2025. Let’s preview the SEC!
Every week through the summer, Bill Connelly has been previewing another FBS conference, ultimately including all 136 FBS teams. The previews include 2024 breakdowns, 2025 previews and team-by-team capsules. Here are the MAC, Conference USA, Mountain West, Sun Belt, AAC, Indie/Pac-12, ACC, Big 12 and Big Ten previews.
2024 recap
The 2024 SEC race was a perfect battle of ceiling versus floor. Texas and Georgia had the high floors, losing only to SP+ top-10 teams and grinding out wins, often by margins smaller than expected. (Texas underachieved against SP+ projections in seven of its last 10 games, Georgia in four of its last six.) Alabama and Ole Miss, meanwhile, put together some of the most impressive single-game performances of the season — Kalen DeBoer’s Crimson Tide beat Missouri 34-0 and LSU 42-13 in back-to-back weeks, while Ole Miss pummeled South Carolina 27-3 and became the first team since 2019 LSU to beat Georgia by more than 17 points (28-10).
That ridiculously high ceiling is why Bama and Ole Miss finished higher than Texas and Georgia in the final SP+ rankings. But both missed the College Football Playoff because they were also capable of losing to 4-8 Kentucky, 6-7 Oklahoma and 7-6 Vanderbilt. Granted, the latter two were statistically unlikely defeats — Ole Miss had a 76% postgame win expectancy* for its 20-17 loss to Kentucky, while Bama was at 99% for its (glorious) 40-35 loss to Vandy — but they happened.
(* Postgame win expectancy looks at all the predictive stats that a given game produces — the things that get fed into the SP+ ratings themselves — tosses them into the air and says, “With these stats, you could have expected to win this game X% of the time.)
Elsewhere, Tennessee rode brilliant defense to a CFP bid, and other hopefuls South Carolina (lost three of four early in the season), LSU (lost three in a row), Texas A&M (lost four of five to end it) and Missouri (a 3-3 midseason stretch) looked the part at times but fell short because of funks.
Continuity table
The continuity table looks at each team’s returning production levels (offense, defense and overall), the number of 2024 FBS starts from both returning and incoming players and the approximate number of redshirt freshmen on the roster heading into 2025. (Why “approximate”? Because schools sometimes make it very difficult to ascertain who redshirted and who didn’t.) Continuity is an increasingly difficult art in roster management, but some teams pull it off better than others.
Only the Big 12 has a better returning production average than the SEC, which, in a universe with (legally) well-paid players, is something you would probably expect. The Big 12 ended up with the advantage because of its huge number of strong returning QBs — who carry significant weight in the returning production formula — but the SEC has the highest average of both returning starts and incoming FBS starts. This is going to be an awfully seasoned league in 2025.
2025 projections
Of the five teams that finished in the SP+ top 10 last season, four rank 81st or worse in returning production, but the fifth, Bama, ranks in the top 30. That is by far the cleanest, easiest way to explain why the Crimson Tide start out on top here. Of course, it’s looking as if Texas is likely to start out No. 1 in the preseason polls, but because there’s no “Arch Manning is about to take The Leap” factor in these projections, the Horns are merely top-5.
Nationally, there are eight teams projected within a touchdown of the No. 1 ranking in SP+, and the SEC has only three of them. (The Big Ten also has three, while Clemson and Notre Dame are also involved.) That indeed means the SEC doesn’t exactly have overwhelming odds of producing a national champion. But as I told SEC fans when the league was winning titles nearly every season, that’s not the greatest measure of league strength. Alabama winning six titles with the best coach of all time didn’t exactly say much about how good Mississippi State or South Carolina was, right? But while the SEC has let its title grip slip, the simple fact that it has 10 of the projected top 17 teams (and 12 of the top 25) drops some pretty clear hints regarding which conference has the best overall depth. (I talked more about the effects of that depth in this piece.)
I always gush about how wide open and unpredictable the Big 12 is, and justifiably so, but “No one has a better than 1-in-6 chance of winning the conference title, and 10 teams have at least a 1-in-20 chance” is pretty dang wide open and unpredictable! If Texas’ Manning is as good as people expect, then the Longhorns’ odds obviously get a big bump, but on paper this race could go about 100 ways.
10 best games of 2025
Here are the 10 games — eight in conference play, plus two of the biggest nonconference games of 2025 — that feature (A) the highest combined SP+ ratings for both teams and (B) a projected scoring margin under 10 points.
Texas at Ohio State (Aug. 30) and LSU at Clemson (Aug. 30). I have so many questions about each of these four teams, and I’m so happy that they’ve basically paired off with each other to help answer them. Toss in Alabama at Florida State in between the noon ET kickoff in Columbus and the evening kickoff in Clemson and you’ve got yourself a solid SEC headliner for each time slot on the first Saturday of the season.
Georgia at Tennessee (Sept. 13). The Bulldogs and Volunteers meet in September for the first time since 2018. Good. I like my UGA-Tennessee games early, when they can spark the largest possible existential crises.
Alabama at Georgia (Sept. 27). A rematch of the second-best game of 2024*. Aside from Ohio State-Michigan, no game did a better job of reminding us that huge college football games will still be huge and delightful even if the national title stakes are dampened by a bigger playoff.
(* Bama gets a rematch of the best game of 2024 the next week when Vandy comes to town.)
LSU at Ole Miss (Sept. 27). Is it too late to redraw the schedules? Between the Bama-Georgia and Oregon-Penn State main events and an undercard of LSU-Ole Miss, Indiana-Iowa, TCU-Arizona State and USC-Illinois (and, on top of everything else, South Dakota at North Dakota State), Week 5 might actually be too big! Goodness.
Texas at Florida (Oct. 4). Texas benefited from a relatively easy slate (relatively speaking) in 2024, with just three regular-season opponents finishing in the SP+ top 20. But if Florida and Oklahoma improve as projected this fall, the Horns are looking at five such games, only one of which is in Austin. That’s the opposite of easy.
Ole Miss at Georgia (Oct. 18). Ole Miss might have enjoyed the single best performance of the regular season in last year’s 28-10 walloping of the Dawgs. That the Rebels turned right around and lost to Florida, eventually eliminating them from CFP contention, has to be one of the biggest on-field regrets of the last 50 years in Oxford.
Alabama at South Carolina (Oct. 25). South Carolina began turning its season around with a near-comeback win over Bama in 2024. This will be the Gamecocks’ third straight game against a projected top-20 team, so the season might have already gone in a couple different directions by the time Bama gets to town.
LSU at Alabama (Nov. 8). Bama crushed LSU in Baton Rouge last season, then pulled an Ole Miss and fell victim to a devastating upset two weeks later. Considering the expectations and pressure both of these teams are dealing with, this game could have playoff stakes and/or hot seat stakes. Or both?
Texas at Georgia (Nov. 15). Georgia was the only SEC hurdle Texas couldn’t clear last season. There’s obviously a chance this will be the first of two UGA-UT matchups in a four-week span.
Conference title (and, therefore, CFP) contenders
Head coach: Kalen DeBoer (second year, 9-4 overall)
2025 projection: Second in SP+, 9.8 average wins (6.0 in the SEC)
Heading into Week 13 last year, Alabama was chugging right along. Kalen DeBoer’s first Crimson Tide team was 8-2, second in SP+ and, despite losses to Vanderbilt and Tennessee, seventh in the CFP rankings. And then, almost overnight, the offense vanished.
Alabama offense, first 10 games: 39.5 points per game, 6.8 yards per play, 1.7% turnover rate, 8.3 yards per dropback
Alabama offense, last 3 games: 14.7 points per game, 4.8 yards per play, 5.1% turnover rate, 6.0 yards per dropback
The pairing of DeBoer with quarterback Jalen Milroe seemed awkward from the start, simply because Milroe was the polar opposite of Washington’s Michael Penix Jr. — with whom DeBoer’s Huskies reached the national title game in 2023 — in all ways good (far more mobile and explosive) and bad (far more sack- and mistake-prone). It worked for much of 2024, then it suddenly didn’t work at all.
Milroe is off to the NFL, and Ryan Grubb, Washington’s 2023 offensive coordinator, is back in tow after a year in the pros. Likely starting quarterback Ty Simpson was the nation’s No. 2 dual-threat quarterback prospect in 2022, and he showed solid wheels in ripping off a 78-yard should’ve-been-a-touchdown run in garbage time against Chattanooga in 2023. (He also showed the wrong kind of Milroe similarities in somehow taking five sacks in just 15 dropbacks against South Florida that same year.) Splitting the difference between Penix and Milroe, and shedding some of the negative plays that doomed Milroe late in 2024, could take Bama quite a long way.
Simpson — or, if Simpson falters, sophomore Dylan Mack or five-star freshman Keelon Russell — will certainly have solid weapons around him. After an incredible start to his freshman year (544 receiving yards at 28.6 per catch in his first five games), Ryan Williams managed just 321 yards at 11.1 per catch the rest of the way, but he was still outstanding for a first-year player. Williams, senior Germie Bernard and Miami transfer Isaiah Horton will lead the way at receiver, while high-upside youngsters like Jalen Hale, Rico Scott and, perhaps, converted corner Jaylen Mbakwe attempt to carve out niches. At running back, solid seniors Jam Miller and Louisville transfer Dre Washington will vie for carries with sophomores Richard Young and Daniel Hill. And a potentially spectacular offensive line, led by left tackle Kadyn Proctor and center Parker Brailsford, could help to turn a good skill corps into a great one.
The defense should already be great. Last season the Tide ranked fifth in points allowed per drive, combining top-20 efficiency (success rate) and big-play prevention (yards allowed per successful play) with elite red zone play and turnover capabilities. Best of all, of the 19 players who saw 200-plus snaps, 13 return. The spine of the defense — senior tackles LT Overton and Tim Keenan III, linebacker Deontae Lawson and safeties Keon Sabb and Bray Hubbard — has massive experience and known quality, and on the outside, corner Domani Jackson and sophomores such as edge rusher Qua Russaw and corners Zabien Brown and Cam Calhoun (a Utah transfer) have flashed elite upside. If coordinator Kane Wommack can figure out how to better rush the passer, quarterback might be the only question mark this team has.
Quarterback is awfully important, though, and Georgia shows up on the schedule by the end of September. Simpson has to not only be ready but ready quickly. That’s not how things always work out.
Head coach: Kirby Smart (10th year, 105-19 overall)
2025 projection: Fourth in SP+, 9.8 average wins (5.9 in the SEC)
I talked about ceilings and floors above and how Georgia and Texas reached the SEC championship game primarily because they avoided the low lows that befell other contenders. In Georgia’s case, we got a perfect example of how a high floor can work for you.
The Bulldogs finished sixth in SP+ (their worst ranking since 2020), 10th on offense (worst since 2020) and ninth on defense (worst since 2018). The Dawgs were clearly a couple of steps off where they were while going 42-2, with three straight top-2 SP+ finishes, from 2021 to 2023. And yet, they dominated in the red zone, avoided third-and-longs, dominated on fourth downs when necessary and played great special teams. They had the depth to account for most of the injuries that came their way, and they beat Texas twice — once via a comeback engineered by backup quarterback Gunner Stockton after Carson Beck’s season-ending injury — and won the SEC in this supposed down year. Stockton couldn’t lead the Dawgs past Notre Dame in the CFP quarterfinals, but it’s pretty clear Georgia’s down years remain better than most teams’ great years.
There’s reason to wonder if Georgia is in for another one of these “down” years. Kirby Smart still recruits an absurd number of blue-chippers and, therefore, has one of the best roster bases in the country. And while he certainly hasn’t used the transfer portal to great effect like rival coaches, he did bring in rather proven entities in running back Josh McCray (Illinois), edge rusher Elo Modozie (Army) and maybe nickel Adrian Maddox, along with physically impressive — if relatively unproven — players such as receivers Zachariah Branch (USC) and Noah Thomas (Texas A&M), defensive tackle Josh Horton (Miami) and safeties Jaden Harris (Miami) and Zion Branch (USC). I’m guessing Georgia’s floor will still be as high as anyone’s.
I struggle to see many units that might improve over last year, however. Sophomore running back Nate Frazier could be ready for a star turn, with the bull-like McCray providing a scary change of pace, and if the new safeties are solid, the secondary could improve a bit, even if it isn’t as elite as past Georgia secondaries. Special teams should remain awesome too, with the return of kicker Peyton Woodring and punter Brett Thorson and the addition of Zachariah Branch as a scary return man.
The incoming receivers’ per-route numbers, however, basically match those of the starters who just left; Beck didn’t get enough from his receiving corps last year, and there’s no guarantee Stockton will. Despite this, Beck still finished eighth in Total QBR with 3,485 passing yards and 28 TDs, and Stockton will have to play awfully well to match that. Meanwhile, last year’s top four offensive linemen are gone, as are seven of the 10 defensive linemen and linebackers who saw 300-plus snaps. The front seven’s production dipped in 2024, and now it’s double-dipping in the turnover department.
No matter how many holes Georgia has, there are countless blue-chippers vying to fill them. That could work out beautifully. But it’s easier to see a repeat of 2024 than a return to 2021-23 in Athens this year. With the right breaks, that could be enough to prompt another SEC title run or more. But it also leaves the door open for other contenders.
Head coach: Steve Sarkisian (fifth year, 37-17 overall)
2025 projection: Fifth in SP+, 9.6 average wins (6.3 in the SEC)
Reading the tea leaves and sussing out the conventional wisdom, it sure seems like Texas is going to be the No. 1 team in the preseason polls. And I get it. There really is a chance that Arch Manning is as good as we’ve been assuming he’d become for years, and if he is, then nothing else matters all that much.
The Longhorns have only a couple of last year’s key receivers returning — DeAndre Moore Jr. and sophomore Ryan Wingo — and while both battled ups and downs in 2024, their upside is obvious. So is that of big-time freshmen like Kaliq Lockett and Jaime Ffrench. Manning will have a strong set of running backs at his disposal, with leading rusher Quintrevion Wisner returning and sophomore C.J. Baxter, a key 2023 piece, back from injury. And while the line is replacing four starters, including incredible left tackle Kelvin Banks Jr., Manning’s athleticism and Manning-esque smarts would make their jobs easier up front. The defense has holes to fill up front, but it’s going to be good no matter what, and if Manning is dominating, the Horns will have more margin for error on that side.
As I asked in my Ifs List, however, what if Manning is merely very good? What if he flashes epic upside — like he did against UTSA, completing passes of 75, 51 and 36 yards and ripping off a 67-yard touchdown run in less than 30 snaps — but also gets fooled at times, like he did against Louisiana-Monroe (and in cameos against Georgia and Florida)? What if he needs an unproven receiving corps to bail him out and an unproven offensive line to protect him more?
What if, against a tougher schedule than last season, the offense gets held in the 17-point range a couple of times and the defense has to make more stops than usual? The back eight will certainly do its job, thanks to the best linebacking corps in the country — Anthony Hill Jr. (15.5 TFLs last year) is otherworldly, as are edge rushers Trey Moore and Colin Simmons — and a secondary featuring corner Malik Muhammad, safety Michael Taaffe and nickel Jaylon Guilbeau. But what about a defensive line that lost five of last year’s top six and is double-dipping turnover like Georgia’s front seven? Can senior Ethan Burke and a load of incoming transfer tackles, including the mammoth Travis Shaw (North Carolina) and Cole Brevard (Purdue), get the push required? And if the injury bug bites more than it did last year, when the Horns ranked fourth in lineup stability, will that wreck what already appears to be tenuous depth in some areas?
I have a lot more questions about Texas than I do the typical (expected) No. 1 team, but it could turn out that the answers match the hype. Steve Sarkisian has slowly built quite the juggernaut, and Manning is a Manning. Regardless, we barely have to wait another month to start getting answers. Having Texas at Ohio State in Week 1 absolutely rules.
Head coach: Brian Kelly (fourth year, 29-11 overall)
2025 projection: Ninth in SP+, 8.5 average wins (5.2 in the SEC)
In three years at LSU, Brian Kelly has had three top-15 offenses, the best offensive player in the country (Jayden Daniels in 2023) and the best defensive player in the country (Harold Perkins Jr. late in 2022). His Tigers have beaten three top-10 teams, and they’ve spent parts of all three seasons in the AP top 10.
They’re also 0-3 in season openers, they’ve lost to three unranked teams and they’ve lost four games by at least 20 points. Their offenses have been consistently good, but they’ve averaged just a 36.3 ranking in defensive SP+ and 73.3 in special teams. When Kelly arrived in Baton Rouge, he immediately restored LSU’s top-15ish credentials after down seasons at the end of the Ed Orgeron era. But the Tigers were 10th in SP+ in 2022, 11th in 2023 and 15th in 2024. That’s good, but it’s not moving in the right direction.
This year could further the stagnation, but the Tigers remain really close to a breakthrough. Garrett Nussmeier threw for 4,052 yards and 29 touchdowns last season, taking few sacks and distributing the ball beautifully — seven players caught at least 20 passes, with three between 55 and 61. Of the seven primary receivers, slot man Aaron Anderson, wideout Zavion Thomas and running back Caden Durham return. They’re joined by some potentially fun transfers in Nic Anderson (Oklahoma) and Barion Brown (Kentucky). Plus, tight end Trey’Dez Green hinted at great things as a freshman, and if bowl standout Chris Hilton Jr. ever achieves consistency, he’s going to be scary: He has averaged 21.2 yards per catch in his career, but he has caught only 31 balls in parts of four seasons.
Nussmeier was awesome on third-and-longs, but he had to be because the run game wasn’t giving him much help. Durham averaged a fantastic 3.8 yards per carry after contact, but he faced contact quickly, and now his line is replacing four starters. Including two transfers, six linemen have starting experience, but it’s going to be an extremely young group.
After stumbling to 52nd in defensive SP+ in 2023, LSU rebounded to 34th in Blake Baker‘s first season as coordinator. That’s pretty good considering Perkins made it just four games before getting injured for the season, but it’s not good enough for title contention. If Perkins and Whit Weeks, another disruptive linebacker who suffered a serious injury last season, are 100% healthy at the same time, that’s one of the best linebacking duos in the country. Kelly tried to sign every defensive end in the portal and came away with Florida State’s Patrick Payton, among others, plus a 10-TFL tackle in Bernard Gooden (USF). The secondary returns corner Ashton Stamps (13 pass breakups) and an active trio of transfers in corner Mansoor Delane (Virginia Tech), safety A.J. Haulcy (Houston) and nickel Tamarcus Cooley (NC State). Baker loves to attack. How many times LSU gets burned in the process will determine the course of the season.
The schedule is loaded with trips to Clemson, Ole Miss, Alabama and Oklahoma, but when LSU is cooking, the Tigers can romp through any schedule. It’s just been a little while since they cooked.
Head coach: Lane Kiffin (sixth year, 44-18 overall)
2025 projection: 11th in SP+, 8.9 average wins (5.1 in the SEC)
On one hand, I was pretty satisfied with Ole Miss missing the playoff. I am happy with the idea that losses matter — even really close ones (they lost three by 13 combined points) and statistically unlikely ones.
On the other hand, damn, Ole Miss was really, really good last year. Per SP+, this was the best Rebel team since 1963, with its best offense since 1971 and its best defense since 1966. Lane Kiffin channeled John Vaught last season, but the Rebels came up just short of a playoff shot. Blow a chance to make a big title run with a squad like that, and you may end up regretting it for quite a while.
Ole Miss offensive players made 143 starts last season; those responsible for just 31 return: slot receiver Cayden Lee (12 starts), tackle Diego Pounds (nine), tight end Dae’Quan Wright (six) and tackle Jayden Williams (four). Among 17 incoming transfers, running back Damien Taylor (Troy) and receivers De’Zhaun Stribling (Oklahoma State) and Harrison Wallace III (Penn State) should be solid immediately, and young former blue-chippers in running back Kewan Lacy (Missouri) and receiver Caleb Odom (Alabama) have obvious upside. With 2024 LSU transfer Logan Diggs healthy and ready to roll, the skill corps should be solid. I don’t see any guaranteed stars among the incoming linemen, though.
The most important player on the offense isn’t actually a transfer, though. Granted, Kiffin signed three new QBs, including one of my favorites, Division II star Trinidad Chambliss (2,925 passing yards and 1,019 rushing yards at Ferris State last year). But the job is sophomore Austin Simmons‘ to lose.
2:11
Ole Miss’ Austin Simmons on new role: ‘I feel older than my age’
As Simmons now holds the title as starting quarterback for the Rebels, the 19-year-old college graduate explains how his experience prepares him to be the leader in the locker room.
Simmons is a redshirt sophomore who finished high school two years early and already earned his undergrad degree (and pitched for the baseball team as a freshman). He was pretty good in a tiny sample last season — he went 5-for-6 for 64 yards filling in for Jaxson Dart in the big win over Georgia — and if he’s awesome, the Rebels will be too.
Pete Golding’s defense enjoyed an incredible breakthrough last season, jumping from 23rd to third in defensive SP+, but of the 18 players with 200-plus snaps, only four return. The front six is exciting — outside linebacker Suntarine Perkins (10.5 sacks, 10 run stops) is dynamite, sophomore tackle Jamarious Brown is super active for his size (6-foot-1, 315 pounds) and linebacker transfers Jaden Yates (Marshall) and Andrew Jones (Grambling) were major playmakers at their last school. But the secondary will be entirely transfer-dependent. Corners Ricky Fletcher (South Alabama) and Jaylon Braxton (Arkansas) and safeties Kapena Gushiken (Washington State), Wydett Williams Jr. (ULM) and Sage Ryan (LSU) could all be good, but the hit rate needs to be about 100% among them.
By SEC standards, the Rebels’ schedule is again manageable, but it wasn’t the big games that hurt Ole Miss last year. If Simmons clicks, and the new defense doesn’t fall off too much, maybe they’ll get a chance to right 2024’s wrongs.
Head coach: Josh Heupel (fifth year, 37-15 overall)
2025 projection: 13th in SP+, 8.8 average wins (5.0 in the SEC)
Tennessee had suffered three losing seasons in four years (and, somehow, eight in 13) before Josh Heupel took over. He has already enjoyed two top-10 finishes with no losing seasons. Better yet, his two top-10 teams were completely different from one another: Per SP+, the 2022 team was driven by the Vols’ best offense since 1940, and last year’s was driven by their best defense since 1999.
The 2025 Vols will likely also be defense-first. Defensive coordinator Tim Banks deploys a huge rotation, and at least 12 of the 25 guys with 150-plus snaps return, including one of the SEC’s best run-stopping defensive ends (Joshua Josephs), one of its most active 300-pounders (Bryson Eason), the team’s leading tackler (Arion Carter) and up to three starting defensive backs.
Why “up to four” DBs? Because the status of star cornerback Jermod McCoy remains unknown after a January ACL tear. The Vols won’t be at their best until/unless he’s 100%. They ranked sixth in lineup stability last year, but 2025 immediately got off to a poor start with McCoy’s injury.
The offense was still solid in 2024, slipping only to 23rd in offensive SP+, but the big plays have definitely vanished through the years.
Opponents have slowly adjusted to Heupel’s quick offense and seem basically to be giving the Vols the Patrick Mahomes treatment at this point (let them have whatever they want close to the line of scrimmage and form a cloud in the back to prevent the huge gashes).
Of last year’s starters, only receiver Chris Brazzell II, tight end Miles Kitselman (who was injured in the spring) and left tackle Lance Heard return. The Vols basically traded quarterback Nico Iamaleava to UCLA for Joey Aguilar in the spring. Iamaleava was the far more highly touted recruit, but Aguilar, who transferred from Appalachian State to UCLA last winter, is a far better scrambler and takes far fewer sacks. (He also throws more picks.)
Learning a third offense in less than a year isn’t optimal, and if Aguilar isn’t up to speed, redshirt freshman Jake Merklinger could take over. The Vols are probably fine at running back, where sophomores DeSean Bishop and Peyton Lewis could replicate new Cleveland Brown Dylan Sampson’s production, but sophomore Mike Matthews and redshirt freshman Braylon Staley both might start after combining for 10 catches last year, while the second string is littered with freshmen and, potentially, Carter, who played on both sides of the ball in the spring. It’s a similar story up front, where the two-deep will consist of Heard, transfers Wendell Moe Jr. (Arizona) and Sam Pendleton (Notre Dame) and an assembly line of redshirt freshmen and sophomores. It feels like the Vols could end up with their best defense and worst offense yet in the Heupel era.
A couple of breaks away from a run
Head coach: Mike Elko (second year, 8-5 overall)
2025 projection: 15th in SP+, 7.7 average wins (4.5 in the SEC)
It wasn’t LaNorris Sellers, it wasn’t DJ Lagway, and it wasn’t Michael Van Buren Jr. or Michael Hawkins Jr. either. Who was the best freshman quarterback in the SEC last year, per Total QBR? Texas A&M’s Marcel Reed.
A four-star true freshman from Nashville, Tennessee, Reed first filled in for an injured Conner Weigman, then took Weigman’s job outright after leading a nearly perfect second-half performance against LSU. He wasn’t the most explosive passer, he scrambled a bit too much and opponents baited him into more mistakes late in the season. But among the 17 SEC QBs with at least 150 dropbacks, he ranked fourth in success rate with the third-lowest sack rate. He kept the Aggies moving forward with his arm and his legs (633 non-sack rushing yards).
The run game will be absolutely dynamite with Reed and seniors Amari Daniels and Le’Veon Moss (combined: 1,426 yards and 18 TDs last year) and sophomore Rueben Owens running behind an enormous line that returns last year’s top six, five of whom are seniors (average size: 6-6, 333 pounds). A&M will absolutely maul opponents that don’t have a good enough defensive front.
When Reed has to pass, he’ll lean on a new receiving corps that lost last year’s top five targets. He should have an excellent possession option in NC State slot transfer KC Concepcion, but he’ll need a few youngsters to come through, like sophomore (and former top-20 prospect) Terry Bussey, all-or-nothing Mississippi State transfer Mario Craver and less-tested options like redshirt freshmen Ashton Bethel-Roman and Izaiah Williams and freshman Jerome Myles.
The Aggies defense was spectacularly all-or-nothing last season: In their past five games, they allowed 44, 3, 43, 17 and 35 points. That’s how things go when you stop 39% of snaps at or behind the line of scrimmage (eighth nationally) but rank 119th in yards allowed per successful play. The secondary is where most of the booms and busts originated — the Ags were fourth in completion rate allowed but 121st in yards allowed per successful dropback — and experience should help to tamp down the glitches. Starting safeties Dalton Brooks and Marcus Ratcliffe and corner Dezz Ricks were all freshmen or sophomores, and they should improve alongside senior corner Will Lee III. I love the addition of nickel Jordan Shaw (Washington), another sophomore with playmaker instincts.
The Aggies ranked just 85th in sack rate despite solid work from second-round NFL draft pick Nic Scourton, but the addition of transfer ends Dayon Hayes (Colorado), T.J. Searcy (Florida) and Samuel M’Pemba (Georgia) could help in that regard. Big tackle Albert Regis and linebackers Taurean York and Scooby Williams made double-digit run stuffs last season; if the pass rush improves a hair, the defense will too.
Head coach: Shane Beamer (fifth year, 29-22 overall)
2025 projection: 17th in SP+, 7.2 average wins (4.1 in the SEC)
Shane Beamer makes memories. He has struggled to build momentum at South Carolina, bouncing from 48th to 19th to 51st to 14th in SP+. His Gamecocks have lost nine games by at least 21 points. But he finished his first season by christening the mayo bath tradition, and his Gamecocks beat No. 5 Tennessee and No. 7 Clemson back-to-back late in 2022. Last season, after a 3-3 start, they won six in a row and got two highlight-reel touchdowns from LaNorris Sellers to beat Clemson again.
1:06
Highlight: Sellers seals scintillating South Carolina win at Clemson
QB LaNorris Sellers scores on a 20-yard touchdown run with 1:08 remaining to clinch the No. 15 Gamecocks’ 17-14 road win over the Tigers in the Palmetto Bowl.
South Carolina has been so all over the map under Beamer that either a charge into the top 10 or a .500 season wouldn’t be a surprise.
From a pure entertainment standpoint, you might want to root for the top-10 charge because that would mean Sellers took a spectacular leap. He took too many sacks last year and finished 42nd in Total QBR, but his great plays were unreal. The Clemson game was indicative: He took three sacks, committed two turnovers and led just one scoring drive in South Carolina’s first eight possessions but ripped off the two brilliant runs to win the game. With any consistency whatsoever, he’d be scary.
The rest of the team is retooling. The offense lost its leading rusher (Raheim Sanders) and receiver (tight end Joshua Simon) and entire interior offensive line, while the defense lost nearly its entire front six outside of end Dylan Stewart.
Stewart is fantastic — he had 11 TFLs and 6.5 sacks as a true freshman — but he’s the only known quantity, and the only semi-proven pass rusher arriving via the portal is Campbell’s George Wilson. The secondary was young, aggressive and sometimes error-prone in 2024, but it returns five of last year’s top seven, including outstanding nickel Jalon Kilgore, and added solid corners in Brandon Cisse (NC State) and Myles Norwood (Ball State).
The 6-3, 240-pound Sellers will form an imposing backfield with transfer running backs Rahsul Faison (Utah State) and Isaiah Augustave (Colorado), and the offensive line will be big, albeit patched together with transfers. The receiving corps is semi-proven at best. Former star recruit Nyck Harbor is ridiculously imposing (6-5, 235) and grew slightly more consistent late in 2024, but he has been more athlete than receiver to date.
After a somewhat manageable start, South Carolina will play seven projected top-21 teams in its final nine games. That brutal stretch will probably preclude the Gamecocks from making a serious run at the CFP, but when Beamer and Sellers are involved, anything is possible.
Head coach: Eliah Drinkwitz (sixth year, 38-24 overall)
2025 projection: 21st in SP+, 7.7 average wins (4.0 in the SEC)
If you have sturdy quarterback play, you can properly execute a good two- or four-minute drill, and with a strong kicker who can bomb in clutch field goals, you’re probably going to win more close games than you lose. Missouri had all those things in 2023 (while ranking 10th in SP+) and 2024 (19th), but winning 21 combined games required a 10-1 record in one-score finishes. With solid QB play, the Tigers could be a top-25 team again on paper, and the schedule is friendly by SEC standards. But no one wins 90% of their close games forever.
Drinkwitz did a nice job of basically adding a transfer for every starter lost. Either Penn State transfer Beau Pribula or former blue-chipper Sam Horn will fill Brady Cook’s shoes at quarterback. As Drew Allar‘s backup at Penn State, Pribula threw mostly short, smart passes and kept PSU on schedule with his feet, but he never really had to show off his arm or make big plays in crunch time. We’ll see how that goes.
Drinkwitz also added Louisiana-Monroe running back Ahmad Hardy. Among 32 backs with 200-plus carries, Hardy ranked sixth in yards per carry after contact (3.7) and first in forced missed tackles per touch (0.33), and he was a freshman playing on an outmanned team.
With last year’s top two receivers gone, Drinkwitz added 900-yard transfers in Kevin Coleman (Mississippi State) and Xavier Loyd (Illinois State), and with five of the top seven linemen gone, in come five transfers, including key left tackle Johnny Williams IV (West Virginia). The offense will have lots of starting experience, but most of it came elsewhere.
On defense, things look awfully sound for coordinator Corey Batoon. Mizzou has ranked 24th or better in defensive SP+ for three straight seasons and returns seven starters. The pass rush was key to having the No. 5 third-down defense in FBS, and losing end Johnny Walker Jr. hurts in that regard, but returnee Zion Young and a host of defensive end transfers, led by Damon Wilson II (Georgia), should offer solid options. And if the rush is good, the secondary could be fantastic; it returns five of last year’s top six, including disruptive nickel Daylan Carnell, and adds four starters from elsewhere, including well-traveled safety Jalen Catalon (UNLV). The offense’s main job could be to control the ball, avoid mistakes and try to hand the game to an excellent defense. Come to think of it, that also sounds like a pretty good close-game recipe.
Head coach: Billy Napier (fourth year, 19-19 overall)
2025 projection: 14th in SP+, 7.0 average wins (3.9 in the SEC)
I talked about plenty of fortunate teams above, but you know who wasn’t very fortunate in 2024? The Florida Gators. They were 134th out of 136 teams in lineup stability.
They started three different quarterbacks, three running backs, 10 receivers and tight ends, seven offensive linemen, 11 defensive linemen, three linebackers and 12 defensive backs. Among all these starters were tons of freshmen and sophomores. But somehow, despite the constant shuffling and a schedule that featured seven of the nation’s top 15 teams per SP+, the Gators proved incredibly resilient. They lost their first five games against top opponents during a 4-5 start, but they beat LSU and Ole Miss in November, then smoked Florida State and Tulane to round out an encouraging eight-win campaign.
If you survive injuries and shuffling, you come out on the other side with a wonderfully experienced team. Of the 49 players who started at least once on offense or defense, 29 return. The offense boasts a pair of potential all-conference linemen (tackle Austin Barber and center Jake Slaughter), along with ESPN BET’s current No. 6 Heisman favorite, quarterback DJ Lagway. Lagway was inconsistent in typical freshman ways, running himself into pressure occasionally, throwing a pick every 21.3 passes and producing a substandard completion rate. But he also averaged a whopping 16.7 yards per completion. He was a major big-play outlier.
Lagway has plenty of familiar faces around him, including fellow sophomores in leading rusher Jadan Baugh and receivers Eugene Wilson III and Aidan Mizell. Wilson was a star in the making but missed most of last season. This isn’t the league’s deepest skill corps, but it is pretty dangerous. And in addition to Slaughter and Barber up front are four others who started at least one game.
The defense had a huge role to play in 2024’s success. The Gators pulled a solid bend-don’t-break routine, forcing enough turnovers and red zone stops to make it work. Considering injuries and general inexperience, that’s impressive. There aren’t many surefire stars here — end Tyreak Sapp and nickel Sharif Denson are the closest things, and with more snaps blue-chip sophomore Myles Graham might become one — but the depth is outstanding.
I’m pretty high on this team, but the schedule still has seven projected top-15 teams. The Gators drew the short straw in the current SEC scheduling rotation, and it could cost them status as a CFP contender.
Head coach: Hugh Freeze (third year, 11-14 overall)
2025 projection: 25th in SP+, 6.9 average wins (3.6 in the SEC)
On paper, Hugh Freeze’s 2024 Auburn Tigers were just about the least fortunate team you’ll ever see. They were 125th in turnovers luck, and according to the postgame win expectancy measure I discussed near the top of this piece, they managed to lose games with postgame win expectancies of 94%, 76% and 61%. SP+ saw an 8-4 team that accidentally went 5-7, and that tends to almost guarantee improvement the next season. But if you actually watched Auburn, the breakdowns were so reliable — here comes another red zone breakdown, here comes another missed field goal, here comes another turnover — that it was difficult to see the losses as mere poor fortune.
Maybe no team in the country, therefore, combines raw upside with extreme burden of proof like Auburn.
There’s potential everywhere you look. Blue-chip sophomore receivers Cam Coleman and Malcolm Simmons return after combining for 1,049 yards and 11 TDs, and they’re joined by portal standout Eric Singleton Jr. (Georgia Tech). Longtime running back Jarquez Hunter is gone, but returnee Damari Alston and transfer Durell Robinson (UConn) are explosive. And the offensive line returns four starters and adds two more in tackles Mason Murphy (USC) and Xavier Chaplin (Virginia Tech).
On defense, end Keldric Faulk became a star in 2024, and corners Kayin Lee and Jay Crawford combined for 18 passes defended. Freeze also added two of my Group-of-5 portal favorites in edge rusher Chris Murray (Sam Houston) and corner Raion Strader (Miami-Ohio).
Notice I haven’t said the word “quarterback” in this capsule yet. Freeze hasn’t gotten what he needs from the position, and he basically flipped the entire QB room: All four players who took snaps last year are gone, and three transfers — Jackson Arnold (Oklahoma), Ashton Daniels (Stanford) and Tanner Bailey (South Carolina) — and blue-chip freshman Deuce Knight are in. Arnold, the No. 3 prospect in the 2023 recruiting class, is the presumptive favorite; he does everything with maximum urgency and intensity, and he ran all over Alabama in OU’s upset win. But he also seems to lack patience when looking to pass, and that created some awfully bad habits when he was dealing with breakdowns from a poor Oklahoma line. By the end of the season, his pocket awareness and internal clock were completely broken. That’s hard to fix, but he’ll at least get some favorable reads in Freeze’s RPO-heavy system.
Freeze has been recruiting well and could leave last year’s crippling mistakes in the past if — IF — he has a quarterback.
Head coach: Brent Venables (fourth year, 22-17 overall)
2025 projection: 16th in SP+, 6.9 average wins (3.5 in the SEC)
The last time Oklahoma had a three-year record this bad, the Sooners won the national title the following season. They jolted from their late-1990s slide to go 13-0 in 2000 with a trendy offense and a speedy, aggressive defense. Brent Venables was the defensive co-coordinator for that run; now he’s the head coach trying desperately to arrest a slide. OU has gone 6-7 in two of his three seasons. It took until last season to get the defense up and running — per SP+, the Sooners had their best defense since 2009. But the offense completely fell apart, dragged down by its worst line in ages, a lack of healthy skill corps standouts and inexperienced quarterbacks who fell into bad habits.
The defense should be fantastic again. The line is loaded with seniors like end R Mason Thomas and tackle Gracen Halton, and Venables made a couple of fun additions in end Marvin Jones Jr. (Florida State) and tackle Siolaa Lolohea (Utah State). It’s a similar story at linebacker, where Kendal Daniels (Oklahoma State) joins standouts Kip Lewis and Kobie McKinzie. The biggest issue last year was occasional big-play breakdowns in the back, but after surviving a number of injuries, the secondary returns six players with starting experience and potential stars in safeties Robert Spears-Jennings and Peyton Bowen and nickel Kendel Dolby.
Even against a schedule featuring nine projected top-25 teams (!), the defense will give the Sooners a chance in most games. The offense’s improvement will determine whether they can actually win a few. Venables brought both offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle and quarterback John Mateer over from Washington State. It’s not hard to see why.
Mateer threw for 3,139 yards and rushed for 1,032 not including sacks. He can scramble into trouble sometimes, which might be an issue if the line hasn’t improved — Venables did sign three OL transfers — but the skill corps has been completely restocked with running back Jaydn Ott (Cal) and eight new pass catchers. None of the four new FBS transfers blow me away on paper, but JaVonnie Gibson (Arkansas-Pine Bluff) is one of four immensely explosive smaller-school transfers. The Arbuckle offense leans heavily on slot receivers, and if returnee Deion Burks can stay healthy, he could post huge numbers. Even just a top-30ish offense, this is a top-15ish team. The ridiculous schedule will put a ceiling on the win total, but the bar for improvement isn’t particularly high.
Just looking for a path to 6-6
Head coach: Sam Pittman (sixth year, 30-31 overall)
2025 projection: 38th in SP+, 5.1 average wins (2.5 in the SEC)
Sam Pittman’s Arkansas team doesn’t stand still. In 2021, the Razorbacks surged from 3-7 to 9-4. In 2023, they collapsed to 4-8. Last fall saw a promising rebound to 7-6 and 24th in SP+, but a 1-3 record in one-score finishes kept the excitement tamped down a bit. In 2025, both the offense and defense start over to a degree.
The Razorbacks improved from 56th to 40th in offensive SP+ in Bobby Petrino’s first season back in Fayetteville as offensive coordinator. Volatile quarterback Taylen Green returns after throwing for 3,154 yards and rushing for 838 (not including sacks); he takes too many sacks and is a constant turnover threat, but he makes countless big plays as well. His line returns three starters and adds three power-conference transfers, but the skill corps is almost completely new. Sophomore running back Braylen Russell is the only noteworthy returnee, and Pittman added nine transfer pass catchers and two running backs. New receiver O’Mega Blake (Charlotte) was maybe the most all-or-nothing receiver in FBS last season, averaging 24.8 yards per catch with a barely 50% catch rate. If other newcomers like Raylen Sharpe (Fresno State) and Ismael Cisse (Stanford) can provide solid possession options, Green should have what he needs.
Travis Williams’ defense improved to 35th in defensive SP+ last year, with a sturdy run defense and problems at the back with an injury-laden secondary. Linebacker Xavian Sorey Jr. is outstanding (100 tackles, 15 run stops), and big tackle Cameron Ball is a keeper, but of the 18 players with 200-plus snaps, they’re two of only six returnees. And beyond corner Julian Neal (Fresno State) and maybe edge rusher Phillip Lee (Troy), Pittman didn’t sign many surefire portal standouts. It might take Williams a while to figure out his best lineup.
With eight projected top-25 opponents, Arkansas is the third of the “short straw” teams with Florida and Oklahoma. Green is a must-watch QB, for reasons good and bad, and Blake could make the Hogs’ offense even more explosive. But I’m not sure they have the defense to overcome the schedule.
Head coach: Mark Stoops (13th year, 77-73 overall)
2025 projection: 43rd in SP+, 4.7 average wins (1.9 in the SEC)
The last time Kentucky slipped below .500 (5-6 in 2020), Mark Stoops made an inspired offensive coordinator hire (new Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Liam Coen), fielded the best offense of his tenure, won 10 games and, per SP+, fielded Kentucky’s best overall team since 1977. Four years later, the Wildcats need another shot in the arm. The defense has slipped a bit, the offense collapsed to 89th in offensive SP+ in Coen’s absence and UK went just 4-8 in 2024. Stoops kept offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan, instead attempting a portal-based rebound. Two former FCS stars might dictate the fate of the program.
If the offense is good again, it will mean redemption for Hamdan and quarterback Zach Calzada. The former Texas A&M and Auburn quarterback returns to the SEC after throwing for 6,342 yards in two seasons at Incarnate Word. He’ll get help from strong backs — burly transfers Dante Dowdell (Nebraska) and Seth McGowan (New Mexico State) join speedy sophomore Jamarion Wilcox — and a remodeled line, but the receiving corps is a question mark. Incoming receivers Kendrick Law (Alabama) and Troy Stellato (Clemson) will try to supply efficiency and free up all-or-nothing deep threats Ja’Mori Maclin and J.J. Hester (Oklahoma).
The defense has been merely good and not elite for a couple of years, and of the nine guys with 200-plus snaps in the front six, seven are gone. The return of senior tackle Josaih Hayes from an Achilles injury should help, but I’m most intrigued by the addition of the best defender in FCS, South Dakota’s Mi’Quise Humphrey-Grace. He had 18.5 TFLs last season, and he’s got fantastic size (6-4, 265 pounds). The secondary lost a great nickel in Zion Childress but returns veteran safeties Jordan Lovett and Ty Bryant and corner JQ Hardaway.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but the schedule isn’t going to help UK’s rebound attempt. The Wildcats are semi-comfortable favorites in only three games and play eight against projected top-25 teams. If Calzada is solid and Humphrey-Grace shines, bowl eligibility is possible, but another 10-win rebound is almost certainly not in the cards.
Head coach: Clark Lea (fifth year, 16-33 overall)
2025 projection: 55th in SP+, 4.7 average wins (1.6 in the SEC)
The New Mexico State gambit worked!
0:59
Diego Pavia gives electric postgame interview after Vandy’s stunning upset of Alabama
Diego Pavia credits his teammates for Vanderbilt’s historic upset of Alabama before getting mobbed by his family on the field.
Needing a boost in both toughness and playmaking, Clark Lea imported the former head coach (Jerry Kill), offensive coordinator (Tim Beck), quarterback (Diego Pavia) and tight end (Eli Stowers), among others, from the best NMSU team in decades. They delivered. Pavia became one of the SEC’s biggest personalities, the defense leaped from 124th to 59th in defensive SP+ (with minimal NMSU assistance) and the Commodores upset Bama for the first time in 40 years and enjoyed their first winning season in 11. Pavia evidently enjoyed the experience so much that he sued to come back for another year. And won.
Here’s where I have to be a Debbie Downer and point out that Vandy ranked seventh in turnovers luck and 11th in close-game fortune last season and might deal with comeuppance in both regards. Pavia’s willingness to both take and inflict hits is incredibly endearing, but it also meant that he spent a good portion of 2024 banged up and only somewhat effective. He gets Stowers, wideout Junior Sherrill and RB Sedrick Alexander back, and Lea added a big-play receiver transfer in Tre Richardson (Washburn). But the line lost four starters and got thinned out enough that Lea had to bring in seven transfers.
The defense should improve further. Of the 16 players with 200-plus snaps, 12 return, and I like new additions in tackle Mason Nelson (Western Michigan) and edge rusher Keanu Koht (Alabama). Honestly, the biggest loss for the defense might be punter Jesse Mirco. The Commodores benefited from major field position advantages that allowed their general bend-don’t-break act to prosper — 118th in success rate allowed, 42nd in yards allowed per successful play — and Mirco averaged 48.0 yards per punt.
If turnovers and close-game bounces (and field position) turn against Vandy, the downsides will be pretty obvious. But the Commodores return enough of last year’s key players to potentially create some more memories regardless.
Head coach: Jeff Lebby (second year, 2-10 overall)
2025 projection: 71st in SP+, 3.8 average wins (1.0 in the SEC)
Near the bottom of each of these previews, I usually encounter a team that (A) stunk last year and (B) returns nobody. Their preview just becomes a list of transfers. With Mississippi State bottoming out last season under first-year coach Jeff Lebby, you’d have figured the Bulldogs were candidates for a total roster culling. But while Lebby brought in more transfers than anyone in the SEC and added double-digit jucos as well, he also held on to 20 players who started at least once last season. Granted, none of the returnees could prevent the Bulldogs from suffering their worst record since 2003, but some continuity is probably better than none, right?
The offense was terribly inefficient last season, but it was less so before Blake Shapen suffered a season-ending shoulder injury. He scrambles into trouble like many others in this conference, but he’s solid, and he’ll benefit from a strong pair of backs in Davon Booth and dynamic transfer Fluff Bothwell (South Alabama), one of 2024’s best freshman backs. The offensive line returns two starters and welcomes four from other FBS schools, and while the receiving corps has little known quality, it has quantity with two primary returnees (tight end Seydou Traore and wideout Jordan Mosley) joined by eight transfers.
The MSU defense bent far too much and forced far too few turnovers to pull a decent bend-don’t-break routine (133rd in success rate allowed). Lebby focused most of his portal work on the front six and landed potential upgrades in tackle Will Whitson (Coastal Carolina) and linebacker Jalen Smith (Tennessee), among others, and the addition of four new 300-pounders can’t hurt. If the push up front improves, the secondary could be solid with active safety Isaac Smith and three of last year’s top four corners returning.
The bar’s pretty low here, both because MSU was comfortably the league’s worst team last year and because there weren’t too many surefire upgrades. But the mix of newcomers and returning talent should create better depth, at least, and hey, it’s not hard to improve on 2-10.
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Jake Trotter
LAS VEGAS — Michigan defensive end Derrick Moore joked Thursday that Ohio State’s national title was not a “real win” because the Buckeyes didn’t defeat the Wolverines along the way.
In the regular-season finale last season, Michigan stunned the heavily favored Buckeyes in Columbus 13-10 for its fourth straight victory in the rivalry.
As an eighth seed, Ohio State roared back in the inaugural 12-team expanded playoff, reeling off four consecutive wins to capture the program’s first national championship in a decade.
Michigan won the national title in 2023, the final year of the four-team playoff.
“First, I’d like to congratulate them on the win,” Moore said during Big Ten media days, noting that he was “hoping” the Buckeyes would lose in the playoff. “But, you know, it’s not no real win if y’all ain’t beat us.”
He added: “If the playoff expansion wasn’t around, [Ohio State] wouldn’t have won the national championship. So, we pretty much look at it like, y’all had a nice little, easy run. But we helped y’all along the way. We pretty much helped y’all build back up. But after that [loss], they dominated everybody that came in front of them. So, got to give all the credit to them.”
Michigan coach Sherrone Moore, when asked later about Derrick Moore’s remarks, gave the Buckeyes full credit for their championship.
“They won the national title. They were the best team at the end of the year, so I give them all the credit,” Sherrone Moore said. “They were well deserving. They played really well. They obviously won it all. So kudos to them.”
Derrick Moore had a pass deflection in the Wolverines’ win at the Horseshoe, as Ohio State’s high-powered offense failed to score after halftime. Afterward, a brawl between the two teams broke out when Michigan players gathered on the Block O logo at midfield and planted their flag. Police used pepper spray to quash the scuffle, which lasted roughly five minutes and left players and coaches from both sides bloodied.
“I feel like I could have [done] a better job as a leader of not letting that get out [of control] like that,” Derrick Moore said. “But at the same time … I feel like that right there is pretty much why people come to Michigan or Ohio State. … The rivalry, the atmosphere.”
On Thursday, Derrick Moore also mocked Ohio state Rep. Josh Williams, who last December introduced a bill that would’ve classified flag planting at Ohio Stadium around Buckeyes football games as a felony.
“That was actually crazy,” Derrick Moore said. “But all I got to say is, that’s Ohio for you.”
Sherrone Moore also addressed the flag-planting incident and brawl, emphasizing Thursday that “there’ll be no more flag planting, there’ll be no more grabbing the flag.”
The Buckeyes face Michigan on Nov. 29 in Ann Arbor.
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David Hale
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — If Bill Belichick’s personal life has been the predominant topic of discussion outside North Carolina‘s locker room in recent months, Tar Heels players insist it hasn’t unsettled the team at all.
Belichick and his girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, have made numerous headlines since the 73-year-old, six-time Super Bowl champion coach was hired at UNC in December, from Hudson interrupting a “CBS News Sunday Morning” interview with him to reports that Hudson had been barred from the Tar Heels’ football facility by school leadership (which officials denied).
It’s all just “noise,” according to Belichick.
“Sometimes it’s noisy and sometimes it isn’t,” Belichick told ESPN. “Sometimes with the Patriots it was noisy, too.”
UNC receiver Jordan Shipp said none of that noise has disrupted the team, though.
Shipp said he has rarely seen Hudson, 24, around the team and believes any inferences that she’s been overly involved in Belichick’s work have been wildly exaggerated.
“Social media can promote some narrative, but that was not a distraction to us at all,” Shipp said. “There was never a problem, like people saying she was running practice. We’d never really see her in the building. That was never a problem.”
Shipp noted that he spent significant time last season with the wife of then-UNC coach Mack Brown, even eating breakfast with her nearly every day at the team’s facility, so he saw no difference in his current coach having his significant other around the team.
Not that that has happened, Belichick quipped.
“I don’t think Jordon’s had lunch with anybody,” he said.
Indeed, quarterback Gio Lopez said, where players are far more likely to see Hudson is in stories and photos shared on social media.
“I log on my phone and see something about Coach Belichick, so it is different, of course,” said Lopez, who transferred from South Alabama this spring. “But you’d never think that about him. He’s a normal guy, a normal coach. That’s how he carries himself. He’s very personable, not worried about the spotlight. He just does his job.”
Belichick sounds unconcerned about the spotlight, but his appearance Thursday at the ACC’s annual kickoff event showed just how bright that light will be for North Carolina. The ACC saw a nearly 50% increase in total credentials distributed to media, and hordes descended on the Charlotte Hilton in hopes of posing a question or snapping a photo. Nearly 200 media members crowded around a riser where Belichick sat for a “breakout” session, with so much demand that a UNC sports information staffer had to organize what was intended to be an open-access Q&A.
Still, Belichick downplayed how much the cameras distinguish North Carolina from any other school.
“They follow [players] around and take miles of film,” Belichick said. “I saw that at multiple schools last year when I visited. there’s always somebody there with a camera. It’s way worse than the NFL. At least in the NFL you know when they’re there.”
North Carolina opens the season in a prime-time game against TCU on Sept. 1, and Belichick said that serves as his sole focus, noting that he’s “pretty far away” from having a firm grasp on his team’s ability to compete at the moment. North Carolina has 70 new players, including about 30 who joined after spring practice concluded.
If North Carolina isn’t ready for Week 1, Shipp said, it won’t be because of a lack of focus or distractions from the head coach and his girlfriend.
“If anything, I feel like it’s not a distraction because it’s always good to have somebody in your corner in the building, just knowing they support us,” Shipp said. “We support Coach B no matter what he’s doing. We’re behind him 100%. Whatever stuff is in the news drug on more than it really was. It was never a distraction, never an issue, never a problem.”
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