MLB’s first 40/60 player? Inside Ronald Acuna Jr.’s return to MVP form
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Alden Gonzalez, ESPN Staff Writer
MARIETTA, Ga. — The living room of Ronald Acuña Jr.‘s two-story, craftsman-style home looks more like a sports memorabilia store, replete with mementos from a career that blossomed earlier than most. All-MLB plaques and commemorative baseballs dot two sets of bookcases on each side of a white fireplace. A signed lineup card from last year’s All-Star Game in Los Angeles sits on one, a Team Venezuela batting helmet from this year’s World Baseball Classic rests on the other. In the middle, an oversized picture of a smiling, 20-year-old, tuxedoed Acuña posing with the 2018 National League Rookie of the Year Award overlooks it all.
Acuña, now 25, takes no credit for the arrangement.
“That was my mom,” he says in Spanish. “She’s the one who decorates.”
It’s an overcast, muggy afternoon on May 18, a Thursday off-day that doesn’t quite feel like one because Acuña and his Atlanta Braves teammates didn’t touch down from Texas until 3 a.m. The past four games of that road trip saw Acuña unleash four home runs that averaged 440 feet. A little more than a quarter of the season has transpired at this point, and Acuña stands on pace to surpass 40 home runs, 60 stolen bases, 100 RBIs and 150 runs, a combination of numbers that have never been reached.
Acuña, wearing tight-fitting black pants with blue-and-white bands that resemble streaks of lightning and high-top sneakers that were clearly designed to match, smiles at the thought of what 2023 is becoming.
Acuña looks like the most exhilarating, dynamic baseball player in the world again, a sentiment that extends beyond his numbers (a .332/.419/.577 slash line, 11 homers, 22 steals and 2.6 FanGraphs wins above replacement, tops among position players). He’s wreaking havoc on the basepaths, crushing prodigious home runs with regularity and making highlight-reel defensive plays seem routine.
It all feels, well, normal, as if this is how it always goes. As if it hadn’t been three years — four if you count the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season — since this version of Acuña presented itself with regularity.
To Acuña, though, none of this feels like a given, not when those three years featured a devastating knee injury and a subpar return from it. Through it all, one of the most outwardly confident athletes of our time wondered if he’d ever be good again.
IT WAS JULY 2021, and Acuña couldn’t stop crying. An awkward landing on a leaping attempt in Miami had caused a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee, an injury that typically comes with an eight- to 12-month recovery and leaves an uncertain future beyond it. Acuña, then only 23, had already secured a $100 million extension and was three days shy of his second All-Star Game start, in the middle of his best year yet. Now he had to wonder if he would ever be the same.
“He cried every day,” Acuña’s mother, Leonelis Blanco, said in Spanish. “It wasn’t just every day — it was the whole day. He was distraught, crying, crying, wondering about his leg.”
Acuña — with a father, Ronald Sr., who spent six years in the New York Mets‘ minor league system, and four cousins, most notably Kelvim and Alcides Escobar, who reached the majors — lived and breathed baseball since birth, Leonelis said. When he was 9, he was appreciably better than the other children his age in La Guaira, a port city in northern Venezuela. At 11, it was clear he would make a career out of the sport.
Leonelis had only known Acuña to be excellent and assertive. But in the two weeks that spanned his ACL tear and subsequent surgery, he was exceedingly vulnerable, refusing to watch baseball games and pondering the possibility of never playing again. Most of his days were spent lying in bed. Leonelis never left his side. She played music, cooked his favorite foods, brought up other topics of conversation and did her best to project positivity. When the subject of baseball inevitably returned, she clung to three phrases.
Paciencia, hijo. (Patience, son.)
Confía en ti. (Believe in yourself.)
Libera tu mente. (Free your mind.)
“Terrible,” Leonelis said of those conversations, every one of which she remembers. “It was really, really hard.”
As his knee improved, so too did Acuña’s state of mind. Simply ditching the wheelchair to walk on crutches noticeably lifted his spirits. Later that season, while the Braves excelled with a makeshift outfield constructed before the end of July, he found joy through his teammates’ success. When the World Series came, he asked to be cleared for travel. It allowed him to be in Houston on Nov. 2, when the Braves became one of the most improbable champions in recent memory. That night, Acuña’s body froze. He then felt a chill run through both of his arms. The tears flowed shortly thereafter.
“I cried out of joy,” Acuña said, “but also I cried because I couldn’t be there with my teammates. I couldn’t be there day to day; I couldn’t be there with them.”
Those feelings directly impacted the following season.
“He missed it so much in ’21, when we won a championship, that he was definitely going to be part of the team in ’22,” Braves first-base coach Eric Young said. “It didn’t matter. If he was well enough to go, he was going out [even if not fully healthy]. That was his mentality. And I don’t fault him for that.”
ACUÑA RETURNED TO the Braves on April 28, 2022, and played in 119 of the team’s remaining 143 regular-season games, plus four more in the playoffs — but he was never truly himself.
Young, Acuña’s coach through his entire major league career, noticed it in how slowly he cut off base hits in the gap. Austin Riley, Acuña’s teammate dating to rookie ball, noticed it in the batting cage, where the ball didn’t quite jump off his bat like it used to. Braves third-base coach Ron Washington, going on his sixth decade in the major leagues, noticed it in how infrequently his typical burst would arrive on the bases. Brian Snitker, his manager, noticed it in the deluge of reports from the training staff that detailed Acuña’s constant need for treatment.
Acuña felt it everywhere — when he didn’t rotate his hips quickly enough to reach fastballs, when he didn’t explode well enough to track down distant fly balls, when he didn’t come out of his stride fast enough to steal bases.
“I put a lot of pressure on myself, like, ‘I have to get back to being who I was before,’ and I think that influenced a lot,” Acuña said. “Things didn’t turn out the way I wanted them to. The knee — there were days when it wouldn’t hurt, I’d go out and play a hundred percent and I’d tell myself, ‘I’m back,’ but then the next day the pain would return. It just kept going like that.”
Acuña was selected by fans as the starting right fielder in the All-Star Game, but he finished with a .764 OPS that fell 161 points below his career mark heading into 2022. He stole 29 bases but was thrown out an NL-leading 11 times. Defensively, he was credited with negative-seven outs above average, placing him among the worst at his position.
On the outside, Acuña continued to flaunt jewelry and smear eye black and celebrate boisterously.
Inside, doubt consumed him.
“I would tell my mom, ‘Mom, I don’t know if I’ll ever run the same again.’ Or my dad, ‘You think I’ll go back to playing the same?'” Acuña said. “The pain was not easy. The operation also was not easy. So I doubted many times. I would tell my friends, ‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to play that way again.’ Every time I would go play, I doubted.”
IN 2018, Young’s first season coaching Braves outfielders coincided with Acuña’s rookie year. The two have been inseparable since. If anybody can reach Acuña, it’s Young. And when the 2022 season ended, Young felt the need.
A week after the 101-win Braves were eliminated by the resurgent Philadelphia Phillies in mid-October, Young called Acuña to chat. He wanted to help set the tone for what would become the most important offseason of Acuña’s career.
“You talk about the best players in the game — Ronald Acuña’s name’s got to be mentioned,” Young recalled saying. “And I told him, ‘It’s not going to be mentioned because you’ve got these skills and you’re talented. You have to do it in between the lines each and every single day to gain respect from your peers. Your peers are the ones telling you who’s the best player in the game. If you go out there and you do the things that you’re capable of, there’s no other person out there that can do it like you.'”
Young’s words helped to reaffirm a mindset Acuña was already carrying with him. He waited another week or so for his knee to become fully healthy — it finally did at the start of November, convenient yet cruel timing — then set out to test it like never before.
“I told myself, ‘I have to work and I have to get back to being 100 percent,'” Acuña said. “‘It’s either going to be 100 percent the good way or 100 percent the bad way.'”
Acuña wanted to play as much baseball as possible as quickly as possible. He planned to take part in the Venezuelan Winter League in December, then represent his country in the 2023 World Baseball Classic. Before that, though, he would take a detour to the Dominican Republic to hit with Fernando Tatis Sr., the former major league third baseman and father of one of his closest friends.
Acuña and Fernando Tatis Jr., the San Diego Padres‘ superstar shortstop-turned-outfielder, met near the end of April 2019, when Tatis paid his first visit to Atlanta early in his rookie season.
“You feel the chemistry from the moment you say hello,” Acuña said. “You say, ‘That’s going to be my brother.’ It’s just a good vibe. Since then, we’ve been brothers.”
Three and a half years later, from Nov. 10 until around Thanksgiving, Acuña and Tatis met on a field in Tatis’ hometown of San Pedro de Marcoris and tried to rediscover their respective selves. Tatis, on the heels of a season lost both to a motorcycle accident and a steroid suspension, wore a cast on a surgically repaired left wrist that limited him to conditioning work. Acuña, meanwhile, hit almost daily under the watchful eye of a man famous for once belting two grand slams in a single inning.
Early on, Tatis Sr. suggested a minor tweak that turned into a major adjustment. He asked Acuña to lower his hands ever so slightly during his setup, down near the bottom part of his chest, making his bat parallel to his upper body in order to get its barrel through the strike zone more quickly.
“I was open to everything,” Acuña said. “It’s why I went down there.”
Acuña struggled mightily to hit fastballs last season, slugging only .416 against four-seamers, 56 points below the major league average. This year, it’s up to .773. His strikeout rate has been cut nearly in half, down to 14.1%. He is a better, more complete hitter than he ever has been, a product, he believes, of the changes he made in the D.R.
Acuña, a deep admirer of legendary countryman Miguel Cabrera, hopes to someday win a batting title. At this rate, at least, he’ll secure his third Silver Slugger Award in five months.
“If I do,” Acuña said, “I’ll give it to Fernando.”
YOUNG HAD BEEN keeping close tabs on Acuña’s offseason work, and by the onset of spring training, he saw a new, more mature version up close. Acuña used to lag through the various stations of workouts, but suddenly he was displaying what Young described as “more focus, more intent” during outfield drills that often seemed to bore him.
The attention to detail, Braves coaches said, has spilled into the regular season, where Young said he is “not running away from any type of challenge in preparing for the game.”
Acuña believes being a father — he has two boys, a 2-year-old and a 7-month-old — has brought a new level of maturity. Suffering the ACL tear in 2021, Young says, humbled him like never before. But simply being ordinary for perhaps the first time in his life might have played just as big a role in his transformation.
“I think he found out what he is, what he looks like, when he’s not healthy,” Washington said, “and that’s the player he doesn’t want to be.”
Acuña, Washington added, is no longer solely relying on his eye-popping physical talent. He works diligently on his baserunning technique and studies pitcher tendencies for the first time, a focus that, when combined with new rules that have created a more favorable stolen-base environment, have led to a 91.7% success rate. He’s reading balls off the bat during pregame batting practice on a near-daily basis, as opposed to once a week. He’s more diligent with his physical therapy and plyometric exercises. Lapses still occur, but they’re far more infrequent.
“He used to hit ground balls, and if it wasn’t a base hit he didn’t run ’em out,” Washington said. “Now, he’s making those son of a b—-es make plays out there. He’s running everything out.”
Last year, Braves trainers talked to NFL trainers to pick their brains about how running backs recovered from ACL tears like Acuña’s. They were told that most players needed a full season and offseason to get back to their previous standards. It’s a message the team continued to impart on Acuña, but one he didn’t fully believe until experiencing it first hand.
And by the time he felt completely healthy, that doubt had become fuel.
“I would hear people saying, ‘He’s not going to run the same anymore, he’s not going to be the same baseball player because people don’t come back well from this surgery,'” Acuña said. “It was frustrating to hear people talk like that. But also, it motivated me. I practiced, I trained hard, I fought and now they’re mistaken.”
RILEY HAS FOUND himself on a dugout’s top step for every one of Acuña’s plate appearances this season.
“Just waiting for something to happen,” Riley said. “It’s pretty special.”
Acuña hasn’t disappointed. Through the season’s first eight weeks, he ranks within the top 3% in exit velocity and hard-hit rate, within the top 17% in sprint speed and within the top 1% — better yet, second among 187 qualified players — in arm strength. Defensive metrics, prone to faultiness in small samples, still grade him as a below-average right fielder. But Acuña has already accumulated six outfield assists and turned in a handful of sensational plays, including two leaping catches against the outfield fence of his home ballpark.
Meanwhile, his already prodigious home runs have been legendary.
“It looks effortless,” Braves second baseman Ozzie Albies said. “He just hits the ball and the ball keeps going.”
Acuña unleashed a 461-foot home run to straightaway center field May 3 and followed with a 470-foot moonshot to left May 10. Five days later, he swung at a curveball only 1.3 feet off the ground and lined it 454 feet to left-center. Acuña has already totaled a major league-leading nine home runs that have traveled at least 420 feet, three more than the second-place Aaron Judge, who outweighs him by 80 pounds. In May alone, he has hit four home runs at least 450 feet. Every other player in the sport has combined for 18 of those this month.
“He’s on his legs now, and you’re seeing what he can do,” Snitker said. “And he’s maturing. He’s growing up — physically, mentally, the whole thing. The kid’s starting to come into his own. It’s kinda scary what he’s capable of, honestly.”
Acuña has acted as a crucial tone-setter for a Braves team that is already 12 games above .500 and 5½ games up in first place, slashing .500/.540/.804 when leading off the first inning. He’s only three points shy of a 1.000 OPS, a mark reached by only six leadoff hitters since 1900, and is on pace to finish as the third player in major league history to combine 30-plus home runs with 50-plus stolen bases, not to mention the first to 30 and 60.
He’s all the way back, but he’s also better than ever.
Those who know him well are bullish.
“Acuña wants to be the best,” Young said. “And if Acuña wants to be the best, his best is the MVP, in my mind. He’s going to be the MVP this year. It’s a prediction. I’m confident in that prediction.”
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Dan Murphy
The University of Wisconsin filed a lawsuit Friday claiming Miami’s football team broke the law by tampering with a Badgers player, a first-of-its-kind legal attempt to enforce the terms of a financial contract between a football player and his school.
The lawsuit refers to the athlete in question as “Student Athlete A,” but details from the complaint line up with the offseason transfer of freshman defensive back Xavier Lucas. Lucas left Wisconsin and enrolled at Miami in January after saying the Badgers staff refused to enter his name in the transfer portal last December.
In the complaint filed Friday, Wisconsin claims that a Miami staff member and a prominent alumnus met with Lucas and his family at a relative’s home in Florida and offered him money to transfer shortly after Lucas signed a two-year contract last December. The lawsuit states that Miami committed tortious interference by knowingly compelling a player to break the terms of his deal with the Badgers.
“While we reluctantly bring this case, we stand by our position that respecting and enforcing contractual obligations is essential to maintaining a level playing field,” the school said in a statement provided to ESPN on Friday.
According to the complaint, Wisconsin decided to file suit in hopes that “during this watershed time for college athletics, this case will advance the overall integrity of the game by holding programs legally accountable when they wrongfully interfere with contractual commitments.”
Representatives from the University of Miami did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The pending case promises to be an interesting test of whether schools can use name, image and likeness (NIL) deals to keep athletes from transferring even though the players aren’t technically employees. Starting July 1, schools will begin paying their athletes directly via NIL deals.
The contracts between Wisconsin and their athletes give the school the nonexclusive rights to use a player’s NIL in promotions. Part of the deal, according to the lawsuit, prohibits an athlete from making any commitments to enroll or play sports at other schools. The lawsuit says Wisconsin had a reasonable expectation that Lucas would “continue to participate as a member of its football program” until the deal ended.
However, according to several contracts between Big Ten schools and their players that ESPN has previously reviewed, these deals explicitly state that athletes are not being paid to play football for the university. Since the school is technically paying only to use the player’s NIL rights, it’s not clear if a judge will consider it fair to enforce a part of the contract that dictates where the player attends school.
The Big Ten said in a statement Friday that it supports Wisconsin’s decision to file the lawsuit and that Miami’s alleged actions “are irreconcilable with a sustainable college sports framework.”
Darren Heitner, a Florida-based attorney who represents Xavier Lucas, told ESPN that Wisconsin did not file any legal claims against Lucas and declined to comment further.
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Eli Lederman
Four-star quarterback Bowe Bentley, No. 261 in the 2026 ESPN 300, announced his commitment to Oklahoma over LSU on Friday, landing with the Sooners less than 24 hours after longtime quarterback pledge Jaden O’Neal pulled his commitment from the program Thursday night.
Bentley, a 6-foot-1, 205-pound prospect from Celina, Texas, is ESPN’s No. 6 dual-threat passer in 2026. His recruitment skyrocketed earlier this year after Bentley broke out for 4,263 all-purpose yards and 63 total touchdowns last fall while leading Celina High School to a Class 4A Texas state title in his junior season. Bentley, who took official visits to Oklahoma and LSU earlier this month, told ESPN this week that the offensive vision of first-year Sooners offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle was among his primary draws to the program.
“Going into depth on the offense with Arbuckle was huge,” Bentley said. “It’s not just what he’s done this spring, but what Coach Arbuckle has done at Washington State and Western Kentucky. I got a strong understanding of where he got this offense from and how he approaches calling it.”
For Oklahoma, Bentley’s commitment marks the close of a drawn out recruiting process that began after the Sooners shifted their 2026 quarterback plan after Arbuckle arrived from Washington State in December in the wake of the Sooners’ disastrous SEC debut last fall.
O’Neal, ESPN’s No. 7 pocket passer, had spent nearly 12 months as the top prospect in the program’s incoming class prior to his decommitment. A frequent visitor on campus over the past year, he relocated from Southern California to Oklahoma’s Mustang High School this spring, where O’Neal will play his senior season roughly 30 miles north of the Sooners’ team facility.
But multiple sources tell ESPN that the relationship between O’Neal and Oklahoma became strained in the early months of 2025 after the Sooners shifted their focus to landing a 2026 quarterback with a similar skill set to John Mateer, the dual-threat transfer who followed Arbuckle to Oklahoma after exploding for 44 touchdowns last fall.
Bentley — who threw for 3,330 yards and rushed for another 933 yards in 2024 — fits that mold, and the Sooners made the fast-rising prospect a top priority this spring before ultimately landing his pledge Friday.
Bentley joins four-star wide receiver Daniel Odom (No. 242 overall) as one of two ESPN 300 prospects in the 2026 class. Behind Mateer, who will be eligible for the NFL draft after the 2025 season, Oklahoma’s current quarterback depth includes second-year passer Michael Hawkins Jr. and three-star 2025 signee Jett Niu.
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Bill Connelly
In their first year as actual conference rivals, Army and Navy joined forces to steal everyone’s thunder.
Heading into the 2024 season, the sports books had Army and Navy projected to win about 12 combined games. SP+ said 11.6. Both programs had slipped in recent years; blocking rule changes targeted the type of cut-blocking common with service-academy option attacks, and the liberalization of transfer rules opened up a new way for all non-service academies to supplement their rosters. Army had gone just 12-12 in 2022-23, while Navy had gone 16-30 from 2020-23.
This time last year, you could pretty easily paint a picture of college football leaving both programs behind. It’s a lot harder to do that now. Navy raced past AAC favorite (and CFP contender) Memphis, 56-44, in an early-season track meet on the way to a 6-0 start, and Army beat its first nine opponents by an average of 35-10. Both teams stumbled midseason when their QBs began hobbling around, but both rallied — Army blew out Tulane, 35-14, in its first ever AAC championship game, then Navy beat Army the next week. Not including the game against each other, the teams went 0-2 against national finalist Notre Dame and 21-2 against everyone else.
The success of the academies overshadowed all other stories in the AAC. Memphis and Tulane still won a combined 20 games, with each continuing to produce a level of depth and athleticism increasingly rare in the Group of 5. UTSA, ECU and USF all overcame slow starts — and, in ECU’s case, a coach firing — to finish strong. The conference’s lower-rung programs were awfully bad, but the AAC had enough depth to finish with the best SP+ average in the G5. It’s projected to do the same this season.
Will the AAC produce more surprise surges in 2025? And if so, who? Will the champ threaten to nab the G5’s playoff autobid from Boise State? And of the many new first-year coaches among last year’s lesser teams, who figures things out the fastest? Let’s preview the AAC!
Every week through the summer, Bill Connelly will preview another FBS conference, ultimately including all 136 FBS teams. The previews will include 2024 breakdowns, 2025 previews and team-by-team capsules. Here are the MAC, Conference USA, Mountain West and Sun Belt previews.
2024 recap
In last year’s AAC preview, the projected order of finish at the top was Memphis-UTSA-Tulane-USF-ECU. Take out Army and Navy, and that was a pretty good read on things. Projecting Tulsa, Charlotte and Temple at the bottom was about right, too. But the academies threw off the balance of power. Now we get to find out if they can do so again.
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 — in some cases, including players who started games in 2023 but missed last season with injury — 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.
The projections below are delightfully messy, and the continuity table gives us a pretty good sense regarding why. The defending champion, Army, is replacing its starting quarterback and plenty of others, and of course the Black Knights aren’t taking advantage of either the transfer portal or redshirts. Meanwhile, the best team per SP+, Memphis, lost almost its entire starting lineup, but it brought in a lineup’s worth of starters from other FBS schools. These resets open a door, and between Navy, Tulane and two of the “got hot late in the year” teams mentioned above (USF and UTSA), someone interesting and experienced could walk through it.
2025 projections
Tulane starts out in front with the best combination of 2024 quality and 2025 continuity. But four other teams are within 4.3 points in the SP+ projections, and USF isn’t particularly far off the pace either. That’s nearly half the conference with a semi-realistic path to the top of the standings. What more can we ask for from a title race?
Five teams with between an 11.7% and 16.6% shot at the title, plus three more between 5.8% and 7.7%. Ladies and gentlemen, the Big 12 of the Group of 5.
Five best games of 2025
Here are the five conference games that feature (a) the highest combined SP+ ratings for both teams and (b) a projected scoring margin under 10 points.
Army at Tulane (Oct. 18). At first glance, the AAC schedule is as balanced as the conference — of the 10 spots available in these five games, Tulane occupies three (including two on the road), while Army, Memphis and UTSA each occupy two and Navy occupies one. I wish we could have squeezed a USF game in here, too, but this is a pretty good list. And the first of the five big games is a 2024 AAC Championship rematch.
Tulane at UTSA (Oct. 30). This is one of the bigger Thursday night games on college football’s 2025 docket. Both Tulane and UTSA are projected favorites in all but one game before this one — UTSA is a Week 1 underdog against Texas A&M, while Tulane is a Week 4 underdog against Ole Miss — and the winner could head into November as the AAC co-favorite at worst.
Tulane at Memphis (Nov. 7). In a nine-day span, Tulane faces the top two projected AAC favorites not named Tulane. Both are on the road, too. That’s pretty rough.
Navy at Memphis (Nov. 27) and Army at UTSA (Nov. 28). Thanksgiving weekend gives us a pair of contests that could serve as either elimination games or previews of the AAC Championship. And it’s pretty noticeable that both of Memphis’ and UTSA’s games on this list are at home, while two of Tulane’s and both of Army’s are at home.
Conference title (and, therefore, CFP) contenders
Head coach: Jon Sumrall (second year, 9-5 overall)
2025 projection: 48th in SP+, 8.0 average wins (6.0 in the AAC)
When we casually talk about the sturdiest G5 programs in the country, we’re likely to start with Boise State, Memphis and Tulane. The Green Wave are an assumed power at this point. That’s pretty incredible considering that, as recently as 2021, the Green Wave were going 2-10. In the 23 seasons between 1999 and 2021, they averaged 4.2 wins per year, but over the past three seasons they’ve won 32 games with a roster that so clearly looks like something from a power conference that it’s erased a quarter-century’s worth of pass impressions. They even had enough depth and firepower to survive a coaching change (from Willie Fritz to Jon Sumrall in 2023) with minimal damage.
In a way, this sudden cachet has backfired. When power programs trust what you’re producing nowadays, they have no problem raiding your roster. Tulane lost eight starters to power-conference programs: quarterback Darian Mensah (Duke), running back Makhi Hughes (Oregon), tight end Alex Bauman (Miami), OLB Matthew Fobbs-White (Baylor), ILB Jesus Machado (Houston), cornerback Rayshawn Pleasant (Auburn) and even kicker Ethan Head (West Virginia) and punter Will Karoll (UCLA). Hell, even three backups — quarterback Kai Horton (Washington) and DTs Adonis Friloux (Baylor) and Parker Petersen (Wisconsin) — moved up the conference ladder.
This is a talent drain successful G5 programs are quickly having to get used to, but Tulane did what you have to do: strike back. Sumrall used Tulane’s brand name to land 20 transfers who started at least once for FBS teams last year. Among the most important were quarterbacks Kadin Semonza (Ball State) and Brendan Sullivan (Iowa), running back Zuberi Mobley (FAU), slot receiver Omari Hayes (FAU), All-Sun Belt center Jack Hollifield (Appalachian State), defensive tackle Derrick Shepard Jr. (UAB), edge rushers Santana Hopper (App State), Maurice Westmoreland (UTEP) and Jordan Norman (South Alabama) and cornerback LJ Green (Troy). He’s basically compiled a mid-major all-star team, and he grabbed a trio of smaller-school stars for the secondary, too: Corners Isaiah Wadsworth (Wofford) and KC Eziomume (Albany) and safety Tavare Smith Jr. (East Central) combined for six INTs and 25 pass breakups last season.
Combine this haul with talented returnees like blue-chip quarterback-turned-tight end Ty Thompson, all-conference offensive linemen Derrick Graham and Shadre Hurst, defensive tackle Kameron Hamilton, linebacker Sam Howard and safeties Bailey Despanie and Jack Tchienchou, and you clearly have one of the most talented rosters in the AAC. The quick-passing Semonza and dual-threat Sullivan both probably represent downgrades from Mensah, and such a massive amount of change will always introduce the possibility of a failed chemistry experiment. But between Sumrall’s recent prowess as a head coach (he won back-to-back Sun Belt titles at Troy before landing in New Orleans), Tulane’s recent prowess as a program and the sheer depth the Green Wave seem to have in the trenches, they are still one of the conference’s safer bets.
Head coach: Ryan Silverfield (sixth year, 42-21 overall)
2025 projection: 53rd in SP+, 8.7 average wins (5.9 in the AAC)
You could say that Memphis is the Ole Miss of the AAC. Like the Rebels, the Tigers peaked in the 1960s, faded into obscurity for most of three decades, perked up in the early-2000s, then bottomed out a few years later. Both rallied to respectability in the 2010s, however, and in 2024 both attempted to pounce on newfound opportunities, loading up in the portal and holding onto stars in the hopes of snagging a CFP bid.
Like Ole Miss, Memphis fielded a mostly dynamite product, but fell short of its goals. The offense finished in the SP+ top 20 for the seventh time in 10 years, and the defense improved, but breakdowns led to track-meet losses to Navy (56-44) and UTSA (44-36), and Memphis ended up with the most disappointing 11-win season in school history. And then basically every starter left: Left tackle Chris Adams and defensive end William Whitlow Jr. are the only full-timers returning.
This doesn’t sound like the start of a 2025 success story, does it? But as with Ole Miss — and Tulane, for that matter — Memphis used its cachet to reload in the portal. The big get was quarterback Brendon Lewis, who has thrown for 5,330 yards and rushed for 2,108 (not including sacks) over parts of five seasons at Colorado and Nevada; the senior should pair well with returning running backs Greg Desrosiers Jr. and as long as a retooled offensive line (six transfers, one JUCO) holds up, the run game should be dynamite. The passing game, however, will require success from a number of less proven transfers like Jadon Thompson (Louisville), C.J. Smith (Purdue), Ger-Cari Caldwell (NC A&T) and tight end Jerry Cross (Penn State). Returning youngsters Brady Kluse and Keonde Henry have upside, too.
With its history of success, and with Lewis in tow, the offense gets the benefit of the doubt. The defense, less so. Twenty-two defenders saw at least 100 snaps last year, and only three (Whitlow, tackle Mond Cole and safety Kourtlan Marsh) are still on the roster. Not surprisingly, Ryan Silverfield tried to load up in the portal, adding five linemen, six linebackers and 10 DBs. It’s a fun mix of former star recruits looking for more playing time (Indiana tackle Marcus Burris Jr., UNC linebacker Crews Law, Michigan corner Myles Pollard, Florida State safety Omarion Cooper, Arizona State nickel Kamari Wilson), mid-major stars (WMU tackle Isaiah Green, UAB linebacker Everett Roussaw Jr., Nevada linebacker Drue Watts), JMU corner Chauncey Logan, Akron corner Joey Hunter) and smaller-school stars (Incarnate Word tackle Chase Carter, Chattanooga corner Beni Mwamba, Harding safety Jeremiah Jordan). Jordon Hankins’ first season as defensive coordinator saw an uptick in aggression and turnovers and a few too many big plays. If he can mold this new set of talent into something decent, Memphis will again contend in the AAC.
Head coach: Jeff Traylor (sixth year, 46-20 overall)
2025 projection: 63rd in SP+, 7.8 average wins (5.5 in the AAC)
Sometimes a coach’s poor timing is a school’s great timing. With his immense Texas high school ties and his immediate success at UTSA, Jeff Traylor has been linked to basically every power-conference opening (or rumored opening) in the state of Texas in the 2020s. None of the supposed moves came to fruition, however, and after winning 32 games from 2021-23, it looked like Traylor’s moment as a high-profile promotion candidate had come to an end when UTSA, with a rebuilt roster, began last season 3-5. After three straight SP+ top-60 finishes, the Roadrunners were 97th entering November.
Everything clicked late, however, and they charged back to finish 64th. The offense had begun to ignite in mid-October, the defense joined the party, and by the end of a 44-15 blowout of Coastal Carolina in the Myrtle Beach Bowl, UTSA had capped a rousing turnaround. And after rallying to 7-6, the Roadrunners enjoy some of the best continuity in the AAC.
Most of that continuity comes on offense, where Owen McCown (3,424 yards, 25 TDs) is among nine returning starters and is the No. 2 returning QB in the AAC in terms of Total QBR.
Actually, including two 2023 starting linemen who were hurt last year, the Roadrunners actually sort of return 12 starters on O.
McCown and running back Robert Henry will line up behind the league’s deepest line, one that returns four starters, plus two 2023 starters who were injured last fall (left tackle Venly Tatafu and center Luke Lapeze) and Georgia State tackle transfer Trevor Timmons. Plus, five players with at least 28 catches are back, led by big-play man Willie McCoy, tight end Houston Thomas and sure-handed slot David Amador II. This could easily be the fifth straight season that UTSA finishes with a top-40 ranking in offensive SP+.
As with Memphis, the defense has far more questions to answer. It has been UTSA’s weaker unit for four straight seasons, and of the 19 players with 200-plus snaps last year, only six return. Granted, that includes a pair of studs in defensive tackle (Brandon Brown, one of the most active and disruptive 300-pounders in the country) and nickel Owen Pewee (14 run stops and two INTs last year) and a potential breakout star in edge rusher Vic Shaw. But depth could be tenuous unless a number of transfers breaks through. There’s certainly potential in the portal haul, which includes both former blue-chippers (Baylor defensive tackle Kaian Roberts-Day, TCU outside linebacker Shad Banks Jr., Maryland safety Brandon Jacob) and smaller-school stars (Tennessee State defensive tackle Cameron Blaylock, East Texas A&M linebacker Brandon Tucker).
Few G5 teams will look more like a power-conference team than UTSA, with 340-pounders on the offensive line, 310-pounders on the defensive line, athleticism on the edges and, of course, a McCown at quarterback. After a half-season setback, Traylor appears to have crafted another deep and exciting team, and the Roadrunners are projected favorites in 10 games.
Head coach: Brian Newberry (third year, 15-10 overall)
2025 projection: 68th in SP+, 7.9 average wins (5.7 in the AAC)
With both Tulane and Memphis flipping so much of their rosters, you might lean toward UTSA as the safer bet in the AAC race. Or maybe you could just go with the team that knows how to win big when it has a star QB. From Ricky Dobbs to Keenan Reynolds to Malcolm Perry, Navy produced a run of great option quarterbacks under Ken Niumatalolo, and after stagnation to start the 2020s, Niumatalolo’s successor Brian Newberry combined a semi-modernized attack and brilliance from Blake Horvath to charge back to 10-3 last fall. Both the offense and defense produced their best SP+ rankings since the 11-win campaign of 2019, and perhaps most intriguingly, despite a lack of redshirting and threats from the portal, both units return quite a bit of last year’s production.
On offense, that of course starts with Horvath. His rushing explosiveness (1,298 non-sack yards, 7.8 yards per carry, 17 touchdowns) was reminiscent of Perry’s, and his 1,353 passing yards were the third-most for Navy since the mid-1990s. Newberry has attempted to open up the offense a bit, and under new coordinator Drew Cronic last season, the Midshipmen lined up in the shotgun 45% of the time; Perry and the 2019 offense did so only 10% of the time. Stretching defenses out evidently produced more big-play lanes for Horvath and slotback Eli Heidenreich, who combined 65 rushes with 39 catches and gained 1,115 yards from scrimmage (10.7 yards per touch) with nine TDs. They’re both back, as are primary fullback Alex Tecza and Brandon Chatman (7.7 yards per touch), another fun weapon on the edge. The line is a question mark, as Navy deployed a tight rotation of basically seven guys and four are gone. But guard Ben Purvis is all-conference caliber, and Navy’s track record up front is solid. I’m guessing it will perform as required.
Navy’s defense has been sound since Newberry’s arrival as defensive coordinator in 2019. They’ve averaged a 65.2 defensive SP+ ranking in that span, and their No. 53 ranking last fall was their best since 2015. This is a bend-don’t-break unit — they ranked 72nd in success rate last season but 22nd in yards allowed per successful play — and that can work awfully well when you rank in the top-30 in both turnovers (24, 17th nationally) and red zone touchdown rate allowed (53.5%, 29th).
There’s more turnover to deal with on defense, but the Midshipmen still return 13 of the 20 players with 100-plus snaps, including four of the six players with at least five tackles for loss (tackles Landon Robinson and Griffen Willis, linebacker Luke Pirris and nickel Jaxson Campbell). The secondary has a couple of dynamite play-makers to replace in corner Dashaun Peele and safety Rayuan Lane III, but it still has solid experience on its side.
Head coach: Jeff Monken (12th year, 82-57 overall)
2025 projection: 67th in SP+, 7.6 average wins (5.5 in the AAC)
My favorite part about the simultaneous Army-Navy surges is that, offensively, they came about in completely different ways. Navy tried to modernize its option attack a bit, while Army did the exact opposite, bailing on a renovation and going back to basics. And both approaches worked! With a slightly more experienced quarterback, Army ended up succeeding slightly more. Bryson Daily rushed for 1,677 non-sack yards and 32 touchdowns — he topped 115 yards in 11 of 13 games — and while the offense slowed as he battled a midseason injury/illness, he rushed for 126 yards and four TDs in the AAC Championship, then hit 127 yards and three scores in his final game, an Independence Bowl blowout of Louisiana Tech. Navy was able to shut Daily and the Black Knights down, but they finished the year with their best offensive SP+ rating in 28 years, and their defense finished in the top 40 for the third time in five years. Just a brilliant season all around.
If the new starting quarterback — most likely: senior Dewayne Coleman — can match Daily’s level, Army will have the pieces to contend again. But wow, is that a high bar, one that Coleman didn’t quite clear in 111 snaps last season. Regardless, the Black Knights still return a dynamic pair of slot backs in Noah Short and Hayden Reed (combined: 157 carries and catches, 1,157 yards, 7 TDs) and two all-conference linemen in center Brady Small and guard Paolo Gennarelli. Three starters are gone up front, but quite a few returnees saw 100-plus snaps, at least. The components are solid as long as the QB play is where it needs to be. We’ll see.
Nate Woody’s defense has an excellent track record, and while the Black Knights only return eight of the 18 defenders with at least 200 snaps, they’re used to turnover in a redshirt-free environment. Among the returnees are an ultra-disruptive duo in linebacker Andon Thomas and safety Casey Larkin (combined: 10 TFLs, 14 run stops, six interceptions, five breakups) and a solid corner in Justin Weaver. Up front, junior tackle Kody Harris-Miller has a hell of a motor: He made tackles on 11.7% of his snaps, more than anyone but the starting inside linebackers, and he’s 301 pounds!
Army had averaged just 2.9 wins per year and had bowled just once in the 17 seasons before Monken’s arrival. But in the past nine years, the Black Knights have averaged 8.4 wins, have hit double-digit wins three times and have finished ranked twice. They’ve won conference titles in 100% of the years they’ve been in a conference. (OK, fine, one of one, but still.) We’ll see how AAC foes adapt with more familiarity, and replacing Daily is not going to be easy. But Monken has earned epic benefit of the doubt — Army’s a contender until proven otherwise.
A couple of breaks away from a run
Head coach: Alex Golesh (third year, 14-12 overall)
2025 projection: 77th in SP+, 6.2 average wins (4.9 in the AAC)
After winning four total games in three years, USF won seven games in Alex Golesh’s 2023 debut, playing well on offense and improving from historically awful to merely bad on defense. The Bulls ranked high in returning production heading into 2024, too, which made me wonder if they had another huge surge in them.
SP+ was more reserved, projecting the Bulls 76th with an average win total of 6.7. They went 7-6 and ranked 79th. Always trust the numbers over my gut.
Heading into 2025, USF again ranks highly in returning production, and I’m again trying to rein in expectations while SP+ again projects another holding-the-fort season. Maybe my gut’s right the second time?
Last year’s offense overcame a season-ending leg injury to sophomore quarterback Byrum Brown and ended up surging late behind another sophomore, Bryce Archie. They were terribly inefficient overall (116th in success rate) — which is terrible when you’re one of the few remaining offenses attempting to move at a mach-speed tempo — but they balanced that with massive rushing explosiveness. Both Archie and Brown are back; if Brown is truly 100% healthy, he’s the more explosive runner and a slightly less error-prone passer, but Archie was pretty good by the end of 2024. The QB of choice will have a wonderfully experienced line in front of him, but the skill corps has lost its top three RBs and top two WRs. Sophomore wideout Keshaun Singleton has big-play potential, and Golesh added two transfer RBs (Charlotte’s Cartevious Norton and Oklahoma’s Sam Franklin) and four mostly unproven pass-catchers.
Defensive improvement has been slow but steady under coordinator Todd Orlando. His 2024 defense was aggressive against the run and hunted turnovers, but it also gave up all the big plays you expect with that approach. If experience produces fewer breakdowns, the Bulls could be in good shape — 13 of 20 players with 200-plus snaps return, and 10 of 12 incoming transfers are juniors or seniors. Mac Harris, Rico Watson III and North Texas transfer Chavez Brown should form one of the more disruptive linebacking corps in the G5, and the secondary has lots of veterans. If the defense complements an increase in offensive efficiency by allowing fewer big plays, the Bulls are in business.
Head coach: Eric Morris (third year, 11-14 overall)
2025 projection: 92nd in SP+, 6.8 average wins (4.3 in the AAC)
You can’t accuse North Texas of being boring.
Chart translation: The Mean Green offense was perfectly average from an efficiency standpoint but had the most successful successful plays in the country. Wideout Damon Ward Jr. averaged 18.4 yards per catch. Running backs Shane Porter and Makenzie McGill II averaged 6.4 yards per carry. When freshman quarterback Drew Mestemaker took over for veteran Chandler Morris in the First Responder Bowl, he completed passes of 42, 46 and 57 yards and ripped off a 70-yard TD run. (He also threw two picks and took three sacks in a 30-28 loss.) Eric Morris’ offense goes for it frequently on fourth downs — their 44 attempts led the nation — lives by chunk plays and occasionally perishes from a lack of them.
If you’re looking for pure, bonkers entertainment, UNT is almost always there for you. In two years and 25 games under Morris, the Mean Green have scored at least 35 points 14 times and allowed at least 35 points 15 times. Granted, there’s heavy margin for error in playing this way — they’re 1-10 when they don’t score at least 35 — but they’re here to entertain us, and I appreciate it.
If they’re here to actually win games, well, it’s pretty clear where the improvement needs to start. UNT has only ranked better than 100th in defensive SP+ once in the past 11 years; Morris must hope that a Bearkat transplant makes a huge difference. Coordinator Skyler Cassity moved over from Sam Houston and brought a number of Bearkat stars with him — tackle Richard Outland Jr., end Briceon Hayes, linebacker Trey Fields, corners David Fisher and Da’Veawn Armstead. Considering SHSU ranked 46th in defensive SP+ last year, these players immediately become the most proven UNT defenders.
The offense will be fine with either Mestemaker or former Albany star (and then Miami backup) Reese Poffenbarger running the show and distributing the ball to backs McGill and Missouri State transfer Jayden Becks and receivers Dalton Carnes, Miles Coleman, Sam Houston transfer Simeon Evans and any number of explosive smaller-school transfers like Tyrese Hunt-Thompson (Ferris State). The offensive line is facing some turnover, but … the offense will be fine.
Head coach: Blake Harrell (first full year, 5-1 overall)
2025 projection: 90th in SP+, 6.0 average wins (4.2 in the AAC)
College football gives us a tiny sample of games, but we still have time for epic plot twists. ECU fired Mike Houston after a 3-4 start last year — his Pirates had gone just 5-14 since the start of 2023 and were 96th in SP+, and signing up for half a season with an interim is basically confirming you’ve got a lost season on your hands.
Under interim Blake Harrell, however, ECU then won four games in a row by an average of 19 points. Some of that had to do with the schedule (three of the victims were Temple, FAU and Tulsa), but the offense shifted into a new gear, and the defense stopped getting torched. The Pirates fell to Navy in the regular season finale but beat NC State in a bowl thriller (complete with the bloody, late-game brawl that we would expect from ECU-NC State). They finished 8-5 and 74th in SP+, a nice turnaround and anything but a lost season.
Naturally, Harrell got the full-time gig. And his first official Pirates team is an absolute mystery to me.
On one hand, there are stars here. Quarterback Katin Houser was explosive (and occasionally interception-prone) after taking over in the starting lineup, and two of last year’s most explosive wideouts, Anthony Smith and sophomore Yannick Smith, are back along with some former high-profile recruits like Jaquaize Pettaway (Oklahoma) and Tyler Johnson (Penn State). The defense returns nice edge attackers — namely, end J.D. Lampley and OLBs Ryheem Craig and Samuel Dankah — and added two of my favorite smaller-school transfers in corners Key Crowell (Indianapolis) and Jordy Lowery (Western Carolina). They combined for 11 INTs and 18 pass breakups last year.
On the other hand, star running back Rahjai Harris and virtually every pass catcher not named Smith are gone, as are three OL starters and 15 of the 20 defenders with 200-plus snaps. It wouldn’t surprise me if the offense was strong again, but it also wouldn’t surprise me if the defense took a solid step backward. ECU isn’t too far away from contending in the AAC and isn’t too far away from the large pack of mediocre teams below it, too.
Just looking for a path to 6-6
Head coach: Trent Dilfer (third year, 7-17 overall)
2025 projection: 112th in SP+, 4.6 average wins (2.8 in the AAC)
The most confusing hire of 2023 has thus far been one of its least successful. Instead of sticking with Bryant Vincent, who was solid as a full-season interim following Bill Clark’s unexpected retirement, UAB attempted a home-run swing, bringing in Trent Dilfer. The former Super Bowl winning quarterback and ESPN analyst had only coached at the high school level. To put it diplomatically, this felt like a massive risk.
Risks frequently go unrewarded. After averaging 8.3 wins per year under Clark and Vincent, the Blazers have won seven games in two seasons under Dilfer. Alex Mortensen’s offense has been pretty solid, but the defense has been a disaster. Dilfer’s been caught on camera screaming at his assistants. Not great.
Dilfer’s third season is basically a do-over, complete with a new defensive coordinator (former Air Force DC Steve Russ) and almost entirely new lineup. Quarterback Jalen Kitna, left tackle JonDarius Morgan and safety Sirad Bryant are back. I just listed all the returning starters.
Among the 30 incoming transfers who will be asked to save Dilfer’s job are some pretty fun players. Receivers AJ Johnson (ETSU) and Evan McCray (Wingate) each averaged over 15 yards per catch last year, and end Jamichael Rogers (Miles College) had 18.5 TFLs in Division II. There aren’t many proven FBS entities here, but if they were proven, they probably wouldn’t have come to UAB. Still, Dilfer found some play-makers, and Mortensen seems like a genuinely solid OC. We’ll see if that’s enough to turn things around. With just two games as a projected favorite, UAB will have to overachieve by quite a bit to make something of 2025.
Head coach: Zach Kittley (first year)
2025 projection: 115th in SP+, 4.6 average wins (2.6 in the AAC)
After winning big under Lane Kiffin, FAU decided it was a place for head coach reclamation projects. It has since hired former Florida State head coach Willie Taggart and former Texas head coach Tom Herman. They went a combined 22-35 in five seasons.
It was time for a new approach. Zach Kittley, still only 33 years old, was a miracle worker in one season as WKU’s offensive coordinator and was solid in three years at Texas Tech. He and defensive coordinator Brett Dewhurst will try to breathe life into a program that has averaged an offensive SP+ ranking of 99.2 over the past five years and a defensive SP+ ranking of 92.5 over the past four.
As is frequently common, Kittley flipped the roster in his first year: Right tackle Alex Atcavage is the only returnee who started more than seven games last season, and 35 transfers are on their way to Boca Raton. A pair of WKU transfers, quarterback Caden Veltkamp and receiver Easton Messer, will be key to a fast start, though they’ll obviously need lots of help. Kittley landed a couple of smaller-school stars on defense — linebacker Paul Tangelo (St. Francis) and corner Terez Reid (Grand Valley State) — but he brought in a lot of younger, less proven transfers as well. That signals to me that he’s thinking long-term. (In hiring a 33-year old, the school probably was, too.) A Kittley offense will score points, and the schedule features five opponents projected 112th or worse in SP+, so there could be some encouraging results. But the 2025 season will probably be more about gearing up for 2026 and beyond.
Head coach: Scott Abell (first year)
2025 projection: 121st in SP+, 4.1 average wins (2.5 in the AAC)
When Rice hired Mike Bloomgren in 2018, it made lots of sense. The former Stanford assistant had been part of major nerd-school success in Palo Alto, and becoming Mid-Major Stanford seemed like a good thing.
Rice didn’t become Mid-Major Stanford as much as Stanford became Power Conference Rice.
Rice, 2018-24: 26-54 (.325 win percentage)
Stanford, 2019-24: 20-46 (.303 win percentage)
Bloomgren had one decent offense and two decent defenses but never built much momentum. It was time to get creative, and Rice did exactly that.
Say hello to your new favorite offense. Scott Abell went 47-28 at Davidson, reaching the FCS playoffs three times and never finishing below .500. He runs a shotgun spread option attack that averaged 315.6 rushing yards per game in 2024 and resembles almost nothing at the FBS level. (Navy might be the closest comparison?) That’s great news for a potentially excellent pair of returning running backs; junior Quinton Jackson and sophomore Taji Atkins combined to average 6.0 yards per carry as backups last year.
Transitioning from Bloomgren’s more pro-style attack could still take a while, as whoever wins the starting quarterback job — junior AJ Padgett, sophomore Chase Jenkins or redshirt freshman Drew Devillier — was recruited to run a very different offense. The line is relatively inexperienced, too. Jon Kay, a Bloomgren holdover, will coordinate a defense that defended the pass quite well but has to replace three of its top four pass rushers and four starting DBs. Linebacker Ty Morris is dynamite, and end Michael Daley was a small-sample star, but the best news for the defense would be if the offense scored more points and gave it less weight to carry.
Head coach: Tre Lamb (first year)
2025 projection: 120th in SP+, 3.9 average wins (2.4 in the AAC)
At only 35, Tre Lamb has already proven quite a bit as a head coach. He led Gardner-Webb to FCS playoff appearances in 2022 and 2023 and lifted ETSU from 3-8 to 7-5 in 2024; his best offenses have been balanced and explosive, and he’s brought in former North Greenville offensive coordinator (and big-play seeker) Brad Robbins as OC. They’ll try to create momentum in a way Kevin Wilson couldn’t. Wilson uncovered lots of exciting young offensive talent but couldn’t hold onto any of it, and Tulsa went just 7-17 in his two seasons.
I like the offense’s potential. Quarterback Kirk Francis and holdover receivers Grayson Tempest and Zion Steptoe will be joined by three exciting power-conference RBs — Dominic Richardson (Baylor), Sevion Morrison (Kansas) and Ajay Allen (Miami) — and a big batch of receivers including Calvin Johnson II (Northwestern) and Mekhi Miller (Missouri). Eight transfer linemen will certainly provide plenty of options up front, too.
Defense was Wilson’s biggest issue, and it’s a mostly clean slate on that side. Twelve transfers join a two-deep that does feature good size up front (particularly that of returning tackles Tai Newhouse and Joe Hjelle) and potential play-makers in linebacker Chris Thompson and sophomore corner Elijah Green. Incoming linebacker Ray Coney was one of ETSU’s best players last season, and Lamb was able to sign six transfer linemen who started at least one FBS game last year, led by tackles Tim Hardiman (Arkansas State) and Nahki Johnson (Pitt).
Tulsa has regressed for four straight seasons, so the idea of a quick turnaround is probably foolish. But I like Lamb’s initial roster-building moves, and I like the athleticism on both sides of the ball.
Head coach: K.C. Keeler (first year)
2025 projection: 126th in SP+, 3.8 average wins (2.2 in the AAC)
When things fall apart, it can happen almost overnight.
Temple, 2015-19: 43-24 (.642 win percentage), 55.6 average SP+ ranking
Temple, 2020-24: 13-42 (.236 win percentage), 119.0 average SP+ ranking
After steady, encouraging progress throughout the 2000s and 2010s, Temple has quickly reverted back to its 1990s form in the 2020s. In three seasons in charge, Stan Drayton went 3-9 three times and couldn’t generate progress on either offense or defense.
This is looking like an increasingly hard job, but K.C. Keeler might be up for the challenge. The 65-year old won FCS national titles at both Delaware and Sam Houston (17 years apart, no less), and he oversaw a 9-3 surge in SHSU’s second season in FBS. No one is guaranteed to succeed, especially at Temple, but the hire made all sorts of sense.
I like a lot of Keeler’s initial roster moves. He brought in Gevani McCoy (Oregon State) and Anthony Chiccitt (Robert Morris) to compete with holdover Evan Simon at quarterback, and running back Jay Ducker (SHSU) and receiver Colin Chase (St. Thomas) could spruce up a shaky skill corps. Defensive end Charles Calhoun III (Gannon), linebacker Ty Davis (Delaware), corners Jaylen Castleberry (Youngstown State) and Dontae Pollard (Samford) and safety Pooh Lawton (Slippery Rock) all produced excellent disruption numbers at smaller schools, and linebacker Jalen Stewart was one of UMass’ better defenders last season. The less said about the offensive line, the better, but the defense might be in position to improve a decent amount out of the gate. And hey, the bar’s low, too — win four games, and Keeler will already have done something Temple hasn’t done since the 2010s!
Head coach: Tim Albin (first year)
2025 projection: 133rd in SP+, 2.9 average wins (1.8 in the AAC)
The common theme among these last few teams: “Things have really fallen apart for [school], but I really like the hire of [coach].”
That’s certainly true for Charlotte. The 49ers have yet to finish higher than 100th in SP+ in 10 FBS seasons, and like UAB, the school made a risky/unique hire heading into 2023. Biff Poggi, hedge fund millionaire and former Jim Harbaugh righthand man, leaned heavily into the transfer portal in his two years in charge, but he went just 6-16. Now the reins go to Tim Albin, who got a veritable Ph. D in Culture Building as Frank Solich’s longtime offensive coordinator at Ohio and won 30 games in his last three years succeeding Solich.
Albin’s Bobcats established a physical identity and played far above their recruiting rankings and NIL spending levels. And like so many others down in this part of the preview, Albin’s first offseason featured a nearly full roster flip: Center Jonny King, linebacker Reid Williford and safety Treyveon McGee are the only returning starters.
Either Grayson Loftis (Duke), Conner Harrell (North Carolina) or Zach Wilcke (JUCO) will take over at QB — Loftis appears most likely — and running back Don Chaney Jr. (Louisville/Miami) and receivers Javen Nicholas (LSU), Jayden McGowan (Boston College) and Ta’ir Brooks (Northern Arizona) will be asked to make big contributions quickly. There are loads of transfers everywhere else, too: five offensive linemen (plus three JUCOs), seven defensive linemen (plus two JUCOs), six linebackers, five DBs. The linebacking corps has major promise, with Shay Taylor (Ohio) and Kadin Schmitz (Ohio) joining Gavin Willis (Bucknell). I like the Albin hire, and I like his initial moves. But someone’s still going to lose games in the AAC, and Charlotte seems as likely as anyone to do that in 2025.
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