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Most schools across the country have begun their spring practice seasons, officially turning the page to the 2015 season. With that in mind, here are the top 10 storylines from around all of college football this spring:
10. Riley Aims to do for Huskers what Pelini Couldn’t
Nebraska made waves this offseason by parting ways with head coach Bo Pelini, who led the Cornhuskers for seven seasons from 2008-14. It’s assumed a major reason Pelini was fired was the program plateaued under his leadership, winning either nine or ten games in each of his seasons on the job without ever truly threatening to win a Big Ten title.
He was replaced by former Oregon State head coach Mike Riley, although ironically enough Riley had only won more than seven games with the Beavers once in the last five years. The question on everyone’s minds is simple: Can Riley find the magic touch Pelini never could, elevating Nebraska past the 10-win hump and into true playoff contention? Others are asking: Is Nebraska even a program capable of contending for conference titles anymore?
This spring Riley and the Huskers will begin answering these questions.
9. TCU Begins Prep for Title Run
The Horned Frogs lost just once last season, found themselves squeezed out of the inaugural four-team College Football Playoff and them promptly slaughtered Ole Miss 42-3 in a New Year’s Six bowl to prove just how wrong the CFP selection committee was.
Now Gary Patterson’s bunch turns the page to 2015, a season in which TCU is considered a heavy favorite to contend for the national championship. The same offense that ranked fifth in the nation in yards per game last season returns a whopping 10 of its 11 starters on that side of the ball, including Heisman favorite Trevone Boykin at quarterback.
TCU is putting in work now to prepare to contend come the fall. Boykin’s continued development, expansion of the offense and Patterson’s work to shore up the defense are all compelling storylines to follow as we all try and gauge the true titans of college football when the autumn finally arrives.
8. Helfrich Addresses Oregon Offense Sans Vernon Adams
Oregon head coach Mark Helfrich has a wealth of talent to replace on both sides of the ball after falling in last year’s national title game, but no first-time starter will face as much pressure as Oregon’s next starting quarterback. That man will have to replace last year’s Heisman winner, Marcus Mariota, and will be expected to maintain the explosiveness of the Oregon offense despite lacking starting experience in the system.
The perceived frontrunner to win the starting job is Eastern Washington transfer Vernon Adams, who lit the FCS on fire a season ago with 3,483 yards passing and 35 touchdowns against eight interceptions to go along another six touchdowns on the ground. The problem is, Adams won’t arrive in Oregon until this summer, meaning Oregon will have to play through spring practice without its No. 1 quarterback.
It will be interesting to see how Helfrish handles the other quarterbacks on his roster, who he works with the first team and how he develops the rest of the offense around a quarterback other than Adams. But if Oregon’s recent history is any indication, the program will find a way to clear this hurdle.
7. Chavis Works with Aggies, Endures Lawsuit(s)
Chavis caught many SEC fans by surprise when he left LSU, where he’d served as defensive coordinator since 2008, and filled the same role on Kevin Sumlin’s staff at Texas A&M. Chavis’ Tigers defenses ranked in the top 20 in the nation in yards allowed per game each of the last five seasons, and no program has elevated more defensive players into the NFL in that time than the Bayou Bengals.
Nevertheless, Chavis departed for College Station in search of a new challenge and a heftier paycheck. He’ll get both at A&M, which gave him a modest raise but also presents him with one of the SEC’s most flawed defenses from a season ago. That move alone within the same division of the SEC is an appealing enough storyline, but that’s not even the juiciest part of Chavis’ offseason.
He has since sued LSU regarding a buyout the program alleges he owes upon leaving the university. Chavis disagrees and the two parties are suing and countersuing one another over the issues. How will the lawsuit play out? How will it impact Chavis’ image? How will it affect his ability to bring the A&M defense up to speed on his new system? We hope to find out this spring.
6. SEC Searches for Quarterbacks
The SEC lost a number of superstar quarterbacks after the 2013 season, including Johnny Manziel, Aaron Murray, Zach Mettenberger, A.J. McCarron, Connor Shaw and others, and the regression at the quarterback position throughout the conference last season was more or less expected.
What’s concerning is the SEC appears to be in even greater trouble at the position in 2015. Alabama and Auburn will both debut new quarterbacks with a wealth of hype and ability but very little experience in meaningful games. Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Ole Miss are four more teams expected to hold open quarterback competitions this spring and perhaps into the fall as they search for their next signal callers. And after closing 2014 with losing records, Kentucky and Vanderbilt are not quite set at quarterback either.
Essentially, other than Dak Prescott, Joshua Dobbs, Maty Mauk and Brandon Allen, the SEC lacks proven, experienced quarterbacks, which could hold the entire conference back as it aims to return to prominence in the national title hunt this season. The spring will play a large role in settling many of those quarterback battles, which will in turn shape the conference come the fall.
5. Muschamp Begins Building Auburn Defense
Auburn made a major splash this offseason by adding former Florida head coach Will Muschamp as its defensive coordinator in an effort to revive a defense that allowed nearly 400 yards per game in 2014.
Muschamp wasted no time in adding talent to the Auburn defense in the form of touted 2015 recruits like five-star defensive end Bryon Cowart and four-star defensive backs Jordan Colbert and Kerryon Johnson. He’ll also benefit from the return of defensive lineman Carl Lawson, who missed all of last year with a torn ACL.
Muschamp was hyped as a borderline miracle worker on the defensive side of the ball after he was let go at Florida, and many are expecting rapid improvements from the Tigers defense with the new DC leading the way. We’ll begin to see how realistic those expectations are this spring.
4. Jim McElwain Develops Florida Offense
Florida won seven games last year and might have won eight had its game against Idaho not been rained out early in the year. Still, the way it lost in its five defeats was rather humiliating, and the culture surrounding the program had devolved from that of a proud, regular contender to that of a skittish, unsettled, middle-tier team.
Florida has no patience to remain a middle-tier program, and the hope is that McElwain can remedy the issues facing the Gators, namely on the offensive side of the ball. As we’ve discussed, Muschamp knows his way around a defense, and the Gators defenses during his tenure were consistently successful.
But his offenses were dreadful, which is why McElwain was brought in to lead a new offense in Gainesville. He’ll need to use this spring to try and decide on a new starting quarterback, be it Treon Harris or Will Grier, and to find playmakers to place around the new quarterback (Kelvin Taylor, Jordan Scarlett and Demarcus Robinson are all contenders to fill those roles). The Gators also lost most of their starting offensive line to the NFL Draft, giving McElwain another area of concern to focus on this spring.
If Florida is to rise to national prominence again, it’ll need to improve dramatically on offense. That falls on McElwain, who will get his first crack at the task during spring ball.
3. Florida State Aims to Replace Jameis
A number of teams throughout the country will have to find new starting quarterbacks this offseason, but no newcomer at quarterback will have bigger shoes to fill than Jameis Winston, including Mariota’s replacement at Oregon.
Winston is a former Heisman winner and national champion in his own right, and he lost just once in two full seasons as the starter at FSU. The next quarterback will be expected to contend for an ACC crown and a playoff berth right away, and although Florida State has had nothing but NFL quarterbacks during the Jimbo Fisher era (Christian Ponder, E.J. Manuel and Winston), the new guy might not be up to speed right away.
The spring will not only be vital for FSU to choose a new starter, but for Fisher and his staff to develop that starter in preparation for the fall. The ACC is once again perceived as a conference lacking depth beyond its top teams, giving the Noles a chance to strike even in a “rebuilding year.” But in order to do so it must put in the work this fall.
2. Harbaugh Begins Michigan Turnaround
There’s no questioning Michigan made the sexiest coaching hire of the offseason when it brought in former San Francisco 49ers head man Jim Harbaugh to lead his alma mater back from the brink of disaster. The Wolverines missed a bowl game last season for the first time since the Rich Rodriguez era (and we recall how that ended), and former coach Brady Hoke was ushered out as quickly as Michigan could get him out the door.
It took Michigan weeks longer than most other schools to fill the vacancy, but the wait proved to be worthwhile as Michigan got its proverbial Michigan Man. Now it’s up to Harbaugh to revive the program as fast as possible.
In a short amount of time he was able to haul in the nation’s No. 38 recruiting class, which is a great start. Now Harbaugh must begin putting his stamp on the program this spring in order to return it to its former glory.
Harbaugh led a similar revival in the NFL with the 49ers and in college at Stanford, so Michigan knows it has a man in place who’s up to the challenge. However, unlike in the NFL fans in college will expect wins to come in mass as soon as this fall. Thus, Harbaugh needs to get to work this spring to try and shrink the timeline to greatness as much as possible.
1. Cardale Controls OSU QB Competition
Ohio State entered this offseason with three quarterbacks who could each start for more than 90 percent of the schools in the FBS right now.
Braxton Miller began last season as a rising senior and prominent Heisman contender, but was injured in training camp and never saw the field, taking a medical redshirt and postponing his senior season by a year. He was replaced by T.J. Barrett, who suffered an embarrassing early loss to Virginia Tech but then led OSU on a perfect run through the Big Ten to finish the regular season 11-1.
But then Barrett suffered a season-ending injury, giving the ball over to third-stringer Cardale Jones, who promptly led the Buckeyes to wins in the Big Ten championship game, the Sugar Bowl and the National Championship Game in his first three career starts.
Miller and Jones turned down opportunities to move on to the NFL, and all three players declined to transfer schools. Now head coach Urban Meyer is both blessed and cursed with the toughest decision in college football this offseason: Who will start under center for Ohio State this fall? And if Meyer uses multiple quarterbacks, who will they be and how often will they rotate in and out of games?
However, there’s no point in monitoring the competition for the starting job this spring, as Miller and Barrett are still nursing injuries and won’t participate. Thus, Jones will get all the first-team reps, giving him a leg up on asserting himself as next year’s starter.
Jones is somewhat of an enigma as a player with only three starts and yet a more accomplished career as a starter than most quarterbacks in the history of college football. He has NFL upside and yet still relatively little experience having never started a regular season game.
How much better will he look this spring? Will Meyer do anything to cater the offense more specifically to Jones? Is there a chance he regresses from last season’s brilliance?
We’ll get answers to all these questions this spring, which is why the defending champ’s quarterback situation is the most compelling storyline going.
A former newspaper reporter who has roamed the southeastern United States for years covering football and eating way too many barbecue ribs, if there is such a thing.
