Every Power 5 College Football Conference's Dark-Horse 2016 Player of the Year

The 2016 college football season is still almost five months away, but time has never stopped predictions from being made.

Interested in who might start out in the Top 25 this fall? There is no shortage of way-too-early rankings, including one by Bleacher Report. Wonder who will be the next Heisman winner? Odds Shark has lines for 14 of the most likely candidates. And if you're curious who stands to get named Player of the Year in each power league, the top choices can be gleaned from looking at which athletes remain from last season's all-conference team.

But all these projections and predictions forget about one get category: the breakout stars.

Stanford's Christian McCaffrey was a promising sophomore running back heading into 2015, but no one could have predicted he'd end up the FBS single-season all-purpose yardage leader en route to a landslide victory as the Pac-12 Offensive Player of the Year. If anything, he might have started out last season as a dark-horse candidate before bursting through to become the league's best individual performer.

It could happen again this fall—some good-but-going-to-get-better player erupts for a monster year and picks up a bunch of hardware along the way, including honors for league Player of the Year. We've tried to predict who that might be for each power conference, limiting our choices to players who have started in the past or were at least a top backup.

ACC: Devonte Fields, LB, Louisville

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Most conferences award both offensive and defensive players of the year, so it's not that bold to think Devonte Fields' comeback story will end with a second conference POY nod. If the ACC were to limit its honor to just one player, regardless of side of the ball, then having Fields topple the likes of Clemson quarterback Deshaun Watson and Florida State running back Dalvin Cook would qualify as a major shocker.

But it's not like the 6'4”, 245-pound senior hasn't already shown he's capable of winning such an award. As a freshman at TCU in 2012, he had 10 sacks and 18.5 tackles while being named the Big 12's unanimous choice for Defensive Freshman of the Year. He was then tabbed as the Big 12 Preseason Defensive Player of the Year in both 2013 and 2014; however, an injury limited his 2013 campaign to three games, and he was dismissed from TCU prior to the start of the 2014 season.

Fields spent a year at a junior college before Louisville gave him a second chance, and combined with a move from defensive end to linebacker, he thrived last fall. He led the Cardinals with 11 sacks and 22.5 tackles for loss, the latter tying for third best in FBS.

Offseason shoulder surgery has limited Fields' participation in spring ball, but by the fall, he should be at full strength and ready to build off his big junior year. A strong enough performance could launch him into serious ACC POY consideration.

Big 12: Patrick Mahomes II, QB, Texas Tech

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The last five athletes named Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year have been quarterbacks, with four of those coming from teams that either won or shared the regular-season title. The exception was 2011, when Baylor's Robert Griffin III also won the Heisman Trophy despite being on a third-place team.

We're not saying Patrick Mahomes II will find his name in the Heisman discussion later this season or that he'll have Texas Tech in the conference title hunt. But his skill set, his past performance and the very strong likelihood that he'll have to put up huge numbers to give the Red Raiders a chance to win each week make him a POY candidate worth exploring.

Mahomes led FBS in total offense in 2015, averaging 393 yards per game. He threw for 4,653 yards and 36 touchdowns and ran for another 10 scores, accounting for at least 400 yards of total offense six times. However, he also threw 15 interceptions and was sacked 27 times. In both cases, most of those were the result of Mahomes trying to make something out of nothing.

He was almost forced to do so, since Texas Tech allowed 43.6 points per game and thus made it so the offense couldn't afford not to score. The same conditions are likely to exist in 2016, which means Mahomes would need to have even greater numbers as a junior for the Red Raiders to be successful. If those stats are big enough, they could offset the team's finish in the Big 12.

Big Ten: C.J. Beathard, QB, Iowa

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Iowa's surprise run to a perfect regular season, a Big Ten division title and the Rose Bowl left many in the college football world shaking their heads wondering how it all happened. It was so hard to fathom that it spawned Tumblr pages and YouTube videos meant to help people explain to children what the Hawkeyes were doing.

Looking back on it, there are still few obvious reasons for how it happened, but it could happen again. And with Iowa playing a tougher overall Big Ten schedule in 2016, there would be fewer reasons to consider it a fluke.

If history does repeat, it will occur because of the play of C.J. Beathard, possibly the nation's least flashy starting quarterback but one who has never lost a regular-season game. He led Iowa to a win over Purdue in 2014, starting ahead of Jake Rudock. After getting named the 2015 starter eight months before that season began, he helped the Hawkeyes win all 12 scheduled games.

The numbers haven't been flashy—only his 7.8 yards per attempt ranked among the top 40 quarterbacks in FBS last season—but they've also rarely been bad. He was intercepted just five times in 362 attempts, never more than once in a game, and only one of his picks came in the red zone.

Beathard is going to need to average better than 200 passing yards per game as a senior—which would likely require him to record his first career 300-yard game—to be able to have a shot at Big Ten POY. But if Iowa can run the table again and Beathard's numbers go up, he will at least be in the discussion.

Pac-12: Budda Baker, S, Washington

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Even with 85 scholarships at their disposal, college football coaches can't help trying to maximize the skills of players who are capable of contributing in more than just one area. The two-way player is becoming more and more common, and adding in special teams contributions makes one even more valuable.

The Pac-12 has one of the best of this lot in USC's Adoree' Jackson, who has started at both cornerback and wide receiver in the same game and has scored touchdowns on offense, defense and special teams. He'd be the first choice for a multiway Player of the Year candidate but also an obvious one. The same can't be said for Budda Baker, who is just as talented as Jackson but has yet to show his full potential.

In two seasons, the 5'10”, 184-pound junior has started 24 games at safety, where he's recorded three interceptions. He had a 40-yard kickoff return in Washington's second game in 2015 on his only attempt, and while there had been talk of using him on offense last season, it never happened.

All areas of the game are on the table for 2016, however. Washington lost three of its top four pass-catchers from last year, including No. 1 receiver Jaydon Mickens. While the team gets back speedy wideout John Ross III (himself a former defensive back) from injury, the Huskies can always use more offensive weapons.

A recent spring practice saw Baker "running routes with wide receivers and catching passes from [Jake] Browning and the other QBs," per Adam Jude of the Seattle Times. In that same practice, Baker blocked a field goal during a special teams drill.

Washington's last Pac-12 POY was quarterback Marques Tuiasosopo in 2000. Browning and running back Myles Gaskin will be in the running this year, but so could Baker if the Huskies manage to turn him into a three-way star.

SEC: Trevor Knight, QB, Texas A&M

Having already been named Texas A&M's starting quarterback just a few months after transferring from Oklahoma, Trevor Knight will be the fifth different player to start at that position for the Aggies since the 2014 season. And based on the way things associated with A&M tend to get overhyped—remember Kenny Trill?—he figures to rocket toward the top of the list of candidates for SEC Player of the Year.

But A&M's inability to live up to expectations the past few years has made it somewhat taboo to pick this team to do big things. Consecutive 5-0 starts in 2014 and 2015 were each followed by poor finishes caused by offensive struggles, something the Aggies hope Knight will help prevent from happening again.

And everything is set up for him to be successful, Bleacher Report's Barrett Sallee wrote:

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The new reality for Knight is a loaded wide receiving corps, a new offensive coordinator in Noel Mazzone—who will develop quarterbacks like he did with Josh Rosen at UCLA last year—a running game that should be stable with the duo of James White and Keith Ford and a more physical offensive line led by new offensive line coach Jim Turner. Knight has been a star before, and he has all of the pieces to repeat the feat with an offense that's one of the most talented units in the country.

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But for Knight to be able to be the SEC Player of the Year, he's going to have to have A&M in contention for the West Division title. A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel was the last conference offensive POY from a team that didn't make the SEC title game, and that came in 2012 when he won the Heisman.

Statistics courtesy of CFBStats.com or Sports-Reference.com, unless otherwise noted. Recruiting information courtesy of 247Sports, unless otherwise noted.

Follow Brian J. Pedersen on Twitter at @realBJP.