College Football End of the Season Accountability with Barrett Sallee
If you demanded accountability for any preseason prediction, prognostication, hot take or Heisman pick, this column is for you.
As has been tradition for nearly a decade, every holiday season I hold myself accountable for good, bad and ugly college football predictions.
Were you mad that I slighted your team in August? This is my present to you, the reader.
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
The Good: LSU, The Pretender
Every offseason, it seems like the national media falls in love with LSU due to a roster that, outside of Alabama, is unmatched in athleticism. The Tigers were picked fifth and sixth in the preseason Associated Press and coaches polls, respectively, and pegged as Alabama's primary threat to the SEC West crown.
Except people seemed to forget they were coached by Les Miles—a coach who, while successful in the past, hadn't evolved with college football and whose stubbornness had prevented the offense from winning games outside of its ultra-traditional comfort zone.
I didn't, and I picked the Tigers (who finished 7-4 and had a game against South Alabama cancelled) to finish 8-4 in the video below.
What's more, I predicted on Jan. 6, 2016 that Miles would be fired in the middle of the season. He was fired on Sept. 25.
The Bad: Texas Winning the Big 12
Rule No. 1 of Twitter: Never tweet.
Well, I did in August, with a link to our Texas preview video. A 10-2 record and a Big 12 championship seemed really promising after a season-opening win over Notre Dame, I swear.
Then Texas lost seven games, including an embarrassing road loss to Kansas, and head coach Charlie Strong got fired. That record prediction will go in the "Cold Take Hall of Fame."
Here's the thing: I'm not opposed to going down that path again in 2017. With Tom Herman in town as Strong's replacement, a young core of impact players on both sides of the ball including rising sophomore Shane Buechele, and more of a sense of urgency by players to earn or keep their starting roles, Texas might be truly back next year.
This year, though, was premature.
The Ugly: Notre Dame in the Playoff
Speaking of Notre Dame, I apologize to all of you for this monstrosity.
Instead, the Fighting Irish were college football's biggest laughingstock. They went 4-8, lost the opener to Texas, fired a defensive coordinator before the leaves changed colors, had 21 wins from 2012-13 vacated and produced a head coach in Brian Kelly who reportedly toyed with the idea of hitting the eject button.
Just a normal, stable, championship-caliber season, right?
Notre Dame's 2016 campaign was an abject disaster, and my pick of the Irish in the playoff wasn't far behind.
The Good: Florida's Record
No, I didn't pick Florida to win the SEC East (more on that later). But I did pick the Gators' 2016 record exactly right.
Check out this preview for the Gators, where I predicted their three regular-season losses—Tennessee on the road, Florida State in a rivalry game and an upset loss at Arkansas.
The season went as I expected for the Gators. There was more consistency from the quarterback position as Luke Del Rio and Austin Appleby took the first-team snaps. But Del Rio's injuries prevented the Gators from getting into an offensive groove and kept them from becoming a true player on the national scene.
Nevertheless, Florida won the division and played Alabama in the SEC Championship Game for the second straight season (it didn't go well).
The Bad: Tennessee Winning the SEC East
As the driver of the Tennessee bandwagon this past offseason—one in which I picked head coach Butch Jones' crew to win the East—I feel obliged to tell all of you to buckle up. It's a rough ride.
The Volunteers didn't seem ready for the big time right out of the gate, when they stumbled and bumbled their way to an overtime win over Appalachian State in the season opener and routinely dug holes they found ways to get out of.
But when they clawed back to beat Georgia on a Hail Mary in Athens one week after bouncing back from a three-score hole to break an 11-year losing streak to Florida, I wrote that the Vols were a lock to win the division.
Yeah, about that.
Injuries ravaged the team, and Jones mismanaged the roster to a point where the Vols looked like they were owed wins based on the fact that they have a "T" on their helmets. They dropped three straight (Texas A&M, Alabama and South Carolina) to make that prediction look silly.
For good measure, they lost their season finale to Vanderbilt because the Vols gotta Vol.
The Ugly: Oregon as Pac-12 Champs
I bought into Dakota Prukop's following the Vernon Adams plan and helping Oregon stay competitive. I bought into Royce Freeman's proving he's one of the best running backs in the nation. I bought into head coach Mark Helfrich's getting the mojo back after one reset season and leading the Ducks to Pac-12 prosperity again.
Instead, Helfrich led the program into a puddle that turned into the deep end of a lake, got fired, finished 4-8 and produced the third-worst defense in the entire country (518.4 yards per game).
Part of that is on defensive coordinator Brady Hoke, who clearly isn't cut out for on-field coaching nowadays.
But most of it falls on Helfrich's inability to develop quarterbacks—which seemed impossible after the individual and team success Marcus Mariota brought to the program. Because of that, Helfrich was forced to go the FCS graduate-transfer route in each of the two seasons. When it didn't work out with Prukop this year, he had to trot out freshman Justin Herbert in a pinch.
Herbert played well (19 touchdowns and four picks) but couldn't do enough to overcome a defense that was a total disaster.
The Good: Auburn's Progress
Remember back in August when Auburn was picked to be in or near the cellar of the SEC, head coach Gus Malzahn was on his way out and the shadow of intra-state behemoth Alabama was too big to overcome?
That was a bit aggressive considering the defensive progress the Tigers made toward the tail end of the 2015 season and the realization that Jeremy Johnson wasn't the answer at quarterback—which is exactly what I said during our Auburn preview in which I picked them to go 8-4.
Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.
Auburn finished 8-4, and the only game I missed was the loss to Georgia (I picked the Tigers to lose to Ole Miss instead).
How'd the Tigers do it? With defense, of course. Auburn gave up just 348.4 yards per game and 4.88 yards per play, notched 81 tackles for loss and produced the conference's second-best third down defense (34.03 percent) according to cfbstats.
The reward for the Tigers is a trip to New Orleans for the Allstate Sugar Bowl, where they'll get to test their mettle against the potent Oklahoma offense.
The Bad: National Champion Florida State
I was on board with Florida State's earning its way back into the national spotlight over the holiday season under redshirt freshman quarterback Deondre Francois and winning its second national championship in four years.
The defense didn't progress the way I wanted (the early-season injury to safety Derwin James played a part of that), the offensive line was a big letdown, the wide receiving corps didn't develop how I expected and the blowout loss to Louisville in September proved the Seminoles weren't ready.
That doesn't mean it will stay that way for long.
Francois' first season as the starter will go a long way toward helping him take the next step, and head coach Jimbo Fisher's crew could be back quickly if it replaces some stars who likely are on their way out, including running back Dalvin Cook.
I swung and missed on Florida State, but it was still a good at-bat after the Seminoles finished 9-3 and earned an Orange Bowl berth.
The Ugly: J.T. Barrett for Heisman
For the second straight season, I picked Ohio State quarterback J.T. Barrett to win the Heisman Trophy.
It didn't go as badly as last year, when Barrett didn't even win the starting quarterback job coming out of fall camp, but it wasn't pretty either.
Barrett finished sixth in the Big Ten in passing (202.3 YPG) and eighth with seven yards per attempt, and he didn't develop as a passer with a full season as the starting quarterback like many—including myself—had hoped.
The bright side is that, as predicted, Barrett led his team to the College Football Playoff. Win some, lose some.
Quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. Statistics courtesy of CFBStats unless otherwise noted.
.jpg?w=480 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
