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So NC is down to a G5 program, as well as a pair of P5 programs; including the one that you would normally expect to be bringing up the rear. 

#64 Duke Blue Devils

#10 in ACC

It’s hard to believe, but David Cutcliffe is entering his thirteenth season as the Duke head football coach, making him the dean of the ACC, and one of just 8 Power Five coaches to be at their current schools for over a decade.  He’s already the third longest tenured coach in school history, and just three years away from catching Wallace Wade, for whom Duke’s stadium is named after.  Granted his .476 winning percentage, and 76 wins, compared to Wade’s .742 and 110, suggest that name won’t be getting chiseled off any time soon.  Nobody is pretending Duke’s money base cares about football, but the fact that he’s getting a thirteenth year with a sub-.500 record is actually fairly remarkable, considering Dave Clawson at Wake Forest and Derek Mason at Vanderbilt (both hired in 2014), are the only other Power Five coaches with more than four years below .500.  In fairness, the Blue Devils have had a winning record in five of the past seven seasons, after having five in the previous thirty-eight, including none in the prior 18.

	KEY PLAYERS
WR	Damond Philyaw-Johnson, Junior
TE	Noah Gray, Senior
C	Jack Wohlabaugh, Senior
	.
DE	Victor Dimukeje, Senior
DE	Chris Rumph II, Junior
S	Marquis Waters, Senior

Wow - completely lost track of how long Cutcliffe has been at the helm. If you take out his first 4 losing seasons Cutcliffe is 57-47 over the last eight, and I think that’s the kind of record which Duke was hoping their patience would net. Not sure any other realistic hire could do much better. With that said, Duke has to be about my least watched, least followed P5 team these past 20 years. Yes, I watched Bama beat Duke to open last season, but before that? Maybe the Peach Bowl Vs Texas A&M (2013?).

The SEC is the only Conference that remains in double digits, with regards to number of teams not yet posted. And that will continue to be the case after their next one gets "put on the board."

So Mississippi (the state) is down to just one team. 

#62 Miami(Ohio) RedHawks

#1 in MAC

In winning their first MAC championship in nine years, and just their fourth since the end of a run of 12 in 30 years from 1948-1977, Miami(Ohio) was a year ahead of schedule, after Ohio was the unanimous preseason pick to win the division by the media.  They are also one of the odder conference champions of all time, finishing outside the top 100 in SP+, losing 6 games, going 0-4 in non-conference FBS games, losing by an average of 31.8 points, all by double digits, and being a -87 on the season in point differential.  But they went a perfect 5-0 in their division, a perfect 5-0 in one score games, was outgained four times in wins (despite not being an overall particularly fortunate turnover margin team), hit a 53 yard field goal in the waning minutes to upset Ohio, and closed on a 16-7 run to erase a second half deficit and upset Central Michigan in the MAC Championship.  So while it’s unlikely they’ll get all those breaks to go their way again, the talent this year looks to actually be perhaps the most in the conference.  A very young offense a year ago (which showed at times) is now one of the ten most experienced in the country, returning ten starters, including their starting quarterback, their two leading rushers, three of their four leading receivers, and their starting tight end; with an offensive line that returns a pair of senior All-MAC players.  Brett Gabbert, younger brother of NFL quarterback Blaine Gabbert, did fairly well for a true freshman, trying to deal with a struggling running game.  Gabbert had PWO offers from a number of Power Five schools, including his brother’s alma mater, Missouri.  However he took the full ride from Miami, and was able to contribute right off the bat, completing 63% of his passes with a pair of touchdowns in his first game, at Iowa.  And, as you would hope, he seemed to progress as the season went on, with his five highest passer ratings coming in the second half of the season, four of the five coming in November, or later.  Their 3.4 ypc was second worst in the conference though, so even getting that up to four should help quite a bit.  While they were a major positive in the close game luck, they were a clear negative on the injury luck front.  All five starting linemen missed at least a game; and both leading running back Jaylon Bester and leading receiver Jack Sorensen missed a quarter of the season.  Repeating is as much contingent on an experienced offense taking a step forward, as it is on the defense maintaining its level of play.  While there is less certainty there, they still do return seven starters from what was the third best defense in the MAC, in terms of SP+, and second in ypp allowed.  While linebackers play a reduced role in Spence Nowinsky’s scheme, which uses a base 4-2-5, the graduation of Myles Reid leaves a massive role in that spot, that struggled to find talent to pair with Reid last year.  Ryan McWood led the team in tackles, but PFF viewed as more of a beneficiary of Reid’s play, than of his own production.  Beyond that, Luke Boldin, who played in every game as a true freshman in 2019, but generated very little production, or incoming freshman C.J. Ware, who is Miami’s highest rated recruit, and had an offer from Louisville, might be the most solid options.  They do get the benefit of playing behind Kameron Butler, who might be the best defensive lineman in the MAC< finishing fourth in the conference with 14.5 tackles for loss last year.

	KEY PLAYERS
QB	Brett Gabbert, Sophomore
T	Tommy Doyle, Senior
C	Danny Godlevsky, Senior
	.
DE	Kameron Butler, Junior
LB	Ryan McWood, Senior
CB	Emmanuel Rugamba, Senior

#61 UCLA Bruins

#9 in Pac 12

In 2013, a book was published entitled The Tao of Chip Kelly: Lessons from America’s Most Innovative Coach.  That feels like a lifetime ago.  If Chip Kelly was at one time America’s most innovative coach, I think now his story is that he was first, not the best.  As more and more teams adopted and developed aspects of Kelly’s style, Chip himself has been passed by.  Granted the situation he inherited in Eugene was a whole lot more favorable, but in four seasons at Oregon, he went 46-7, with a BCS Championship Game appearance, four consecutive BCS bowls, and three Pac 12 titles.  It took him just 9 games to pile up 7 losses in Westwood, and he sits at 7-17 after two years, with the first consecutive bowl-less seasons for the Bruins since 1989 and 1990.  He’s now staring at UCLA’s worst three year stretch since going 10-20 from 1962-1964, and at least that stretch included bookend Rose Bowl seasons in 1961 and 1965.  He has plenty of returning starters, but is short on returning stars, losing all six players to garner any sort of postseason honors a year ago.  There was also plenty of roster shuffling through the transfer portal, simply continuing what has been a fairly volatile roster situation during Kelly’s two years.  The Bruins had 13 players exit, but brought in four players, including three instant impact Power Five transfers.  The most important is probably Duke transfer Brittain Brown, who was originally a strong prospect from Georgia, with a Clemson offer, received a transfer offer from Wisconsin (who knows a thing or two about running backs), and was an academic All-ACC player, but suffered a season ending injury a year ago.  The Chip Kelly offense isn’t going to work with 3.7 ypc, and that was with a likely future NFL Draftee in Joshua Kelley.  Kelley got over 1,000 on a fine 4.6 ypc, but the fact that he’s an NFL player shows just what a mess this run game actually was.  The rest of the team combined averaged just 61.8 ypg on 2.8 ypc.  Part of the problem was starting three first time starter underclassmen on the offensive line, including a pair of TRUE freshmen on the left side in tackle Sean Rhyan and Duke Clemens.  Even though starting right guard Chris Murray departed for Oklahoma, you would think the line should be substantially improved.  If Dorian Thompson-Robinson continues to improve, and you mix in impact freshman Kyle Phillips, with incoming freshman receiver Logan Loya, there is the making of what could finally be a good offense.  And they’ll have to be, because the defense is still going to be an absolute mess, particularly the secondary.  Cornerback Darnay Holmes going pro made a bad situation worse.  Bringing in Obi Eboh from Stanford helps, and the Bruins also added Qwuantrezz Knight from, wait for it, Kent State.  The strength of the unit is certainly up front, led by Osa Odighizuwa, who led the team in tackles for loss.  But not just him, all three starters return, and all six players from the two deep.  The massive 340 pound Otito Ogbonnia is the ideal nose tackle, but that is seemingly just not a spot where underclassmen, used to relying on pure size, tend to thrive.  I’m expecting a massive jump out of him going into his junior year, and it would not surprise me if he leaves early after the season for the NFL.

	KEY PLAYERS
QB	Dorian Thompson-Robinson, Junior
WR	Kyle Phillips, Sophomore
T	Jake Burton, Senior
	.
DE	Osa Odighizuwa, Senior
LB	Leni Toailoa, Senior
S	Stephan Blaylock, Junior

#60 Florida Atlantic Owls

#3 in Conference USA

The whirlwind Lane Kiffin experience is over, and the next couple years will help shed some light on just exactly what he left behind.  He certainly upgraded the talent, maybe overlooked some red flags, and made it the “cool” Florida mid-major, even while UCF was winning national championships*, but perhaps aided by USF’s struggles, filling that void.  If nothing else, what Kiffin did was create a brand, create a niche, where FAU could succeed.  The challenge facing new coach Willie Taggert is to maintain that brand.  What makes it easy is that like Lane Kiffin, he’s a still relatively young coach who burned out at multiple higher profile jobs.  He can sell kids on this being their second chance to make right, because he, like Kiffin, was living that.  The early returns suggest that it is exactly what Taggert intends to do, bringing in transfers from power five schools, including Clemson and Florida State.  That’s the type of talent Kiffin brought in, for the second time in three years, the Owls had multiple players leave early for the NFL.  The offense brings back former Oklahoma player Chris Robison, the best quarterback in the conference, but the surrounding talent looks quite thin.  Their dynamic two tight end offense from a year ago got a boost by John Raine getting an additional year.  He’s no Harrison Bryant, who won the Mackey Award as the nation’s top tight end, and might be the first tight end off the board in the NFL Draft, but I’m not sure what this passing game would look like without either of them.  They are going to be relying heavily on the aforementioned transfers, with four new receivers coming in to join John Mitchell and Willie Wright.  I’d expect the offense to be a lot more open, to take advantage of Robison’s experience, and the sheer number of options he’ll have to throw the ball to.  The beneficiary of that might be Malcolm Davidson, who led the conference with 7.0 ypc, but missed all of four games, and parts of others, limiting him to just 102 carries.  That was still good for the 7th best ypc in the nation among qualified backs, but a full healthy season could put him in the Doak Walker discussion.  For comparison, the other backs who got at least 50 carries for the Owls (James Charles, Larry McCammon III, Nick Tronti and B.J. Emmons) averaged just 4.4 ypc, lest you think he was just running behind an elite line.  There was that big of a gap between him and their other options.  Jim Leavitt, who was the head coach at South Florida from 1997-2009, and served as Taggert’s defensive coordinator at Oregon in 2017 was brought in as defensive coordinator, but you wonder if he looks at the roster, particularly the front seven, that looks totally depleted.  Five players from the front seven are for sure gone, and the status of Akileis Leroy, probably the team’s best linebacker, is still unknown.  He was suspended for the Boca Raton Bowl for academic reasons, and was not listed on the team’s spring roster.  He indicates on his social media accounts that he is still a member of the team, but a fairly cryptic recent update was simply “#FAU21”.  I’m not sure entirely what that means, but it perhaps indicates a full year academic suspension, with a 2021 return?  Just anecdotally it seems like the number of kids who return to a team, roughly 21 months after their last game, due to an academic suspension, is nearly zero.  But either way that doesn’t help a team that lost 57% of its defensive production, tenth most nationally, most in the front seven.  The secondary, even with cornerback James Pierre leaving early for the Draft, is on solid ground, led by Meiko Dotson, whose 9 interceptions led the nation.

	KEY PLAYERS
QB	Chris Robison, Junior
TE	John Raine, Senior
G	Desmond Noel, Senior
	.
LB	Hosea Barnwell V, Senior
CB	Meiko Dotson, Senior
S	Zyon Gilbert, Senior