But perhaps the biggest surprise of all... Notre Dame at #1.
I haven't had a chance to read through his latest magazine but his surprise teams section tends to be rather interesting. Stanford was his #3 surprise team last year (not that our final record necessarily surprised anyone) and his #1 surprise team in 2015 (when we really did surprise just about everyone). The other teams on the list go as follows:
2. Texas
3. Michigan State
4. Michigan
5. Stanford
6. USC
7. Florida State
8. Mississippi State
9. Boston College
10. TCU
11. Utah
12. South Carolina
To me, Utah and South Carolina are way too far down the list and Michigan State and Notre Dame are far too high. Can anyone really see either of those teams improving on their 9-3 so substantially that it comes as a surprise? Because at that point you're talking 11 or 12 wins and I'm having a hard time envisioning that with their brutal schedules.
FSU will be much improved, Texas should be as well. Each of those teams will definitely have the best opportunity to improve on last year's record seeing as how they each finished with 7 wins. Mississippi State and TCU both have that sleeper vibe and Michigan will probably make some noise in the Big Ten East with Shea Patterson and a boatload of starters back. The USC pick seems a bit curious to me. Perhaps he has them on there because everyone's going to be expecting a backslide and they may not necessarily regress much if their incoming talent (i.e.- Daniels & co.) is the real deal.
I feel like the only real reason we're on the list is because of the meltdown in the Alamo Bowl. That one game seemed to caused a lot of the national prognosticators to cool on Stanford's chances in 2018. Before that, we were riding the high of beating Washington, Notre Dame, and taking a Darnold-led USC down to the wire. Had we managed to hold on to our 21-point lead against the Horned Frogs, I have no doubt that we'd be coming in somewhere between 8-10 in all the preseason rankings. Instead, we choked our lead away, became yet another example of what was Pac-12 football mediocrity in 2017, and caused everyone to largely dismiss our chances in 2018.
I have yet to take a look at the rest of Phil Steele's magazine but I have a feeling he probably slots us #2 in the North behind Washington (along with just about everyone else in the business). Not expecting anything too shocking but I'll keep you guys posted as I work my way through his thesis of a preseason magazine.
I haven't had a chance to read through his latest magazine but his surprise teams section tends to be rather interesting. Stanford was his #3 surprise team last year (not that our final record necessarily surprised anyone) and his #1 surprise team in 2015 (when we really did surprise just about everyone). The other teams on the list go as follows:
2. Texas
3. Michigan State
4. Michigan
5. Stanford
6. USC
7. Florida State
8. Mississippi State
9. Boston College
10. TCU
11. Utah
12. South Carolina
To me, Utah and South Carolina are way too far down the list and Michigan State and Notre Dame are far too high. Can anyone really see either of those teams improving on their 9-3 so substantially that it comes as a surprise? Because at that point you're talking 11 or 12 wins and I'm having a hard time envisioning that with their brutal schedules.
FSU will be much improved, Texas should be as well. Each of those teams will definitely have the best opportunity to improve on last year's record seeing as how they each finished with 7 wins. Mississippi State and TCU both have that sleeper vibe and Michigan will probably make some noise in the Big Ten East with Shea Patterson and a boatload of starters back. The USC pick seems a bit curious to me. Perhaps he has them on there because everyone's going to be expecting a backslide and they may not necessarily regress much if their incoming talent (i.e.- Daniels & co.) is the real deal.
I feel like the only real reason we're on the list is because of the meltdown in the Alamo Bowl. That one game seemed to caused a lot of the national prognosticators to cool on Stanford's chances in 2018. Before that, we were riding the high of beating Washington, Notre Dame, and taking a Darnold-led USC down to the wire. Had we managed to hold on to our 21-point lead against the Horned Frogs, I have no doubt that we'd be coming in somewhere between 8-10 in all the preseason rankings. Instead, we choked our lead away, became yet another example of what was Pac-12 football mediocrity in 2017, and caused everyone to largely dismiss our chances in 2018.
I have yet to take a look at the rest of Phil Steele's magazine but I have a feeling he probably slots us #2 in the North behind Washington (along with just about everyone else in the business). Not expecting anything too shocking but I'll keep you guys posted as I work my way through his thesis of a preseason magazine.
