After looking at the remaining undefeated teams a few weeks ago, SMQ dives in to determine the most disappointing teams in each FBS conference.
As we head toward the end of October and get closer to the final month of the season, teams are going to begin scrambling to reach various goals. Some of the best teams in the country will be vying for one of the four College Football Playoff spots. Other teams will continue to jockey for position in conference races. There are those schools fighting to position themselves for a better bowl bid.
We’re not here today to talk about those types of teams, though, who by and large are at least meeting expectations. No, today’s Sunday Morning Quarterback has a different goal in mind. Today we’re going to look at those teams that came into the year with high expectations and have done everything possible to dash fans’ dreams in 2017.
Rather than going into a lot of introduction, let’s dive right in this week and look at those teams that have fallen flat on their goals this season. Keep reading for our picks of the most disappointing teams in each FBS conference in this week’s Sunday Morning Quarterback after eight weeks of the 2017 season.
Sun Belt: Georgia Southern
Georgia Southern wasn’t expected to be a contender in the Sun Belt this season, but the Eagles were picked to finish middle of the pack in the Group of Five conference. Instead, Tyson Summers has found no answers to get his team playing effectively, and the Eagles are the last winless team in the Sun Belt.
Nothing has really gone right for the Eagles in 2017. Only once in six games has Georgia Southern finished within 10 points of its opponent. That was a 35-27 loss to a New Mexico State team that is currently 3-4 on the year. In every other game, the Eagles have lost by double digits to their foes. They currently rank 128th out of 129 teams in the FBS in terms of red zone offense, and only two other teams are allowing more sacks per game.
Upon their arrival from the FCS ranks, Georgia Southern immediately made noise as they went 18-7 in two years with Willie Fritz at the helm. Once the coach left Statesboro to take over at Tulane, though, Summers took over and has failed to maintain the same level of play.
A dip in 2016 seemed as though it would be an anomalous event. Instead, one of the youngest teams in the FBS has played abysmal football. While teams like new member Coastal Carolina were expected to be bad in a transitional year, Georgia Southern should be established by this point. Instead, the Eagles continue to backpedal and will be lucky to win a single game in 2017.
Conference USA: Louisiana Tech
Last year, Louisiana Tech played in the Conference USA championship game for the second time in three seasons. While the Bulldogs lost to Western Kentucky in a 58-44 shootout, they entered the 2017 season as the overwhelming pick to take top honors in C-USA West once again. Now, title contention has taken a backseat to simply reaching bowl eligibility.
Through its first six games of the season, Louisiana Tech has gone from contender to pretender in a hurry. The Bulldogs have played little besides heart-stopping games throughout the course of the 2017 season, with four of their seven contests decided by a single score. Three of those games have been decided by a single point.
And Louisiana Tech has gone just 1-2 in one-point contests and 1-3 in one-score games. After losing a slew of talent, the Bulldogs simply haven’t been able to reload like many expected they would this season. Tech hasn’t been far off this season, as all the close games attest. But close won’t get the Bulldogs to a bowl game in 2017.
Through seven games, the Bulldogs have a sub-.500 record. Skip Holtz‘s team needs to win three of its last five just to become eligible for a bowl game this year. Louisiana Tech is already playing disciplined football as one of the least-penalized teams in the country, but they continue to fall short on the gridiron. That is why they represent C-USA on this week’s list of most disappointing teams.
MAC: Eastern Michigan
Eastern Michigan opened the season 2-0, and they were beginning to look like a legitimate challenger to the other directional Michigan schools and Northern Illinois in the MAC West. Instead, the goodwill from wins over Charlotte and Rutgers has collapsed with five straight losses by the Eagles.
Like Louisiana Tech, Eastern Michigan has been locked into close contests. But the Eagles simply cannot convert those opportunities into victories, and at some point one must chalk up such streaks of futility to something other than bad luck.
Eastern Michigan entered the season with one of the most veteran teams in the MAC, returning a group of players that accounted for more than 80 percent of the offensive yards generated and over 85 percent of the total tackles on defense in 2016. But those veterans have regressed from a 7-6 team that went to its first bowl game in three decades.
The defense has been solid enough, holding opponents under 20 points per game. But the offense has not been able to match that productivity. The Eagles are ranked 114th national, scoring only 20.3 points per game. Only twice have they topped 20 points, making the Eagles among the most disappointing teams of the season as they fell to 2-5 through eight weeks.
Mountain West: New Mexico
A year after challenging for the MWC Mountain crown, New Mexico entered 2017 with hopes of building upon that momentum. Instead, the Lobos are languishing in the cellar of the division. If they cannot right the ship and win three of their past five, the Lobos are in danger of missing out on the postseason for the first time since 2014.
New Mexico still boasts a top-20 rushing unit in the FBS, but they have struggled to convert that yardage into points. The Lobos currently rank 90th in the FBS as they score an average of 25.1 points per game. That is more than a point lower than what the defense is allowing, which is why the Lobos have been one of the most disappointing teams in the country this year.
From a shot at contending for the Mountain West crown and maybe even threatening to play a dark-horse role in the Group of Five race for a New Year’s Six bowl, New Mexico is now just struggling to reach any bowl game.
At 3-4 in the standings, the Lobos don’t have the worst record in the conference. But they are the only team in the Mountain division with a sub-.500 record in conference play. Exposed at this point as a pretender rather than a contender, New Mexico joins the list of the most disappointing teams of 2017 as the MWC representative.
American Athletic Conference: Cincinnati
In his first season at the helm, new Cincinnati head coach Luke Fickell was expected to at least turn a veteran team into a bowl participant. The Bearcats weren’t necessarily supposed to be conference contenders or a threat for the Group of Five title, but they were at least expected to hover around .500 and make it to the postseason.
Instead, Cincinnati now has to win all four of its final games just to get to six wins on the year. The Bearcats have squandered the talent around them, and they are currently being outscored by nearly two touchdowns per game by their opponents. Less than a decade removed from winning the Big East, the Bearcats have fallen completely off the map.
Fickell’s crew hasn’t done itself any favors, as they rank outside the top 100 in penalties. In five straight losses, the Bearcats have failed to play a disciplined game. That has proven costly after five straight losses.
Only one team in the MAC West has failed to claim a league win so far. For for the Bearcats, the inability to score with a decent offense on paper and the inability to stop teams on defense that has been wishful thinking for one of the most disappointing teams of 2017.
Independents: BYU
At the moment, there are just four independent teams in the FBS. One, Army, is a service academy hoping to go bowling for a second straight year. Another, UMass, is little more than a glorified FCS team merely trying to hang on for dear like any way that it can. Notre Dame is a perennial contender until their play takes them out of the race.
BYU was expected to push the Fighting Irish this season for the distinction of finishing as the best independent school. They were hoping to force their way into a New Year’s Six bowl game. Instead, BYU struggled to take down FCS Portland State in its season opener and has since failed to win another game.
Only once, in the Holy War defeat against Utah, has BYU lost by less than 10 points. In every other contest, whether against Power Five opponents like LSU and Wisconsin or Group of Five foes like Boise State and East Carolina, the Broncos have fallen by double digits.
Now 1-7 on the season, the Cougars are guaranteed to be watching the postseason from home while other teams play in bowl games. It was a surprising and sobering turn of events for a team slated by many to at least get to a bowl game in 2017.
Big 12: Baylor
Baylor was among the top teams in the Big 12 over recent seasons. The Bears lost some critical parts on both sides of the ball, but new head coach Matt Rhule found a team in complete disarray upon arriving in WACO. If institutional support was low at that point, imagine how things were before the College Football Playoff shifted its focus.
The Bears weren’t expected to contend at the top of the Big 12, but they were at least expected to reach an eighth straight bowl game. Now, Baylor is now officially out of the postseason after suffering its seventh loss of the year in Week 8. It has been a complete collapse that began right out of the gate.
First, Baylor was upset by FCS Liberty in the season opener. They followed that defeat up with a second non-conference loss against lower-tier competition, this time when UTSA dropped the Bears in Waco. Those two games set the tone for five more losses, first against Duke and then four straight to start Big 12 play.
The question is no longer whether Baylor can reach bowl eligibility after their most recent defeat against West Virginia this weekend. Now the focus shifts to whether one of the most disappointing teams of 2017 can claim at least one win before the end of the season.
Pac-12: Utah
Utah was supposed to be a contender for the Pac-12 South this season after threatening Colorado and USC in the division last year. The Utes brought back a skilled team, and then fortified it with several key transfers during the offseason. Kyle Whittingham had assembled a team capable of competing for and taking the division and possible the Pac-12 crown altogether.
Instead, Zach Moss has struggled to fill the shoes of Joe Williams in the backfield and Tyler Huntley has dealt with the growing pains of being a first-time starter at the college level. Utah could still reach the postseason without too much difficulty. But contending for the division is now out of reach barring a league-wide collapse in the Pac-12.
Unlike another recent addition to the league, Utah was not expected to experience the slump faced by Colorado. But they have experienced that fall from grace in some ways even harder than they did last year. Whether this was to be expected or unexpected, the Utes have generally struggled to put together any serious challenge in 2017 games.
A 3-0 start to the season seemed to herald that this was Utah’s year. Instead, the Utes crumpled once Pac-12 play started. Utah took down Arizona in its conference opener, but has now lost three straight to sit 1-3 in league play.
ACC: Florida State
Yes, Deondre Francois was injured in the season opener. But a team like Florida State is supposed to reload rather than rebuild, and it isn’t as though the Seminoles have failed to recruit talent at quarterback. But the loss of the Francois seemed to disrupt everything else in Tallahassee, turning Florida State from an ACC contender into an also-ran just struggling to reach a bowl game.
The Seminoles were picked to finish atop the ACC Coastal. Media members ranked them ahead of not only Louisville, which features defending Heisman winner Lamar Jackson, but also the defending College Football Playoff national champion Clemson Tigers. Instead, they are out of the conference race after stumbling against NC State, Miami, and Louisville already this year.
Instead of contending for the Coastal division, Florida State is now just in survival mode. New starting quarterback James Blackman has struggled between the tackles. He is one of the most-sacked passers in the college game.
Jimbo Fisher isn’t in danger of losing his job any time soon after bringing Florida State’s most recent national championship to Tallahassee. But even then, his Florida State team has been one of the most disappointing teams in the country right now.
Big Ten: Nebraska
Mike Riley‘s third season in Lincoln has been a disaster. Rather than challenging Wisconsin for supremacy in the Big Ten West, Nebraska has instead been blown out by both ranked teams they have faced so far. In back-to-back weeks, Wisconsin and Ohio State leveled the Cornhuskers with massive margins of victory.
In both cases, insult to injury came in the fact that both tough defeats came at home. That the losses were against teams ranked in the top 10 of the AP Top 25 is small consolation. Nebraska fell 38-17 to the Badgers, and stumbled 56-14 against the Buckeyes. Most importantly, both defeats came at home.
Teams have been able to get into the Cornhuskers backfield with reckless abandon while failing to generate much pressure on defense. The once-vaunted Blackshirts defense now ranks 109th in sacks created and 124th in tackles for loss. Because the front seven has struggled so much, opponents have been able to notch nearly 230 passing yards and over 165 rushing yards per game.
Just to reach the postseason, Nebraska has to win at least three of its final five games of the year. Three of those showdowns take place on the road, though that could be a blessing in disguise as the Huskers step away from the pressure cooker of Lincoln. Whether they reach a bowl game or not, Nebraska is the Big Ten representative among the most disappointing teams of the year.
SEC: Tennessee
Tennessee continues to underwhelm in a season where they were picked to finish third in the SEC East. Instead, Butch Jones has found himself sitting on an incredibly hot seat through the first few months of the year. After losing to Alabama on Saturday, the Volunteers find themselves under .500. Tennessee is staring at the possibility of missing the postseason altogether for their first time since 2013.
Frustrations came to a boil in Tuscaloosa. The Crimson Tide took full advantage of systemic issues with the Vols on both sides of the ball. A 3-1 start has now become an 0-3 record in conference play. There seems little that Jones and his staff will be able to turn things around in 2017. The roster isn’t going to be turned around completely, which is why
Tennessee leads the country in passing defense, holding opponents under 130 yards per game through the air. But that is deceptive, as the Volunteers have one of the worst rushing defenses in the country. And, as teams try to kill the clock after building a led on Tennessee, they have had less time to actually advance their candidacy for the conference.
Next: Projected Week 9 AP Top 25
To get to nine wins like they have the past few years, Tennessee would have to win every game left on the schedule. To get to bowl eligibility, the Vols will have to take down half the teams on a second-half schedule that features Kentucky, Missouri, LSU, and Vanderbilt along with Southern Miss from Conference USA.