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We just ran a post headlining how terribly things are going at Michigan, explaining how Michigan’s at least 18 points worse than it is last year, but the number’s probably a lot bigger than that. If you’re interested, here’s a link. The bottom line is that the same Sherrone Moore who refused to outsmart himself last season is reacting to a nuclear meltdown by throwing more uranium into the pot.
That 18 points number comes from Movelor, our model’s rating system. It’s actually 18.4. 16.4 points is how much better Movelor thought Michigan was coming into this season. That 16.4-point underperformance is the largest underperformance in the country. Some of the issue is that Movelor valued Michigan too highly in the preseason. But it wasn’t that far ahead of the industry (this team was ranked ninth in the preseason AP poll, which is usually fairly predictive), and like we said above, the number’s probably worse than 16.4 points.
While checking the number, we checked everybody else’s number as well. We were curious who’s underperformed and overperformed Movelor’s expectations the most. Here’s what we found. We’ll go through the top five in each category within the FBS, then drop in a few other notable teams.
Underperformers
1. Michigan: –16.4 points since preseason
2. Air Force: –15.8 points since preseason
Bill Connelly looks at roster turnover each offseason through the lens of how much production each team returns. I’m not sure how accurate his number was for Air Force on May 21st, since he noted Air Force hadn’t released its full roster yet, but my guess is that it was fairly accurate, and given it was eight percentage points lower than anybody else’s (25%, the next-lowest was 33%), it probably doesn’t matter exactly how accurate it was. Air Force probably returned less production this year than anyone else in the country. This didn’t have to be the final word about their season—that next-lowest returning production number belonged to UL Monroe, who’ll feature in our overperformers section—but Air Force doesn’t exactly mine the transfer portal. It’s a rebuilding year for 18th-year head coach Troy Calhoun.
3. Troy: –15.8 points since preseason
From Troy Calhoun to Troy University. Troy won the Sun Belt last year, and they did it with a second-year head coach, a second-year offensive coordinator, and a first-year defensive coordinator. That staff was green, but it’s now Green Wave. All three of those guys are at Tulane.
That now-departed head coach—Jon Sumrall—also won the Sun Belt in his first season at Troy, so it’s not like a new head coach is a guarantee of a step backwards. In fact, one of our attempted offseason adjustments to Movelor was a “new head coach” variable, and it backfired in testing. If anything, we found most programs got a first-year head coach bounce.
But, like roster turnover, coaching turnover increases variability. The best way to adjust for this would probably be to make Movelor react more dramatically to early-season results when there’s a lot of turnover in either department. To be honest, I’m not sure we’ll pull that off in the near future. Regardless, Troy stinks in Gerad Parker’s first year as a head coach. Maybe it’ll work out in the long run, but right now, Troy stinks.
4. Florida State: –15.6 points since preseason
What’s most puzzling about Florida State being so bad is that they were bad right away. They opened the season losing to Georgia Tech and Boston College. A lot of times, a hyped team who becomes bad gets there by spiraling as the year goes on. Some spiraling may be occurring now, but the team got a head start, and those first two games remain fairly inexplicable. Florida State’s returning production number wasn’t that bad. They have a lot of talent. My best theory is that, spoiled by Jordan Travis, Mike Norvell and his staff failed to build a gameplan and offense that worked for their quarterback room, and that the spiral then began on top of that. That’s just a theory. Anyway, we’ll beat ourselves up for our model overestimating Michigan, Air Force, Troy, and more teams on this list. We will not beat ourselves up for the FSU overestimate. I still don’t really get how it got this bad.
5. Arizona: –11.7 points since preseason
First, notice the gap from those first four to these guys. We’re getting away from the real outliers. Second, I’m about to blame the media.
After the “new head coach” adjustment failed, we turned to an adjustment based on the preseason AP poll. It helped a little in backtesting. It didn’t help enough with Arizona. This program returned a lot of key figures from last year’s team, but last year’s team was a big surprise, and the head coach—Jedd Fisch—left, as did the defensive coordinator. Maybe we should have turned to betting markets, but that always feels like cheating.
7. NC State: –11.0 points since preseason
NC State might have been in our preseason top 25 even without the preseason AP poll adjustment, but it’s worth remembering that this team was ranked in the preseason and that their game against Tennessee was supposed to be a marquee affair. Dave Doeren’s coaching his twelfth season in Raleigh. Grayson McCall was a folk hero at Coastal Carolina. The program had solid continuity and added a strong quarterback. I would love someone who knows NCSU better than I to explain what’s gone wrong.
(Edit: I am aware of the McCall injury. It was going badly before that too, though!)
9. Appalachian State: –9.4 points since preseason
Movelor wasn’t as high on App State as a lot of individuals in the blogosphere were, individuals I think looked at how likable App State is and how big their game against JMU was last year and neglected the fact that last year’s team lost five times. Still: The Mountaineers have been a major disappointment, and they were even before Hurricane Helene devastated Appalachia. As with NC State, I’m a little lost on this one. How are they this bad?
FCS 1. Furman: –14.9 points since preseason
Furman lost quarterback Tyler Huff to Jacksonville State, but Huff wasn’t amazing last year, and freshman Trey Hedden hasn’t been terrible. Some of this is probably Movelor undervaluing offseason regression towards the mean (last year’s team came together really well), but it’s still a little shocking to see Furman so bad after testing Montana on the road in last year’s playoffs.
FCS 2. Northern Iowa: –11.5 points since preseason
UNI…what have you become? The Panthers’ grip’s been slipping, but we’ve chalked that up to how hard their schedule always is, often including an FBS team and a strong Big Sky opponent recently in addition to the gauntlet which is the MVFC slate. This year, things might really be falling apart? Maybe this is more about how UNI loses. All five of their defeats—to Nebraska, Hawaii, South Dakota State, South Dakota, and North Dakota, a very tough list for even a great FCS squad—have come by at least 24 points. Maybe UNI’s just falling apart once things go bad in a given. game? It’s an interesting theory, but usually, big losses are telling, and with UNI’s offense often quite weak, the likelier explanation is that the defense just can’t keep up the way it usually does.
Overperformers
Shifting to the happier end of the table:
1. Indiana: +13.5 points since preseason
Indiana’s absolute change isn’t as large as Michigan’s, Air Force’s, or Troy’s, which makes us wonder if Movelor maybe isn’t undervaluing the Hoosiers as much as we’ve sometimes feared. (Movelor currently rates the Hoosiers only the 24th-best team in the country.) Time will tell, though, and regardless of where Movelor rates these guys now, hats off to Curt Cignetti, who kept a lot of good pieces in Bloomington, brought in a healthy dose of his best guys from JMU, complemented them with other transfer portal acquisitions, and then managed to make things click. That last piece is the hardest part. That last piece is rare. It suggests Cignetti was getting the “right” guys, not just the best guys.
2. UL Monroe: +13.2 points since preseason
We mentioned the Warhawks above. Here they are! Their only loss came to Texas in Austin. They’ve beaten James Madison and Troy, possibly last year’s Sun Belt’s best teams (we’ve mentioned Troy already, of course). UAB declined to make Bryant Vincent their head coach after Vincent’s strong interim performance in 2022, a season which followed Bill Clark’s health-related summer retirement. In his debut year at ULM, Vincent is making UAB look like idiots. If Movelor isn’t still undervaluing these guys, a reckoning is coming, with games remaining against Auburn and four of the Sun Belt’s five best teams. If it is still undervaluing them, ULM could conceivably win this conference. They’re tied for the lead in the West Division right now.
3. Colorado: +11.6 points since preseason
Coach Prime! We are admittedly surprised. We thought Colorado would have even more off-field drama this year, that Shedeur Sanders would quit halfway through the year to protect his draft stock, and that Deion Sanders would leave this offseason and start some NIL agency which would later be the subject of fraud allegations.
Four games into the season, this plot was still the most believable. Nebraska bodied the Buffs, the Buffs looked unimpressive against Bison and Rams, and for as thrilling as the comeback win was against Baylor, Baylor was quite the mess heading into that weekend. Since that Hail Mary, though, Colorado’s whacked UCF and Arizona on the road and played Kansas State to the wire at home. Things are going really well in Boulder. For real this time. Off-field distractions are still a risk (I’m not sure Travis Hunter’s comments on Ashton Jeanty were treated fairly, given the nature of the question he was asked), but for the moment, this looks like a real football program, and a good one at that.
(Kansas State, along with Ohio State, Kentucky, Stanford, and Southeastern Louisiana, has seen its Movelor rating change by less than a twentieth of a point this season.)
4. Nevada: +11.2 points since preseason
The Wolfpack are down, but the Wolf Pack are up. First-year head coach Jeff Choate, the initial architect of Montana State’s surge before he left Bozeman for a three-year stretch as a Texas assistant, has good things going in Reno. This team might only be 3–5, but four of their five losses have come by one possession, they beat Oregon State, and they’re one upset win away from being likelier than not to make a bowl. This, after consecutive 2–10 seasons under Ken Wilson.
5. BYU: +11.0 points since preseason
6. Navy: +11.0 points since preseason
7. Army: +10.5 points since preseason
We’re grouping these three together, since I think that they, alongside Indiana, would receive early mention from fans asked about the season’s biggest surprises. We’re at the point in the curve where I wouldn’t expect these ratings to imply additional gains going forward—Movelor has probably found the ballpark on everyone behind ULM on this overperformers list—but the important thing about each of these teams this year is that they just keep winning. In some ways, it doesn’t matter who you beat as long as you’re winning football games. These teams keep doing it, with Bryson Daily’s Heisman-worthy first half leading Army, first-year offensive coordinator Drew Cronic transforming Navy, and Kalani Sitake recapturing that 2020 BYU magic. We mentioned this a little earlier today, talking about 2019 LSU, but vibes can do something in college football. Belief…motivation…all that stuff matters. Sometimes, teams are clicking. Their ceilings usually only go so high (2019 LSU was a rare intersection of unreal talent and a fully aligned program, mentally), but there’s no one in the Big 12 whom BYU can’t beat.
FCS 1. McNeese: +13.5 points since preseason
Last, a nod to McNeese, who stopped covering the spread every single week but has come a long way from last year’s 0–10 mark. Gary Goff had a very good two seasons at Valdosta State. Valdosta State’s a little bit of a Division II powerhouse, but maybe McNeese has something, with Goff now in his third year. If that’s the case, it’ll happen at a good time for the university, with Will Wade bringing a lot of attention to the men’s basketball program.
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We’ve got some meaningful Conference USA action tonight, even if both games are expected to be blowouts. Liberty and Jacksonville State are, alongside Western Kentucky, in the midst of what’s probably a three-team race for the conference title. Each is favored by three scores this evening, but we can learn things from margins, and when teams play on Wednesdays after two weeks off, there’s a lot of uncertainty attached.
One week ‘til good Tuesday Night Football (Texas State vs. Louisiana). One week ‘til good Wednesday Night Football (Liberty vs. Jacksonville State). Two weeks ‘til MACtion.
We’ll have the Week 9 preview up tomorrow.
Bark.
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