May 3, 2022

  • Marking SchlabachESPN Senior Writer

    Shut

    • Senior college football author
    • Author of seven books on higher football
    • Graduate of the University of Georgia

Leap do is over. The NFL typhoon has come and gone.

Higher football game is headed to its offseason, which once meant exactly that, though not anymore.

Lord's day was the deadline for entering the transfer portal and nevertheless being eligible for this upcoming season. More than 2,000 players entered the portal during the 2021-22 schoolhouse yr, and not all of them accept (or volition) find new homes. At that place will be plenty of roster turnover betwixt at present and September, including some more big names.

Earlier we get to what happens next, though, let'south evaluate what we just saw. New coaches similar LSU'south Brian Kelly, Notre Dame's Marcus Freeman, Oklahoma's Brent Venables and USC's Lincoln Riley were under the spotlight this spring, and all of them will confront lofty expectations this fall.

Here's a batch of overreactions to this spring.

Georgia lost too much talent to go back to the CFP

Georgia ended a 41-year drought without a national championship this past flavor, and if you watched concluding calendar week's NFL typhoon, it's easy to understand why.

The Bulldogs had 15 players selected in the draft, the most by any team during the current vii-round format, which started in 1994. Georgia set some other record when information technology had v defensive players selected in the showtime round, including No. 1 pick Travon Walker.

So, with so many players leaving for the NFL, the Bulldogs have to slide pretty far dorsum, correct? Probably non. While they'll take to reload much of the front 7 on defense, the Bulldogs have plenty of talent returning to win the SEC Eastward again.

Quarterback Stetson Bennett IV should be better after getting a full offseason and preseason camp working as the No. 1 quarterback. He had limited reps in do earlier replacing JT Daniels last flavor. There are areas to ameliorate, even for a 24-twelvemonth-former who is almost to play his 5th season at Georgia.

"Brand better decisions," Bulldogs charabanc Kirby Smart said of his QB this spring. "We were late over the heart a couple of times with assurance and tardily in the season. He would be the first to tell you he didn't play perfect. He made some really practiced plays for united states with his feet, with his legs, with his controlling, only you just wanna take out some of the os-head throws, some of the os-caput mistakes that he has made from time to time.

"It'due south piece of cake for him to say he didn't have the opportunity to correct those mistakes because the guy was taking [third-team reps] at this fourth dimension last year. He wasn't getting a lot of reps, he got a lot of work fast and we still feel similar he is still showing progress."

Georgia will bring dorsum All-American tight end Brock Bowers and added former LSU transfer Arik Gilbert, who looked adept in spring action starting at receiver earlier moving back to tight end. Offensive tackle Broderick Jones could be a potential get-go-round pick in the 2023 NFL typhoon.

Georgia might have at least three more first-rounders on defence force: tackle Jalen Carter, outside linebacker Nolan Smith and cornerback Kelee Ringo.

"They might have three or four NFL players on defense force next season, instead of five or six," one SEC head coach said. "They've still got more than almost everyone else."

The Bulldogs might not be every bit dominant equally they were in 2021, when they went unbeaten in the regular flavour and defeated Alabama 33-18 in the CFP National Championship Presented past AT&T. But they don't play Alabama or Texas A&M in the regular season; route games at South Carolina, Mississippi State and Kentucky might be their biggest challenges.

It would be a big surprise if Georgia isn't back in the SEC championship game.

What Lincoln Riley is doing at USC is wrong

Pittsburgh omnibus Pat Narduzzi is reportedly upset that star receiver Jordan Addison might be headed to USC via the transfer portal. According to ESPN'southward Pete Thamel, Pitt officials suspect that tampering might take occurred. Addison and Trojans quarterback Caleb Williams, formerly at Oklahoma, are both from around Washington, D.C.

Information technology'southward easy to sympathise why Narduzzi is mad. He took a player that wasn't even ranked in the ESPN 300 in 2020 (Addison was ranked the No. 12 prospect in Maryland by ESPN Recruiting) and helped him develop into Pitt'south all-time receiver since Larry Fitzgerald. Final season, Addison won the Biletnikoff Award afterward catching 93 passes for 1,479 yards with 17 touchdowns.

Now, thanks to a potentially lucrative Naught deal, Addison might leave for USC or some other higher football blueblood. With the existing transfer and NIL rules, Addison won't be the merely previously overlooked star player to leave for greener pastures.

But Riley isn't doing anything wrong. He was lured from Oklahoma to transform the Trojans into the national power they were under Pete Carroll. The USC roster needed a massive rebuild, and Riley has already added 15 players through the transfer portal, including Arizona Country linebacker Eric Gentry and Ohio Country safety Bryson Shaw just last week.

Back in Dec, when Riley was asked about the transfer portal, he said, "I'd say we're open up for business organization on all accounts."

Riley is only playing past the rules, or at to the lowest degree what is left of them in the Cypher era.

"It's NFL free bureau without any rules," one Power five coach said. "It's nuts."

Texas volition be able to compete in the SEC

While last week'south NFL draft might have been a celebration for Georgia, it was an indictment for Texas, which will presently exist competing confronting the Bulldogs in the SEC.

For the first time since 2014, the Longhorns didn't have a single player selected in the typhoon. Chattanooga, Fayetteville State, Fordham, Jackson State, Lenoir-Rhyne, Ouachita Baptist and Southern Utah had at to the lowest degree i histrion selected. Montana State, N Dakota Land and South Dakota Land had two.

Even worse: There were 32 players drafted who attended Texas high schools. None of them played for the Longhorns.

While Texas is coming off a 5-7 campaign, in which information technology lost half-dozen sequent games in coach Steve Sarkisian'southward first season, the NFL typhoon shutout is more than of an indictment of the coach he replaced, Tom Herman. Almost of the players in this year's draft class were part of the 2018 and 2019 recruiting classes during Herman'due south tenure.

Information technology's sadly nothing new for the Longhorns. Whether it is because they're missing on recruiting evaluations or failing to develop players, their once-steady pipeline to the NFL has stale up. They haven't had a first-round pick since 2015 (defensive tackle Malcom Chocolate-brown to the Patriots). Quarterback Vince Young was the last offensive player taken in the beginning round -- in 2006.

Terminal month, Sarkisian told reporters that fifth-yr defensive lineman Moro Ojomo would not exist talking to the media "for a while" afterward his disquisitional comments nigh the team's culture.

Among other things, Ojomo said his teammates were "eighteen- to 22-year-olds that want to chase women, want to hunt coin, desire to chase alcohol and they don't see the futurity."

"They're distracted by what'due south in front end of them," Ojomo said. "It's such a difficult affair, specially guys that haven't been in a winning civilization. They're ever talking well-nigh coming in hither and irresolute stuff. It's like ingrained. You're uprooting, what? Ten years of southward--- that's simply been let go."

Maybe Sarkisian should make Ojomo a team helm.

Nebraska is in adept hands

Information technology might be difficult to decipher which is worse: Nebraska existence penalized for using besides many coaches during a iii-v campaign in 2020, or the NCAA actually penalizing the Cornhuskers for having an analyst coaching players during practices and film sessions with everything else going on in collegiate athletics.

Nonetheless, Nebraska coach Scott Frost was hit with a i-twelvemonth show cause order and a v-24-hour interval break on Mon. He'll have to serve it during the "championship segment" of the upcoming season. I'll await for you lot to stop laughing.

It's not what y'all might be thinking. A championship segment, as defined by NCAA rules, is "when competition is conducted in which results are counted for postseason pick." Then, essentially, Frost will have to sit down out v days at some point during the upcoming season.

Frost's mistake was hiring a senior graduate analyst, Jonathan Rutledge, to jitney special teams, instead of having a full-time banana or group of administration piece of work with the specialists. In 2020, the Cornhuskers ranked 95th in the FBS in punt average, 105th in punt coverage, 94th in kickoff returns and 87th in kickoff coverage.

Frost, who is fifteen-29 every bit coach of his alma mater, is working with a restructured contract in 2022. He'll be making $four million this flavour, instead of the previous $5 million, and his buyout was reduced from $15 million to $7.five million. If the Cornhuskers improve this season, his bacon would return to $v million if the squad "achieves metrics mutually agreed to."