i never agreed with us being no.1. i couldn’t help but be reminded of the michigan team from last year that was preseason top 5 despite losing so many key players to the nfl. we beat that team in the big house, and they ended up going 6-6. now i’ve never thought that we’ll be anywhere near 6-6, but my expectations were never that we were going to be the best team in the country, especially not right out of the gate.
ive been an outspoken critic of preseason rankings, and a proponent of not even debuting the rankings until the first or second week of october, and these overhauled two-deeps for major programs who pump out nfl talent are a huge reason why. you don’t lose 25 nfl draft picks from your previous two teams, break in a new o line, new qb, rb coming off a missed season, new wr and te room, etc, and just say, “yeah that’ll still be the best team america.”
have we been disappointing? yes. that’s a solid, firm yes. but the folks out there who are extremely angry right now must have bought into that undeserved preseason hype, because imo this team has been mildly disappointing with lots of potential for growth, and not this hopeless, abject failure that so many others apparently see.