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Pete Fiutak
Q: The most overrated team going into 2005 is ...
A: From what I've read in early copies of several preseason publications and from various outside sources I've been talking to, you'd think the 2005 Michigan Wolverines were on the verge of winning the Super Bowl and not just the Rose Bowl.
Oh sure, Michigan will be in the mix for the BCS again. If you want to argue that Michigan might end up winning the Big Ten title with no Purdue on the slate and the season ending showdown with Ohio State in Ann Arbor, fine. But I'm not all that sold that this is the be-all-end-all team that many will be making it out to be over the next few months.
First of all, I'll believe it when I see if from the receiving corps without Braylon Edwards. Jason Avant is fantastic, but he's not Edwards. Steve Breaston could be the next Desmond Howard, but he has been a next-level kick returner so far, not a receiver. Will Chad Henne and Mike Hart be better than last year when they couldn't have possibly done more? No on Henne with no Edwards to throw to, and maybe on Hart. O.K., so both lines are tremendous and should carry the team far, but the defensive back seven should be worse than it was when we last saw Vince Young running through it.
So while I don't believe that this will be one of the five best teams in the nation, it should still win eight games without a problem beating Northern Illinois, Notre Dame, Eastern Michigan, at Wisconsin, Minnesota, Penn State, at Northwestern and Indiana. At Michigan State, at Iowa and Ohio State are the three question marks, but winning two of three isn't asking for much. Can Michigan really be overrated and finish 10-1? Absolutely.
Richard Cirminiello
Q: The most overrated team going into 2005 is ...
A: For this exercise, let’s agree to define “overrated” as a team that’ll finish the season at least a few rungs below their pre-season ranking. That’s not to suggest they suck or should be relegated to Division I-AA. Just overrated. Plenty of pundits have begun selling Florida State as a Top 10 team, but I’m not buying. The ‘Noles are plenty good by ACC standards, but no closer to their glory days of perennial national contention and Top 5 finishes than they were last year. The 2004 edition limped unimpressively to the end of the regular season thanks largely to an impotent offense that won’t be much better this year. The defense figures to be terrific, and will keep every game competitive, but, boy, does that offense have major question marks. A starting quarterback failed to distinguish himself in the spring, local HMOs are in the red thanks to the offensive line and the receivers haven’t been this pedestrian since the Burt Reynolds era. All that can easily be overcome against the ACC’s second division, but against the likes of Miami, Virginia and Florida, the lack of offensive balance will haunt them. And here’s the real kicker: Conference rookie Boston College is good. Real good. Good enough to beat the ‘Noles in Chestnut Hill in one of those upsets-that-aren’t-really-upsets, and represent the Atlantic division in the league’s first-ever title game.
Offensive coordinator Jeff Bowden will continue to be pariah in and around Tallahassee, and Florida State will lose at least three games for the fifth straight year, moving another step further from the days when the rest of the ACC was their personal sparring partner. If failing to win the conference crown used to be taboo, failing to even win the division is going to be viewed as sacrilege in 2005.
John Harris
Q: The most overrated team going into 2005 is ...
A: In years past, it was almost easy to pinpoint the team in the top ten that was severely overrated. Michigan State was easy pickings in 2002. Last year, it was West Virginia and even Florida did a free fall out of the top ten. This year, it doesn’t seem that easy to find that one team that is the most overrated, but for sake of answering the question, I’ve got to say the Iowa Hawkeyes. Now, what bothers me so much about this is the fact that I think Drew Tate is magnificent and his receiving corps is strong. The linebackers Abdul Hodge and Chad Greenway are tremendous, but there are two big, gaping holes that worry me. One, the running game. The buzz coming out of spring camp is that the running game has come around and should be able to produce at least 100 yards a game, which they couldn’t do last year. If the run game can’t get it going, teams are eventually going to find a way to stop Tate, even if it means that they play eight DBs all game long. The other personnel worry that I have is that the defensive line that changed the course of many games over the past few years has left the building, if you will. If you look at teams that lost one entire line or the other the past few years, you’d find it was tough sledding. Take for instance Washington State and Will Derting. Derting was incredible in 2003, but with his entire DL gone for 2004, he and WSU struggled immensely. Georgia experienced the same situation after the George Foster/Matt Stinchcomb OL departed after 2002. The last thing that can happen to Hodge and Greenway is for them to be cut off from scraping to the ball by DL who are being blocked right into them on a consistent basis. And, although the Big Ten doesn’t have too many huge potholes, the Hawks do go to Ames (Iowa State), Columbus (Ohio State), West Lafayette (Purdue) and Madison (Wisconsin). They also have Michigan coming to Iowa City, so they get the Big Two, not catching a schedule break as they did in 2002, when they didn’t have to face Ohio State. Kirk Ferentz has done a whale of a job turning this program around, and in a way, I hope that I’m wrong, but I see a lot for Iowa to overcome this season to be thinking about the Rose Bowl.
Matthew Zemek
Q: The most overrated team going into 2005 is ...
A: When you go down a certain path as a writer, you can't turn back until events conclusively smack you in the face. So, until Ohio State proves to have reliable, dynamic, disciplined skill position performers on the offensive side of the ball, I'll be a skeptic.
And please, let's not ascribe an agenda to this of any kind. This is a football-only observation based on the realization that one studly Michigan game does not make Troy Smith a can't miss superstar this season. Sure, Smith could easily be a breakout player in 2005--it would not be a surprise if that turned out to be the case.
But what I'm sensing is that Troy Smith's superstardom is perceived nationally as something of a foregone conclusion, and I'm making the not-very-controversial statement that we simply need to let events play out first. It is indeed well within the realm of possibility for Ohio State's talent to mesh under a man with superior coaching credentials in Jim Tressel, one of the very best in his profession.
Here's the core element of my message to Buckeye fans who might be very upset (it's unnecessary on a whole host of levels, folks) at this answer:
it's actually a great credit to Ohio State teams of past years--and to blood-and-guts legends such as Craig Krenzel, who didn't have half the raw athletic prowess of a Troy Smith--to not anoint the Bucks as the Big 10 favorites, let alone a top-tier national contender. The very history of Ohio State football in the past 15 years under John Cooper and Coach Tressel offers a very clear mosaic, a very well-defined motif, in which talent did not easily or readily translate into championships. The 2002 titleists were not more talented than some of John Cooper's very best and most loaded teams. But the '02 Bucks won with discipline, character, resiliency, belief, and classic gridiron values that coaches try to instill into all their teams. I need to see these values re-emerge at Ohio State after some rocky seasons, and I darn sure need to see these values in Troy Smith before I join the rest of the nation in seeing Ohio State as the Big Ten fave and a national title contender. 2004 was a very disjointed season in Columbus.
Craig Krenzel was not the starting quarterback. See a connection, folks? To not be sold on the '05 Bucks is actually the smartest, most sane way to honor the career and memory of Krenzel and all those other giants who gave the Buckeye football program its finest hour since 1968. Let's see OSU develop and mature into a well-rounded championship team before it happens.
As it stands right now, Iowa and Michigan have the PROVEN players. OSU still has to prove itself. Yes, that could very easily happen, but it hasn't happened yet, and I just want to be sober and sensible in saying that this Big 10 season will not be an automatic Columbus Coronation. Let's keep the hype in check--ironically enough, doing that very thing is precisely what will increase the chances of Troy Smith playing smart, consistent ball throughout 2005. So in the end, the best response to all this from Columbus just might be: let our players do the talking.
Indeed. What a smart answer that would be, and if OSU makes its loud statement against Texas and everybody else, more power to them. It would be a nice story of redemption and resilience if the Buckeyes bounced back in 2005. But let's see Troy Smith mature first. Let's see a lot of offensive players prove themselves in ways that Chad Henne, Mike Hart and Drew Tate already have done through their work in 2004.
