re: Auburn is the preseason favorite . . . why?

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There is no reason they should be ranked that high based off of last years results and what they lost/bring back.

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So who should be higher, and why?

I think most every team in the west has questions at certain positions that can bring doubt into the equation when talking about pre-season rankings. Look at bama. We know they'll have solid D play, but who will be their QB? Who replaces Cooper, who was something close to half of their passing yards. He was so much to their offense he will be very hard to replace. Sims had the year he did partly because of Cooper. Their DB's didn't play up to what we tend to think of when you think of bama DB's under Saban. Do they improve at all?


Malzahn has proven that his offense will work, pretty much no matter what. There are some outlier seasons - 2011 - but we had to replace our entire OL and had shitty QB options, but we've got better players at pretty much every position on offense now than we did in 2011.

It's all about the defense. We have tons of talent and one of the best DC's in the country. I don't think it's a stretch to assume an improvement on defense to go along with a more overall talented offense than we had the last probably 4 years.