Alabama Football: A deep dive into CFB’s top 25 for 2020

Minnesota started ‘rowing the boat’ in 2019 and 2020 is looking even better. The defense which was strong in 2019 loses a good amount of starters, but the offense returns almost everyone. Minnesota gets their signal-caller, Tanner Morgan, back which will be the key for the Gophers in 2020. Morgan was electric last season especially down the stretch, accumulating a TD-INT ratio of 30-7. The Sophomore completed 66 percent of his passes for over 3,200 yards and earned a 178.7 passer rating. Good for fourth in the country behind Joe Burrow, Jalen Hurts, and Justin Fields. Pretty good company. The offensive line remains intact to protect Morgan and he gets most of his weapons back. The Minnesota offense will be tough to stop in 2020, but they are playing in a tough BIG-10 conference. The good news is they don’t have Penn State or Ohio State on their regular-season schedule. Their toughest tests will be Wisconsin and Michigan who they get in back-to-back weeks. Outside of those two weeks, the Gophers are likely to be favored in most, if not all, of their other regular-season games. P.J. Fleck is building something special in Minneapolis.

Kirby Smart and Georgia are going to have to replace players at almost every level of both sides of the ball in 2020. The only position group that doesn’t lose any starters is WR. Swift? Gone. Fromm? Gone. Mays? Transferred. Crowder? Gone. Reed? Gone. If Georgia is going to remain competitive in a suddenly wide-open SEC East they will need to fill these needs fast, because they are traveling to Tuscaloosa to face Alabama football in Week 3. The Alabama Crimson Tide is sandwiched in between four tune-up games against Virginia, East Tennessee State, Vanderbilt, and UL-Monroe before the tough part of Georgia’s schedule begins against Auburn. Their October-November stretch is brutal. That part of the schedule is Auburn,  at Missouri, Florida (neutral site), at SCAR, Tennessee, and at Kentucky before the regular-season finale against Georgia Tech. Now that Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Florida are all on the rise Georgia will have to fight to maintain their stranglehold on the SEC East.

Speaking of the Gators, I believe they will take over the SEC East in 2020. Although they lose a lot of weapons on offense, they return Kyle Trask who is arguably the best returning QB in the SEC. Trask had a magnificent campaign in 2019 after taking over for the injured Feleipe Franks. Florida does get a good chunk of their defensive starters back. Which will be big for a defense that was one of the best in the SEC in 2019. If Trask can repeat what he did in 2019 and the defense shows improvement, the Florida Gators will be your SEC East champion in 2020. Dan Mullen has a good team at Florida and if he continues recruiting well he will have Florida back to being a perennial powerhouse soon.

People are sleeping on the Texas A&M Aggies in 2020. Not only are they returning 8/11 starters on both offense and defense, but their schedule gets substantially easier than it has been the past two seasons. No more Clemson on the schedule and no Georgia or Florida for the cross-division opponent. The non-conference schedule is Abilene Christian, Colorado, North Texas, and Fresno State. Three gimme games and a relatively easy contest against Colorado. The cross-division games this year are Vanderbilt and South Carolina. Again, both easily winnable games. There is a good chance that if Texas A&M gets past Auburn in October that they will be 10-0 when they head to Tuscaloosa to face Alabama football on November 21st. This is the year Jimbo Fisher has been waiting for. They are a dark-horse candidate for the College Football Playoff and certainly are in a position to compete for the SEC West title.

I was very high on Wisconsin for all of 2019. I’ll admit that I was let down by the Badgers as the season progressed. I named them a contender for the College Football Playoff and they were promptly dismantled by Ohio State the following week. I am still a believer in Wisconsin going into 2020. They return almost the entire defense which was one of the best in the nation in 2019. The question marks on offense are on the O-line and at RB. However, those are both positions that Wisconsin has historically been excellent at recruiting. They do return their starting QB, but losing Jonathan Taylor at RB is still a huge blow. They will need to find a more consistent passing game in 2020 to be competitive in the BIG-10, but they have the players in place to be great. Defense is always a good thing to hang your hat on and they will have a great one in 2020. That is why I have the Badgers here at number six.