College Football Playoff Party Crashers: Who Will Be This Year's Surprise CFP Teams?

Fox News

2 days ago

At least one team is going to break the system in 2025. It happens every year — a so-called nobody storms into the College Football Playoff race and sends shockwaves through the sport.
We saw it last year with Arizona State, Boise State, Indiana and SMU making the CFP after being excluded from the preseason AP Top 25 poll. Tennessee made the CFP last year after being picked to finish seventh in the conference.
So, who'll be this year's Arizona State, Boise State, Indiana, SMU or Tennessee? FOX Sports lead college football analyst Joel Klatt attempted to answer that question in the most recent episode of his podcast, "The Joel Klatt Show," picking one team from each of the Power 4 conferences most likely to play spoiler.
Following a 6-7 season in 2024, Washington has the strongest chance of the Big Ten teams ranked outside the preseason AP Top 25 to make a CFP run in 2025, according to Klatt.
"Nobody's talking about Washington, and Washington's got something cooking with Jed Fisch," Klatt said. "They went to a bowl game in his first season, and he basically had to start from scratch after Kalen DeBoer left."
To Klatt's point, only four players who recorded an offensive snap in Washington's loss to Michigan in the 2023 national championship game remained on the roster in 2024, according to The Athletic. As the Huskies have more stability entering 2025, Klatt said that they might have the best quarterback (Demond Williams Jr.), running back (Jonah Coleman) and wide receiver (Denzel Boston) in the Big Ten.
"Williams flashed in the bowl game, with over 400 total yards and five touchdowns against Louisville," Klatt said. "Coleman is one of the best backs in the league and Boston is a guy who could end up being, I think, one of the top three or four wide receivers in all the Big Ten.
"If you take Ohio State out of the equation, he would be in the mix as one of the best wide receivers in the Big Ten."
Defensively, Klatt is a fan of new defensive coordinator Ryan Walters, who had previous success in the same role at Illinois. He also loves Washington's home-field advantage, as the Huskies have won 20 straight games on their home turf. Three of their four toughest games are at home as well, playing host to Ohio State, Oregon and Illinois, while their game against Michigan is in Ann Arbor. Klatt does question if Washington's offensive line is good enough for it to make a surprise run, as the unit gave up the most sacks in the Big Ten last year. Still, he's "bullish" on the Huskies entering 2025.
"If they get any momentum whatsoever, protect their quarterback and protect their home field, this is a team that could absolutely be a 9-2 team hosting Oregon in the last week of the season. If they're in that boat, they could absolutely claim that if they win that game, they would go to the college football playoff."
Others considered: Nebraska, USC
Klatt considered Nebraska largely due to Matt Rhule entering his third year at the helm in Lincoln, citing the third-year improvements he made at Temple (six to 10 wins) and at Baylor (seven to 11 wins), but he didn't pick the Cornhuskers due to their defensive situation, losing defensive coordinator Tony White, along with defensive tackles Nash Hutmacher and Ty Robinson.
USC was also considered, with Klatt saying he liked the play out of quarterback Jayden Maiava at the end of the year. Maiava, who took over for Miller Moss, won three of the four games he started, including an upset win over Texas A&M in the Las Vegas Bowl, as he threw for 1,201 yards and six interceptions to go with 15 total touchdowns in the seven games he played. However, Klatt doesn't like USC's schedule, which includes matchups against Illinois, Michigan, Notre Dame and Iowa.
"I think that's a bar that's a bit too high for them to get over to that 10-win, 11-win mark," Klatt said.
While Missouri might have underwhelmed relative to expectations last year, Klatt thinks that the Tigers could overperform in 2025. They haven't named a starting quarterback yet, but Klatt is a fan of former Penn State QB Beau Pribula and thinks the defense "should be pretty good." However, what separates Missouri from the other contenders to be the best sleeper team in the SEC is its schedule.
"They hit the schedule lottery," Klatt said. "Teams from the SEC not on Missouri's schedule: Texas, Georgia, LSU, Florida, Ole Miss and Tennessee. The only school in the country to have six home games to start the year? Missouri. The toughest games are going to be Alabama and South Carolina, but those fall into the first half of the season at home. It also plays Texas A&M, which is later in the year at home as well.
"If Pribula, or whoever their quarterback is, hits, they're probably going to play quality defense and all they'll have to do is protect their home field. … I think they can be 7-1 going into November."
Others considered: Auburn, Oklahoma
Klatt considered picking Auburn to be his dark horse team in the SEC after a 5-7 season because the Tigers recorded the most starts by freshmen of any power conference team in 2024. He also likes the addition of quarterback Jackson Arnold to an offense that includes a pair of talented wide receivers (Cam Coleman and Eric Singleton Jr.), but he also thinks that asking Auburn to make the CFP in 2025 might be too tall an ask.
"That is a huge jump, and in particular in that conference, it's hard to make a jump because I think that the margin between the great teams in the SEC and the teams in the middle of the pack of the SEC are bigger than in most conferences," Klatt said.
As for Oklahoma, Klatt is also a fan of the moves it made on offense, hiring former Washington State offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle for the same role while adding signal-caller John Mateer and running back Jadyn Ott. In fact, Klatt said he'd probably pick Oklahoma to be his sleeper team in the SEC if its schedule wasn't so brutal.
"They've had a losing record two of the last three years, and now they face a schedule where their last seven games look like this: Texas (neutral site), at South Carolina, Ole Miss, at Tennessee, at Alabama, Missouri and LSU. C'mon, they went 2-6 in SEC play in their first year last year with largely the same type of schedule, and I think this one might even be more difficult."
Utah's 2024 season fell way short of expectations, going 5-7 after many predicted the Utes to win the Big 12. That isn't stopping Klatt from predicting them to be the top sleeper team in the conference in 2025, though.
"When nobody is talking about them, that is when they're at their most dangerous," Klatt said. "Coming off a season where they went 5-7, that was all injury-related for Kyle Whittingham, in particular at the quarterback position. They had to start four different quarterbacks during the year."
While Cam Rising is no longer a part of the mix for Utah at quarterback, it brought in former New Mexico quarterback Devon Dampier, who was named first-team All-Mountain West last year. He threw for 2,768 yards, 12 touchdowns and 12 interceptions to go with 1,166 rushing yards and 19 rushing touchdowns.
"They upgraded significantly at that position with New Mexico transfer Devon Dampier," Klatt said. "I think they'll be a little bit more of an RPO-style team, which will help their offensive line and run game."
Klatt also likes Utah's schedule, as all three of its games vs. teams ranked in the preseason AP Top 25 poll are at home.
Others considered: Baylor, Colorado, TCU, Kansas
Baylor received consideration due to its strong end to the regular season (six-game win streak), quarterback play (Sawyer Robertson threw for over 3,000 yards) and running back play (Bryson Washington; 1,028 yards, 12 touchdowns). But even though Klatt said that Robertson and Washington might make up the best QB-RB duo in the Big 12, he isn't a fan of its schedule. As for Colorado, having to replace Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter while trying to make the CFP is too much of an ask, Klatt said.
TCU received consideration because of quarterback Josh Hoover and its improved defensive play. However, Klatt cited a tough seven-game stretch as a reason for a possible setback for TCU. Finally, he's a fan of Kansas quarterback Jalon Daniels as well, but thinks the Jayhawks are too dependent on him.
Georgia Tech nearly pulled off one of the biggest upsets of the college football season last year, taking Georgia to eight overtimes. As Haynes King showed his toughness in that game, Klatt "loves" the quarterback and this team going into 2025.
"I thought deeply and for a long time about putting them in my top 25, and I just couldn't," Klatt said. "I liked the other teams there more. It's not that I didn't like Georgia Tech. Haynes King and Jamal Haynes, the running back, that's a really good combination. I love the fact that they can play with the best teams in the country.
"The way they played in Athens against Georgia last year is going to just always resonate in my mind. The play of King that night, the play of their defense, even though they have to get better on defense, they fought and scrapped. They had a big lead in that game."
As Georgia Tech opens the year at Colorado, Klatt believes that the Yellow Jackets have the opportunity to "put themselves on the map" if they win that game. If they do so, he likes their schedule the rest of the way.
"They get Clemson at home and Georgia on a neutral field," Klatt said. "That's a team that could easily go 10-2, and a 10-2 Georgia Tech team, in particular, with the way that they played Georgia last year and the opportunity to still play Georgia this year, how they play in [against Clemson and Georgia] games is going to matter."
Others considered: Louisville, Duke, Florida State
While Klatt likes the consistency of head coach Jeff Brohm and incoming transfer Miller Moss, he doesn't like Louisville's schedule, which includes matchups against Clemson, Miami (Fla.) and SMU.
"I don't know if a 10-win ACC team is going to cut it," Klatt said. "There will be a 10-2 SEC team. I know there will be a 10-2 Big Ten team. Those teams will not be playing for their conference championships, and they will get the benefit of the doubt over a 10-2 Louisville."
Duke also received consideration from Klatt thanks to head coach Manny Diaz, incoming quarterback Darian Mensah and its 16-3 home record over the last three seasons. Klatt thought about Florida State as well, but realized it has too long of a losing track record as of late.
"You realize that the 10-win seasons are actually the anomaly, the sub-.500 seasons are actually the rule," Klatt said of Florida State. "That's problematic."
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