Who’ll be in college football’s new class of overachieving teams?

Are we seeing a changing of the guard among programs that field elite teams despite not recruiting at championship levels?

Oregon, Stanford, Michigan State, Baylor, and TCU.

Every year when I present my Blue-Chip Ratio piece, laying out which programs have recruited well enough to win a national title, those five teams are brought up as among the most likely to bust through and win a title, despite not being among the super elite at recruiting.

This year, four of those teams are a combined 8-11 against FBS teams and are eliminated from the Playoff race. I have some questions. (We'll discuss Baylor later in this article. The Bears haven't started their season like their recruiting peers have, going 5-0 against an easy schedule so far.)

Are these programs trending down? Or are these just blips on the radar?

Over the last four seasons, the foursome has combined to go 165-49, an incredible winning percentage of .771. Over the last two, it’s 92-17 (.844).

This season, they were projected by Vegas oddsmakers to each win between eight and nine games in the regular season, a combined 34-14 record. It’s fair to say down years compared to recent records were expected. But each team is on pace to underachieve even those expectations. They could easily combine to lose more games this season than they did combined over the last two.

I’ll assert that trying to win at the highest level with less talented recruits than the teams that populate the highest level is an inherently high-variance endeavor.

One way to overcome that is with great quarterback play.

Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images

All four lost excellent college quarterbacks. Oregon’s Vernon Adams was first in passer rating nationally. Stanford’s Kevin Hogan was fourth. TCU’s Trevone Boykin was eighth. And Michigan State’s Connor Cook had an excellent career and a knack for making big throws.

While all four have replaced those QBs with veteran players or talented newcomers, the results have not been the same. None of the schools has a passer rating against FBS competition that rates in the top 40.

But the problem is not just quarterback.

Veteran players at other spots, who have presumably gone through those schools’ highly touted development processes, have not reached the same level as their predecessors.

As SB Nation’s Bill Connelly writes, Michigan State is not a young team.

O’Connor is a senior, one of nine who started on offense against BYU. Seniors make up three of State’s four leading receivers and four of five starters on this line. The defense featured four senior starters plus McDowell, a junior likely to go pro. Of the 44 names on the offensive and defensive two-deep, 26 are upperclassmen (15 on offense, 11 on defense).

Losing nine senior offensive starters off a disappointing team does not bode well for the Spartans in 2017. Nor does having to recruit against Jim Harbaugh’s rolling Michigan.

Nor does TCU’s defense being a sieve for the second consecutive year under Gary Patterson. That side of the ball was decimated with injuries in 2015. It was expected to be better this season, but is considerably worse. And the offense is not covering up for the defense, like it did in 2015.

Stanford loses seven senior starters after the season, which isn’t that much, but also likely loses junior running back Christian McCaffrey. Its passing game is getting little respect from opposing teams, and its normally excellent offensive line is anything but. Combined with a young, injured defense, the Cardinal have dropped off in a big way.

Those three, though, are captained by coaches who have proved to be at the top of their profession.

Oregon is a different case under Mark Helfrich. The Ducks might not make a bowl for the first time in over a decade. Every game casts more doubt on Helfrich’s ability as a head coach, and comparisons to West Virginia’s Bill Stewart and Miami’s Larry Coker — two in-house promotions who started hot and than declined — are easy.

Like Stanford, Oregon benefits from operating in the Pac-12 North, a talent-barren region that has not produced a national title in over a quarter century. The Ducks could be back to winning double-digit games if they make the right hire, or if Helfrich’s staff figures things out, because the team is pretty young.

The only senior starter on offense is tight end Pharaoh Brown, and even if star running back Royce Freeman goes pro, sophomores Tony Brooks-James and Taj Griffin (15 carries for 120 yards against Washington) are loaded with potential. The line started four redshirt freshmen.

The Oregon defense is nearly as young. Only three of the top 25 tacklers are seniors, and the two most disruptive players thus far are freshman linebacker Troy Dye and sophomore end Justin Hollins. That doesn’t excuse a ghastly No. 106 defense (per Def. S&P+), but it’s something.

If they don’t come back, will they be replaced by other overachievers? If so, who?

It’s possible that all four bounce back in 2017, but for the sake of argument, let’s assume at least some do not.

Michigan State is in the toughest spot because it is in the same division as the Buckeyes and Wolverines.

But in the other division, Wisconsin could threaten to win a lot of games. The Badgers lose little off a good 2016 squad, dodge Ohio State in 2017, and get Iowa and Michigan in Camp Randall Stadium. It’s conceivable that Paul Chryst’s Badgers could get back to winning 10-plus games, as it did in seven of the last 10 seasons. Wisconsin’s non-conference scheduling over the next four years is weak, which should allow it to rack up wins. But with only 10 percent of its signees in the last four years rated four- or five-stars, Wisconsin is on the extreme end of the talent/development spectrum. That means it remains vulnerable to losing games to Big Ten teams that wouldn’t be seen as threats to true elites.

Nebraska has signed double the four- and five-star talent over the last four cycles as Wisconsin has and is recruiting well by its standards under Mike Riley. I’ve argued Nebraska does not have the talent to win the national title, but that did not stop the four schools at the top of this article from being in the title conversation and combining to make two Playoff appearances. Nebraska’s future non-conference schedule, like Wisconsin’s, is not daunting.

It’s also possible that the Big Ten, like the SEC and ACC, becomes ruled by its super recruiters. When Ohio State and Michigan are operating at peak capacity, it’s hard for any program in the league to match up.

The Pac-12 is currently the easiest place to overachieve.

The replacement for Oregon and Stanford might already be in place: Washington.

The Huskies have recruited at a top-25 level over the last four classes and are still improving in that area. They have a proven, elite head coach in Chris Petersen. And the Huskies have a difference maker at quarterback in sophomore Jake Browning. Browning has combined physical ability with tremendously quick decision-making to lead the country in passer rating. And Washington already beat Stanford and Oregon by a combined score of 114-27.

Washington is also helped out, much like Stanford and Oregon have been, by the Pac-12’s two best recruiters, USC and UCLA, consistently underachieving. The Trojans and Bruins have lost a combined six games this year already.

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Status quo for the Big 12.

In the Big 12, there is not an obvious candidate to replace TCU as an overachiever. TCU could see a benefit from Baylor’s coming downturn (the Bears ended up with just one four- or five-star player from the 2016 class and have none in the 2017 class) both in recruiting and on the field.

Oklahoma is already seen as a yearly contender for the national title, despite not consistently recruiting at that level, and has been recruiting better of late.

If Houston joins the conference, it could easily become one of the league’s top teams, given that the Cougars are already the best recruiting team in the Group of 5. It is fair to question if that would last, though, if coach Tom Herman leaves.

The ACC is worth watching.

The ACC does not have any consistent overachievers falling down. But thanks to a generational QB talent, improved recruiting, a top coach, and a willingness to take seemingly anyone as a transfer, the Louisville Cardinals are in the national conversation this year and figure to be as long as Lamar Jackson is in school.

It’s also worth watching to see if Virginia Tech or Miami, both with just one loss so far, can get back to where they were a decade ago. Both have a lot of room to improve in recruiting.

Your turn

What do you think? Is it more likely that the four teams featured bounce back, or will other overachievers take their place? Which ones?