📡 Post-Spring Top 25: Resetting the Pecking Order at the Offseason's Midpoint - Sports Illustrated

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Sports Illustrated​

Post-Spring Top 25: Resetting the Pecking Order at the Offseason's Midpoint
Sports Illustrated

We’re still just under four months away from Week 1, but enough has changed in the four months since the night of Alabama’s title-game victory over Georgia to reassess college football’s national landscape. Many of last season’s stars are now in the NFL, while others returned to school to use up remaining eligibility. A large portion of incoming recruits won’t be on campus until the summer, but some of the most anticipated arrivals enrolled in time to participate in spring drills and performed well enough to suggest they’ll become household names this fall. Injuries and transfers resulted in roster upgrades and downgrades, with more sure to come before the season kicks off at the end of August.
All of those developments have been incorporated into this post-spring Top 25, which will be updated again before the start of the season.

1. ALABAMA
The Crimson Tide just set an SEC record by having 12 players selected in the draft, including four in the first round. An exodus on that scale would set back most programs for a season, if not longer, but Alabama showed this spring that it’s ready to defend its fifth title in nine years. Linebackers Mack Wilson (junior) and Dylan Moses (sophomore) and linemen Isaiah Buggs (senior) and Raekwon Davis (junior) will lead a frightening front seven, and the winner of the ongoing quarterback battle between junior Jalen Hurts and sophomore Tua Tagovailoa (who missed most of the spring with an injury his throwing hand suffered during the first workout) will have the option of complementing a powerful, multi-pronged running attack with a promising receiving corps that can stretch defenses.

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Post-Spring Top 25: 2018's pecking order takes shape