Most intriguing questions heading into the 2019 college football season

Will a team represent the Pac-12 in the College Playoff?

It hasn’t been since the 2014/15 season when Oregon made the playoff in its first year of existence that a Pac-12 team represented its conference in the National Championship game. Two years later Oregon made the Final Four, only to be destroyed 24-7 by Alabama. These last couple of seasons no team from that conference has really come that close to even being chosen by the committee. The closest ones have been USC in 2017, who looked lost versus Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl, and then Washington State last year, who gave up their right to even compete for the conference title by losing to Washington. This year there are three Pac-12 teams in the top 15 of the pre-season polls – Oregon, Washington, and Utah.

I already talked about Oregon’s offensive line and a potential top ten draft pick at quarterback. While the Ducks don’t have that highlight-reel skill position player on offense, they should feature a powerful rushing attack with a duo of talented running backs to go with #10 showing growth in becoming a more consistent passer and producing big plays through the air at a higher rate. The defense lost four starters from last year, but they still have Troy Dye in the middle and a talented young secondary.

Washington, on the other hand, will have a lot of changes on offense. Jacob Eason is taking over under center after sitting out a year due to his transfer from Georgia. They will look to feature Salvon Ahmed more heavily as the top back with Myles Gaskin going pro and tight-end/H-back/all-purpose guy Hunter Bryant could emerge as a major weapon all across the field. However, they also lost a lot of leadership in the nation’s leading tackler Ben Burr-Kirven, the brains of their secondary in safety Taylor Rapp and their best cover-guy in Byron Murphy.

Utah is the team I really want to see winning big this year. The D-line looks stout with guys like Leki Fotu and Bradley Anae, while Julian Blackmon will transition to safety after a couple of strong seasons on the outside. I hope redshirt sophomore Duke Shelley will emerge as the Utes’ starting QB because of the potential he showed at the end of last year and with Zack Moss running the rock that offense could complement the defense much better.

I’m not sure if any of these teams are quite good enough to be one of the Final Four, but this is the best collection of Pac-12 teams in pre-season I have seen in recent years.