2019 AAC Preseason Position Previews: The Final Tally

Our 2019 AAC Preseason Position Previews wrapped up, and it’s time to look at the big picture. Once again, it appears to be a tight race for the conference championship. There weren’t many surprises, but there certainly will be once the season begins. Let’s take a look at how we scored the results, and where each team ranked.

Scoring

For every position except quarterbacks and kickers/punters: Elite got a team four points, Second Tier received three, Wait and See got two, and Room for Improvement received one.

For quarterbacks, the only difference was that Elite got you five points instead of four. For kickers/punters, Elite received two points, Second Tier got one, and the other two groups received zero.

1. Memphis - 28

2. Cincinnati - 24

T3. UCF - 23

T3. Houston - 23

T3. USF - 23

T6. Tulane - 20

T6. Temple - 20

T8. SMU - 17

T8. Tulsa - 17

10. ECU - 13

11. UConn - 9

12. Navy - 7

Analysis

• After winning back-to-back conference championships, it was surprising to see UCF tied for third. Granted, that’s not an indication of how they will finish, but still interesting. The Knights lost two points at quarterback with McKenzie Milton being hurt, but they would have finished second if he was healthy.
• SMU tied Tulsa, which was interesting given that some believe they could compete for a conference championship. Maybe that’s a sign of things to come for Tulsa, though.
• Memphis finished first overall, and led the conference in number of position groups in the “Elite” ranking with six. UCF finished with four, as did Houston.
• Houston tied with Memphis for offensive points with 15, followed by UCF (14 points), and USF (13). D’Eriq King and the Houston receivers gave the Cougars two first place finishes to help tie with the Tigers, who only had one position (quarterback) below “Elite.”
• Memphis and Cincinnati tied for defensive points with 11, followed by Temple (10), UCF (9), and USF). The Tigers return experience everywhere, which helped them finish “Elite” or “Second Tier” at every defensive position. Cincinnati also saw the same result even while losing great talent on their defensive line.
• Houston led all teams with the biggest margin of points between offense and defense with nine. No surprise there given Houston’s struggles on defense and explosiveness offensively.
• We didn’t see a ton of fluctuation, but there were a couple big jumps. Cincinnati finished tied for seventh last year in our preseason position series, and jumped up to second this year (+5). They replaced Temple, who finished second last year but dropped to tied for sixth (-4).
• The bottom three teams were the same from last year, except Navy and ECU flipped at the 10 and 12 spots.