With a larger College Football Playoff field in place last season, we saw a handful of upstarts crash the postseason party in college football.
Can those party crashers keep it rolling this fall, or will they wilt under the weight of loftier expectations?
Check out a couple of college football win totals and NCAAF picks for Arizona State and SMU in 2025.
College Football Win Totals, Picks
- Arizona State Under 8.5 Wins (+100)
- SMU Under 8.5 Wins (-108)
Arizona State Sun Devils
Under 8.5 Wins (+100)
When targeting a regression candidate, I generally look for a few specific themes. In the case of the Sun Devils, they check two huge boxes: loss of their offensive engine and a young head coach.
Running back Cam Skattebo was the heart and soul of ASU last season.
Offensive coordinator Marcus Arroyo loves to identify a bellcow and feed said bellcow every chance he gets. Of the 136 FBS playcallers, no one placed more touches on one running back than Arroyo (54.4% opportunity share).
Last season, Skattebo touched the ball 338 times. That made him the second-most-used offensive weapon in the country behind Boise State’s Ashton Jeanty. He turned all of those touches into 2,316 yards and 25 touchdowns (21 rushing, three receiving, one passing).
Skattebo’s greatest strength was his ability to break tackles. He broke 103 tackles last fall, the most by a Power 4 ball-carrier. He actually rushed for 1,202 yards after contact, which is the highest figure for a P4 rusher in the past five seasons.
That kind of game-breaking ability will be enormously difficult to replace.
Meanwhile, Kenny Dillingham is entering just his third year as a head coach. He’s 14-12 overall, and he and his Sun Devils lived on the edge last season. Arizona State won five one-score games in 2024, four of which came in Big 12 play.
If any of those games had flipped, they wouldn’t have appeared in the conference championship game, and the narrative surrounding Dillingham and his program would be much different.
The natural pushback is that Arizona State returns a ton of production, ranking second, and a rising star at quarterback.
But keep in mind that defenses respected Skattebo so much that Sam Leavitt was often facing vanilla coverages or simple man-to-man concepts downfield.
With the weight of the offense now on his shoulders, I expect defenses to cook up more complex schemes this time around, particularly in conference play.
And finally, we have a schedule that's doing ASU no favors whatsoever.
In Big 12 play, it'll travel to Baylor, Colorado, Iowa State and Utah. Toss in home tilts with a loaded Texas Tech team and TCU on a short week, and there are six loseable games on this schedule.
Pick: Arizona State Under 8.5 Wins (+100)
SMU Mustangs
Under 8.5 Wins (-108)
The Mustangs bring back quarterback Kevin Jennings but not many established skill-position players.
Key weapons like Brashard Smith (1,977 all-purpose yards, 18 TDs) and LJ Johnson Jr. are no longer in the Mustangs’ backfield, and three of their top four receivers need to be replaced.
Their offensive line is swapping in two new starters from a unit that was elite in pass protection, ranking 23rd, per PFF. Keep an eye on Joshua Bates at center. As he goes, so goes this line.
SMU's offensive staff is as sharp as any in the ACC and has worked together for the past four seasons under head coach Rhett Lashlee. But I still see this unit struggling against more athletic defenses.
Penn State and Duke gave the Mustangs fits last season, forcing six interceptions from Jennings while creating eight turnover-worthy plays from SMU’s QB1.
Those giveaways were a major problem for SMU last season, as its 24 turnovers ranked 126th nationally, and they could persist this year with more challenging defenses on the slate.
SMU is set to face four defenses inside the top 45, per ESPN’s Bill Connelly, two of which come on the road in Clemson and TCU.
Defensively, the holes are troubling.
The Mustangs created a ton of negative plays by living in opponents' backfields, racking up 100 tackles for loss to rank 10th nationally. But they lost eight of their top 12 box defenders, and despite some solid portal additions, they could struggle to create the same kind of Havoc they did in 2024.
I like their secondary a whole lot, especially after they added portal gem Robert Rahimi from San José State. But if they don’t create tackles for loss and regress against the run (seventh in ‘24), they could find themselves in more than a few high-scoring affairs.
And with only three true layups on the schedule in East Texas A&M, Missouri State and Stanford, I think it’s unlikely they replicate the kind of success they saw in 2024.
Pick: SMU Under 8.5 Wins (-108)
