CFB's overrated, underrated teams

Florida could go unbeaten in SEC; TCU's defense will drop; more projections

Updated: September 25, 2012, 9:16 PM ET

By Phil Steele | Special to ESPN Insider

This season I have been giving you my bold predictions on ESPN Insider every Thursday, but in addition to those picks this week, I wanted to provide you with my most overrated and underrated teams one quarter of the way through the season. In some cases, these teams are being overvalued or undervalued when it comes to overall ranking in the polls, and in other cases their statistical rankings on either offense or defense are being artificially inflated by misleading starts.

We'll begin with the three underrated teams, before tackling my three overrated teams.

UNDERRATED

1. Texas Longhorns (No. 12 in AP poll)

Reason: The QB play is better than you think.

Coming off back-to-back disappointing seasons, the Longhorns were my No. 1 dark-horse national title contender coming into this season and so far they have lived up to that billing with an undefeated start and blowout wins against each of their first three opponents.

Coming into the season everyone knew about the talent they had on the defensive side of the ball, with stars at defensive end in Alex Okafor and Jackson Jeffcoat to go along with a secondary that I ranked as the best in the country. The question mark on the team was at quarterback.

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