5. Adrian Clayborn, DE, Iowa.
It's hard to be down on a first-team All-Big Ten and All-America pick on a top-20 defense who's still slated for somewhere near the top of the draft. (Especially when he weighs 286 pounds and you have a public mugshot for easy reference.) But Clayborn almost certainly wouldn't have come in for any those honors without the hype created by his sensational junior season, when he turned in 20.5 tackles for loss, 11.5 sacks, nine QB hurries, four forced fumbles, a blocked punt returned for touchdown to upset Penn State and an MVP sendoff in the Orange Bowl that set him up as this fall's version of Ndamukong Suh.
Instead, he made it barely a third of the way to his '09 production with seven TFLs and 3.5 sacks, and a 50 percent drop-off in solo tackles (from 36 last year, fourth on the team, to 18, ninth on the team in 2010). Opponents were paying attention to those accolades too, obviously, and responded with double and triple-teams. Aside from another big night against Penn State, though, they largely succeeded in keeping the big man at bay.
4. Jeremiah Masoli, QB, Ole Miss.
My early November progress report on the offseason's most celebrated transfer was decidedly mixed, and it was downhill from there, into a 7-of-18, 80-yard passing effort in a 52-14 humiliation at Tennessee and a nondescript finale against rival Mississippi State. For the season, Masoli hit an SEC-low 56.4 percent of his passes with an SEC-high 13 interceptions for a last-place team with a single conference win.
Worse, Oregon's offense – supposedly set back by Masoli's suspension and eventual departure – shifted into an extra gear without him. To the extent that it's still even conceivable that Masoli was once considered a legitimate Heisman contender, it's clear his hypothetical trophy would have belonged on Chip Kelly's mantel.
3a. Garrett Gilbert, QB, Texas.
3b. John Brantley, QB, Florida.
Gilbert and Brantley were intrinsically linked before the season as hyped, big-armed slingers who would inevitably stave off a slide out of the national elite in their beloved, record-breaking, Heisman-taking predecessors' wake. They're linked at the end as the overwhelmed scapegoats at the center of imploding operations scrambling to hit the 'reset' button.
• Dec. 8: Best Upsets
• Dec. 11: Most Overachieving Teams
• Dec. 13: Most Overachieving Players
Gilbert, riding a wave of offseason optimism forged in the fire of last season's emergency appearance in the BCS Championship Game, was arguably the worst starting quarterback in the Big 12, finishing at or near the bottom of the league in interceptions, touchdown-interception ratio and overall pass efficiency as the vaunted Longhorn offense failed to top 24 points in any Big 12 game. Brantley seemed like a square peg in a spread option attack clearly struggling to un-Tebow-ify itself with a less mobile quarterback. Gilbert's offensive coordinator was fired; Brantley's head coach walked away, with his beleaguered mentor likely next on the chopping block. "Growing pains" and "regression" from McCoy and Tebow doesn't begin to cover it.
2. Dion Lewis, RB, Pittsburgh.
Lewis was everybody's All-American this summer after smashing Tony Dorsett's freshman rushing mark with 1,799 yards in 2009, leaving him as the returning leader nationally in yards, carries and 100-yard games. Instead, it took about three weeks for Lewis to begin yielding carries to fellow sophomore Ray Graham, who outrushed his more celebrate backfield mate 492 yards to 143 in September, with three straight 100-yard efforts. Graham was still the Panthers' leading rusher entering the regular season finale at Cincinnati, on almost two full yards more per carry than their forgotten star.
Lewis' out-of-nowhere, 261-yard, four-touchdown outburst against Cincy left him on the verge of a 1,000-yard season, a mark he's likely to pass with a solid effort in the bowl game. But it came too late to salvage the Panthers' chances at a Big East title, coach Dave Wannstedt's job or his own status as one of the elite backs in the country.
1. Jerrod Johnson, QB, Texas A&M.
Johnson's senior campaign was officially anointed as the "leap year" when Big 12 media tabbed the 6-foot-5, 245-pound prototype as the league's preseason Offensive Player of the Year. Six games and three consecutive losses later, he was out of the lineup altogether, watching converted receiver Ryan Tannehill take the offense to 33 points per game over the course of a six-game win streak that took coach Mike Sherman off the hot seat and put A&M back in a Jan. 1 bowl for the first time since 2004.
Once Tannehill got his opportunity in the win over Kansas, the transition was total: Johnson, one of the most fearsome athletes in the Big 12 and anticipated Aggie recruits of the last decade, spent the last month of his career cheering from the sideline without so much as a garbage time snap.
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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.
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