> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.bayareaexaminer.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Ranking Every Post-Leavitt USF Football Season: The Top Three

- URL: https://www.bayareaexaminer.com/ranking-every-post-leavitt-usf-football-d4b/
- Published: 2026-05-18T13:03:29.000Z
- Updated: 2026-05-18T13:03:29.000Z
- Description: Because someone has to finish the series.
- Author: Collin Sherwin
- Tags: #Migrated-1792597384348, #Import 2026-10-21 15:44

Welcome to the final edition of our ranking! In part two of this series, which ran in January, I mentioned we’d wrap it up next week. You may have noticed that it is definitively *not* next week. Good things - like USF football conference titles - take time.

If you missed the first two parts, we’re spending the offseason revisiting and ranking every USF football season occurring after Jim Leavitt’s departure. Why now, you might ask? Part of the purpose of this exercise is to see where the Bulls’ excellent 2025 season stacked up in the history books, and the other part is because it is simply good fun! So far, we’ve been putting together a quick summary of each season, plus the season’s top highlight, worst lowlight, and an offensive and defensive MVP. You can catch up on the first two parts of the series below:

[Ranking Every Post-Leavitt USF Football Season (Part 1)](https://thebayareaexaminer.substack.com/p/ranking-every-post-leavitt-usf-football)

[Ranking Every Post-Leavitt USF Football Season (Part 2)](https://thebayareaexaminer.substack.com/p/ranking-every-post-leavitt-usf-football-317)

We’ll be making one change for this final entry: rather than just one highlight, we’ll be listing the top *three* highlights for each season. We’ve revisited a lot of tough seasons to get to this point, so let’s spend a bit of extra time reminiscing on the best of the bunch.

---

## #3: 2025 (9-4, 6-2 in conference)

**Summary:** Finally, we’ve arrived at the reason for this exercise. Folks, the 2025 Bulls were *good*. This was, by any metric, one of the best teams in USF football history. Just check the data: before the Bulls’ backup-filled bowl game, SP+ rated them as the 23rd-best team in the country, and Sports Reference’s SRS pegged them as the second-strongest team in program history, just behind the legendary 2007 squad. Or simply use your eyes: the Bulls basically took a chainsaw to any team that couldn’t match them for talent. In fact, they took a chainsaw to a couple teams that *could* match them for talent, too. The season began with a thoroughly unexpected 34-7 romp over 2024 College Football Playoff quarterfinalists Boise State, and the Bulls’ standard of play rarely dipped from there. Along the way, they upset then-#13 Florida in the Swamp, rose as high as #18 in the rankings, whipped a previously-undefeated North Texas team, and scored at least 48 points on seven different occasions. Behind a rejuvenated Byrum Brown at quarterback - fully recovered from his season-ending 2024 injury - the Bulls’ offense was a battering ram that simply outmanned most of the teams on their schedule. It was an electric performance from start to finish, the result of melding a generational quarterback to a roster full of athletes that Alex Golesh had been slowly brewing for three years.

But, of course, there was one thing they didn’t do: win a conference title. Again.

That might be the only demerit against this squad, but it’s one that I can’t entirely ignore in this ranking. There have been *plenty* of talented USF teams that have failed to bring in hardware before - in increasingly baffling ways - but I’d argue that none of those teams had the ball so clearly in their court in the way that the 2025 Bulls did. It was evident very, very early on in the season that this team was a cut above most of the American Conference. This was a team capable of beating Florida and trouncing the Mountain West champion and American runner-up by four scores each… but in two mouth-watering win-and-in opportunities, the Bulls once again faltered in heartbreaking fashion and lost both by three points. And once more, the boulder rolls down the hill and flattens poor Sisyphus.

To classify the season as any sort of failure, though, would be joyless and deeply unfair. No one outside of the most fringe portions of the USF fanbase expected Golesh’s Bulls to be this good, this soon. Entering 2025, USF hadn’t put together a winning regular season since 2018, hadn’t managed even a top 100 (!!!) defense since 2019, and were pinning their hopes on a star player whose health and game fitness were entirely unknown. They ended the season with one of the best showings in program history. It’s something to be treasured.

**Highlights:**

1. **The season-opening win over Boise** was a statement of intent the likes of which USF had never really produced before. The Broncos were expected to take a step back from their Ashton Jeanty-led 2024 season, but they were still ranked 25th in the country and were the presumed kings of the Group of Six conferences when they came to Tampa in late August. After a choppy first half where neither team gained much footing, USF broke the game open with a brilliant call from Golesh: on 4th and 6 from the Boise 46-yard line, the Bulls snuck in true freshman quarterback Locklan Hewlett at punter. Hewlett took the snap, paused for a full one-Mississippi to sell the fake, and then heaved the ball deep to Keshaun Singleton, who had lined up at gunner. Singleton made the catch and shook off his defender for a touchdown, and the Bulls never looked back. The story of the game, though, was the much-maligned USF defense, which looked entirely reborn in the first game of their third year under Todd Orlando. The Bulls were swarming to the ball from the opening snap, forced three fumbles, and held the Broncos to their lowest yards per play average (4.4) since September 2023\. It was immediately evident that Bulls fans were going to be witness to something special in 2025.
2. That something special occurred just a week later, when the Bulls **went to the Swamp and beat Florida for the first time in program history.** This was a defensive slugfest in which the rejuvenated USF defense repeatedly frustrated then-Heisman contender DJ Lagway, leading to a dream finish: USF had the ball on their own eleven-yard line, down one point with two minutes to go. Byrum Brown proceeded to lead one of the most by-hook-or-by-crook game-winning drives you’ll ever see - featuring a free 15 yards from a Gator defender *spitting* at a USF lineman, a squirrelly 29-yard dash by Alvon Isaac on a screen pass that looked dead to rights in the backfield, and a series of clearly signposted, battering-ram runs from Brown that set up the eventual game-winning field goal from Nico Gramatica. It’s a cause for celebration any time USF manages to beat one of the in-state titans - and this win officially completed the trinity - but the real headliner here was that the Bulls became the sport’s front-page news for the first time since… probably 2007\. After two ranked wins in two games, the USF athletic department basically ran a full-court press in the media; the week after the game, you couldn’t open a computer without seeing a feature piece on Alex Golesh or Byrum Brown. And the hype was entirely deserved: the Gators were considered a College Football Playoff contender at the time, and the Bulls were every bit their equal. For a Bulls fanbase starved of positive headlines for years, it was catnip.
3. That two-game opening stretch had the fanbase levitating, but if you pressed me to pick a singular highlight, I might choose the **63-36 evisceration of previously undefeated North Texas.** USF looked strong through their opening five games, but the Mean Green were off to one of their best starts ever, and received the good fortune of a primetime Friday night slot to host the 24th-ranked Bulls. It cannot be overemphasized how big a deal UNT made of this game, and for good reason: a win would have cemented them as perhaps *the* College Football Playoff frontrunner in the mid-major conferences. The university at large cancelled all classes that Friday to build hype, and it worked: the Mean Green sold out their stadium for the first time in program history. But if the Bulls were walking into a hornet’s nest, they promptly took a flamethrower to it. After a back-and-forth first half, USF took the lead on a jet-sweep-turned-receiver-pass from Christian Neptune to Keshaun Singleton, then Fred Gaskin intercepted Drew Mestemaker on the ensuing drive and returned the ball to the UNT 15, where the Bulls ran it in on two plays. The cherry on top came on the next drive: Jarvis Lee jarred the ball out of a UNT receiver’s hands and Jhalyn Shuler scooped it up, sprinting so quickly past the entire Mean Green offense that he had time to dawdle around the goal line for a few seconds before dipping into the end zone. Just like that, the Bulls had scored three touchdowns in three minutes and twenty-five seconds of game time, instantly turning a tight game into a laugher and locking up their third marquee win of the season.

**Lowlight:** The Bulls only lost three games in the regular season. One was a disappointing but understandable blowout at the hands of Miami, the eventual national runner-up. The other two, unfortunately, were shockers in conference play that kept the Bulls out of the conference title game. Many will point to the late-season loss to Navy as the worse of the two - it was, after all, the game that sealed the team’s fate - but I find myself more haunted by the Bulls’ loss to Memphis. This was a stunning meltdown: entering the fourth quarter, USF was up 31-17 on the 6-1 Tigers, and the game seemed on the brink. But the Memphis offense - which had only put together two drives of over 40 yards all game - suddenly flipped a switch. The Tigers had three drives in the fourth quarter, and each one went the length of the field. Two Memphis touchdowns and a field goal later, the Bulls shockingly found themselves down three points with a minute left in the game. Byrum Brown did well to methodically lead the offense down to the Tigers 24-yard line, where Alex Golesh (understandably) decided to take one shot at the end zone before settling for a field goal. Alas, the Bulls were flagged for holding on the play, turning a potential 41-yard game-tying field goal into a 51-yarder. I don’t have to tell you what happened. In the same way that the 2007 Rutgers game or the Zach Collaros Cincinnati game are still discussed today in hushed tones, so too will the 2025 Memphis game be discussed; future generations will listen in horror to the story of the favored Bulls blowing a 14-point fourth-quarter lead that would’ve sent them to their first conference championship game.

**Offensive MVP:** Later in this countdown, we’ll discuss a single-season USF performance that I suspect will never be topped. Byrum Brown came shockingly close to topping it last year. No one knew what to expect from Brown coming off his season-ending injury in 2024 - in fact, many weren’t even sure if he’d be on the Bulls’ roster in 2025\. Boy, was he! Byrum barely put a foot wrong all year; to wit, he averaged over 426 total yards and three touchdowns in the Bulls’ two conference *losses*. He rediscovered the touch on his deep ball that was eluding him in 2024 and was excellent in getting the ball to the Bulls’ array of talented wideouts, but the highlight with Byrum will always be his running - a human being of his size simply should not be able to move as fast as he does. Any time Brown got his legs churning behind a pulling guard last season, there was a real chance that he was going to break one for a touchdown. It all culminated with a rare 3,000/1,000 season and a whole bunch of pages in the USF record book. He’s unquestionably a program legend.

**Defensive MVP:** NCAA eligibility rules are nebulous and confusing nowadays, but they gave us six years of Mac Harris in green and gold, so it’s difficult to complain. Already bordering on icon status after an excellent 2024 season where he led the Bulls in tackles, TFLs, and sacks and publicly spurned the transfer portal, Harris’s encore may have been even better. He played like his hair was on fire in 2025, racking up 103 tackles (a career high), six sacks (a career high) and four forced turnovers (this will stun you, but also a career high). Best of all: a lifetime Bull who first came to campus during the dreadful Jeff Scott years got to witness the fruits of his labor in real time. Mac deserves a ton of credit for helping lead the Bulls out of the wilderness and back to national relevance.

## #2: 2015 (8-5, 6-2 in conference)

**Summary:** The number two spot feels a little ambitious for an eight-win season, but stick with me here. Many great USF seasons have nonetheless stung a little bit because the Bulls fell short of lofty expectations. So… might I interest you in a season that had nearly no expectations whatsoever?

I pride myself quite a bit on my preseason win-loss projections for USF. Barring a few misses here and there, I’ve usually been able to nail the Bulls’ final record within a game or so. This is always the season I reference when I talk about those few misses, because - let me tell you - *absolutely no one thought USF was going to be good this season*. The 2015 season came on the heels of two pretty dreadful years in which Willie Taggart tried desperately to fit his young, dynamic Florida recruits into an offensive scheme that looked airlifted straight from the nineteenth century. When Taggart announced midway through the offseason that he was suddenly going to pivot to a wide-open, spread offense scheme for the first time in his coaching career, that did little to convince the fanbase that the program was moving in the right direction. The predecessor to this very site published an article in April titled “I’ve Already Given Up On the USF Football Season”. It wasn’t all bad - Taggart had very obviously recruited well, and fans were cautiously optimistic that the future was bright - but most people didn’t believe that the future included the 2015 season, or included Willie Taggart.

A few games into the season, it looked like the popular consensus was correct. The Bulls started 1-3, and while the newly-minted “Gulf Coast Offense” showed a little bit of pop behind uber-athletic quarterback Quinton Flowers and all-conference halfback Marlon Mack, Taggart’s seat was scalding hot entering an early October home game against former conference foe Syracuse. What happened next was the stuff of legend: reportedly convinced by a team meeting in which his players begged him to take the training wheels off Flowers, Taggart gave his young quarterback full rein over the offense, and the Bulls unexpectedly blitzed the Orange. Between Flowers, Mack, and other future NFL talents like shifty wideout Rodney Adams and tough-as-nails all-purpose back D’Ernest Johnson, the Gulf Coast Offense suddenly transformed into one of the most unstoppable units in program history. After averaging 16 points in their first three games against FBS opponents, the Bulls averaged a whopping 37.6 from the Syracuse game onward. Between the electric offense and a revitalized “Bull Shark” defense under new defensive coordinator Tom Allen - who would, of course, go on to be the head coach at Indiana - USF was unexpectedly brilliant over the second half of the season, finishing the regular season on a 7-1 heater and coming within a whisker of the conference title game. There have been USF seasons with more wins or bigger games, but I’d posit that to this day, the sheer mania of the thrilling, entirely unforeseeable back half of the 2015 season remains unmatched.

**Highlights:**

1. **The Syracuse game.** Goodness, the Syracuse game.The end result of this game was so shocking that it’s easy to forget exactly how it happened. The first half actually did little to cool Taggart’s seat, as the Bulls played respectably but only held a narrow 10-3 lead. Then, as if by dark magic, a switch flipped at halftime. Mack led off the half with an impressive, 25-yard touchdown run, and on the Bulls’ next possession, Taggart pulled a rabbit out of his hat: with the ball on the Syracuse 42-yard line, Flowers handed the ball off to Mack on what appeared to be a basic zone read play to the right. But then Mack pitched the ball back to Rodney Adams, sprinting left; Adams deftly avoided a blitzing Orange defender and then tossed the ball back *again* to Flowers. The Bulls’ QB cocked back and launched a deep pass to wideout Ryeshene Bronson, who had run about fifteen yards past the nearest defender. Bronson caught it for a touchdown, giving the Bulls a 24-3 lead that they never surrendered. It’s not an exaggeration to say that this play changed the trajectory of the program: the Bulls had won just 10 of their last 40 contests before the Syracuse game, and they won 34 of the following 40.
1. Even at 5-4 and on the brink of their first bowl game since 2010, it remained to be seen if USF was actually a quality team or merely skating by against the dregs of the American Conference. That question was answered definitively by the **Bulls’** **thrashing of 21st-ranked Temple**. The Owls, coached by Matt Rhule, were 8-1 and led the conference’s East division at the time, but the Gulf Coast Offense had become a full-fledged buzzsaw by this point. After the teams traded a couple early scores, the Bulls had the ball up 14-10 early in the second quarter. That’s when it happened: Mack found a seam on a simple handoff up the middle, and by the time he hit the second level, it was obvious to the entire stadium that *there was not a single player on Temple’s defense who was capable of catching Marlon Mack at full speed.* Mack left at least five Owls in the dust on the 57-yard touchdown scamper, and that was just the beginning of his career day: he finished with 272 yards from scrimmage and three total touchdowns in one of the most comprehensive USF performances against a quality opponent of all time. The Bulls ended up winning by three scores, and fans got to rush the field for the first time since the legendary West Virginia game in 2007.
1. When the Gulf Coast Offense was clicking, it had the aesthetic qualities of a hot knife through butter. That was never more evident than in the Bulls’ next game, **a 65-27 whomping of future United States senator Tommy Tuberville and his Cincinnati team** that - I kid you not - was not nearly as close as that score would indicate. The Bulls scored so quickly in this game (a 67-yard pass from Flowers to Adams on the first play from scrimmage) that the television broadcast didn’t even cut over in time, and TV viewers tuned in with the score already 6-0 Bulls. That was par for the course in this one: if there was a conceivable way for USF to score, they scored in that way. Quinton Flowers threw a touchdown on each of his first three passes of the game, Marlon Mack ran for two scores in the first half, and the Bull Shark defense forced five (!) first-half turnovers, including one pick six. The Bulls led 51-3 at halftime, an astounding figure that produced several memes of Tuberville that have only increased in utility in recent years. The head rush of this game immediately following the Temple game was a level of giddiness for Bulls fans that I suspect remains unmatched.
2. UCF went 0-12 lmao

**Lowlight:** I have to be honest: there wasn’t much of a lowlight this season, which is part of why it ranks so highly. I suppose that the Bulls’ conference opener against Memphis —which featured a feckless, pre-renaissance USF offense and a blown 10-0 lead—ended up being a bummer, since a win would have ultimately sent the Bulls into the conference title game. But the 2015 Bulls really produced the cheat code for this exercise: get your bad games out of the way early, and you can never be a disappointment.

**Offensive MVP:** There are about five different players on this offense with a reasonable argument for MVP—but this was undoubtedly Marlon Mack’s year. Mack’s 2015 season was, for my money, the best running back performance in school history. He ended up with 1,381 rushing yards on 6.6 yards per carry, and that number could have been even higher if he didn’t miss a game midseason with an injury. Even more stunning was his consistency: he only had one game with less than 71 rushing yards or less than 4.3 yards per carry *all season*. Mack was electric—a legitimate threat to score every time he touched the ball, and one of the best athletes to ever set foot on the field for the Bulls.

**Defensive MVP:** This was a particularly fun defense, led by the indefatigable Allen. It’s a tough pick, but I think a huge reason for the Bull Sharks’ sudden success was the second-year leap taken by a number of Taggart’s talented young recruits—particularly cornerback Deatrick Nichols, who was dynamic in his sophomore season. Nichols was tremendous both in coverage (four interceptions) and playing downhill (8.5 TFLs), kickstarting an excellent career in green and gold.

## #1: 2016 (11-2, 7-1 in conference)

**Summary:** Ranking USF football seasons is, to some degree, an exercise in deciding which heartbreak was the most tolerable. There has, unfortunately, never been a complete, wire-to-wire performance in a USF season; even the best of the bunch feature some element of tragedy. For that reason, I think it’s best to keep it simple when anointing a winner (or a post-Leavitt winner, anyway—your mileage may vary on 2007): which season produced the highest highs? On that criteria, it’s 2016 by a mile.

To set the table here: the Bulls returned nearly every player of note from their unexpectedly excellent 2015 team, and expectations were accordingly sky-high for the Gulf Coast Offense’s encore. Note that I say returned every *player* of note, because something rather unexpected happened late in the offseason: in January, long after the coaching carousel had stopped turning, Tom Allen left USF for Indiana. Allen was - and remains - a universally beloved figure among the Bulls fanbase, not the least because his year-one revival of the USF defense was one of the better coordinator performances in school history. Perhaps seeking continuity, or perhaps devoid of options due to Allen’s departure happening so late in the cycle, Willie Taggart elected to promote then-linebackers coach Raymond Woodie.

It can be debated how much blame falls at Woodie’s feet, but the bad news is that the USF defense - generally composed of the same players as the 2015 Bull Shark unit - declined horribly in 2016\. The good news? Combining an all-time stinker of a defense with a reinforced Gulf Coast Offense produced the most off-the-rails Bulls team of all time, a delightfully chaotic squad that was fighting its own defense as much as it was fighting the opposition. Flowers, Mack, and company were transcendent in 2016 - and they had to be, because the Bulls’ defense was liable to get a fifty-burger dropped on them at any given moment. By midseason, nearly every game devolved into a Wild West-style shootout; the only neutral party who could possibly be upset at a 2016 USF football game were the very tired scoreboard operators.

But making this team out to be a goofy group of offensive merchants sells them tremendously short. This team was loaded, front-to-back with future NFL talent, and the sheer level of athleticism on display this season was dazzling. The Bulls won a program-record 11 games this season because very few teams - even SEC teams, as proved in the bowl game - could match them for athleticism or speed. This season was the culmination of the fantastic recruiting classes that Taggart started bringing in from the moment he got to Tampa; all the promise and potential finally come home to roost.

**Highlights:**

1. Even in their worst moments, USF football has always done a pretty good job at **bullying Syracuse**. 2016 was no exception. Somewhat shockingly, the Orange jumped out to a 17-0 first quarter lead against the 2-0 Bulls, and it was beginning to look like the Gulf Coast Offense was folding against its first real test of the season. But, as it so often did, the offense flipped a switch in the second quarter. In under 14 minutes of game time, Bulls ripped off 28 straight points - including three Rodney Adams scores - and never trailed again en route to a breezy 45-20 win. This game set something of a tone for the rest of the season; no matter how deep a hole the Bulls found themselves in, the GCO was always capable of catching fire upon a moment’s notice.
2. Before the 2017 War On I-4 eventually one-upped it, **USF’s wild 49-42 shootout win against Memphis** was the most delightfully chaotic game the Bulls had ever played. By this point in the season, a couple important things had happened: USF had exhausted all possible margin for error in the conference title race - they’d have to run the table to have any shot at making the championship game - and the Bulls’ beleaguered defense had essentially given up all pretense of attempting to play the sport. This made every remaining game a high-wire act in which Quinton Flowers and company essentially had to score on every single drive in order to stay afloat. That’s pretty much what they did here: down 24-21 early in the third quarter, Flowers engineered four touchdowns on five second-half drives to give the Bulls a seven-point lead with under two minutes to go. The last of the bunch was particularly stunning - on third and eight from the Memphis 41, Flowers was caught dead to rights in the backfield, but managed to flip the ball out to Adams while he was being tackled, and Adams scampered for the first down. Two plays later, Flowers collided with Mack in the backfield, took a moment to get his bearings, then cut right and went 22 yards for the score. This being the 2016 USF defense, of course, the Tigers moved right back down the field and had three shots at tying the game from the three-yard line. They opted to test USF’s star corner Deatrick Nichols three straight times, and Nichols broke up the play each time (with some help from a very generous no-call on fourth down). I really recommend sitting down with the highlights from this one if you haven’t seen them for a while; it’s probably the most entertaining win in program history, complete with a magisterial performance from Flowers (24/29 passing for 263 yards and two scores, plus 20 carries for 210 yards and three touchdowns).
3. Despite a record-setting 10-2 regular season that saw Quinton Flowers named the conference offensive player of the year and got Willie Taggart the Oregon job, there was still some element of *“well, can they do it against a quality power conference team?”* In the Bulls’ national “prove it” game earlier in the season, the defense got their doors blown off (common theme) against Dalvin Cook and Florida State, so there was understandably a bit of anxiety regarding **the Bulls’ bowl game against South Carolina**, especially with Taggart having already departed for Eugene. No matter: interim coach and cult hero T.J. Weist took the reins for a day and called a wonderfully unhinged game, running a swinging-gate two-point conversion after the Bulls’ first touchdown (successfully) and attempting an onside kick up 39-21 in the third quarter (unsuccessfully). If there was any knock on Weist, it’s that his offensive play-calling clammed up late in the game, allowing the Gamecocks to make up that 18-point deficit in the fourth quarter and send the game to overtime. But Quinton Flowers, as he so often did, rose to the occasion, delivering a dime on the first play of overtime to tight end Elkanah Dillon for a 25-yard score, and the Bulls’ defense held firm. A win over 6-6 South Carolina wasn’t the crown jewel that this season deserved, but it was still an electric finish to an electric season, and provided some proof of concept that the Bulls - even without their newly-promoted head coach - could hang with SEC talent. This Gamecocks team didn’t look terribly impressive at the time, but you’ll recognize a few names in retrospect: the offense featured future NFL starters Deebo Samuel, Rico Dowdle, and Hayden Hurst.

**Lowlight:** Unfortunately, even the best USF football seasons to date have featured at least one crushing lowlight, and this season’s was one of the most crushing. At 6-1 on the season and 3-0 in conference - all against AAC East division foes - the Bulls could’ve put themselves on the doorstep of a conference title game appearance with a win over 4-3 Temple. But if you’re reading this, I suspect you know what happened: Matt Rhule’s Owls ran a ground-and-pound game plan intended to keep the ball out of Quinton Flowers’ hands, and they did so to perfection. Temple nearly doubled up USF in time of possession and absolutely gashed a helpless Bulls defense on the ground, racking up 319 rushing yards on 6.3 yards per carry thanks in part to someone named Nick Sharga, who put several Bulls defenders on their butts en route to becoming a first-ballot program villain. The Bulls still had a chance to pull it out down 37-30 with three minutes to go, but Flowers had to leave the game with an ill-timed injury and backup Brett Kean couldn’t get any traction. The good news is that the Bulls wouldn’t lose again all season; the bad news is that this one slip-up ended up being enough to once again disqualify them from conference title contention. Bleak!

**Defensive MVP:** We’re going to switch it up here and reveal the defensive MVP before the offensive MVP, because a certain player deserves to be our sendoff to this countdown. But that’s not meant to discredit our nominee here, the former walk-on fullback-turned-linebacker Auggie Sanchez. Sanchez became a team leader and program icon during his five years in Tampa, and the 2016 season may have been his best: a team-leading 117 tackles, plus eight TFLs, six sacks, and an interception. He may have saved the Bulls from a third loss with his clutch fourth-down stop against SMU in the penultimate game of the regular season.

**Offensive MVP:** If you’ve been reading this series, or were sentient during the years 2015-2017, you know where this is going. Quinton Flowers’ 2016 season was unbelievable - a performance the likes of which we may never see again at USF. Flowers proved that he was a dynamic weapon in 2015, but he was certainly the offense’s second fiddle behind Marlon Mack. Mack was as good as ever in 2016, but Flowers took a massive leap forward and became the straw that stirred the drink. You may already know how good Flowers’ stat line was this season, but check out his numbers down the stretch, post-Temple loss: with the Bulls unable to afford another blemish on their resume, Flowers was unimpeachable, averaging 218 yards passing per game, with nine passing touchdowns to two interceptions, plus 157 yards rushing per game and ten touchdowns. If you don’t have a calculator handy, here’s what that would come out to over a thirteen-game season: 2,834 yards passing, 23 touchdowns to five interceptions, 2,041 yards rushing and 26 rushing touchdowns. I mean… gadzooks.

But as anyone who watched Flowers can attest, his impact can’t be summed up by a box score. For one thing, he played the position like he had springs in his legs - his best asset wasn’t necessarily his straight-line speed, but his cartoonish shiftiness. For a defender, ending up one-on-one with Flowers in the open field was basically a death sentence; it became a weekly occurrence for him to send defenders caroming off each other like 250-pound pool balls.

But even more importantly, he was such a wonderful representative of the USF program and the university at large. His [story](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sV7EKTVfIQ&ref=bayareaexaminer.com) has been told ad nauseam, but that’s because it’s genuinely *that* impressive: a young man overcoming every hurdle that life threw at him and excelling in spite of it. Flowers could’ve played defensive back at a number of top-tier power conference schools; instead, he chose to bet on himself and come to USF, and the program is much better for it. The best season on our countdown was, fittingly, anchored by the best player in program history.