Week 13 Stock Report: The incredible Cody Schrader story, Year 1 coaches with impressive turnarounds, sad future of Oregon State's program

It’s Conference Championship Week, and there’s lots to be sorted out before the final College Football Playoff Rankings this Sunday. 

But with the 2023 regular season now over, I wanted to focus the Week 13 Stock Report exclusively on players, teams and coaches who aren’t in the mix for the four-team field. 

Each Monday, I take note of whose stock — be it team, head coach, player, assistant, unit, Heisman candidacy, preseason narrative, etc. — is trending upward, whose is down and whose is holding.

Here is this week’s stock report:

📈 Stock Up: The Cody Schrader story 

One of the more special stories this season has been Cody Schrader’s arc from “Oh, Missouri has a former D-II tailback who is pretty good” to “Oh, the Tigers have a stud who is among the best running backs in the country.”

In his final regular-season game, the senior rushed for more than 200 yards for the second time in three games, shredding Arkansas with explosive runs (three carries over 35 yards). Schrader has five 100-yard games in a row and ranks No. 2 nationally in rushing (1,499). 

How cool is it that a former walk-on who led D-II in rushing in 2021 is nearly doing the same in the FBS two years later? What a story. 

The 5-9, 220-pound senior is a bowling ball ‘back, and he’s been a workhorse for the Tigers with 247 carries and 13 touchdowns. After Schrader hit the Hogs for 217 on the ground, head coach Eli Drinkwitz said his tailback should be up for the Heisman Trophy, and while that’s a bit hyperbolic, he should be right there with Oklahoma State’s Ollie Gordon for the Doak Walker Award. 

📉 Stock Down: Teams whose seasons ended in a thud 

I’m looking at you Nebraska, which was 5-3 and then lost four straight games to end the season to keep its postseason absence streak alive. In all-too-familiar fashion for Cornhuskers’ fans, all four losses were by a single score, too. Matt Rhule did some nice things in his first year in Lincoln, but the last month was a major missed opportunity for his program.

Similarly, TCU, last year’s reigning national title runner-up, had a miserable 2023, going 4-3 to start the year and then promptly losing four of five down the stretch to miss a bowl. Something was amiss in Fort Worth all season, starting with a Week 1 loss to what turned out to be a bad Colorado team. The Horned Frogs then capped with year with a blowout defeat on the road at Oklahoma. 

Lastly, Florida threw up all over itself in its season-ending loss to rival Florida State. UF had multiple players ejected, and the team’s complete lack of discipline (a theme all season) squandered any hopes of pulling off the upset. Instead of securing a Top 10 win over Missouri or FSU the last two weeks of the season — both of which were quite possible at various points of the game — Billy Napier’s program enters an offseason with all sorts of question marks with a young team in desperate need of 15 extra practices home for the holidays. 

📈 Stock Up: Year 1 turnarounds

This time of year, we tend to focus so much on the playoff teams and programs facing major transitions. And that makes sense. But what about the teams that vastly exceeded expectations in 2023?

I’ve given flowers to Louisville head coach Jeff Brohm in this very space earlier this season, and while the Cardinals did squander a chance to end their losing streak to rival Kentucky, they did go 10-2 and will play in the school’s first ACC Championship this weekend against Florida State. 

Brohm, who returned to his alma mater last December, is the first coach to lead two different programs to league title games in back-to-back seasons. 

Elsewhere, G.J. Kinnie at Texas State won seven games in his first season as a head coach. Here are shouts to three other head coaches who deserve some real shine for their Year 1 turnarounds, too. 

Barry Odom, UNLV — The former Missouri head coach is in contention for several openings this cycle after taking the Running Rebels to the Mountain West title game in his first season in Las Vegas. Odom inherited a 5-7 team and took them to 9-3 in the regular season — the school’s best season in 38 years. They’re going to a bowl game for the first time since 2013 — four coaches ago. 

Alex Golesh, USF — You think Tennessee missed its former wunderkind offensive coordinator this season? The 36-year-old head coach took over a Bulls program that was 4-29 the last three seasons under Jeff Scott and has them bowling (6-6) in Year 1. They saw a slight uptick offensively (31 points per game), while cutting off nearly a touchdown on their scoring defense (42 points per game to 34.9). South Florida gave Alabama a scare and won five AAC conference games — as many as the program had in the last five years combined. 

Brent Key, Georgia Tech — Key had a head-start on all the other first-year head coaches, going 4-4 as the Yellow Jackets’ interim head coach in 2022, but he elevated the program in his first full season on the job this fall. He hired a solid staff, headlined by OC Buster Faulkner, and did well recruiting the transfer portal (quarterback Haynes King leads the ACC in total touchdowns). Georgia Tech is going to a bowl game for the first time since 2018, the program’s final season under Paul Johnson. The Bees went 5-3 in ACC play this season, which was better than Clemson, North Carolina, Duke, Miami, etc. 

📉 Stock Down: The future of Oregon State‘s program

I feel legitimately bad for Beavers fans. It is no fault of their own that their program is suddenly like one of those inflatable Tall Boys outside of a car dealership just flailing around in the wind. 

It’s been four months of brutal knife cuts to the program. The Pac-12 crumbled, with Oregon State one of two programs left without a musical chair. The Beavers were competitive for much of the fall, only to lose late to No. 3 Washington and then get blown out by rival No. 6 Oregon in perhaps the last Civil War for some time. 

Oh, and then a day later their head coach Jonathan Smith, who played quarterback at Oregon State, left for the same job at Michigan State because it simply offers more resources and upside. Smith also took most of his top assistants with him to East Lancing, too. 

Now there are questions about whether Beavers players like promising freshman quarterback Aiden Chiles or star tailback Damien Martinez are going to enter the transfer portal. 

The program faces a real uncertain future, and for the folks in Corvallis, that stinks.