USF football all-time offensive Dream Team. Here are my picks, so what are yours?

As USF prepares to open its preseason football camp next week, the staff at Green, Gold and Bold (that’s me) thought it would be fun to pick the Bulls’ all-time offensive dream team.

No insult to offensive linemen or defensive players intended, but I’ll be going with skill players only for this exercise.

Of course, their overall production will weigh heavily in the selection process, but I’m not basing these picks solely on statistics. Sometimes, you must trust a feeling, which I did in some of these picks.

And while everyone in Bulls Nation is excited about the job Alex Golesh, Byrum Brown, and the other players did last season, we need a larger body of work before they can make this list.

QUARTERBACK

Quinton Flowers: The Bulls went 30-6 in the last 36 games of his career. Matt Grothe had about 500 more career passing yards, Flowers threw 71 touchdowns to Grothe’s 52 and 3,672 rushing yards, and 41 touchdowns to Grothe’s 2,206 rushing yards and 23 TDs.

Flowers gets the top spot.

Backup: Grothe: Long-time USF watchers will always have a soft spot for Grothe. He was fearless on the football field, and no one in green and gold will forget that he engineered one of the Bulls’ top victories ever. His touchdown pass to Jesse Hester, Jr. gave USF a stunning upset win in overtime at Auburn.

RUNNING BACKS

Marlon Mack: Flowers is actually USF’s career leader in rushing yards, but we’ve already got him as a quarterback. Mack gets one of our two starting positions. He had 3,609 rushing yards and 32 touchdowns in three seasons with the Bulls. He had three consecutive 1,000-plus yard seasons, and Mack had 230 yards and three TDs (one receiving) against Temple in 2015.

Andre Hall: He only played two seasons at USF but made the most of it as the Bulls transitioned from Conference USA to the Big East. He had three consecutive games over 100 yards – including 222 at Syracuse – in leading the Bulls to three straight wins in the Big East. Two of those were on the road.

Backups: Brian Battie and D’Earnest Johnson. Even on a team that went 1-11 in 2022 and played in many lost causes, Battie gave everything he had. He rushed for 1,185 yards and eight touchdowns. Johnson was a steady performer with a career of 1,796 yards rushing and 16 TDs. He also had 909 yards and 12 touchdowns as a receiver.

Battie was critically wounded by a gunshot in May.

RECEIVERS

Andre Davis: He was a steady target in his four years with the Bulls. He had 153 catches, and his 2,136 yards are tops in school history. He also had 17 career touchdowns.

Marquez Valdes-Scantling: He played just two seasons for the Bulls after transferring from North Carolina State, which explains why his career 1,294 receiving yards ranks only 12th on USF’s all-time list. But he also averaged a Bulls-best 17.3 yards per catch to go with 11 touchdowns. In the NFL, he has played with quarterbacks Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes, and he caught a touchdown in Kansas City’s Super Bowl win in February.

Backups: Tyree McCants and Sean Atkins: McCants ranks third in all-time receiving yards for the Bulls, while Atkins makes our list for his determination (and last year’s breakout season) more than his career stats. After battling his way onto the roster as a walk-on, then sticking it out through three seasons where the Bulls were best purged from our collective memories, he broke out with 1,054 yards and seven touchdowns last season – including two TDs in the 45-0 rout of Syracuse in the Boca Raton Bowl.