They have for a while now. Honestly, if you take out Beamer’s 20-ish year tenure there, this is pretty much where the program’s generally been/fallen…he entirely gave this program the public reputation college fans seem to have for it
Not that badly to be predicting or claiming such before week 0, though. It seems more like a fanbase taking a crackpot’s prediction and running wild with it right before the season started.