Hawaii's offseason theme is straightforward: keep what works up front and figure out coverage on the back end. Micah Alejado returns as the starting quarterback, which matters more than the departure of backup Luke Weaver, who left for San Jose State with 15.9 PPA attached to his name. The bigger loss came at receiver, where Jackson Harris and his 53.6 PPA are gone to LSU and Brandon White followed to Kansas State. The portal response brought in sixteen new pieces, led by Devin Alves from Virginia Tech and Carson Brown from Iowa State, but the raw math — 82.0 PPA out the door against 12.6 PPA in — says this offense will be rebuilding target share from scratch, even with 100% of the offensive line and the quarterback room intact. That mixed continuity picture lines up with a profile that grades as roughly average on offense. Defensively, the bigger concern isn't scheme, it's replacement: role loss and coverage attrition marks suggest the back end is more fragile than the offense, consistent with a defense that grades below average. Special teams, by contrast, looks like a legitimate strength and could be the tiebreaker in close Mountain West games.

JP+ projects Hawaii at 7.0 wins, with the toughest tests coming at Arizona State, at Stanford, and at home against UNLV, while San Jose State, New Mexico State, and Sacramento State at home represent the clearest paths to bowl eligibility. The gap between that number and however the market frames this team likely comes down to how fast the new receivers translate PPA into production and whether the defensive coverage attrition shows up as explosive plays allowed. If Alejado's continuity at quarterback and along the offensive line offsets the receiver turnover, and the secondary stabilizes faster than the moderate-risk continuity grade suggests, Hawaii pushes toward the higher end of that projection. If the coverage issues linger into conference play, a floor closer to six wins is the more realistic outcome.