I have only a passing knowledge of EWU and Weber… I will say Weber impressed.
I did watch some of the butt-whooping NAU received at the hands of San Diego, I wasn't impressed.

I would put the SoCon into three buckets

top three
Samford — potential top 5 team needs to show up in the playoffs and get a few wins.
Furman — still a young team but excellent coaching and influx of athletic physical talent.
Mercer — this could be the year that Mercer gets to the playoffs.

question marks
Wofford — Ayers was a legend, how will the new regime navigate a tough SoCon road schedule?
Chattanooga — Talent everywhere, but something was amiss in Arth's first season.
Western — Talent everywhere, maybe too dependent on Adams.

dark horses
The Citadel — Have the talent, can be a scheme matchup nightmare.
ETSU — You can't sleep on the Bucs, new coach lots of talent.

When I break the SoCon teams down this way — the SoCon has eight teams that have a ton of talent, anything could happen in 2018 and not surprise me. The weak link is VMI. I know they have to be included here but they have a long way to go. Speaking of elite teams — the SoCon needs to soon get a team as far as the semis to be included in those conversations again. I see only one realistic SoCon candidate this year — SAMFORD. And the DOGS better get it done this season.

I expect the DINS to take another step this season but FURMAN is still rebuilding — my hope is by 2020 Furman will be able to compete at or near the elite level again.

Would love to see a similar breakdown of the Big Sky.