College Football Morning: Alabama’s in Real Trouble (Week 8 Recap)

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We will talk about Texas below, and about Georgia. In terms of identifying this year’s national champion, that game was the most significant game of the week. In the big picture, though—the grand, long-term college football scope—what happened in Knoxville on Saturday afternoon promises more ripple effects than any other game in the country.

It’s hard to stand out in the SEC. Mississippi is probably one of the ten best teams in the country, and they’re 5–2, twelfth in the conference standings, and 18th in the AP poll. This might be the best football team Mississippi has ever had. It’s almost certainly the school’s best in the last sixty years. Unless Lane Kiffin can find a way to upset Georgia, there’s a good chance the team will play in something like the ReliaQuest Bowl, and that would be among the better options. There are so many benefits to SEC membership, many of them financial, but when it comes to building a noteworthy program, it’s hard to find a place that rewards growth less. To win, you must be great. Anything less, and you’ll easily find yourself swallowed.

We’ve ridden the Alabama rollercoaster this year, as a lot of people have. We haven’t ridden it with the same emotional vigor as Alabama fans themselves, but we’ve ridden it. Concerned post-Saban about the program falling off? Yes. Eager to give Kalen DeBoer his plaudits post-Georgia? That was us. Taken aback by the struggles against Vanderbilt and South Carolina? Us too. If I’m going to give us credit for anything, it’s for the dawning realization early this season that this year might be DeBoer’s easiest, his biggest challenge more about keeping a chaos-prone community from descending into chaos, as opposed to building something new like most coaches have to do. Even that, though, is looking unwise in hindsight. We were too focused on recruiting. We weren’t focused enough on the difficulty of keeping a talented team focused and executing at a high level.

On its surface, the Tennessee loss is far from damning. Our model’s rating system rates the Volunteers the seventh-best team in the country, and our bracketology this morning projected Josh Heupel’s team to claim the 9-seed. Neyland Stadium is one of many iconic venues in this sport. It’s hard to win the cigar game. It’s hard to beat Josh Heupel. It’s understandable to lose at Tennessee.

However.

The first problem, for DeBoer and Alabama, is that Alabama entered Knoxville having forfeited the luxury of seeing the understandable go understood. Were this Alabama’s first loss of the season, we’d congratulate Tennessee on the accomplishment and hardly dwell on the Tide, aside from pondering whether they might not quite be as good as Ohio State. (Spoiler: We’re going to have a conversation like that about Texas in a few paragraphs.) This was not Alabama’s first loss of the season. Alabama lost to Vanderbilt. And in between that loss and this one, Alabama slopped its way through a two-point home victory over South Carolina, a respectable team but very much one swallowed amidst the depths of the SEC.

The second problem, for DeBoer and Alabama, is that Tennessee didn’t play very well. This is easy to overstate. With college basketball, we speak often about the role effective defense plays in making the sport look “ugly.” Plenty of defensive backs drop interceptions. Jermod McCoy didn’t drop the one in the endzone. Plenty of defensive fronts have allowed and will allow more than 2.2 yards per carry to the Alabama run game. 2.2 yards per carry was the final number in Saturday’s game. Tennessee played good defense Saturday, and on the other side of the ball, Alabama probably had at least something to do with the many Volunteer moments which made us wince.

Still…Nico Iamaleava has more in the way of potential than he does in the way of present potency. Tennessee’s defense has no business pushing around what are supposed to be the mightiest offensive lines in the country. The Vols are a good team, but that wasn’t their best game, and they’re not a great team. They, like Alabama, are merely good. In the SEC, that’s not good enough. Not if you want national respect. Not if you want to continue operating at a national championship level.

All is not lost for the Crimson Tide. Our model places them only barely on the wrong side of 50% playoff-likely, and they have opportunities for high-profile/high-margin victories against Missouri and LSU over the next three weeks. Make the playoff, and Alabama stands a good chance of winning at least one game, even if that game happens on the road. I would think that in Tuscaloosa, a quarterfinal appearance in a coach’s debut season should leave DeBoer with a healthy seed of credibility among the people he needs to lead. And yet:

At this moment, Alabama is more likely than not to miss the inaugural 12-team playoff. At this moment, Alabama is swimming in the depths of the SEC. At this moment, Alabama is on track to be the fourth-best SEC team in its first post-Saban season. The country may only have space for three.

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As for Tennessee!

This is life, right here.

We’ve said before that Tennessee is a year away, but we understand that’s different from saying that, for example, the Detroit Tigers are a year away. Ascents in sports are joyous until they get old. For Tennessee, I suspect the climb has begun to age. It’s been two years now since the 52–49 classic which ended with the Vols’ goalposts submerged in the Tennessee River. This is Heupel’s fourth season in East Tennessee. Tennessee is ready to take the next step. Taking the next step means, at the very least, winning games like these.

In a sport dependent upon the financial contributions of fickle boosters and alums, momentum is real, and it is key. Tennessee just restored a lot of it in a situation in which it had probably begun to wane. Take care of business from here, and the Volunteers should finish 10–2 and make the College Football Playoff. This despite a quarterback who’s severely lacking polish. This despite substantial depth concerns across the roster. A second eleven-win campaign in a three-year stretch is well within reach. The bitter taste from the Arkansas loss—one which would have cut even deeper now that LSU went and slaughtered the Hogs—is eased. Things are good in Knoxville. There’s work to do, but Tennessee doesn’t have to do anything besides what it’s supposed to in order to call this season a success. Things are good in Knoxville.

Texas vs. Good Georgia vs. Ohio State

I’m going to get a little annoying here, and I ask that you entertain me for a minute while I do that. I don’t think Oregon is the best team in the country. They’ve made strides—more on that below—and they’re a much better unit than whatever it was we saw against Idaho and Boise State. But I’m not ready to seriously include Oregon in that best–team–in–the–country discussion. Movelor, our model’s aforementioned rating system, is higher on the Ducks than both SP+ and FPI, two systems with slightly stronger track records. Even so, Movelor has Oregon behind Ohio State, behind Texas, and only barely ahead of Georgia, a team known for spending the majority of its season goofing around out there.

I don’t mean to rip on Oregon. They aren’t the best team in the country, but they’re arguably the most accomplished, with the best set of wins (Ohio State is mostly it, but that’s enough) of any undefeated team. I respect Oregon enough to address why we’re not including them. I’m not explaining why we’re not discussing Pitt.

With that established:

I think the thing we really want to know, coming out of Texas vs. Georgia, is how good both teams are, and how those teams compare to Ohio State. Ask who the best team in the country is, and I think you could still answer any of the three. You might not want to answer “Texas”—I sure would not answer “Texas” in casual conversation today—but Texas did rally at least a little, and the problem with Georgia is how inconsistently they seem to play and how much sense that makes in the context of their off-field struggles.

That inconsistency makes Georgia both an easy answer and a hard one. At the Bulldogs’ best, they’re making two of the best quarterbacks in the country wear terror on their faces. At their worst, the offense is sloppy and the defense is lackadaisical.

The core question about this Georgia team is whether they decide when they flip the switch. There’s no Newtonian law which states college football teams can’t selectively elevate their game. We think this is outside Georgia’s control, that sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t and that’s why Kirby Smart’s record is so bad against Alabama. But we really don’t know. Maybe they’ll goof around against Florida but rise to thrash Mississippi, then whoop Texas again in the SEC Championship. Or maybe they’ll crush Florida, scuffle against Mississippi, and enter Thanksgiving needing a powerful showing to earn a playoff home game.

Where does Ohio State fit into this? We’re the most confident in our assessment of what Ohio State is, among the three. Georgia is so volatile that it’s hard to measure Texas against Georgia. We think we have a better idea of what Oregon is, and therefore of what Ohio State is. Adding to this, Ohio State has more continuity right now than just about any of the elite programs. We know this Ohio State program with great familiarity. They’ve been themselves for years. We don’t how exactly how good the final product will turn out to be, but we have a sense of where the Buckeyes stand. Where is that? Somewhere right around the top of the country.

The simplest explanation today is probably that Good Georgia is the best team in the country, that Ohio State and Texas come next, and that Bad Georgia is down past Oregon, down past Alabama, maybe even down past Tennessee and Mississippi and Notre Dame. It might not matter, if they can turn Bad Georgia off and power Good Georgia back up, but it does probably still matter. We’re hard on Georgia around here, but I don’t know how else to react to a kid who plays with matches.

The rest of the SEC:

LSU stomping Arkansas wasn’t the most surprising thing, but it said a lot about where things stand in Baton Rouge. I’d venture that the Tigers have gotten better since the loss to USC. I don’t know if they’re good enough to come out of this upcoming mini-gauntlet a playoff contender, but this is still a very good team.
Texas A&M was never in much danger in Starkville, but that wasn’t particularly inspiring. The Aggies get LSU in College Station next week in one that’s taking the shape of a playoff elimination game.
Oklahoma’s a mess, and the university finally seemed to acknowledge that yesterday, firing Seth Littrell eight games into his tenure as offensive coordinator. But credit to South Carolina for taking advantage. The Gamecocks are well into Movelor’s Top 25, and all three of their losses have come to playoff contenders. The schedule doesn’t get easy from here—they still have to play Clemson, A&M, Missouri, and whatever Vanderbilt is—but they’ll be a popular sleeper for next year’s playoff, and they’ll have plenty of opportunities to make noise down the stretch.
Speaking of Missouri, it’s probably not good to need that big of a comeback to topple Auburn at home, but it was sure a lot of fun, and the Tigers are 6–1 heading into a landmark opportunity against potentially vulnerable Alabama.
Last: Great win by Florida, who like South Carolina is up into Movelor’s Top 25. The Gators have a winning record for now, freshman Jadan Baugh ran for five touchdowns, and Billy Napier’s program responded well to losing Graham Mertz for the year. Maybe Kentucky is falling apart. Maybe Florida’s gotten it together but it won’t matter because their next four games are so hard. But maybe Napier can save this thing, or at least extend it another season.

Indiana Is Rolling

Moving up to the Big Ten, the Hoosiers might be for real. We’ve acknowledged here and elsewhere that Movelor is prone to underrating teams like Indiana who so dramatically improve over the course of one offseason. By placing the Hoosiers barely in its Top 25, Movelor artificially dampens what our model shows for Indiana’s playoff probability (SP+ and FPI have the Hoosiers knocking on the top ten’s door). With the benefit of some human ability to see nuance, then, let us acknowledge: Indiana is a good football team, most likely the fourth-best in the Big Ten. Nebraska doesn’t have to be great for that win to mean something big.

I’m not sure whether the Hoosiers should be panicking about Kurtis Rourke’s injury or not. Tayven Jackson had no problem finishing the job against the Huskers, and he has a solid pedigree. Overall, I’d guess the dropoff isn’t that big. If Indiana loses to Washington, I’d doubt it would be because of Jackson. But, that might become the narrative, so it’s something to watch. We’re pretty sure Movelor’s low on Indiana, but we’re not positive. The toughest game these guys have played was probably when Maryland came to Bloomington. Washington and Michigan are obviously down this year, but those will be better tests for this team, Rourke or Jackson or otherwise.

More from this league:

Some slop crept in as the game went on, but Oregon decimated Purdue, scoring touchdowns on its first three possessions, drives of 75, 80, and 99 yards, respectively. The Ducks are now likelier than not to finish the regular season 12–0, and while we explained above why we doubt that they’re national championship good, you might not need to be national championship good to win a national championship.
Michigan suffered another low point, losing handily to Illinois in Champaign. Bret Bielema is making progress, but not so much progress as to warrant this from Michigan. Movelor should finally catch up on the Wolverines over the next three weeks unless Sherrone Moore figures out how he wants to run his offense. But this team is three or four touchdowns worse than last year’s, and that’s after promoting from within. What would the narrative be here if Alabama had finished these guys off in that Rose Bowl?
USC also found a new bottom, not only losing at Maryland but blowing a comfortable lead in the process. For the third straight season, this USC team has responded to early excitement by getting exposed. For the second straight season, the wheels might be falling off. What in the world is happening out there?
As with South Carolina and Florida, credit to Wisconsin, players of good football lately. They’re also into Movelor’s Top 25. Theirs is maybe the most pivotal turnaround of the three, given Napier’s probably still doomed and South Carolina’s still buried in the SEC. Luke Fickell’s tenure started terribly. I don’t know if Badger fans should trust the guy yet, but the recent stretch is a sign of life, and a big opportunity awaits on Saturday.
In one of the quieter games, Michigan State punked Iowa, and now Jonathan Smith’s got a good path to a bowl game while Kirk Ferentz is back to navigating his way around a lot of hard questions. The first half was hilarious, with Michigan State kicking four straight field goals and those the only scoring. In the second half, Sparty managed to hold the Hawkeyes at arm’s reach, knocking Iowa out of Top 25-ish status and bolstering the mood in a big way in East Lansing. Over the prior month, MSU had taken a disappointing loss to Boston College and had to play Ohio State and Oregon back-to-back.

Iowa State and BYU Survived

For BYU, it happened Friday night, and for Iowa State, it happened on Saturday, but in both cases, the script was about the same: The Big 12’s undefeated teams played host to a previously underachieving visitor. Things got messy, the odds became grim, and each quarterback stepped up and led a game-winning drive in the game’s closing minute. The result?

Our model has Kansas State the Big 12 favorite.

This is cynical and boring and I promise we won’t dwell on it for too long. Winning is what matters. Winning is good. BYU and Iowa State won, and they should be thrilled, and they should remember these games as magical classics. But this demonstrated something we’ve feared might be the case for both these teams, and that’s that they just aren’t quite as good as their records. While Iowa State was wrestling a raging bull of its own creation, K-State was beating the brakes off of West Virginia in Morgantown.

It’s been a disappointing season for most of the Big 12. Oklahoma State and Utah have brutally underperformed expectations (Utah’s recently highly sought-after offensive coordinator just stepped down last night). Arizona has proven any preseason optimism foolish. Kansas is 2–5, Dave Aranda’s on the hot seat at Baylor, UCF and West Virginia are letdowns, and Houston recently went two full games without scoring a single point. And yet…

Among BYU, Iowa State, Kansas State, and Colorado (!), nobody has lost to any Big 12 team besides one another. Colorado’s a unique character in that mix—the Buffs have a nonconference loss, and that loss, an emphatic loss to Nebraska, looks a little worse today than it did on Friday—but the Big 12 is basically this: Three programs overperforming and rallying when they have to, K-State being good old K-State (good but prone to meltdowns), and a lot of football teams absolutely shattering. Paradoxically, that can look really good for the league as a whole. If even one of BYU and Iowa State can defy the odds and reach the Big 12 Championship at 12–0, this conference will have a good shot at putting two teams in the playoff, and there’s even a route towards three, though that would likely require 15 separate games going the right way plus some outside help to get an 11–1 Iowa State across the committee’s threshold.

The safest bet in the Big 12 is that things will get weirder. The second-safest bet might be K-State winning this conference. They’re its best team, even if Iowa State and BYU have done more so far.

Other little Big 12 things:

Colorado thrashed Arizona in what might have been the best game a Deion Sanders-coached team has ever played. That was even with Travis Hunter leaving again to tend to that shoulder injury.
Arizona State lost at Cincinnati and Texas Tech got pummeled by Baylor, dropping both teams to two overall losses on the season. Neither was a serious conference contender, but their overall win–loss mark had kept us watching them, and we don’t have to watch so closely anymore.
The focus after Utah’s loss to TCU is on Utah, who appears to be fully falling apart, but the victory is big for TCU. This is a program who allowed 30 points to Houston the last time they took the field. This is a program who recently went from a national championship appearance to ceding control of the DFW to SMU. Bailed out by Utah’s offense? Maybe. But if TCU can be even adequate defensively from here, they could weasel their way into something like eight wins, a respectable bowl game bid, and a deep breath come December.

The Jury’s Still Out on Miami…

…but we’re finally believers in Cam Ward.

We’ve waited for Cam Ward to fall apart at the wrong time, to flail around a little bit and cost Miami a game. Maybe that will still happen, but we’re eight weeks into the season now and he keeps answering the bell. After Saturday, it’s at the point where we wouldn’t mind seeing him win the Heisman, if that’s indeed what happens. Cam Ward is special. He did not give Louisville a chance down the stretch in that game.

Is Miami a national title contender? Absolutely not. This team has won its three ACC games by a combined twelve points, and the best team they played in that stretch was either Louisville or Virginia Tech, each of whom is aimed at a 7–5 finish. Will Miami win the ACC? Probably not. Clemson continues to appear the team to beat in that conference, with SMU also in the mix. Clemson is right on the edge of being favored to finish ACC play 8–0. Miami and SMU are both projected for 7–1. But Ward keeps Miami in football games, and so far, he keeps winning them.

One thing to mention here, since we brought up Clemson and SMU:

It’s possible three ACC teams could finish the conference season undefeated. This is a possibility that arises when you build a 17-team conference and only schedule eight conference games. If that happens, my impression is that the ACC tiebreakers (I believe these are still current) would come down to each teams’ conference opponents’ combined conference win percentage.

Other results and reactions:

We didn’t mention what the loss means for Louisville, who went from believable playoff candidate to that 7–5 projection in the blink of an eye. Three one-score defeats, all to strong playoff candidates. That’s tough for the Cardinals, who now have to pull it together and try to play spoiler.
Clemson’s defense is getting to be a legitimate concern, but they did only allow Virginia to score ten points through the first three quarters. That unit has issues, but they didn’t exactly struggle on Saturday.
SMU had no issues on the road against Stanford, and the Mustangs are now up to 15th in Movelor, another one of these upward movements that feels necessary to acknowledge. SMU would be favored on a neutral field right now against both Iowa State and, in a rematch, BYU.
Undefeated Pitt was idle.

James Madison Did It Again

In leading Group of Five news, James Madison self-destructed again, not scoring an offensive touchdown against Georgia Southern until the fourth quarter. The Dukes are now entirely out of it, and with them, the Sun Belt is most likely done as well. There’s still plenty of reason to be bullish on Bob Chesney’s program, but you only get to lose one game you shouldn’t, max.

Over in the American, Army and Navy continued to roll, with Navy particularly emphatic in their beatdown of Charlotte. (Army handled East Carolina comfortably.) With Memphis holding off North Texas in a shootout and Tulane surviving Rice, this more and more has the look of an exhilarating four-team race.

One more note on Army, while we have them: Bryson Daily now leads the FBS in rushing touchdowns. Bryson Daily also has a lot of passing touchdowns. Army probably isn’t quite as good as Boise State, and Boise State has a better playoff shot, and I’d personally argue that Ashton Jeanty is more impressive. But Daily should be getting Heisman attention. This isn’t gimmickry from the Black Knights. The man ran for 171 yards and five touchdowns on Saturday, and he passed for 147 yards on ten attempts. This wasn’t all that unusual of a performance.

Boise State was idle this week, but UNLV survived Oregon State in a controversial finish. Ultimately, Oregon State put themselves in the position, and Oregon State would have still needed to convert the two-point conversion even to just force overtime, so it’s a good road win for the Rebels. But it came with some controversy.

In the MAC, Toledo did beat Northern Illinois in DeKalb, so the Rockets are still (or once again, I forget where we had them last week) the conference favorite.

Liberty was idle this week, but Western Kentucky won pretty big on Wednesday against Sam Houston. The Hilltoppers are the new Conference USA favorite.

Notre Dame and Washington State Rolled

There isn’t much to report on Notre Dame and Washington State. Both won comfortably, Notre Dame taking down Georgia Tech and Washington State beating up Hawaii.

Washington State’s right on the edge of an 11–1 projected final record. They need chaos.

Notre Dame probably benefits from the attention being paid to Army and Navy (each of whom is on Notre Dame’s schedule), and probably benefits from USC and Florida State’s lapses (again, both on that schedule), and will have more reasons than anti-Brian Kelly sentiment to cheer for Texas A&M this coming weekend. (Remember when Notre Dame beat Texas A&M?) With the CFP committee, the simplest answer usually ends up being the right one, so the conventional wisdom which states the Irish are in at 11–1 and out at 10–2 is probably correct.

Is North Dakota State Back??

It was an evening of smashmouth football in Fargo. Cam Miller played within himself again, the NDSU defense severely limited South Dakota State’s passing game, and the Bison are back atop the FCS world, at least in the eyes of the public. It was only a four-point win, and it did happen in the Fargodome, and Movelor does still have SDSU favored by 2.2 points in a hypothetical neutral-site rematch (down from 5.7 entering the contest). But NDSU has the inside track now to the FCS’s 1-seed or 2-seed, each of which keeps you from having to play a road game. A huge win in Tim Polasek’s first Dakota Marker game as head coach.

Other big FCS results:

Sacramento State edged Weber State in double overtime after blowing a 17-point fourth-quarter lead. Early in the fourth, the Hornets were driving, but a trick play in the red zone turned into a pick-six, Weber State scored ten more points after that, and Sac State had to pull it together under some serious pressure.
Idaho and Northern Arizona, two of our favorite teams this year, both looked underwhelming against bad Big Sky teams, with NAU in particular needing some late drama to survive Idaho State.
It was a busy Saturday in the SoCon, with Samford’s 55–35 upset of Mercer flipping the conference script. Chattanooga, who lost to Mercer in September, now looks like the best team in the league. Western Carolina, who walloped Furman, is the lone undefeated team in conference play.
Maine upset Villanova, and they did it with force, sending the Wildcats home from Orono with a 28-point loss. This knocks Villanova back in the CAA and could take them out of an eventual playoff bye. Meanwhile, Richmond upset Delaware, who isn’t playoff-eligible because of their FBS transition but might be the best team in the conference.

College Football Morning: Alabama’s in Real Trouble (Week 8 Recap)

Joe Stunardi

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Joe Stunardi

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