We’ve gotten rather used to undefeated national champions. In four of the last five years, the last college football team standing has been an undefeated team. This is unusual. In the twelve years before these last five, we only had an undefeated champion three times. In one of those years, we had the infamous two-loss champ.
There are a number of potential explanations for this trend, and I’m not sure which would stand up to scrutiny. Are teams scheduling more cautiously? Is talent concentrating itself? Are advances in coaching and development lessening inconsistency? Whatever the cause, chaos has been on the decline in college football these last few years. This week, it hinted that it might be coming back.
Coming out of Week 2, our college football model assigned 19 teams a 1-in-25 chance or better to make the playoff. Yesterday, 18 played. Only seven covered the spread. Two of those seven were the two most fringe contenders on the list. Serious playoff contender after serious playoff contender struggled yesterday, and two of the medium ones—Kansas State and Tennessee—lost outright, as both the Big 12 and the SEC continued to aggregately struggle in the season’s early going.
What should we fall back on here? Three thoughts, and then we’ll run through the present playoff picture.
Watch the Pac-12
The Pac-12 doesn’t grade out spectacularly overall, largely because its bottom teams—Stanford and Arizona State—are both so bad. At the top, it’s remarkably deep, with five bona fide playoff contenders and three more teams making serious noise. It’s hard to talk about the five in any specific order, because they’re so tightly bunched and they’ve each been so impressive so far. Washington and Oregon and USC are lighting up scoreboards. Oregon State is making the most of its final assured power conference season. Utah is rolling despite continuing to await the return of its starting quarterback from offseason ACL surgery. Are any of them the best team in the country? Almost definitely not, but the quantity of them plus the presence of UCLA, Washington State, and Colorado makes for both 1) a lot of big games and 2) a decent chance at least somebody will get through the gauntlet with an 11–1 record and a Pac-12 Championship berth. Cannibalization is a risk, as always, but if it happens, it won’t be mediocrity topping mediocrity, the way it has in this league for the last few years. It’ll be good teams taking down good teams, and it’ll be a whole lot of fun to watch.
Survival Is Enough
If you’re going to play poorly, it’s better to play poorly and win than play poorly and lose. If everyone else is playing poorly, it’s an even more positive situation. I wouldn’t expect a Florida State fan to be happy about the Seminoles’ performance in Massachusetts, but life is a valuable thing, and right now, Florida State is very much alive. That has a lot of value, and that goes for all the others who avoided disaster as well.
Ohio State Might Be Great
Ohio State is lucky they play Notre Dame later this year than they did last year. After two weeks of struggling to click on offense, the Buckeyes scored five touchdowns yesterday in the second quarter alone, pulverizing a Western Kentucky team that’s the Conference USA favorite and lines up above Wyoming and Georgia Tech in the national picture, to offer a comparison. Western Kentucky’s strength isn’t its defense—SP+ had the unit 105th in the FBS even before the blowout—but it is hard to score 63 points, and it is hard to average 13.3 yards per pass attempt, and Kyle McCord was a comparable recruit to CJ Stroud, making it very believable that he could develop to thrive under Ryan Day. It’s not the most eye-catching result from yesterday, but the last few years, there have been three teams consistently talented enough to win national titles, and if one of them fired on all cylinders, that’s news within this broader, sloppier picture.
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Onto the playoff situation.
We’ve been using arbitrary thresholds to define this, because how else do you draw the line, and so our goalposts are moving when it comes to what warrants inclusion in our sphere of focus. We want to be up front about that. After Week 1, 17 teams checked in at 1-in-30 or likelier to make the field, per our model. After Week 2, 19 teams were at or better than 1-in-25. This week, there are 14 likelier than 1-in-10, and an additional eleven likelier than 1-in-35. In other words? The playoff picture is expanding. That’s weird!
The 25, and then some more notes from the week:
Georgia: 51.9%
Something odd about yesterday’s Georgia struggle against South Carolina is that despite holding the ball for nearly 40 minutes, Georgia only totaled ten possessions, excluding the kneel-down at the end. Georgia had the ball all day and did very little with it against a Gamecock defense that does not resemble the 1985 Bears. Alabama has a quarterback problem, and we’ll get to that, but Georgia may have one of its own. Early returns on Carson Beck are merely fine despite the guy facing a manageable set of opponents. The rushing game has been weirdly bad too, sitting in the middle of the FBS in both total yards and yards per play. The whole thing is uninspiring, looking a lot more like pre-2021 Georgia than the Kirby Smart team which dominated the sport these last two years. Are they the best team in the country? Probably. But if our concerns about their discipline and focus were to be borne out, it would look a lot like this.
Penn State: 47.5%
Penn State looked fine against Illinois yesterday, and that’s probably a victory. Illinois is the kind of team who makes everything around them ugly, and the archetype of a championship contender would not allow themselves to fall into the muck but we don’t have any archetypical contenders right now. Drew Allar did not have a great game, but he avoided mistakes, and Penn State did enough on Illinois’s mistakes to get a win. The stage is set for a tough visit from Iowa next week. Illinois is a big enough unknown that this Iowa game might be our first real learning about where Penn State’s ceiling sits.
Ohio State: 42.6%
We talked about the Buckeyes above, but to say one thing: I think the underwhelming Week 1 has people completely not noticing this football team, and I’m curious what the narrative’s going to be this week heading into College Gameday in South Bend. I personally think it’s foolish to say Ohio State isn’t a top-four team right now. There is so much talent and they have now flashed a high ceiling. I’m curious where everybody else stands.
Florida State: 29.0%
Our first drop in probability comes between these guys and the trio above them. Even after playing such a bad game against Boston College (who followed the upset script perfectly in approach, by the way, aggressive on fourth downs and declining to kneel the clock out before halftime), Florida State is the comfortable ACC favorite, something made all the more advantageous by the dynamic where if they do lose this week at Clemson, they’ll still be favored to make the ACC title game, with a loss that will then have come to a top-15 team and therefore be very forgiven by the committee. Florida State, in other words, still has a loss to give.
Still, Jordan Travis’s injury was concerning, and while he seemed to be ok in the second half, it’s the kind of thing to bookmark for future reference. Even beyond that: While it was a prototypical trap game, happening on the edge of a hurricane after avoiding the immediate post-LSU letdown, consistency still matters, and we still haven’t seen it from FSU. It isn’t that they’re lacking it more than others, but it’s something that programs have to prove, and Florida State hasn’t proven it yet. They’ll get their chances soon.
Washington: 27.0%
Movelor doesn’t know about the Mel Tucker situation, but there’s still plenty to take away from Washington’s butt-kicking of Michigan State, namely that the offense is outrageously fun. Our model’s been shuffling the Pac-12’s top five all year, but the Huskies are the flavor of the day, and their schedule is backloaded, meaning we might be seeing a pretty small number next to their name in a few weeks here.
Oregon: 23.9%
Oregon walloped Hawaii, bringing their average points per game down to 58. That’s small-sample silliness, but the Ducks still look good, hard as it is to know what exactly they have in Eugene. They’re our most mysterious team so far, which is weird given they played a solid Big 12 team on the road last week. Texas Tech just isn’t all that telling of a test, especially if you win uncomfortably.
Michigan: 21.6%
Yes, this is lower than the consensus, but the difference between Movelor and the consensus is that Movelor is aware of Michigan’s scores. The Wolverines couldn’t top 40 against any of East Carolina, UNLV, and Bowling Green. J.J. McCarthy, everyone’s favorite quarterback until they watch him play, threw three picks yesterday while only attempting thirteen passes. That’d be one thing if Blake Corum was running all over the field, but he isn’t really doing that. Michigan’s only 32nd in the country in yards per rush despite playing a schedule highlighted by an 0–3 team from the AAC. There is no reason to believe this sluggishness has anything to do with Jim Harbaugh’s absence on gamedays. He’s at practice. The team doesn’t look very good. It’s slipping towards the national pack, and it’s slipping away from its Big Ten East rivals, each of whom Movelor would have favored against Michigan no matter the locale. Michigan needs to turn this around, or it is going to be in for two very bad Saturdays later this fall.
Oklahoma: 18.0%
After SMU gave the Sooners a lot of trouble on offense, Brent Venables went up the turnpike this weekend and watched his team hang 66 on Tulsa. Oklahoma is a lot like Oregon in terms of the mystery, but they’re looking great so far on the aggregate, and with Cincinnati and Iowa State ******** **** ***** **** yesterday (evidently literally, in Iowa State’s case, if we’re to make a lot of the food poisoning narrative), OU’s poised to enter the Shootout 5–0.
USC: 17.8%
USC was idle this week. Sloth’s a sin, Lincoln!
Notre Dame: 13.4%
Notre Dame did not play its best game against Central Michigan, beating the Chippewas about as decisively as they beat NC State. The program has explicitly been looking ahead to Ohio State, but it was a little concerning, and it became more concerning when Sam Hartman came up limping in the third quarter. The Irish will not have the talent advantage over Ohio State, and while they don’t need that win to make the playoff, it would not constitute a step forward for this program to finish 11–2 having been beaten soundly by Ohio State at home and Georgia in the Cotton Bowl.
One interesting note on these guys: On the 247 talent composite, they’re eleventh, and they only have one five-star on the roster, but their average player’s recruiting grade is fifth-best in the country. Their roster is a little smaller than some of their peers, which theoretically means they have similarly talented starters to the pack below Ohio State, Bama, and UGA but enjoy less depth. That isn’t exactly what’s going on—the lack of five-stars shows they have an abundance of four-stars, offering a different sort of depth—but it says something, and the broader point is that Notre Dame’s program is built differently from the rest of this list. They’re zigging, and it’s not for the sake of not zagging (it’s academics and a few other things), but it could still conceivably hit on a zag inefficiency.
Alabama: 13.3%
The Crimson Tide were up seven on USF and the Bulls were driving, and the Tide still have a playoff chance.
I’m not sure that Jalen Milroe was benched as much as Alabama wanted to try Tyler Buchner and Ty Simpson. Either way, though, it had the same effect, with the small-sample performance favoring Milroe, then Simpson, then Buchner. It will be seen whether Nick Saban agrees.
We’re getting too young to remember, but Alabama struggled to score at the beginning of this dynasty. For a long time, this was a defense-first program under Saban. That’s changed, and the change peaked with DeVonta Smith and Steve Sarkisian, but Alabama did show, a long time ago, that you can win titles without a top-ten offense.
Anyway, yes, Alabama’s even worse than they looked last week, but they’re still in the playoff if they win out, and they have some hypothetical paths at 11–2. Watch this space.
Oregon State: 13.0%
The Beavers hit a speedbump, DJ Uiagalelei completing fewer than half his passes and throwing two picks against San Diego State. Oregon State still shut down the Aztecs offensively, for the most part, and the game was a win, but it wasn’t the best they’ve looked. In fact, it was one of the worst games any of these five good Pac-12 teams have played this year. The tests start next week for Oregon State, with a trip to Pullman followed by a visit from Utah. If they’re going to be part of this story, they need to win at least the first of those two games.
Texas: 12.6%
The Longhorns had the expected letdown game against Wyoming, but it was still a concerning night. Coming on the heels of USF almost making beating Alabama a fad, Texas took the field at home as 30-point favorites and needed all four quarters to beat gutsy Wyoming. Credit to Quinn Ewers for avoiding mistakes, but he’s not consistently making the throws. He knows how to play quarterback, but he isn’t carving up secondaries.
Utah: 12.3%
The last of the fourteen serious contenders, Utah handled Weber State effectively, handing the second-string reins to freshman Nate Johnson, who played fine. We have no idea when Cam Rising will return, and because of that, we have a very hard time knowing what this Utah team is. They *can* beat UCLA without Rising next weekend, but they might not.
Louisville: 6.6%
Leading these next eleven is Movelor darling Louisville, who started so strong against Indiana only to need a big goal line stop down the stretch. The Cards’ advantage continues to be their schedule.
Iowa: 5.4%
The Hawkeyes wore down Western Michigan, ultimately scoring 41 points, their highest total since that 2021 Friday night game in College Park where they picked off Taulia Tagovailoa five times. It was a solid performance from a team that continues to look like the best in the Big Ten, and given Iowa’s Big Ten East opponents are Penn State, Michigan State, and Rutgers, the path to 11–1 and a shot at an upset in Indianapolis remains clear.
Mississippi: 5.3%
Lane Kiffin’s young men pulled away over the second half against Georgia Tech, the passing offense continuing to shine in Oxford. They’ve found a good time to play Alabama. That’s the pivotal game for this team.
Syracuse: 4.9%
If you’re struggling to conceptualize these probabilities: The top fourteen are all believable. The next eleven is a group that includes Syracuse. Possible? Yes. The Orange beat Purdue on the road with a style point or two, and the ACC is soft enough that style points against Purdue say something. But they’re still Syracuse, at least for another week or two.
Tennessee: 4.7%
Yikes!
I thought Florida played well, but to do a little transitive property: Utah didn’t have a functioning quarterback two weeks ago and beat these Gators by two scores but more like three.
Tennessee’s defense looked like it could be the worst in the power conferences during that first half, and the offense completely no-showed. Movelor was very high on these guys because Movelor cares a lot about what teams did last year. Movelor was wrong, and we were wrong to believe Movelor. The magic is gone again from Rocky Top.
LSU: 4.3%
LSU and Mississippi have played the best in the SEC so far, and that’s a real big problem for the SEC, because LSU did what it did against Florida State. It was a dominant win yesterday over Mississippi State, and though the Tigers are looking suspiciously like those Brian Kelly teams up north who could beat anyone outside the top ten, LSU fans might take that for the year, given 1) there are scenarios where that’s enough to win the SEC and 2) just how bad that FSU loss was. The tests keep coming, but the Tigers are probably going to be in the mix in their division.
North Carolina: 4.3%
Our model has long loved Minnesota, rightly or wrongly, and so it was very impressed with UNC’s performance, elevating the Tar Heels to…34th in the country.
It’s possible UNC is legitimate, and that Mack Brown has broken through and produced a playoff team in Chapel Hill. It’s also possible, though, that UNC is good enough to appear legitimate playing a bunch of ACC competition. It was quietly a really solid win, though, and with South Carolina hanging with Georgia, UNC fans should feel pretty good about their team’s performance so far. The schedule, as usual, is great for the team playing it. It’s an ACC schedule. UNC could make the playoff.
Kansas State: 3.6%
This might have been the most consequential loss of the season. Time will tell whether this was K-State laying an egg like it did against Tulane last year or K-State being a worse team than it was last year or Mizzou playing one hell of a game, but Kansas State piddled one away against a Missouri crew it’s hard to believe is going to be competitive for the whole season. It was such a fun game, but it wasn’t a well-played game, and that is most true of Kansas State’s tacklers, who did not do the tackling thing such terminology implies. This is very bad for the Big 12, because this is the kind of loss that will pull the whole conference down if K-State becomes one of its best teams, which is still moderately likely.
Clemson: 3.5%
Remember these guys? They beat up FAU, and now they host a Florida State team that looked pretty shaky up by Boston. The likeliest truth, if Clemson does beat the Seminoles, is that the ACC is a natal cleft again, something that stinks sitting in close proximity to a lot of strength. But, ACC teams have that great playoff path, and for as bad as the Duke loss was, it’s believable that Clemson could still finish atop this conference, and therefore in a relevant position to the national scene.
UCLA: 3.0%
UCLA put NC Central away comfortably, and now Pac-12 play begins. The Bruins dodge Washington and Oregon, but they’re the sixth fiddle at best in this league from what we can see. Still, they could catch Utah at an opportune time, and they should be favored over Washington State at home, and maybe Oregon State isn’t really for real. If that’s all true, UCLA would have a delightful path to a 10–0 start. The college football season is so short. That’s a real chance right there.
Duke: 2.9%
Finally, Duke, who handled Northwestern. The Blue Devils still have to do a lot of convincing, but like so many others on this list, they play in the ACC, and they haven’t lost yet. What’s more, they beat someone who’s probably a solid football team. Consider them in the mix.
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Other thoughts, beginning with the Buffalo in the room:
It’s tough to know what to make of Colorado’s game against Colorado State. Our model is so low on both teams, and we’ve had plenty of concerns about its evaluation of Colorado, but Colorado State’s receivers made so many impressive catches that we now aren’t sure we should trust it on them, either. To do a little model talk: Movelor isn’t going to boost a team by much more than four points after a given game. That’s just too quick a reaction. If Movelor wasn’t so simple, it’d have probably estimated Colorado higher to begin with, and we’d have a mechanism in which it adjusts more quickly for more unknown teams. But to make a point: Movelor was closer to this final score than betting markets were. Closer by a lot.
Something a lot of people are doing is saying that because they’ve agreed that Colorado is great, Colorado State just played the game of the century, and because Colorado State played so well, that makes Colorado’s win impressive yet again. It circular logic, spiraling upward. In reality, Colorado was burned by some good plays but looked like a bad defensive team, and though Shedeur Sanders looks like a poised, professional quarterback, questions remain about his ability to hit receivers deep. What does that sound like to you? To me, it sounds like Mike Leach’s Washington State. In this year’s Pac-12, that shouldn’t be good enough to do a whole lot. It would stand to reason that Colorado minus Travis Hunter is a lot worse, so maybe it’s that (he should be one of the ten best players in the country right now, if recruiting rankings are good at what they do), but while our model is wrong when it calls them the 109th-best team in the FBS, I have a hard time believing they’re one of the best 25.
On a narrative level: Deion Sanders’s work is impressive and fascinating, but the circus is starting to run its course, and Colorado is a few weeks of this away from Mike Krzyzewski territory, where fans understandably hate them and establishment media hasn’t caught on. Clemson followed this arc too, but it happened much faster, and there was a lot more winning involved. What’s this going to look like when the novelty wears off? What’s it going to look like if Colorado gets tossed around a little these next two weeks?
The rest:
- The Mississippi State offensive overhaul is interesting given Zach Arnett was an internal promotion. I understand he was the defensive coordinator, I see he must have disagreed with Leach, but I’m surprised he so quickly and decisively removed the forward pass from a team presumably built to throw the ball around.
- 39 undefeated teams remain in the FBS. We have 19 of those in the playoff picture, and we just talked Colorado, but the remaining 19, in no meaningful order, are: Miami, Wake Forest, BYU, Kansas, UCF, Rutgers, Maryland, Washington State, Kentucky, Missouri, Auburn, James Madison, Georgia State, Marshall, Air Force, Fresno State, Liberty, and Memphis. Just wanted to give them each acknowledgment. Miami will either rise into our circle of interest soon or confirm Movelor’s impression.
- Fresno State continues to lead the pack for the Group of Five title, bouncing back after that Eastern Washington debacle last week to stay unbeaten.
- There was a decent amount of attention paid to some FCS games against FBS teams, but only Sacramento State grabbed one of those wins. Cal got its feet under it to beat Idaho, and North Dakota is not North Dakota State, leaving Boise State safe enough to survive.
- In FCS vs. FCS action, NDSU retook 2nd place in Movelor’s rankings after beating Central Arkansas soundly. Southern Illinois pulled off a nice fourth-quarter comeback to beat SEMO. Holy Cross pulled away from Yale, validating their ranking but also prompting the question of how much it helps to be playing your third game against someone else playing their first. (That is a real question, I am not trying to throw shade at the Saders.) In FCS vs. Division II action, Montana pulled away from Ferris State. It’s hard to know how troubling or impressive that is, but in case you’re an FCS fan reading this: A reminder that our model views all non-Division I teams as equals. We will be low on Montana by a point or two for a week or two.
- We’ll talk Iowa State elsewhere this week—this is not a space for Iowa State talk. Only nationally relevant things in here. Not happy, though!
- Oh! Presbyterian, the worst team in Division I according to our model, got a win, and it was against Wofford, of all teams. Wofford has evidently really fallen off, but credit to the Blue Hose, and best of luck in your continued pursuit of Marist, the second-worst rated team.
