If you’re scoring at home, the situation seems to be this: Alabama is good, but they’re capable of playing horribly. Florida State is ok. Miami is good, but it’s hard to keep Miami teams focused and Mario Cristobal’s game management could eventually blow a hole in the ship. Penn State not only isn’t what the narrative said they were, which we found out last week, but also managed to respond to that exposure with a calamity of a trip to Los Angeles. Texas has offensive line problems and its defense isn’t the best in the country, which it maybe needed to be. Ohio State and Oregon and Georgia and Oklahoma and Texas A&M and Indiana and Texas Tech all also exist. We don’t quite know what to make of them, but we’ll get it a shot.
Takes, theories, observations, and the rest from a very college football Saturday:
The SEC: Texas Is, Unfortunately for Them, Still Texas
We get a lot of things wrong, but we did write in January that Ohio State was the only team who made sense as the offseason number one. Texas was turning over too much up the middle on defense, its offensive line was probably good but reshaping, and Steve Sarkisian clearly didn’t trust Arch Manning, instead repeatedly choosing a Quinn Ewers who was playing through two kind–of–big injuries. The Manning issue looked a little better at Florida, but those other two things—about 50% of football—did not. Florida hadn’t scored 17 since the LIU game. Arch Manning had a decent day and the Longhorn offense still couldn’t keep up. Living in Austin, I’ve heard absurd takes from Texas fans criticizing Sark. This is the first time it’s been fair to seriously question his overall performance.
Usually at Texas, focus is the question (more on this vis-à-vis Miami later). This team’s issue seems more like development, which is weird. That line should not be mediocre. Neither should that quarterback. The defense only had one bad day, so no need to react too much there yet, but the prescribed fixes for Texas are all schematic, and not in a good way. Nobody’s making suggestions about how to play to Texas’s strengths. They’re suggesting ways to work around Texas’s weaknesses. The speed and size and strength is all there. The players aren’t good enough. That points to position coaching, plus possibly strength & conditioning.
Good for Billy Napier, who keeps getting fired by everybody who isn’t his boss. Florida’s only 2–3. They’re still in danger of missing a bowl. But if they play like that every week, they won’t miss a bowl. Which is good news for Texas, actually. We harbor no illusions of Texas being great, but if Florida plays like a top-15 team, Texas could still make the playoff, and maybe even host in the first round.
Every time Alabama takes care of business, it looks more like that trip to Tallahassee was the product of terrible preparation for one game as opposed to a reflection of a bad coaching job overall. That’s the cautionary tale, though, right? It’s what Penn State ran into in Los Angeles. It’s what Miami should be deathly afraid of doing sometime down the line. Teams can lose to teams they’re better than. That’s how this all works. You have to focus.
We’ve taken some heat because our model doesn’t respect Oklahoma and Texas A&M. Should our model respect those teams more? Probably not. A&M’s win at Notre Dame was impressive, but so was NIU’s last year. A&M’s a lot better than NIU, but it’s still only one game. Oklahoma has no impressive wins to speak of, winning both its ranked games at home (neither against likely playoff teams) and benefiting from an illegal play going uncalled in one of them. Both A&M and OU still need to be better than what they’ve shown if they want to get mentioned with the top of the SEC. Thankfully, we’ll eventually find out if they are that good, probably by the end of the month. Vanderbilt was 5–0. Almost everyone in the SEC is good. We pay attention to the teams who are better than the rest of the league.
The Big Ten: Yeah That Was Bad, Penn State
We also wrote in January that the Penn State hype didn’t make sense, considering Penn State was losing Tyler Warren, losing Abdul Carter, and retaining a Drew Allar who Penn State had already probably broken. We expected them to lose to Oregon. We of course did not expect the UCLA loss. What to make of that?
What losing to UCLA showed was how hard the Oregon loss hurt Penn State. Penn State believed the AP Poll. Penn State believed its own propaganda. Penn State believed it might be the best team in the country, and when they lost a perfectly understandable loss in moderately rejuvenating fashion, it seems like it broke them. Last Saturday, they turned a big game into their Super Bowl, then lost. This Saturday, they were a shell of themselves. And it’s not like they were a shell of Oregon, either. They were a shell of a fringe top-ten team.
What do I know, but I’d be shocked if James Franklin got fired. Penn State gets a couple more comfortable games, then Ohio State, then a home game against an Indiana who’s looking like they’ll have one loss by then. Penn State is poised to remain at its baseline at a time when investment is high and the Jim Knowles hire is still ready to pay dividends. Watch for them to chase a high-profile transfer quarterback and bill that as the solution to their problem. (The problem is that they aren’t as big and fast and strong as Ohio State.)
Good for UCLA. Weird booster civil war going on out there right now. Hilarious repudiation of the “Fire [UCLA’s athletic director]” airplane banner.
Should Oregon be worried that Penn State was mediocre? No. We should maybe be more careful with the Ducks and Ohio State now that Penn State and Texas are both two-loss teams (with worse losses than two-loss Notre Dame), but it’s hard to make an earnest case for anyone as better than that pair.
This would have been a nice year for Wisconsin to play the old Big Ten West schedule. Even with that, though: Would they have just gone 5–7 instead of 3–9? They didn’t even really keep Michigan close, and it still felt like a moral victory. That’s damning.
I didn’t pay any attention to Washington vs. Maryland. I wish I did.
The ACC: Miami Is National Championship Good…For Now
Look. It’s October 6th. Everything is going right for Miami, and Miami’s toughest remaining regular season game is either Louisville (at home) or a trip to…Pitt? It would take some freaky stuff for Miami to miss the playoff. But last year’s Miami team might have been the best in the conference too, and they managed to miss the playoff.
Miami has two problems: First, it’s harder to focus in Coral Gables than it is in Columbus, and no this isn’t overblown because I’m partly talking about the people with millions of dollars who hang around football programs. Miami doesn’t have the institutional discipline that Nick Saban instilled in Tuscaloosa. Few teams do. If you think this Miami team is disciplined, then why did they let Notre Dame and Florida State both back into games the Canes had wrapped up? And that’s just in the in-game arena. Most games are lost in practice. Second, teams with a lot of NFL prospects but a second-tier ranking on the Talent Composite tend to be teams with weaker depth. Their first string is great, and in September and October, that plays. But in December and January, you need depth. Guys will go down. You need more guys to replace those guys.
It’s hard to tell how good a job Mike Norvell is or isn’t doing at Florida State, but if you start from the place where he deserved to have his job to enter this season, then skepticism about his long-term status in Tallahassee shouldn’t have changed. 3–2 with a win over Alabama would have sounded good in August, even knowing that meant a loss at UVA. FSU’s fine; Norvell very recently had a top-ten team there. Give it more time.
You’re going to hear a lot about Virginia’s path, and that’s fair. But that path would look just as good with NC State on it, and NC State beat Virginia. Path is only helpful if you take care of business. Will Virginia do that? We don’t know. We haven’t seen them do anything a fine–not–good team couldn’t do. Louisville might have been the better team this week. Louisville just struggles to handle business under Jeff Brohm. (So far. People can change!)
At the same time, we’ve been curious what role Tony Elliott played in Clemson’s now-departed ACC dynasty as we look for things that changed between the good days and now. Offensive coordinating is different from head coaching, and Elliott was mostly a co-OC for the Tigers. But seeing him finally put together success at UVA does make some of that equation easier to square.
Boston College should have had a lot of momentum coming out of last year’s 7–6 season (and 4–1 start). They’re 1–4 and just lost by 41 points to Pitt. There are a lot of ACC schools that are better suited to be basketball schools, but BC isn’t really one of those. It should be a football brand. What’s happening? I wonder how much of it is the relative unpopularity of college football in the northeast. There’s a stat out there about how many southeastern FCS schools have moved up to the FBS over the last twenty years, plus a corresponding stat about how many northeastern FCS schools have cut football. I wonder if wins have also seen a geographic shift.
Football is downstream from a university’s leadership, and UNC is the worst team in the ACC.
The Big 12: Dammit Iowa State
Gratuitous Cyclone fandom on its way.
We’re already down to two unbeaten Big 12 teams, plus another two who are unbeaten in conference but lost a nonconference game. The conference title race is shaping up to be just as nuts as last year. There’s a concern that this is bad for the Big 12, that it’d be better to have one or two top-15 teams and then a soft bottom. The argument makes sense—there are a lot of incentives to maximize your conference’s playoff representation—but it’s more fun to follow a league with a lot of solid teams who are capable of beating one another. Fellow fans of Big 12 schools: Don’t let the playoff ruin college football.
Game management and situational football is a smaller deal in college than it is in the NFL. Games aren’t as close. The head coach job is bigger. But it gets more important the better you get, because there’s more marginal damage with each loss. Iowa State is good enough that Matt Campbell needs to hire someone to tell him when to accept and decline penalties like the holding penalty on Cincinnati’s second drive. Taylor Mouser needs to have his guys ready for an attempt to go 65 yards in eleven seconds. Iowa State almost got away with one of the worst first halves any Big 12 defense has played this year. They didn’t, and now there’s a good chance it’s Big 12 title or bust.
Credit to Cincinnati, who showed up pumped and ran all over Iowa State’s face in the first half. They are somewhere between “good for them” and “this team is a serious conference title contender.”
Only three of Colorado’s four losses were close, but it’s not great to play a lot of close games when your head coach refuses to learn how to game-manage. It’s more galling when it comes from the guys who say they’re building an NFL college football team.
The Others: Yep, Notre Dame’s Path
It seems like last week was the “Will Notre Dame make the playoff if they get to 10–2?” week, but maybe I just consume a lot of Ari Wasserman’s stuff. (Big fan, Ari! This is not a chirp!) We’ll probably get another one soon. For what it’s worth, I think both sides were mostly right, and that people have different definitions of “lock.” Seeing Penn State lose to UCLA, though, is a useful reminder: Every college football season can blow open at the seams. This one is poised to do exactly that. The SEC’s best teams are probably Alabama and Georgia, each of whom has a loss. This could get really, really messy. And in a world where the committee usually shows some reluctance to place a team with a worse record above a team with a better one…I do think Notre Dame is getting in the playoff if they get to 10–2. There are scenarios where they don’t, but those are rare. More likely, there are losses out there we don’t see coming.
For Notre Dame, then, the task is firstly to win out, which is definitely not a lock, as Notre Dame itself has proven plenty of times in recent seasons. Secondly, the task is to not get noticed unless it’s for beating a team badly. Notre Dame wants every halftime and final score to be palatable to the committee and the public. Notre Dame does not want people flipping to NBC for a surprisingly close fourth quarter. Against Boise State, mission accomplished. (It would help Notre Dame if USC was either firmly a ranked team at season’s end or firmly mediocre. It would also help if this season blew open at the seams, but that’s a dangerous game because fewer 13–0 teams means more at 11–2.)
In the world of, “Is any FCS team good enough to hang with North Dakota State?”, both South Dakota State and Tarleton State underwhelmed while NDSU didn’t play its best game but still beat Illinois State by three possessions. NDSU’s Movelor rating dropped on the result, but so did those other two. NDSU is in control down there.
Memphis remains in control of the race for the fifth automatic bid. There’s fun stuff on the periphery, but right now it’s still Memphis vs. The Field.
**
If you enjoy these posts and want to receive them more directly, we have two options for you. The first is to subscribe to our Substack, where we currently exclusively publish college football blog posts a few days a week. The second is to subscribe to our daily-ish newsletter, a rundown of everything going on at The Barking Crow.
**
