I started writing this at a reasonable time, but I had some distractions and decided to add an extra section. I settled on just one picture to get it published faster. Even my cat is wondering what’s taking so long.
CFP Reaction and Playoff Considerations
The committee has had last-second changes of heart before, but I think they’re still telegraphing pretty clearly that the Pac-12 championship game is for a playoff spot. They don’t care if Oregon only has the 52nd toughest schedule, compared to Alabama having the #5 schedule (vs. FBS), Ohio St. having the #25 schedule, and Texas having the #31 schedule. (Texas did not play an FCS opponent, so I’d argue for the Longhorns ahead of the Buckeyes assuming a win this weekend.) They just love Bo Nix and his passes that travel all of five yards in the air regardless of the competition. I’m usually for undefeated teams that keep getting lucky (like Washington) to lose but not in this case. I don’t dislike Oregon or Bo Nix, I’ve talked about him and his family positively on this blog. I just hate these hype campaigns and biased “eye tests” that ignore facts.
Anyway, a secondary issue is that Ohio St. is too high as the #2 one-loss team according to the committee, but I highly doubt Alabama stays behind the idle Buckeyes if the Tide beat Georgia. I’d be more worried if I were Texas. I’ve talked about how if it came down to Texas and Alabama, Texas would go ahead due to head-to-head; but there is no such issue if the last spot were to come down to Ohio St. and Alabama. Just keep that in mind if you’re counting on Saban not being in the Playoff.
I did notice something that I believe helps a potential argument for an SEC team to either be in the playoff with one loss or be #1 even if there are multiple undefeated teams. It’s that the top 5 teams in the SEC (Georgia, Alabama, Ole Miss, Missouri, and LSU) have only lost to each other or to a team in the CFP top 7 (or in my top 7).
The only two home losses by the top 5 of the SEC were Alabama to Texas and Missouri to LSU. I mention that because it generally took a hostile environment combined with a very good team to bring these teams down. I think given that Ole Miss had to play both championship contenders (both on the road) and beat LSU, they belong ahead of Missouri, but that’s another mystery of the committee. Maybe they just don’t like Lane Kiffin’s tweets.
So if Alabama wins, they will have beaten three of the four other teams in the top 5 (all but Missouri). If Georgia wins, they will also have beaten three of the four other teams (all but LSU).
Anyway, you obviously don’t get that kind of quality anywhere else. I have been an advocate for Oregon St., but they have four losses now and even this committee who loves the Pac-12 only has them 20th. That’s a big drop off. They lost to a Washington St. team who finished with a losing record. Arizona, who’s become the darling Pac-12 team lately, lost to a mediocre USC team and lost to Mississippi St., who like Wazzu finishes with a losing record.
You can go three teams deep in the Big Ten, but Big Ten #4 Iowa has that ugly loss to Minnesota, who also finished with a losing record. It wasn’t necessarily a fair loss, but maybe if the Golden Gophers had needed another score to win, it would have changed the way the game ended. The point is the top of the SEC isn’t nearly as threatened with mediocrity as the top of these other conferences has been.
I shouldn’t even have to mention the Big XII. The team that made the title game (they don’t have divisions, so they’re not #4 and lucked into the title game like Iowa did, they actually finished second overall in the conference {winning a tie-breaker over Oklahoma}) lost to South Alabama by 26, to Iowa St. by 7, and to Central Florida by 42! Those three teams each barely qualified for a bowl, and South Alabama is 6-6 despite playing in the Sun Belt. Losing to Oklahoma, a team who lost to Oklahoma St., should count against Texas even if the Longhorns will have beaten the Cowboys. And it shouldn’t be brushed off as, “Texas only lost a team who tied for second in their conference, no big deal.”
I took some criticism this week in one of the discussion groups I’m in for not thinking head-to-head tie-breakers are always fair. The Big XII is a perfect example. Texas was the #1 team. I think if two teams are tied for second, the first question should be “did you play the #1 team?” If the answer for one is yes and the other is no, the team who answered yes should win the tie-breaker. You don’t reward the team who answered no and lost to worst teams (Oklahoma St. and Kansas went a combined 12-6 in the Big XII; Iowa St. and Central Florida went a combined 9-9).
So let’s say undefeated Florida St., undefeated Michigan, 1-loss Oregon, 1-loss Georgia, 1-loss Washington, 1-loss Ohio St., 1-loss Texas, and 1-loss Alabama. We can put the undefeated teams aside, but I think when you rank the one-loss teams by resume, the first thing you should ask is “was the one loss to one of the teams in this pool of playoff candidates”. If it was, those teams should get a leg up. In this case, that would be all the 1-loss teams except Texas. Then we’d talk about wins. Texas and Alabama will have had the two best wins in my opinion, but then who’s #2 and #3? Texas’s would be borderline top-25 teams Kansas St. and Oklahoma St. Alabama’s would be solid top-15 teams Ole Miss and LSU. I don’t think you ignore that because Texas was the better team on a given Saturday in September.
I’m not saying how you sort out the rest of that mess if it happens, but I am saying I think in that scenario I’d like to see Alabama with a higher ranking than Texas. I like a fair national championship system more than I like to see Nick Saban upset, but it’s a close call, so I won’t be all that angry if Texas goes ahead. This isn’t SEC homerism either. I mentioned Georgia. I’d have to see how the numbers shake out, but right now I have Georgia 81st in schedule strength vs. FBS and Texas 31st. They’ll get closer this weekend but not that much closer; and as mentioned, I’d give Texas an edge for not having played an FCS opponent also. In addition, I’m also in favor of resolving doubts in favor of conference champions, at least while we still have a 4-team playoff. So I’d want a 1-loss Texas ahead of a 1-loss Georgia.
LSU’s Defense Going Forward
The drumbeats about LSU needing a new defensive coordinator continue despite the results over the weekend seemingly casting down on that necessity.
Texas A&M recently scored 51 points against Mississippi St., a team against which Ole Miss only managed 17 points on Thanksgiving. The Aggies managed less than 60% of that total against LSU on Saturday.
Are they really sure LSU’s defense hasn’t improved from giving up 55 to Ole Miss?
Also, they keep repeating the idea that the LSU coaching staff was not able to make defensive adjustments. That’s interesting given that Texas A&M scored 24 points in the first 39 minutes (0.62 points per minute) and only 6 in the remaining 21 minutes (0.29 points per minute).
Jayden Daniels breaks free of the Texas A&M front seven in the first half in Baton Rouge on Saturday. Although two of the touchdowns were 1-yard runs by running backs, Daniels led the Tigers to six touchdown drives versus just three punts against the best defense the Tigers have faced all season. Daniels accounted for 235 yards passing and 120 yards rushing. LSU runs its record to 9-3 against the Aggies since the latter joined the SEC in 2012. Texas A&M has not won in Baton Rouge since 1994.
Texas A&M is the second-beat team LSU beat. Against the best team, the Tigers were also improved in the second half. Missouri had scored 25 in the first half against LSU and only 14 in the second half. Then the anti-House activists say weird things like, “if LSU doesn’t get a pick-6, they might have lost that game.” Is that not a good defensive play? It’s just bizarre. They also say that about Greg Penn’s interception against Texas A&M, by the way, even though if you add 7 points to A&M’s total, LSU still wins comfortably. Remember, LSU went into victory formation on first and goal.
Alabama did score 21 in each half; but in the second half, the Tide was aided by an interception of their own deep in LSU territory. Alabama was scoreless over the last 13 minutes. Obviously, they had no urgency to score with Jayden Daniels sidelined and a 14-point lead, but Alabama does not fail to score points at the end of games just to be nice. And that’s a close enough margin not to put all the bench warmers in to see what happens.
Speaking of Alabama, they gave up 6 more points to Auburn last weekend than LSU did. Maybe Saban doesn’t know what he’s doing, right? I know he’s not the coordinator, but I think every knows the buck stops with him on defense at least.
The game before Texas A&M was against Georgia St., a Sun Belt team roughly equivalent to the South Alabama team I mentioned in the previous section (so not the type of team completely incapable of an upset of a top 25 opponent). They scored 14 points in the first 17:15 of the game, but they didn’t score again after that. Are we sure no adjustment was made to ensure that?
I’m not saying Matt House is the best defensive coordinator LSU can get or that he’s worth the salary he’s being paid. But like I was saying about the playoff committee, I really don’t like when facts and a fair evaluation of those facts is pushed aside to push a narrative. It’s the worst defense ever. There were never any improvements at any point during a given game or during the season. Every time they held someone below 20, it’s because the opposing offense was trash and really should have been shut out. This is what the LSU radio shows and podcasts say almost every day.
Before the Alabama game, some of these same commentators admitted that since halftime of the Missouri game, the LSU defense had gotten better. This is when they were pushing the narrative that LSU had a good chance in that game.
Now that they’re pushing the narrative that Jayden Daniels was perfect even in the losses (to be fair, he was pretty close to perfect in the loss to Ole Miss), it’s back to pretending there was functionally no defense at all at any point in any SEC game. I’d like to see Jayden Daniels win the Heisman as much as anyone, but you can just say (accurately) there were a lot of defensive struggles without which he would have had more possessions and a better record. You don’t have to ignore every modicum of success the defense had.
It seems that LSU is not doing all that great in getting defense recruits even though they need them. The media hosts I’m talking about think that’s proof of what they’re saying. I think it’s more proof that the things they’re saying are being believed, not that they’re all true. So the lies and exaggerations that might be made with the idea of helping Jayden Daniels (and that’s my attempt to be charitable about the motivations) might be doing some harm in other areas.
Comments About My Top 25
Michigan had 99.92% as many points (if we set #133 Kent St. at 0 points) as Washington, so it was an extremely close call for #1. I think this is the first time I’ve ever personally ranked Washington #1. I did think they were better than U. Miami in 1991 though. Georgia, who was only playing Georgia Tech, was not surprisingly passed up by Michigan. That does not mean the Bulldogs won’t be in the running for #1 with a win over Alabama though.
I think most of the other teams moved up in a logical and predictable way. You still get a fair amount of credit for beating teams that aren’t in the top 25, and there are a few that are that don’t cause too much damage. That’s why you see a big jump by North Carolina St. Similarly, Louisville only fell a few spots for losing to Kentucky. Oregon St. has lost three out of five games, but they were all to teams ranked higher, so I don’t mind them being #25. The alternative was Kansas St., who just lost to #39 Iowa St.
The Wildcats lead my honorable mentions list though, trading places with Oklahoma St. North Carolina and UNLV lost and were replaced by Kansas and Utah, who were still hanging around after recently falling out of the top 25. Clemson and Memphis remained on the list from last week.
Ratings and College Football Playoff Response/Prediction
The first four teams are all undefeated now, just in time to lose at least one undefeated team this weekend. It happens to be the same top four as the CFP top 25. I can argue until I’m blue in the face about Oregon, but I guess people like flashy offenses and uniforms (not to mention years of a hype and a nationwide ad campaign for the quarterback) more than they like a good strength of schedule. It seems like they’re setting up the possibility of Oregon going to the Playoff in the event of revenge wins over Oregon St. (for last year) and Washington (for both last year and earlier this season).
Putting aside the CFP ramifications, I think Oregon might have some motivation to win this next game.
I don’t think Washington, Georgia, or Florida St. (another undefeated not in the top four) have much chance of a loss this coming weekend, but losses by none of them (except maybe Georgia) would be much stranger than the time 4-7 Pitt beat 10-1 West Virginia in 2007 to help LSU make the championship game.
Florida and Washington St. have five wins apiece and are playing for bowl eligibility as well as in-state bragging rights, while Georgia Tech is already bowl-eligible. A late pick-six is likely the only reason Washington beat Arizona St., who is only 3-8. Despite one fewer win, Florida is a better team than Boston College, whom Florida St. only beat by 2. Georgia hasn’t really come close to a loss though.
Alabama and Florida St. both lost ground compared to higher teams as a result of playing FCS opponents. Alabama probably lost a bit less since the SEC gained strength with out-of-conference wins and because Chattanooga is an FCS playoff team.
I suspect that unless Washington and Georgia remain undefeated, removing Oregon and Alabama from the running in the process, the plan is that Florida St. will be excluded from the Playoff. I don’t know if this was the plan before their QB Jordan Travis was hurt or not.
I don’t think the CFP standings after Alabama matter too much for the national championship, but LSU fans (ironically) should cheer for Missouri and Ole Miss to lose for a better chance at a selection committee (or NY6) bowl or at the CapitalOne Bowl. It’s ironic because normally it would be a good thing if no one outside of the top 12 beat you and you had a top-10 win, but that’s not how the logic of bowl placement works.
It would be more logical for LSU fans to cheer for Alabama to beat Georgia (whom LSU did not play, if you haven’t noticed) in the SEC Championship game because that would retain the possibility of there being two SEC playoff teams. This might not be the year for that to happen though given the possibility of four undefeated teams going into championship weekend. There are also a couple of other teams (I mentioned Oregon; there is also Texas) who could be good one-loss candidates as conference champions. I think one-loss Texas will go ahead of one-loss Alabama even if they shouldn’t.
Anyway, the rest of this is just about my ratings, not the CFP rankings or what I think they will do.
The Big Ten is now much closer to the Pac-12, which is now #3, as they can look forward to taking the Pac-12’s two best teams (as well as UCLA and USC, which are more in the middle). They would still be behind the SEC, which will add the Big XII’s two best teams.
I mentioned Arizona St. earlier. Oregon’s win over the Sun Devils allowed them to get past Ole Miss, who beat an inferior UL-Monroe squad. Other relatively small differences in quality of opponents accounted for the movement in the rest of the top 20, apart from James Madison, who lost to Appalachian St. Oregon St. fell a smaller number of spots for losing to Washington, which was a close game as expected.
I had a little bit of trouble figuring out the last two. I strongly considered Oklahoma St. and Clemson, but they each had three losses that were all big negatives. Arizona had only one bad loss and one that was mediocre. Oregon St. and North Carolina St. only had one mediocre-to-bad loss apiece. Oklahoma St. had the best list of wins, but the others had comparable good wins. I didn’t hold the fourth loss (to Florida St.) against Clemson, but there weren’t really strong wins to counterbalance the other losses.
It might seem a little weird that North Carolina still has honorable mention status, but the four teams directly below them (Kansas, Utah, Tennessee, and USC) all lost also. Another interesting one is UNLV, whom I have never ranked in the top 25.
I was supposed to have time to do this on Wednesday but ended up having an unusually long (and rainy) work day instead, so I’m writing this on Thursday night (Friday morning for many of you).
Best-laid plans of mice and A&M boosters, I suppose.
Recap of LSU/Florida and Rivalry
It wasn’t because there was nothing to write about. I’m happy to make fun of Texas A&M and Florida, who lost a fifth straight to LSU. No one else has a losing streak to LSU that goes back to the national championship season (unless Vanderbilt’s streak of two counts). Although the LSU/Florida series dates back to 1937 and has been played annually since 1971, this was the first time LSU won five straight. Florida had once won nine straight from 1988 to 1996, but LSU now has its first lead in the series since then. If LSU doesn’t win another game this season, I’ll still feel some measure of success from that fact.
While it is unlikely that the LSU/Florida series will continue annually beyond that, the Tigers will at least make the return trip to Gainesville next year. I will endeavor to update the key Rivalry Series in the next week or so.
Not to be bitter about it, but the damage is done anyway. Having to play Florida every year, which included going to the Swamp every even year (apart from 2016), at least more often than not placed the Tigers at a disadvantage in the SEC West as far back as 1996. I guess it did in years before that too, but LSU was so bad it didn’t really matter. LSU had also played Auburn, which was strong for roughly the same time period, on the road in even years. The combined influence of those two games prevented LSU from winning the West in an even year until last season. The other SEC Championship appearances had been 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2011, and 2019. I acknowledge a certain crimson opponent played a role as well, but LSU’s unique struggles with them really only started in the 2012 calendar year.
LSU had to play Auburn every year by virtue of being in the West (that series will not be played next year), but had the Florida series not been made permanent, playing a different SEC East opponent could have made the difference in 1996 (when LSU would been one game better rather than losing a tie-breaker with Alabama) and 2006 (when LSU would have won a tie-breaker with Arkansas, but the additional loss made that irrelevant).
Given that the game was typically in early October though, it put the Tigers behind in 8-ball in several additional seasons. For example, LSU would have known going into the Arkansas game in 2000 that a win would have sent them to Atlanta (ironically, they went to Atlanta anyway to play in the Peach Bowl). Florida dealt LSU its first loss in 2008, and QB Jarrett Lee was never the same again. If it weren’t for his late-season penchant for throwing “pick sixes”, LSU could have easily won all but one other SEC game. LSU also nearly lost to Troy later in that season (seems like that would have taught the AD a lesson, but I digress). I doubt it affected the SEC championship games, but Florida also dealt LSU its first losses in 2012 and 2018, respectively.
Anyway, this was the largest win by either team since LSU’s 41-11 win in 2011. I’ll give the Gators credit for keeping it close for a while though. It didn’t help LSU that, as a result of a poorly-fielded kickoff, the Gators were able to score twice in just a couple of minutes to take a 28-24 lead in the third quarter. Jayden Daniels is a little bit more reliable for generating points than hoping for points off of turnovers and other miscues though, so the Tigers outscored the Gators 28-7 the rest of the way.
Jayden Daniels rushes against Florida on Saturday in Baton Rouge. He ran so well, I can’t even be certain which play this was; but I believe it was the 85-yard touchdown that was along the left side of the field. Daniels became the first person to pass for 200 yards and run for 200 yards in an SEC game at some point in the third quarter, but he finished with over 350 passing yards, which had never been done along with that many rushing yards. Johnny Manziel had thrown for 200 and rushed for 200 once; but that was in a bowl game, so we really hadn’t seen anything like this before.
The LSU defense and coordinator Matt House continue to get a lot of flak, but keeping Alabama within one possession at least until the fourth quarter (if not the entire rest of the game) and keeping Florida from getting a lead the whole game would have been something to be proud of. It’s just not helpful if you put them on the field with their backs close to the end zone seconds after the previous drive ends.
Response to College Football Playoff Top 25
I’ll start by saying there is nothing really new in terms of grievances with the College Football Playoff’s top 25. Oregon’s being ahead of Alabama and Texas continues to make no sense if you care about schedule strength.
At least Oregon St. is no longer the top 2-loss team, having been passed by Missouri. I don’t expect the Beavers will stay the one of the top 2-loss teams indefinitely anyway given games against Washington and Oregon coming up. If they win both, I’ll be happy for them to be the top 2-loss team though. More on them below.
I’d also like them to care more about the schedules of teams like Arizona and North Carolina, but those are far enough down that I’m not sure they really matter. The Arizona/Arizona St. game might actually be game though. It looked like it was going to be a pillow fight earlier in the year.
Comments about My Ratings
I had a bit of time to smooth out the rough edges this weekend and I still liked the results to add the original ratings back in as I described last week. It also makes sense for some of the teams lower in the ratings because there is a number I have to adjust to factor in the bad teams so one bad loss doesn’t swallow multiple wins. I can re-add the original ratings without that adjustment though, which I think is the fairer approach.
I was also able to do conference ratings and strength of schedule. I will wait another week to see if the strength of schedule is giving teams enough credit in the ratings. That might also be a further adjustment to the formula. The same basic numbers and computations are being used regardless, it’s just been a continuing balancing act over years between giving credit for wins and giving credit for quality of competition.
It’s amazing that LSU, Ole Miss, and Penn St. have only seven combined losses and are still in the top 7 of the strength of schedule. Duke is the only other team in the top 12 with a winning record. Others in the top 20 with winning records are Utah, Kansas St., Kansas, Notre Dame, Missouri, and USC. I did opt not to put Kansas in the top 25 below due to some of the losses they have though.
I think it’s fair that even though Michigan and Georgia still don’t have great schedules that this recognizes their schedules are now comparable enough that they should be ranked ahead of teams with losses like Texas and Alabama. I think barring any major upsets (based on rank, not necessarily based on betting line), most people would agree that the Top 4 should be Big Ten champion, SEC champion, undefeated Florida St., and undefeated Washington. If Alabama were to lose the SEC championship, the next beneficiary (for now) of a potential upset should be Texas if they win out. This recognizes that.
The conference ratings weren’t very surprising. The SEC and Big Ten are neck and neck, but I think the SEC will pull away slightly next week given the out-of-conference games. There are non-conference games the week after that, but I don’t like Kentucky’s, Florida’s, or South Carolina’s chances against ACC opponents (I’m not too worried about Georgia), so that might bring the SEC closer to the Big Ten again.
The SEC would still be ahead after adding the new programs to the Big Ten and the SEC. That’s not really proof of too much about next season anyway given that Washington, Oklahoma, etc., can’t get as many good wins without hurting someone else in their respective future conferences next season. It might mean that the Big Ten will be harder to beat in future seasons; but on the other hand, maybe Oregon and Washington fall back to the more mediocre status they occupied not too long ago.
Washington is very close to getting the top spot in the computer ratings. I definitely think the Huskies will have that spot with a win, but they might lose it the week after (Washington St. wouldn’t count for nearly as much as Michigan would) and reclaim it the week after that (Oregon would count for a lot more than Iowa would). I expect to keep Ohio St. #1 here however for the next couple of weeks absent a loss or something really concerning. I’ll be very interested in how the ratings shape up after the conference championships though.
The initial line I saw had Washington barely favored over Oregon St., and then I saw one in which the Beavers were favored. I definitely think that’s the big game this weekend. As I’ve mentioned, the Huskies have a couple of very narrow wins at home, so playing a team that’s been playing well on the road might be a challenge. They might gain more support in the polls and the CFP with the win also, but those are much more stubborn than my ratings are.
Another Heisman candidate now, Michael Penix, Jr., throws under pressure against Oregon St. in Seattle last November. The Huskies won at the last second, 24-21, so it makes sense that the Beavers are given a very good chance to win at home this time despite the Huskies’ undefeated record.
I feel bad for Oregon St. that they lost a close game in Pullman when Wazzu was playing well, but the Cougars have gone down like the Hindenburg since then.
Three of the Honorable Mentions got promoted last week, so keep an eye on those. This week, all but one is in a Power Five conference, so that’s a noticeable change. That one other team is Coastal Carolina, the only one that hasn’t been ranked at some point this season.
I mentioned in the last blog that my ratings were delayed this week. I realized while I was compiling them that not enough credit was being given for playing a series of good opponents. I’m ok with giving undefeated teams or teams with very good records against mediocre to bad opponents the benefit of the doubt, but I’m not OK with James Madison being #6, Liberty being #11, and Troy being #17. I think if any of those teams played a random selection of top 25 opponents every week, their record would be about 1-9 or 2-8 right now.
Adjusted Approach to Top 25 and Possibly to Ratings
In recent years I added what I called weights to “good” games.
To explain how this came about, my original formula from about 18 years ago was sort of based on a 10-point scale. If you beat every team you played and those teams beat every team they played apart from you, you’d be between 9 and 10 depending on how good the opponents of the teams you beat were. This was the entire rating at first, but it later became sort of the first round where I used that number to decide how much credit you got for a win or how much you got subtracted for a loss.
Realistically the best teams can hope to be around 7 (Ohio St. right now is 6.676). So what I did with the “weights” was if you played teams better than 5 points (which right now is 14 teams), you’d have a certain number added to your overall rating. Another 16 teams are between 4.25 and 5, so I would add a smaller number for playing those teams.
This was regardless of whether you won or lost because you already lost points, so getting some of them back because it’s a good team isn’t a bad thing. I don’t just want to reward beating them. I wouldn’t want to reward Texas for beating Alabama and losing to Kansas St. (if the Longhorns had lost over the weekend) where I would not reward another team (like LSU) for beating Missouri and losing to Alabama. I actually think it’s better if you consistently beat teams lower than you and only fall short if you have a very good opponent.
Anyway, I’m starting to question if that’s the best approach. Wherever I draw the line is ultimately going to be kind of arbitrary. I mentioned the 5-point thing. Kansas is 4.98. How much less credit should you get for beating them than you do for beating Louisville at 5.01?
I also didn’t want to go backwards and introduce more subjectivity on my part. What I decided to do was just to add that initial number to what I have been publishing as the computer ratings. I could only use a fraction of that number because the other ratings right now tops out at 0.93. For most top 25 teams, the largest number is about 10x the smallest number, so I though the fairest thing to do was divide the largest number by 10 and then add the two together.
I’m still giving myself the leeway to move teams up to three spots for the top 25. I might go down to two next week, and I will let you know if I made a change to the published ratings. I want to see how it plays out. Sometimes when I make changes, they’re great for one week but I quickly see problems going from one week to the next. That’s fine for my top 25, but I don’t think it’s good for the computer rating. It’s good to be able to compare numbers over longer periods of time.
Big Picture for LSU after Bama Loss
I had a couple other quick thoughts about Saturday’s game. I’ve mentioned LSU’s personnel issues on defense. I also mentioned that the LSU defense was put in a really difficult spot in the fourth quarter when Alabama received the ball at the LSU 25 after an interception only a few seconds on the clock after the previous Alabama offensive drive (3 minutes and 65 yards).
I don’t blame Jayden Daniels for trying to make a play, the ball getting tipped, etc., but giving up a touchdown after the quick turnaround is not proof of a bad defense in that moment. No LSU fan goes on about how bad the 2019 defense was, and no one wanted Dave Aranda to be fired; but LSU gave up 41 points in that game. The Tigers gave up three touchdowns in the fourth quarter and the SHORTEST touchdown drive was 75 yards. I highly doubt that if Joe Burrow threw an interception two plays after one of those drives that the defense would have stopped the Tide from scoring.
“Hot seat” isn’t nearly dramatic enough for Baton Rouge media personalities when they get worked up about something.
So I’m not on the “Fire Matt House” bandwagon that others are on. I know that in hindsight we should have tried to spy more because knowing what we know now, the offense didn’t get close to enough points for the defense that we played. Maybe LSU would have gotten lucky and there would have been a bunch of drops and bad passes. However, we don’t know if more open receivers would have backfired. I don’t hear anyone saying Nick Saban and his defensive coach are incompetent for sacrificing QB rushing yards for more pass coverage. Jayden Daniels ran for more yards than Jalen Milroe, and the former left the game with 13 minutes left.
If both teams had scored in the 40s in an LSU win like four years ago, everyone would be happy. But LSU commentators are going on the radio or on YouTube and saying giving up 40+ to Alabama is never OK regardless.
Even though he’s one of those who I think has been too much of an alarmist about the defense, Matt Moscona pointed out an interesting thing Kelly has been dealing with. You’d think no matter how badly things went off the rails, if you take over a team less than two years after a national championship, you’d have a pretty good recruiting class coming of age. But no, there are only three players left who were recruited in the wake of that championship. The rest of the team is either players Kelly brought in or players that came to play for a team that was going .500. The older players in the subsequent classes who stayed with the team are great. I always have a soft spot for overachiever types, but to think there isn’t a significant talent gap just because we escaped with a win over Alabama last year is silly. Having a better personality and recruiting in a better location than Saban was only getting Coach O so far.
Speaking of which, I want to compare with Saban for a moment. Saban went 26-12 (68.4%) in his first three years at LSU. Kelly is at 69.5% right now. Pretty good for having almost no junior class last year and almost no senior class this year. LSU has a chance to go 4-0, but let’s say they go 3-1 the rest of the way. That would give Kelly a 70.4% mark going into next season. In his last three Division I stops, there was a significant improvement in year three; but even if there isn’t, far too many fans are overreacting.
Granted, LSU had a worse record the two years before they hired Saban than they did the two years before they hired Kelly, but there wasn’t a transfer portal back then. There were good players who had come in after respective 9- and 10-win seasons in 1996 and 1997 who didn’t have a good option other than to stick it out. (By the way, there was only an 11-game regular season back then.). Gerry DiNardo, Saban’s predecessor, won 69.7% over his first three years, so it’s not like Saban blew away anything anyone had seen in recent years right away.
To make some less big-picture comments and get back to the rankings, I think it still makes sense to put Texas ahead of Alabama. That may change if Oklahoma loses again and LSU wins out. I’ve mentioned that LSU can get some meaningful positive points in each of the next few weeks. They’ll definitely be favored in the next two and they haven’t lost to Texas A&M in Baton Rouge since 1994 (the year before DiNardo started), so chances are pretty high they’ll be favored in that one too. Unfortunately, Georgia St. (who is in between Florida and Texas A&M) has lost two in a row though. They still may be the second-best team in Georgia.
College Football Playoff Rankings
I think it’s ridiculous that the committee thinks Oregon is the top one-loss team. The Ducks have the 82nd-best schedule. I know they played undefeated Washington, but the Huskies have played the #99 schedule. I don’t even factor in opponents’ opponents’ records as much as many similar blogs do. Some count that equally to opponents’ record because it’s a much narrower range from team to team. Utah, the Ducks’ best win, has a top-50 schedule but two losses.
The big difference comes after Oregon’s marquee win. The highest-rated opponent after that is Colorado, which is #69 overall. Alabama and Penn St. have each beaten four teams who are better than Colorado. Ole Miss, Texas, and Louisville have each beaten five teams who are better than Colorado. I can understand giving some credit for having one close loss to an undefeated team, but it shouldn’t compensate for about every other game being against a team in the top half of the FBS versus about 20% of games being against such teams. Any other team that’s a candidate for the college football playoff would be all but guaranteed to be 8-2 against the Ducks’ schedule, and most would probably beat Utah, my number 20 and the CFP’s #18.
I also don’t think Oregon St., who played no one of note out of conference, is close to the best 2-loss team. I don’t know where they get the idea the Pac-12 is so great. Arizona lost to Mississippi St. and is now half a game out of third place. Notre Dame has suffered a third loss now, but they beat USC (who actually is third place) easily. Wins over Wisconsin and TCU (albeit by lesser teams) have lost their luster.
There isn’t reason to get too annoyed yet, but the committee’s disregard of quality of opponents is something to watch out for going forward.
Comments about My Top 25
I think Purdue is better than their record, but Michigan hasn’t added as many points per week as other major-conference teams do on average. Even with USC’s struggles, they’re worth a lot more than Purdue. Alabama and Texas both added high-quality wins as well. Texas was a lot closer to losing at the end, but I don’t factor that in.
Georgia and Michigan can each get a good number of points next week though. Penn St. (who is playing Michigan) and Ole Miss (who is playing Georgia) are right behind them, but neither the Nittany Lions (Rutgers and Michigan St.) nor the Rebels (UL-Monroe and Mississippi St.) have nearly as many potential points to gain in the last two weeks of the season as the Bulldogs (Tennessee and Georgia Tech) and Wolverines (Maryland and Ohio St.) do.
The last time Ole Miss played Georgia, Rebel QB Chad Kelly led the team to a 45-0 lead in Oxford in 2016. Bulldog QB Jacob Eason (right) was only able to complete 44% of his passing attempts and failed to throw a touchdown. Somehow the Bulldogs’ long-awaited chance at revenge is not the SEC game of the week. I wish Ole Miss would go back to those uniforms. by the way.
So if you want to see an SEC team in the playoff, you need to be for Georgia (even if you’d rather see Alabama). If you want to see a Big Ten team, you need to cheer for Michigan (even if you’d rather see Ohio St.). I’m not saying the CFP committee always agrees with me, but high-quality wins are usually important to them in the end. Even if two or three one-loss teams make it, I doubt either one will be Penn St. or Ole Miss.
The order of Kansas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma St. is mostly explained by what I said earlier about bad losses.
I liked not having to drop Missouri, Kansas St., and LSU too far. Part of that is due to Tulane and Toledo playing fairly weak opponents (even though Tulane barely won again). Losses by USC and UCLA helped too.
USC almost stayed in the top 25 given that the Washington loss didn’t hurt much, but there is only so much room for 3-loss teams. The rest of the honorable mentions are from outside of the major conferences.
They didn’t make the honorable mentions, but Duke, Arizona, North Carolina St., and U. Miami are the other major-conference three-loss teams in the top 40. North Carolina still only has two losses but has a relatively low schedule strength. It’s interesting how many ACC teams are in the 30s. Clemson (despite four losses) has a good chance of joining that group in the next few weeks.
I think this is the last week that I’ll add a subjective component. I might still move some teams a few spots, but it will be starting with the list the computer ratings give me instead of making some sort of ranking average first.
As for this week, after adding three parts computer rankings to one part subjective rankings, I then moved teams up to three spots.
Ohio St. was one of the few teams that I moved the full three spots. The Buckeyes play computer #17 Wisconsin next week while the Seminoles play Wake Forest (#74) and the Sooners play Kansas (#46). If the Badgers win, there will be a new #1 regardless. The other team Ohio St. skipped over was Michigan, who’s off next week. So there was really no other good option to select as #1 when considering the next opponent.
The Ohio St. defense forces a quick pass from Penn St. quarterback Drew Allar, who only completed 18 of 42 passes for 191 yards. The Nittany Lions arguably fared even worse in rushing, with an average of less than 2 yards per rush.
For future reference, Michigan does not play Wisconsin or Iowa this season (and also didn’t have an opponent like Notre Dame out of conference), so I would be strongly disinclined to move them ahead of Ohio St. without a loss by the Buckeyes. Ohio St. already beat the other three teams remaining on the Wolverines’ schedule (Purdue, Penn St., and Maryland).
The computer so happened to follow the following win chain. Oklahoma beat Texas, who beat Alabama, who beat Ole Miss, who beat LSU. I’m not promising to keep the teams in that order in the future; but for now it still fits the parameters I set out above, so I don’t see why not.
If you’re wondering why I didn’t similarly put Oregon St. ahead of Utah for beating the Utes, consider that Utah’s only loss is to a 1-loss top-10 team and Oregon St.’s loss is to a 3-loss team who is no longer in my top 30. Also consider that Utah beat a top-40 team out of conference and none of Oregon St.’s non-conference opponents are in the top 90.
Missouri’s going back ahead of LSU is simpler to boil down. Mizzou has one fewer loss and a couple of decent non-conference wins (Kansas St. and Memphis). LSU may end up with one decent non-conference win in Georgia St., but that’s not for a few weeks.
Despite having lost to Washington in the same stadium where Arizona St. should have beaten the Huskies, I actually was kinder to Oregon than the computer was. My kindness just doesn’t go as far as it did last week. The Ducks are still in need of some quality wins though. Colorado isn’t as good of a win as it appeared to be a month ago; and Oregon was the third team to beat Washington St., so that’s hardly a noteworthy achievement either. The Ducks still play Utah, USC, Oregon St., and a potential Pac-12 title game, which would probably be a rematch with either one of those or with Washington.
Speaking of which, the computer doesn’t factor in how ugly a win is, but ugly wins over bad opponents don’t get rewarded much by me. The computer put the Huskies #8, and I just let that be their final spot. UW had zero offensive touchdowns and took the lead when Arizona St. threw a “pick 6” on fourth down from the Washington 12. Had the Sun Devils kicked the field goal to take a 10-6 lead, I have little doubt that they would have won since the Huskies only managed a field goal the rest of the way and were still very much motivated to put the game away with a touchdown. Arizona St. still has no wins over FBS opponents.
I had no choice under the rules at the beginning but to rank Liberty and Air Force. The Flames have a weak remaining schedule though. They may get passed up by Air Force eventually even if they don’t lose.
Watch the “honorable mention” list. All three of the newly-ranked teams were on that list last week, which indicates the ratings are becoming a little less volatile.
LSU-specific Updates
You can expect LSU to fall further next week given the bye, similarly to how Georgia fell this week. Alabama is actually the computer #4 right now, so their bye will help the computers to make more sense. Obviously if LSU were to win, they could expect a pretty good move upward, but a loss following Army and a bye could see the Tigers fall out of the top 25 altogether.
This has no bearing on the rankings, but to give a couple of thoughts about the game… Given some of the mistakes Army made, LSU got some extra possessions, so the high point total by the LSU offense doesn’t mean much to me.
The defense is graded more on a curb, so I do give them some credit for the shutout. I’m still not sure they would have shut out a better-run option attack, particularly under the old rules that allowed such schemes to utilize more effective blocking downfield blocking, but I’ll take it.
This is after having a good second half against Missouri and a good game against Auburn. LSU only held Auburn to a few points less than Georgia and Ole Miss did, but 8 of the 18 points were given up after LSU led 34-10 going into the fourth quarter. Neither the Georgia nor the Ole Miss defenses had time to relax against Auburn since both finished as one-score games.
To elaborate on the Missouri game, LSU’s best win so far, the average Power-5 opponent who’s played Missouri gives up 17.5 points per half and LSU gave up only 14 in the second half. The first half (25 points) was bad, but Kelly sort of indicated it may have been related to play calls more than preparation. You can’t implement and practice an entire new game plan at halftime, so that makes some sense. It seemed like before that point the defense was scared to death a receiver might get behind them (even though it happened sometimes anyway); but now that fear is reduced, and the aim is more to hassle and distract the quarterback enough that he might not be able to get the ball to such a receiver anyway.
While I’m more excited by the recent progress by the defense, I wanted to give Brian Thomas, Jr., credit for making his three receptions count. He accounted for 122 yards and two touchdowns against Army, all in the first half. LSU had its 7th consecutive game with over 500 yards of total offense (a first in school history; second-best was the 2019 team with 5 in a row), while the Black Knights were held to fewer than 200 total yards. LSU also won the turnover battle, 4-0.
If the defense continues to hold teams below their average and the offense keeps scoring like this (not against Army per se, but it’s been consistent across a variety of defenses), LSU will be hard to beat. As Kelly referenced in one of the press conferences, no one is confusing them with the 1985 Bears; but that’s not remotely necessary. It’s not like 2012 when we scored 24 points or fewer in 40% of our wins. (It would have been 50% if it weren’t for an Alabama screen pass and a Clemson field goal in the final moments of those respective games.)
I’m still moving toward my completely objective top 25; but if you just want to know what the computer says, go here. Last week, it was less than 1/3 objective. Today, it’s roughly half. The initial list I made was 60% objective, but I still allowed myself to move teams by up to 5 spots after that. The only exception was Ohio St., whom I moved six spots. There is a good chance the Buckeyes will be near #1 on their own merit next week anyway (if they beat Penn St. of course).
This might be the last week I can have Georgia ahead of all the one-loss teams though. Texas has the #3 schedule, and Georgia has one of the worst in FBS. Adding a bye week doesn’t help. The Bulldogs have a gauntlet after that (three games against ranked teams, one on the road, and two other good teams away from home), so they’re not pulling the wool over anyone’s eyes to get back to the Playoff; but this is meant to be a snapshot. They should not be in the top four or even the top eight if the season ended now. Not only was Vanderbilt a weak opponent, but all of the Bulldogs’ best three opponents so far (Kentucky, South Carolina, and Auburn) lost to teams the Bulldogs have not yet played or will not play.
Just like last week though, most teams did not move more than a couple of spots from the improvised formula. There may still be some volatility in the coming weeks because for many teams next week’s result will still make up 1/6 of their FBS opponents, so it counts for about twice as much as a game does at the end of the year. Also, I’m going to continue to give myself less power to smooth out any transitions up or down the rankings.
The top 9 should make a lot of sense based on last week.
Iowa is exactly where the formula put them. If Penn St. loses, the Hawkeyes may fall a spot or two, but I think this is fair for right now. North Carolina is undefeated and has played a significantly better schedule than Georgia has, so I thought that spot was good for them.
Louisville followed up on the win over Notre Dame with a loss to Pitt, so this allowed LSU to move ahead of the Irish despite having a much less impressive win. The only loss by either of the two teams who beat LSU was to Alabama, so LSU’s two losses look much more excusable right now. Pitt already had four losses and had no FBS wins going into last week. They had a significant drop-off from last season. Former Pitt (and USC) quarterback Kedon Slovis going to BYU didn’t seem to do either side any good.
Michael Penix, Jr., of Washington prepares to attempt a pass against the Oregon Ducks in Seattle on Saturday. While both teams did have some success on the ground, the anticipated quarterback battle largely delivered. Although Penix threw for fewer yards and a lower completion percentage and threw the game’s only interception, he made up for it by throwing for two more touchdowns and about half a yard more per attempt than Oregon’s Bo Nix threw.
Oregon is still a good team despite the setback in Seattle. Their loss is similarly excusable to LSU’s losses, but there just isn’t a quality win like LSU and Notre Dame have. Missouri also only has one loss, but obviously I think hosting LSU is a step down from traveling to Washington right now.
Five of the remaining nine teams in my top 25 are in the Pac-12. It took me a while to sort them. I think it’s easier to explain in reverse order. Despite two losses in a row, Washington St. deserved to stay ranked because they beat Wisconsin, the team I would otherwise have put #25. Colorado St. isn’t bad for a second-best out-of-conference win either.
I don’t know why Wazzu lost to Arizona so badly, but margin of victory (or loss in this case) isn’t a big concern for me going forward. The week before, the Cougars lost to UCLA, so I put the Bruins higher. Oregon St. beat UCLA, and I think they only ended up losing to Washington St. because the game was in Pullman. Also, it’s a singular loss. The Beavers also beat Utah, so I think putting them between Washington St. and Utah made sense.
USC lost, but it was out of conference to Notre Dame, so I don’t have a problem with leaving the Trojans ahead of Oregon St., UCLA, and Washington St. You could argue about Utah, but it helps that the Utes beat Florida, whom I have #32 right now. Baylor isn’t having the best season, but going to Waco is still a strong second-best out-of-conference game. I don’t think USC has beaten anyone nearly as good as Florida. The Utes are 1-1 against the rest of the top 25 (win over UCLA, loss to Oregon St… another reason the Beavers are ahead of the Bruins), which is of course better than 0-1.
I squeezed Duke ahead of USC because they played Notre Dame closer and also because Clemson is creeping their way back toward the top 25 like Florida is.
I wasn’t blown away by the fact that Tennessee beat Texas A&M at home, but I like the way that they were able to grind out a low-scoring win and never seemed panicky or particularly at risk of losing. There were times last year when the Volunteers were out of their element when a defense was able to slow them down. I’m seeing some maturity and consistency that I’m not seeing from teams that are lower; and I mentioned Florida vis-a-vis Utah, so I’m more forgiving of that loss than the combinations of two losses below or the singular loss to Pitt.
I moved James Madison as far down as I could, so I don’t think the Dukes would beat the Volunteers on a neutral field right now; but this is a normal consequence of the computer formula. I could be wrong though. I would have sworn all last year that Tulane wouldn’t have beaten USC on a neutral field, for instance. I have Tulane #31, by the way, between the five honorable mentions and Florida. Kansas St. is right after Florida, which explains in part why Missouri is still as high as they are. Kentucky isn’t a bad #2 win for a one-loss team either.
My vacation has been over for more than a week, but I’m only about 1/5 of the way through adding results for an eventual computer rating, which I hope to have some semblance of by next week. Given that a team playing tonight is in my top 25, I couldn’t wait any longer to put up another subjective top 25.
LSU and Florida could well be among the best 25 teams; but consistent with my approach last week, I think if you have two losses right now, that’s too many to remain ranked. Also, either could seemingly lose several games by being unable to stop teams with any regularity when on defense.
Since Kentucky beat Florida easily and is undefeated, that seemed like a good option to take the Gators’ place. I haven’t thought Texas A&M was deserving of a ranking since last September; but in hindsight, the Aggies seem to have meaningfully improved from last year judging by the first couple of SEC games. Since their only loss is to U. Miami, who is undefeated, I thought it made sense to give the Hurricanes the final spot given that I’d decided it could not go to Florida or LSU.
Kentucky RB Ray Davis scored 4 touchdowns and ran for 280 yards against Florida in Lexington on Saturday.
I don’t have that much to say about the LSU game itself. I thought they would lose by single digits if they had a good day, and they basically would have lost by three if you take out two disastrous plays (and leave everything else the same): a blocked field goal from fairly close range that was returned for a touchdown, at least partly because all but a couple of players on the field forgot the rules (a 10-point swing), and an interception deep in LSU territory that resulted from a ball that was falling to the ground that hit an LSU helmet instead (this set up a fairly easy touchdown drive).
I’m not surprised that Alabama and Tennessee went ahead of LSU in bowl consideration given that they each only have two losses. I would argue if LSU had beaten Texas A&M, but my guess is that didn’t matter either. Rightly or wrongly (obviously wrongly in my view), Alabama was seen as the best SEC team after Georgia; and Tennessee’s win over LSU would have been a tie-breaker for a New Year’s Six bowl even if one didn’t punish LSU for the extra loss.
LSU is a superior team to Purdue, but sometimes it can be hard to be enthusiastic about playing such a game. I think the Boilermakers will be relatively excited to play in the game and probably would be to play in any bowl.
I do think Tennessee should have gone to the Sugar Bowl, but I guess we didn’t need another game between Alabama and Clemson to take place in the Orange Bowl. All the other New Year’s Six Bowls were fairly obvious match-ups according to the guidelines. USC vs. Tulane in the Cotton especially made sense as the two westernmost teams not bound to the Rose Bowl. They will play one another in a bowl for the first time since the Trojans won the Rose Bowl after the 1931 season. That game might have helped inspire the creation of the Sugar Bowl a few years later. USC and Tulane also split a home-and-home in the 1940s.
I had said Friday that Ohio St. should move up if another team fell out of the top four. I didn’t realize that TCU and USC were far enough ahead of Tennessee and Alabama that they could afford a loss and stay in the top five. Actually, my first draft of the ratings had USC ahead of Ohio St.; but then I realized that somehow Utah was being counted as a better opponent than they were. Not to bore the reader with the details, but I try not to penalize teams as much for losing a close game on the road, but that wasn’t meant to treat the winner as one of the top teams in the country as the weighted ratings do if not corrected.
The Trojans did beat one more top-25 team than Tennessee did. It hurt the Vols that LSU lost in a way because now the Tigers are not in the highest classification of the weighted ratings. Had LSU won, Georgia would not have fallen out of that classification (which right now is the top 8 teams). In the bigger picture, USC beat 8 Pac-12 teams and Notre Dame whereas Tennessee only beat 6 SEC teams and Pitt. You can think the former is more impressive while still having the SEC as the best conference.
I’ve written about Clemson playing a deceptive number of quality opponents, so that’s why they’re ahead of Alabama. The Tigers only beat one top 25 team (the same number Alabama has beaten), but they’ve beaten five other teams in the top 42 to Alabama’s one. Illinois is #39 and was a missed field goal from beating Michigan, and #37 Pitt took Tennessee to overtime, so I’m not talking about opponents that anyone can take for granted. (For an even better example, Florida is #51 and beat Utah.). Alabama does have better losses, but that doesn’t make up for that volume of decent wins.
Florida LB Amari Burney intercepts a pass to win the game against Utah in Gainesville on September 3. In hindsight, it’s another reminder that there are a lot of teams (including those who fall well outside of the top 25) who are threats to some of the best teams, even eventual Power-5 conference champions. On Friday, the Utes beat USC to claim the Pac-12 title and eliminate the Trojans from Playoff consideration.
I think it’s appropriate that the respective Big XII and Pac-12 champions round out the top 10. I don’t think Tulane, Troy, and UTSA would beat many of the 5 to 10 teams immediately below them, but I don’t mind that in my system teams like that are in the top 20 as long as they’re not in position for the Playoff. I’m glad not to be in New Orleans to hear from the Tulane fans who don’t know anything about national college football listing all the SEC teams they’d beat with their one good team in a generation though. I have mixed feelings about Troy playing UTSA in the Cure Bowl. On the one hand, it’s good that they’re both playing a ranked team; but on the other hand, I wonder how they would do against one of the lower Power-5 bowl teams.
I know the Playoff is going to expand to 12 teams, but one or two of those teams being non-Power-5 champions is fine with me. I will want most Power 5 teams to be eliminated with three or four losses. This isn’t the NFL; I’m not willing to take a team seriously as the potential national champion if they lost 1/3 or more of their regular-season games.
I don’t like Oregon being ahead of Oregon St. even though I do think the Ducks have been the better team overall this year. USC didn’t beat Oregon (both “civil war” teams played Utah), so it doesn’t hurt Oregon for the Trojans to lose. USC did beat Oregon St. It also helps that Oregon’s best non-conference opponent solidified its claim as the best team in the country. Oregon St. played Boise and Fresno, and neither is as good as LSU anyway, so there wasn’t as much of a gain there (there was a slight improvement to strength of schedule though).
My formula did put the Egg Bowl rivalry in the “correct” order (according to head-to-head results) though, with Mississippi St. at #25 and Ole Miss at #26. Of course, it helps that Mississippi St. played Georgia instead of Vanderbilt (all the other conference opponents were the same, and the two teams have the same record).
Some teams moved up or down more than they normally would given how many teams didn’t play. I hadn’t worked on the weighted formula in a few years and it was still new before COVID, so there were still some kinks to iron out. Given that most of the changes still made sense given the results and there was no turnover in the top 25, I don’t think I changed anything too abruptly.
I’ve updated the ratings after the Army-Navy game before, but this year I’ll just treat is as a bowl game since neither will play an actual bowl game.
For the ratings of all 131 teams and all FBS conferences (and independents), see here or click “Knights’ Ratings” above at any time while browsing this site.
I ended up agreeing with the committee regarding the top 5. I’ll be really surprised if two of the current top 4 lose this weekend. I had said before last week that I thought Ohio St. would be one of the stronger non-champions were they to lose to Michigan.
Neither Tennessee nor Alabama, who each have two losses, had a non-conference game that was worth very much to compensate for the extra loss. The SEC is better, but it’s not so much better that you don’t need either a very good non-conference game or a ninth conference game.
I did think that LSU would have deserved consideration if they had finished with 2 losses, but the Tigers did get the ninth conference game when they qualified for the SEC Championship Game. This would have given LSU a second win over a team who finished with a winning record in conference.
Anyway, as to who #6 should be, I disagree with those who have Tennessee behind Alabama. Tennessee not only played the #1 team in the country by virtue of playing in the SEC East, but they also beat both of the top teams in the SEC West. Alabama didn’t beat anyone in the top 6 (there are 7 teams per division) of the SEC East, and they also didn’t beat the only team with a winning conference record (LSU) in the SEC West. The Tide did lose two games in the last second, but I think beating more good teams should count for more than how close the losses were. Alabama didn’t have to beat a team like either team who beat Tennessee. Texas was a better non-conference opponent than Pitt, but that doesn’t make up for Alabama playing Vanderbilt as the extra cross-divisional opponent while Tennessee drew LSU, not to mention Georgia and South Carolina.
Ratings and Other Thoughts
I don’t think this technicality matters as far as Playoff arguments but something else that annoys me is if you lose a tiebreaker for the conference championship game, you’re still considered a divisional co-champion. Even though LSU lost after clinching the spot in the championship game, Alabama can now claim they’ve won the SEC West 10 of 11 years (the exception being 2019). I prefer the NFL approach. If you lose the tiebreaker to the team that advances as the winner of the division, you’re not called a champion or co-champion. The previous time the Tide lost it outright was also to LSU, in 2011. Since divisions will cease to exist in about two years, I hope we can get at least one more outright win in the next two years.
Back to my rankings/ratings, you may have noticed the “weighted rank” doesn’t penalize as much for losses anymore. I’ve compensated for that by making it a smaller component of the overall total, but it still does take record into consideration to some extent. For instance, Vanderbilt had to play four of the five best teams by conference record in the SEC and is only #39 in the weighted rankings because the Commodores also have 7 losses. Alabama only played two of those teams and is #15 in the weighted rankings largely because there were no other losses.
So, although when I first introduced the weighted rankings they were meant to stand alone, in no universe did I think LSU was #1 last week or that Oregon St. is #2 this week (after Georgia); but those are the teams (other than Georgia) most deserving of bonus points if you will given a combination of a good record and quality opponents. I also think it’s right that Clemson lost an extra spot (from what they are in the original unweighted formula) because their weighted rank fell to #24. Clemson just barely edged out LSU and Oregon St.
Sometimes you have to hold onto your hat in the last 20 minutes of a Rivalry Week game.
One might come to the conclusion that I don’t give conferences other than the SEC enough of a chance with the weighted component, but there are five Pac-12 teams in the weighted top 10 and only three SEC teams. All things being equal, LSU and Tennessee having such tough conference slates would have caused them to finish lower than Alabama in the standings, but they both beat the Tide and ended up with the same number of conference losses as the Tide.
USC was the only one of those five Pac-12 teams to have a better weighted rank than unweighted rank. This was because the other four all finished with three overall losses. It also helped that the Trojans played Notre Dame. This compensated somewhat for USC not having played Washington and Oregon.
The other teams in the top 10 of the weighted rankings are Texas and Michigan. Michigan is doing well being that they only played two teams in the top 40 in my overall ratings, but of course being undefeated helps. Texas has the opposite situation: a number of top-40 opponents (4) but also a number of losses (4). Texas has also played 5 teams that finished between numbers 41 and 65 with only one opponent (ULM) below #85.
There are only a couple of the lower teams I thought needed a little bit of explanation beyond the results of last week.
It really hurt Florida St. that Clemson and LSU lost because those games were largely responsible for the Seminoles’ having an unweighted ranking of 14 and a weighted ranking of 16 last week. Notre Dame’s loss to USC also had some collateral effect upon the ACC as a whole as well given that the Irish beat both of the ACC title contestants and another team (Syracuse) who went .500 in conference and finished 7-5 going into the bowl game.
The only other team who seems somewhat out of place is Boise St. The win over Utah St. wasn’t the most impressive (although to be fair, the Aggies had won 5 of 6 going into the game), but the three teams who had beaten the Broncos all had “good” weeks. The Broncos’ worst loss, UTEP, is still not a good team; but the Miners improved their strength of schedule considerably by playing UTSA. You probably know what happened with Oregon St. (who beat Boise St. in Week 1) and why their stock improved. Also, BYU improved its strength of schedule with the win over Stanford (who played in a good conference and somehow beat Notre Dame…. Best wishes to departing head coach David Shaw, by the way. How he made it so long is beyond me).
Boise St. LB Ezekiel Noa sacks Fresno St. QB Logan Fife in the third quarter of what was at the time a close game in Boise on October 8. The Broncos outscored the Bulldogs 20-0 in the last 20 minutes of the game to win 40-20. A rematch will be played for the Mountain West title tomorrow, also in Boise.
I also noticed there were some games that weren’t included the last time or two I had updated the weighted rankings, so that may have played some role in why Florida St. fell after a loss and why Boise St. rose so far after a win over a now-6-loss opponent. I think that’s also the main reason UCLA fell so much last week and rose so much this week. Without correctly factoring in how good USC was, it made the loss to the Trojans look worse than it should have; and this is now corrected.
Regardless, I like the process I’ve followed this year because it’s been a lot more stable. I don’t like to say a given team is top 10 one week and not in the top 25 the next or that six or seven teams are in this week’s top 25 but weren’t in last week’s. We don’t really find out that much about a team in one game, especially not when it’s 1 of 12 games, so I don’t like to see much volatility later in the year even if there are some adjustments in the methodology.
I wanted to start by saying happy Thanksgiving. I thought it was best to get this out today since there is only one game, which is probably not of crucial importance.
Because they have been so dominant until now, Georgia is the only one-loss team I can see finishing ahead of either LSU with two wins in the final games or USC with two wins in the final games. The loser of Ohio St.-Michigan will not have anything on their resume similar to Georgia’s wins over Oregon and Tennessee. It could be an interesting argument if TCU loses or if both LSU and USC lose though. I don’t automatically discount non-champions (even with the same number of losses), but I believe they should be looked at more skeptically.
Strength of Schedule
I touched on this last week, but something that many basic fans either don’t grasp or don’t bother to look into is how much schedules vary. Most conferences are not like the Big XII where it’s a pure round robin; but even in the Big XII, there are still three non-conference games.
I wanted to go over who is on the schedule of the following teams that have a realistic chance at the playoff. I’ll go over the top four teams of the respective conferences and the biggest non-conference game. I’ll mention TCU last because I think most people’s sense of their schedule is accurate.
LSU: Georgia (plays December 3), Alabama (win), Tennessee (loss), Ole Miss (win), Florida St. (loss).
Georgia: LSU (plays December 3), Alabama (did not play), Tennessee (win), Ole Miss (did not play), Oregon (win).
USC: Oregon (not played; possible conference championship opponent {NPPCCO}), Washington (NPPCCO), Utah (loss), UCLA (win), Notre Dame (play on Saturday).
Ohio St.: Michigan (plays Saturday), Penn St. (win), Iowa (win, may play again), Purdue (NPPCCO), Notre Dame (win).
Michigan: Ohio St. (plays Saturday), Penn St. (win), Iowa (win, may play again), Purdue (NPPCCO), Connecticut (win).
Clemson: North Carolina (plays December 3), Florida St. (win), Pitt (did not play), Duke (did not play), Notre Dame (loss).
TCU has beaten the following: Kansas St., Texas, Oklahoma St., Baylor, and Texas Tech. Out of conference, the best win was over 6-5 SMU. As I discussed in the last blog, the Horned Frogs will play either Kansas St. or Texas for a second time in the championship game.
Former walk-on Stetson Bennett IV (pictured above throwing on the run against Florida in Jacksonville last month) helped lead Georgia to its first national championship since 1980 and has the Bulldogs well-positioned for another.
Early Resume Comparison
I’m not making predictions about the remaining games, but I’ll discuss the teams as if I’m comparing them at the end of the season. For instance, if I say LSU will have beaten Georgia, what I’m talking about is the only scenario in which LSU is a contender. I don’t expect LSU to come particularly close to beating Georgia.
The committee does not consider the wins a team would have at the end of the year, or Clemson and USC would be higher. Those are the only two above who have two really decent opponents left. I think it’s harder to have to win successive games like that. Even moreso with USC because it would be three strong wins in a row: UCLA, Notre Dame, and then the #2 Pac-12 team.
If Iowa beats Nebraska, which is highly likely, LSU and TCU will be the only teams to have played every other top-five team of their respective conference. I do think the quality of LSU’s top opponents would make up for the extra loss if TCU were to lose a game.
I know it doesn’t seem like either Big Ten team would be missing a big resume bullet point by not playing Purdue, but Purdue has one fewer loss than Illinois, which led Michigan with about one second left on the clock last week. Also, if you’re not really missing any competition by not playing one of the top five teams of your 14-team conference, that doesn’t say much about your conference schedule.
As I suggested, I’ll be impressed by USC if the Trojans manage to win the next two weeks, and I would not be bitter about it if they were to edge out LSU. I tip my hat to the committee for having LSU #5 right now. I think it shows they understand the lists above, and if the last two games barely put USC ahead of LSU, so be it.
That’s not to say I don’t think LSU would have an argument. One key point is USC’s loss thus far. Utah lost to a mediocre SEC team and beat USC. That suggests to me that USC would have more than one conference loss if they played at least four teams who finished higher in the SEC than Florida did.
This comparison only takes place if LSU wins, so we would either have an SEC non-champion having blown out USC’s best win at the beginning of the year or we would have USC avoiding one of the more dangerous teams in its conference.
Teams Who May Lose Late and Be Considered; Why Clemson Might Deserve a Spot if They Do
Putting LSU aside, Ohio St. would be a very interesting contender if they lose to Michigan. I think they would compensate for having two fewer games against the Big Ten West as a result of the non-conference game against Notre Dame. This argument becomes even stronger if USC is knocked out of the running by Notre Dame.
Ohio St. WR Emeka Egbuka stretches for a touchdown against Notre Dame in September in Columbus. Although the Irish have had a couple of ugly losses since then, this still may be a key win for the Buckeyes.
One-loss Michigan would be a poor contender against anyone but a one-loss TCU though. I know Connecticut beat Liberty and became bowl-eligible, but Connecticut is not a good team. TCU is the only team in this discussion with a similar lacking best non-conference opponent.
Maybe the committee disagrees, but I would prefer a one-loss Clemson to a one-loss Michigan. The ACC wouldn’t be the reason, but playing two non-conference opponents with the kind of quality wins that South Carolina and Notre Dame have would make the difference for me. It would be two good non-conference opponents to zero.
As I discussed in the previous blog, one reason I give Clemson more credit so far than others do is if you play a series of let’s call them high-medium teams (not ranked but above average) such as Louisville and Wake Forest, you’re still exposing yourself to risk of a loss to a higher degree with each game. Just ask Tennessee and Ole Miss. They didn’t show signs of being vulnerable to teams like that over the previous month or two, but they got to the point of playing too many teams that were high-medium or better and apparently didn’t get up enough for every one.
On the other hand, based on the above, you can imagine what the committee has probably said. Even if these other teams are in equal conferences (the ACC is probably the worst of the bunch), Clemson has only played one team in the top five of its conference, and they lost to the only team they’ve played so far who would be in the top five of their conference.
This conversation would probably only come up in seeding, but I wanted to address it anyway. Some are assuming that Georgia will definitely be ahead of LSU even if they lose to the Tigers, but I’m not so sure. If Georgia had to play Alabama and Ole Miss, it’s certainly possible they’d be entering the championship with a loss. Right now, I think the non-conference game against Oregon resolves any doubt; but it becomes a more open question if both Oregon and Florida St. have three losses at the end of the season. This wouldn’t matter in my ratings, but obviously how that SEC championship game plays out would influence this discussion.
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Rivalry Week Top 25 & Look Ahead
In College Football, College Football Playoff, General LSU, Post-game, Rankings, Rankings Commentary on November 29, 2023 at 8:13 PMI started writing this at a reasonable time, but I had some distractions and decided to add an extra section. I settled on just one picture to get it published faster. Even my cat is wondering what’s taking so long.
CFP Reaction and Playoff Considerations
The committee has had last-second changes of heart before, but I think they’re still telegraphing pretty clearly that the Pac-12 championship game is for a playoff spot. They don’t care if Oregon only has the 52nd toughest schedule, compared to Alabama having the #5 schedule (vs. FBS), Ohio St. having the #25 schedule, and Texas having the #31 schedule. (Texas did not play an FCS opponent, so I’d argue for the Longhorns ahead of the Buckeyes assuming a win this weekend.) They just love Bo Nix and his passes that travel all of five yards in the air regardless of the competition. I’m usually for undefeated teams that keep getting lucky (like Washington) to lose but not in this case. I don’t dislike Oregon or Bo Nix, I’ve talked about him and his family positively on this blog. I just hate these hype campaigns and biased “eye tests” that ignore facts.
Anyway, a secondary issue is that Ohio St. is too high as the #2 one-loss team according to the committee, but I highly doubt Alabama stays behind the idle Buckeyes if the Tide beat Georgia. I’d be more worried if I were Texas. I’ve talked about how if it came down to Texas and Alabama, Texas would go ahead due to head-to-head; but there is no such issue if the last spot were to come down to Ohio St. and Alabama. Just keep that in mind if you’re counting on Saban not being in the Playoff.
I did notice something that I believe helps a potential argument for an SEC team to either be in the playoff with one loss or be #1 even if there are multiple undefeated teams. It’s that the top 5 teams in the SEC (Georgia, Alabama, Ole Miss, Missouri, and LSU) have only lost to each other or to a team in the CFP top 7 (or in my top 7).
The only two home losses by the top 5 of the SEC were Alabama to Texas and Missouri to LSU. I mention that because it generally took a hostile environment combined with a very good team to bring these teams down. I think given that Ole Miss had to play both championship contenders (both on the road) and beat LSU, they belong ahead of Missouri, but that’s another mystery of the committee. Maybe they just don’t like Lane Kiffin’s tweets.
So if Alabama wins, they will have beaten three of the four other teams in the top 5 (all but Missouri). If Georgia wins, they will also have beaten three of the four other teams (all but LSU).
Anyway, you obviously don’t get that kind of quality anywhere else. I have been an advocate for Oregon St., but they have four losses now and even this committee who loves the Pac-12 only has them 20th. That’s a big drop off. They lost to a Washington St. team who finished with a losing record. Arizona, who’s become the darling Pac-12 team lately, lost to a mediocre USC team and lost to Mississippi St., who like Wazzu finishes with a losing record.
You can go three teams deep in the Big Ten, but Big Ten #4 Iowa has that ugly loss to Minnesota, who also finished with a losing record. It wasn’t necessarily a fair loss, but maybe if the Golden Gophers had needed another score to win, it would have changed the way the game ended. The point is the top of the SEC isn’t nearly as threatened with mediocrity as the top of these other conferences has been.
I shouldn’t even have to mention the Big XII. The team that made the title game (they don’t have divisions, so they’re not #4 and lucked into the title game like Iowa did, they actually finished second overall in the conference {winning a tie-breaker over Oklahoma}) lost to South Alabama by 26, to Iowa St. by 7, and to Central Florida by 42! Those three teams each barely qualified for a bowl, and South Alabama is 6-6 despite playing in the Sun Belt. Losing to Oklahoma, a team who lost to Oklahoma St., should count against Texas even if the Longhorns will have beaten the Cowboys. And it shouldn’t be brushed off as, “Texas only lost a team who tied for second in their conference, no big deal.”
I took some criticism this week in one of the discussion groups I’m in for not thinking head-to-head tie-breakers are always fair. The Big XII is a perfect example. Texas was the #1 team. I think if two teams are tied for second, the first question should be “did you play the #1 team?” If the answer for one is yes and the other is no, the team who answered yes should win the tie-breaker. You don’t reward the team who answered no and lost to worst teams (Oklahoma St. and Kansas went a combined 12-6 in the Big XII; Iowa St. and Central Florida went a combined 9-9).
So let’s say undefeated Florida St., undefeated Michigan, 1-loss Oregon, 1-loss Georgia, 1-loss Washington, 1-loss Ohio St., 1-loss Texas, and 1-loss Alabama. We can put the undefeated teams aside, but I think when you rank the one-loss teams by resume, the first thing you should ask is “was the one loss to one of the teams in this pool of playoff candidates”. If it was, those teams should get a leg up. In this case, that would be all the 1-loss teams except Texas. Then we’d talk about wins. Texas and Alabama will have had the two best wins in my opinion, but then who’s #2 and #3? Texas’s would be borderline top-25 teams Kansas St. and Oklahoma St. Alabama’s would be solid top-15 teams Ole Miss and LSU. I don’t think you ignore that because Texas was the better team on a given Saturday in September.
I’m not saying how you sort out the rest of that mess if it happens, but I am saying I think in that scenario I’d like to see Alabama with a higher ranking than Texas. I like a fair national championship system more than I like to see Nick Saban upset, but it’s a close call, so I won’t be all that angry if Texas goes ahead. This isn’t SEC homerism either. I mentioned Georgia. I’d have to see how the numbers shake out, but right now I have Georgia 81st in schedule strength vs. FBS and Texas 31st. They’ll get closer this weekend but not that much closer; and as mentioned, I’d give Texas an edge for not having played an FCS opponent also. In addition, I’m also in favor of resolving doubts in favor of conference champions, at least while we still have a 4-team playoff. So I’d want a 1-loss Texas ahead of a 1-loss Georgia.
LSU’s Defense Going Forward
The drumbeats about LSU needing a new defensive coordinator continue despite the results over the weekend seemingly casting down on that necessity.
Texas A&M recently scored 51 points against Mississippi St., a team against which Ole Miss only managed 17 points on Thanksgiving. The Aggies managed less than 60% of that total against LSU on Saturday.
Are they really sure LSU’s defense hasn’t improved from giving up 55 to Ole Miss?
Also, they keep repeating the idea that the LSU coaching staff was not able to make defensive adjustments. That’s interesting given that Texas A&M scored 24 points in the first 39 minutes (0.62 points per minute) and only 6 in the remaining 21 minutes (0.29 points per minute).
Texas A&M is the second-beat team LSU beat. Against the best team, the Tigers were also improved in the second half. Missouri had scored 25 in the first half against LSU and only 14 in the second half. Then the anti-House activists say weird things like, “if LSU doesn’t get a pick-6, they might have lost that game.” Is that not a good defensive play? It’s just bizarre. They also say that about Greg Penn’s interception against Texas A&M, by the way, even though if you add 7 points to A&M’s total, LSU still wins comfortably. Remember, LSU went into victory formation on first and goal.
Alabama did score 21 in each half; but in the second half, the Tide was aided by an interception of their own deep in LSU territory. Alabama was scoreless over the last 13 minutes. Obviously, they had no urgency to score with Jayden Daniels sidelined and a 14-point lead, but Alabama does not fail to score points at the end of games just to be nice. And that’s a close enough margin not to put all the bench warmers in to see what happens.
Speaking of Alabama, they gave up 6 more points to Auburn last weekend than LSU did. Maybe Saban doesn’t know what he’s doing, right? I know he’s not the coordinator, but I think every knows the buck stops with him on defense at least.
The game before Texas A&M was against Georgia St., a Sun Belt team roughly equivalent to the South Alabama team I mentioned in the previous section (so not the type of team completely incapable of an upset of a top 25 opponent). They scored 14 points in the first 17:15 of the game, but they didn’t score again after that. Are we sure no adjustment was made to ensure that?
I’m not saying Matt House is the best defensive coordinator LSU can get or that he’s worth the salary he’s being paid. But like I was saying about the playoff committee, I really don’t like when facts and a fair evaluation of those facts is pushed aside to push a narrative. It’s the worst defense ever. There were never any improvements at any point during a given game or during the season. Every time they held someone below 20, it’s because the opposing offense was trash and really should have been shut out. This is what the LSU radio shows and podcasts say almost every day.
Before the Alabama game, some of these same commentators admitted that since halftime of the Missouri game, the LSU defense had gotten better. This is when they were pushing the narrative that LSU had a good chance in that game.
Now that they’re pushing the narrative that Jayden Daniels was perfect even in the losses (to be fair, he was pretty close to perfect in the loss to Ole Miss), it’s back to pretending there was functionally no defense at all at any point in any SEC game. I’d like to see Jayden Daniels win the Heisman as much as anyone, but you can just say (accurately) there were a lot of defensive struggles without which he would have had more possessions and a better record. You don’t have to ignore every modicum of success the defense had.
It seems that LSU is not doing all that great in getting defense recruits even though they need them. The media hosts I’m talking about think that’s proof of what they’re saying. I think it’s more proof that the things they’re saying are being believed, not that they’re all true. So the lies and exaggerations that might be made with the idea of helping Jayden Daniels (and that’s my attempt to be charitable about the motivations) might be doing some harm in other areas.
Comments About My Top 25
Michigan had 99.92% as many points (if we set #133 Kent St. at 0 points) as Washington, so it was an extremely close call for #1. I think this is the first time I’ve ever personally ranked Washington #1. I did think they were better than U. Miami in 1991 though. Georgia, who was only playing Georgia Tech, was not surprisingly passed up by Michigan. That does not mean the Bulldogs won’t be in the running for #1 with a win over Alabama though.
I think most of the other teams moved up in a logical and predictable way. You still get a fair amount of credit for beating teams that aren’t in the top 25, and there are a few that are that don’t cause too much damage. That’s why you see a big jump by North Carolina St. Similarly, Louisville only fell a few spots for losing to Kentucky. Oregon St. has lost three out of five games, but they were all to teams ranked higher, so I don’t mind them being #25. The alternative was Kansas St., who just lost to #39 Iowa St.
The Wildcats lead my honorable mentions list though, trading places with Oklahoma St. North Carolina and UNLV lost and were replaced by Kansas and Utah, who were still hanging around after recently falling out of the top 25. Clemson and Memphis remained on the list from last week.
My Top 25
Honorable mention: Kansas St., Clemson, Memphis, Kansas, Utah