NCAA Football Rankings 2014: Predicting the Top 25 After Week 7
Week 6 of the college football season was all about chaos. Week 7 was all about near chaos.
Three teams from the national Top 10 were defeated, but two of those teams, Auburn and TCU, were playing road games against Top Five opponents (Mississippi State and Baylor, respectively). It's hard to call those "chaotic" defeats.
At the same time, though, last week's No. 6 team (Notre Dame) struggled at home against North Carolina, last week's No. 7 team (Alabama) struggled on the road at Arkansas, last week's No. 8 team (Michigan State) struggled on the road at Purdue and last week's No. 11 team (Oklahoma) struggled on a neutral field against Texas. We almost saw a lot more wreckage in Week 7 than we actually did.
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
What sort of effect is this going to take on the polls? It's difficult to say. The biggest winners of the week will not be the biggest risers, because they started so far toward the top. There isn't any room for them to rise. For the teams they beat, however, there is always plenty of room to free-fall. The rankings are a bottomless pit.
Here's a projection of Sunday's Associated Press Top 25.
| 1. Florida State | 6-0 | 1 | def. Syracuse, 38-20 |
| 2. Mississippi State | 6-0 | t-3 | def. Auburn, 38-23 |
| 3. Ole Miss | 6-0 | t-3 | def. Texas A&M, 35-20 |
| 4. Baylor | 6-0 | 5 | def. TCU, 61-58 |
| 5. Notre Dame | 6-0 | 6 | def. UNC, 50-43 |
| 6. Alabama | 5-1 | 7 | def. Arkansas, 14-13 |
| 7. Auburn | 5-1 | 2 | loss to Mississippi State, 38-23 |
| 8. Michigan State | 5-1 | 8 | def. Purdue, 45-31 |
| 9. Oregon | 5-1 | 12 | def. UCLA, 42-30 |
| 10. Georgia | 5-1 | 13 | def. Missouri, 34-0 |
| 11. TCU | 4-1 | 9 | loss to Baylor, 61-58 |
| 12. Oklahoma | 5-1 | 11 | def. Texas, 31-26 |
| 13. Ohio State | 4-1 | 15 | BYE |
| 14. Kansas State | 4-1 | 17 | BYE |
| 15. Oklahoma State | 5-1 | 16 | def. Kansas, 27-20 |
| 16. East Carolina | 5-1 | 19 | def. South Florida, 28-17 |
| 17. Arizona State | 4-1 | 20 | BYE |
| 18. Nebraska | 5-1 | 21 | BYE |
| 19. USC | 4-2 | NR | def. Arizona, 28-26 |
| 20. Arizona | 5-1 | 10 | loss to USC, 28-26 |
| 21. Utah | 4-1 | 24 | BYE |
| 22. Stanford | 5-2 | 25 | def. Washington State, 34-17 |
| 23. Texas A&M | 5-2 | 14 | loss to Ole Miss, 35-20 |
| 24. Clemson | 4-2 | NR | def. Louisville, 23-17 |
| 25. Marshall | 6-0 | NR | def. Middle Tennessee State, 49-24 |
Note: Rankings above reflect the author's projection of the Week 8 AP poll—not how he would rank the teams himself.
Biggest Risers
Oregon
Oregon's offense looked a lot more like...well, Oregon's offense in a thorough win over UCLA. Offensive tackle Jake Fisher returned to the lineup after missing two games with an injury, and it was difficult to ignore the improvement he catalyzed up front.
Fisher moved from right tackle to left tackle when Tyler Johnstone went down with a torn ACL this spring and has played as well on Marcus Mariota's blind side as he always had on his sighted side. Mariota was not sacked against a very good Bruins pass rush, and Oregon rushed for 258 yards on 41 carries.
The Ducks raced out to a 42-10 lead before allowing UCLA to score some meaningless points at the end of the fourth quarter, taking their foot off the gas once the outcome was in hand. If this version of Oregon shows up for the rest of Pac-12 play, it's not hard to foresee a scenario where it finishes 12-1, wins the conference and sneaks into the CFP despite last week's ugly home loss to Arizona.
USC
USC held on tight to beat Arizona, 28-26, in the wee hours of Sunday morning. This time, there was no Grand Canyon State miracle.
As egregious as the Trojans' Hail Mary defense was against Arizona State in Week 6, do we really think that says much about the quality of their team? If not for that one lapse in defense, they would be 5-1 right now and probably ranked inside the Top 15. Even with a loss at Boston College, the Trojans would be ranked inside the Top 15.
So it seems logical to think they'll re-crack the Top 20 after winning a road game against an alleged Top 10 opponent. Even after the loss to ASU, the Trojans placed No. 28 with 61 votes last week. And who among that back group did more than USC to rise up during Week 7?
Biggest Fallers
Missouri
Missouri's offense was terrible against Georgia. Painfully, comically terrible. It was the most undeserving-of-a-Top-25-ranking performance from a Top 25-ranked team we have seen this entire season.
Offseason darling Maty Mauk—a player for whom I am guilty of believing the hype—played the worst game of his career, completing just nine of 21 passes for 97 yards and four interceptions. At times, he looked like he wanted to turn the ball over, lest he be forced to take another snap behind his overwhelmed offensive line.
Missouri's defense was plucky but eventually caved when its offense kept throwing it back onto the field with no rest. There is enough talent on this roster for Missouri to compete for second place in the SEC East, but in a division so devoid of quality teams, that doesn't mean much of anything.
UCLA
As mentioned above, UCLA was outplayed by more than 12 points in its 42-30 loss against Oregon. The only real difference between last year's meeting and this year's meeting was the fact that this year's meeting took place in the Rose Bowl, where all of UCLA's fans could witness the embarrassment firsthand.
For the umpteenth consecutive week, Brett Hundley struggled to feel pressure in the pocket, which makes him a suboptimal quarterback for a team so prone to allowing pressure. The NFL will be enamored with Hundley's physical tools—and rightfully so; they're impressive—but it's looking more and more like he'll never put the pieces all together in college. He isn't a good fit for this team.
The real trouble with Saturday's game was the UCLA defense, which wilted by allowing Oregon to score 42 points in the first 46 minutes of the game. A lot of that was a result of its offense not staying on the field, but it was difficult to watch the Bruins' supposedly superior unit get torched.
Texas A&M
What do we make of Texas A&M?
The Week 1 win at South Carolina looks worse than it did at the time, but South Carolina beat Georgia on that same field. The Week 5 win against Arkansas was difficult on the eyes, but Arkansas just came within a blocked extra point of taking Alabama to overtime. And even though the Aggies got worked by the Mississippi schools the past two weeks...the Mississippi schools appear to be the class of college football.
Still, there is no good excuse for getting beaten as handily as Texas A&M did by Ole Miss in Week 7—especially on its home field. Kevin Sumlin's supposedly fine-without-Johnny-Manziel offense sputtered to the tune of zero points in the first half.
"We're getting whipped up front," Sumlin said at halftime, per Bruce Feldman of FoxSports.com. And that is the problem exactly. At its best, Texas A&M functions from the inside out. For three consecutive weeks now, its offensive line has been outplayed by an opponent's defensive line. In all three cases, it hasn't even been close.
The line is the biggest difference between last year's team and this year's. It's also the reason A&M might fall out of the polls pretty soon.
Arizona
Arizona finally lost a game in Week 7, mounting a frantic comeback against USC but falling just short with a missed 36-yard field goal as time expired.
Truthfully, however, the Wildcats' undefeated season should have been buried long before Casey Skowron's kick went sailing wide right. They should have lost to California before catching a Hail Mary as time expired, and they shouldn't have even been within two points against USC.
The Wildcats are not a bad team by any measure. They won a true road game at Oregon, which, no matter the state of Oregon's offensive line, is difficult to replicate. Rich Rodriquez is a fantastic game-planner, the receivers are first-rate, Anu Solomon looks like a future star and even the defense is better than in previous years.
But this was never a team that belonged in the Top 10. It just wasn't. It deserved to be there based on its record and its on-paper resume, but who among us really thought it was one of the 10 best teams in the country? Who would have taken it over, say, Oklahoma on a neutral field?
Twenty seems like a much fairer spot.
.jpg?w=480 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
