7-Step Drop: A College Football Season of Surprises from East to West

One of the best things about every college football season is that when you start to approach the halfway point (and that's quickly coming up), there are a ton of surprising teams that end up putting up wins you simply don't expect based on preseason expectations.

It's even more surprising when it happens in the supposedly "weaker" divisions in many conferences around the country. This past weekend was a perfect example of that.

Coming into 2015, it was a near-consensus opinion that the SEC West was going to be far and away better than the East, that the Pac-12 South was going to produce the eventual league champ over the North out west, and that the Big Ten West was going to take a seat behind the Big Ten East all year long. It hasn't played out that way, though. Heck, even the American Athletic Conference has proved to be much better and deeper than expected.

For all of the prognostications and deep dives into depth charts, there's still the unknown variable of 18- to 25-year-olds lining up on Saturdays. Even earlier performances this season may hide the fact that some teams are playing up or down to their competition and may in fact be better than we think when faced with a little adversity.

Gary McCullough/Associated Press

Nowhere was this more evident in Week 5 than at the Swamp, where freshman quarterback Will Grier looked like a wily veteran in torching a previously stingy Ole Miss defense. Grier threw four touchdown passes in the first half to put the Rebels in a deep hole from which they never recovered.

More than anything, he took hold of the starting signal-caller job by playing to the Gators' strength—running the ball and playing stout defense—while minimizing the team's flaws on its super-young offensive line by getting rid of the ball quickly to the right playmaker.

What's even more amazing is the fact that Grier was in that position in the first place. He was expected to see some time at quarterback this year, splitting reps with Treon Harris as they had in the first two games, but nobody expected him to be playing like this against a good Ole Miss team. Heck, he wasn't even going to play last weekend after being one of several Gators who were battling a stomach virus all week.

Kudos to Jim McElwain and his two coordinators—Geoff Collins on defense and Doug Nussmeier on offense—for crafting a near perfect game plan that exploited their opponent in ways that Alabama could not two weeks prior. They were rewarded for their efforts with a massive jump in the polls, and for good reason: This young team looks well coached for the first time since the early Urban Meyer days and has plenty of talent to boot.

I'll be the first to admit Saturday's result was a surprise after Florida's previous uninspiring efforts against East Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee. Perhaps those close calls were just what the team needed to turn the corner. I counted seven underclassmen on the field on offense at one point, and a glance at the two-deep reveals a total of nearly two dozen. These freshmen and sophomores have not only grown up by this point in the season—they're starting to thrive.

That's not great news for other SEC teams, but it does add more drama to the already up-and-down East division. With the exception of their trip to LSU and neutral-site game against Georgia, the Gators should be favored the rest of the way, and reaching double-digit wins is a real possibility.

If you thought that was possible before 2015, please go with me to Las Vegas. To say the team is ahead of schedule in McElwain's rebuild is putting things mildly. There's a great young nucleus that should continue to grow throughout the season and into 2016.

Florida isn't the only team to look unexpectedly good at this point in the year, though. One has to look no further than the Big Ten to find that out. Michigan's resurgence and defensive dominance have garnered a lot of attention, but it's really the West division that has helped out the conference's reputation in the face of unexpected struggles from heavyweights Ohio State and Michigan State.

Northwestern jumped onto everybody's radar with a season-opening win over Stanford, and its defense, by now, can certainly be seen as the real deal. Entering Week 6, the Wildcats have only given up 35 points, and the offense, led by freshman quarterback Clayton Thorson and sophomore running back Justin Jackson, has done more than enough to get the job done.

They face their first big conference test this week in Ann Arbor, but there's certainly some deserved optimism among the Northwestern faithful that a trip to the league title game is attainable this season.

Aaron Gash/Associated Press

The one team that might stand in the Wildcats' way of getting to Indianapolis is a resurgent Iowa. While it hasn't always been pretty this year, the Hawkeyes have done enough to get to 5-0 and enter the polls for the first time in what seems like ages.

Quarterback C.J. Beathard has remained undefeated as a starter and, most importantly, has thrown just two interceptions while completing 64 percent of his passes. Jordan Canzeri has contributed to the typically strong running game, and the defense has been much-improved, including forcing four turnovers against Wisconsin.

A trip to Northwestern in two weeks looms large, but it's not hard to picture the Hawkeyes in Indianapolis either, based on the way they've been winning. The heat has cooled just a tad under Kirk Ferentz's hot seat, but the Hawkeyes fanbase likely is remaining cautious about this newfound source of success.

And all of those surprises don't even mention the fact that the game of Week 6 is out West between the two remaining Pac-12 undefeated teams of…Cal and Utah? Yes, it's been that kind of year.

Surprises from week to week are to be expected in a sport with so many variables and so many teams capable of beating others. At this point, however, there are a whole lot of football squads who are who we thought they were not: contenders.

Stats of the Week

• Wisconsin LB Joe Schobert is the national leader in tackles for loss, sacks and forced fumbles. Not a bad trifecta.

• B/R's stats department uncovered a good nugget: Northwestern has shut out two opponents in the same season for the first time since 1965.

• The AAC—your Group of Five front-runners—is a combined 9-1 against the Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West and Sun Belt. The league also has five combined wins against the ACC, Big 12 and Big Ten. Memphis and Temple, along with Bowling Green, are the only teams in the nation with 3-0 road records.

• Ohio State's Ezekiel Elliott averaged 11.9 yards per carry against Indiana, a new school record.

• Nebraska suffered its third loss of the season on the opponent's final play of the game. The damage was done by Illinois this week with a game-winning touchdown pass.

• Under Gary Patterson, TCU has allowed 17 points or fewer 100 times. According to the school, the team is 97-3 in such cases.

• 247Sports' Wes Rucker pointed out that Tennessee was 0-2 to start SEC play for the eighth consecutive season.

• Iowa is 5-0 for the first time since 2009. Amazingly, it's only the second time they've been 5-0 under Kirk Ferentz. The Hawkeyes captured their first win over a ranked opponent since 2011.

Quote of the Week

"The comment was we were not going to be ready. Clemson wouldn't be ready and our crowd was going to be lugubrious when the game was over. I don't know how to spell that. I'm hooked on phonics. I just sound it out. Lugubrious. But I did look it up, and 'lugubrious' means to look sad and disappointed," Dabo Swinney said in his postgame press conference. "So I appreciate the education that we got this week—the vocab lesson. The first thing our players said to me when they came to the locker room was 'man that leprechaun was a little lugubrious looking.'"

Tweet of the Week

Plays of the Week

OK, maybe not plays of the week as much as amazing bits of dancing after big wins at Florida and Clemson.

Sound from Saturday

Pre-Snap Reads

California at Utah

Who had these two as the last ones standing in the Pac-12? The Bears have a potential No. 1 overall draft pick in quarterback Jared Goff and a group of terrific offensive skill-position players. That won't be enough to overcome a shaky defense, however. The Utes will bask in the limelight once again with a big win on the national stage.

Northwestern at Michigan

First to three points wins? A pair of salty defenses will take the field, and it may be tough to figure out which offense can move the ball with any regularity Saturday. The home team gets the slight edge, but turnovers, as usual, will play a big part in determining the winner of this one.

Navy at Notre Dame

The Irish return home after a tough, deflating road loss at Clemson and are certainly on upset alert against a very good Navy team that is difficult to prepare for with its triple-option attack and terrific quarterback Keenan Reynolds. This one will be close and may not bode well for Notre Dame's chances next week against USC even if it squeaks out a victory.

You can follow Bryan Fischer on Twitter at @BryanDFischer.