This upcoming week will give us a few matchups which should clarify some conference championship races and probably shake out the playoff rankings quite a bit depending on how things go.
Here’s our current playoff rankings.
Georgia (9-0)
Ohio State (9-0)
Michigan (9-0)
TCU (9-0)
Tennessee (8-1)
Oregon (8-1)
LSU (7-2)
USC (8-1)
Alabama (7-2)
Clemson (8-1)
We have to start by offering the caveat these weekly rankings serve primarily as fight promotion for the weekly games as the season progresses. If they can make Michigan vs Ohio State a 1 vs 2 at the end of the year, they will.
Still, the playoff four will almost definitely be among this group of 10 teams. The fact Clemson is last is interesting. If they win out and get another ACC Championship they’ll leapfrog some teams, probably including a theoretical 10-2 Alabama. Keeping Alabama ranked higher this week allows the committee to put a lot of weight on their matchup this week with Ole Miss (11th).
TCU being ranked fourth heading into their primetime game at Texas is a classic “set em up to tear em down” sort of situation. Of the teams listed above, Georgia and Michigan stand out to me as the strongest two squads in the country. Alabama failed to get enough receiver talent around Bryce Young to make their season come together. Ohio State feels to me like a team which lacks a championship gear.
Tennessee we’ve discussed, Oregon has a chance to position themselves for something interesting if they can get through their upcoming stretch which will be difficult.
LSU -3.5 at Arkansas
I’m not sure why Arkansas is getting such good odds. I suppose an anticipated LSU letdown performance combined with the Hogs potentially getting KJ Jefferson back at home are the main reasons.
LSU’s path for the rest of the season is interesting. They face “only” Arkansas, UAB (SEC bye), and Texas A&M from here on out. None of those games seem too tough on the surface. They’re currently tied with Ole Miss atop the SEC West but the Rebels still face Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi State which is considerably harder.
The sole loss on Ole Miss’ record comes from LSU so the Tigers already hold a tie-breaker over them or over Alabama if they lose another game but the Rebels could also just find another loss. Odds of LSU making the SEC Championship game are looking pretty good, which makes their narrow point spread over Arkansas kind of curious. The Tigers will be playing motivated football.
If the Tigers win out and win the SEC Championship game against Georgia (unlikely), they’ll have a really nice resume for the playoff committee. Wouldn’t a 2-loss LSU be in over a 1-loss Clemson with no wins of note? The committee already has them ahead now.
Alabama -12 at Ole Miss
Hanging around in SEC country we have this doozy of a matchup. There’s a lot here I find interesting and frankly quite curious.
Ole Miss runs a different version of RPO spread offense than Tennessee although they are closely akin, like cousins, because Lane Kiffin hired Kendal Briles back at FAU and Jeff Lebby at Ole Miss. Kiffin doesn’t share the same slavish devotion to the wide splits for the receivers and consequently can mix in more of the route patterns he knows from years of running pro-style schemes. A lot of the offense is the same though…
I’ll draw this one up to illustrate the stress of it.
It’s obviously really simple. You have the inside receivers run stop routes where they find open grass and sit in it. Any outside linebackers assigned to cover them can’t also fit gaps against the run scheme, which is basically iso with a tackle as the lead blocker. So they move gaps but eliminate the ability of the defense’s adjusters at outside linebacker to move to fill them with the easy pass options.
Lane Kiffin always his drills his quarterbacks on how these RPOs work so they can reliably get the ball out to open receivers when teams try to cheat to the run. The O-line is left to block 5-on-5, the Dime blitzing off the edge is basically ignored, and they catch the Aggies for a big gain.
Alabama has tended to struggle with this style and really fell apart trying to defend Tennessee’s brand. The Tide can try to play their linebackers in the box and drop a safety down, but we saw them do that against Tennessee and get murdered because DeMarcco Hellams couldn’t hold up in space. They can play more two-high nickel and hope to limit damage underneath with their athleticism at linebacker and safety…but this hasn’t gone super well for them in the past against Kiffin.
The point spread suggests a lot of faith in Alabama to rebound after a loss but to me this game looks worse for them than the LSU game did. The hope is that Bryce Young can bail them out on the road and we’ve seen from previous games this season at Tennessee, LSU, and Texas that the Alabama wide receivers aren’t really there for him to reliably win shootouts.
If Lane pulls off a home win here, you have to wonder how the response will go in Tuscaloosa…
Washington at Oregon -13.5
There are two pretty good sized obstacles between Oregon and a Bo Nix Heisman chance or playoff invitation. First, this home date with Washington, then later the Pac-12 Championship game against USC or Utah.
Here’s the trick with Oregon, they aren’t very good on defense yet. They weren’t great last year despite having some good coaches in Marcel Yates and Tim Deruyter (both now at Texas Tech) because they didn’t have the guys up front yet to play big boy run defense. Dan Lanning came from Georgia, where relying on a big and physical D-line was the name of the game, so there’s quite an adjustment for him in making this come together. It’ll take time.
They haven’t been winning by crushing people on defense anyways, they’ve won by taking what Mario Cristobal had built and taking it up a notch by infusing Bo Nix’s talent and experience. Cristobal and his ironically small offensive line coach Alex Mirabal (5-foot-4!!!) built a really good, power run game in Eugene.
Lanning and his staff had to bring in transfer running backs along with Nix to tote the rock but the O-line which everything is built around is all Cristobal/Mirabal.
The interior is all COVID seniors who received years of snaps and coaching from the previous staff and the tackles are a pair of fourth-year 340 pounders recruited by the ‘bals. Oregon can run the crap out of the ball, the fact Nix has been a good red zone runner (13 touchdowns) simply enriches the overall system.
Washington is also scoring at a high clip, mostly due to excellent play-action passing, and 13.5 is going to be a lot for the Ducks to clear. Oregon will likely have to win a lot of shootouts between now and bowl season to get into the playoffs. They may have the caliber of opponents to build a nice resume though if they can win out, especially if they really put a beating on Washington.
Committee don’t care about defense unless it’s a good excuse to keep a lesser brand (cough, TCU) out of those big money TV slots. An exciting Oregon offense manned by a Heisman finalist Bo Nix who transferred from Auburn is good entertainment.
The Big 12 race: TCU at Texas -7 and K-State at Baylor -2.5
Let’s start with the game in Waco.
Baylor this season has been frankly bizarre. I cautioned all offseason that the loss of their receiving corps (particularly Patriot rookie Tyquan Thornton) and the loss of five good defensive backs (including Texans’ star Jalen Pitre) would be hard to replace.
The prevailing media opinion was that their wealth of returning quality on the offensive AND defensive line would carry them. I argued Space Force would hurt them and reduce them to being something like an 8-4 team, despite the terrific line play.
Well they’re currently 6-3, so both outcomes are technically in play.
The Bears just got a big boost from the return of right tackle Khalil Keith, who’d been injured most of the season. Keith is a big, mauling brute who makes their run game more potent. Their receiving corps has honestly handled the loss of Thornton reasonably well, Gavin Holmes has found consistency as the season progresses and is averaging 20.6 yards per catch with 23 for 474 yards and three touchdowns. As I expected, they have found a running back. It’s freshman Richard Reese who has 156 carries for 798 yards at 5.1 ypc with 13 touchdowns.
Offense has gone better than I expected. Defense? Probably worse.
Their secondary has not been good. They did pick off Dillon Gabriel three times last week in a big road win, but all three were deflected and frankly pretty iffy decisions or throws by the Sooner signal-caller. The tackling is very suspect.
Kansas State is a nightmare if you struggle to tackle in the secondary or to play with precision in your coverages. Their route concepts have chewed up opponents all year and the Wildcat run game with its physical O-line and Deuce Vaughn or Adrian Martinez toting the ball is a load.
The K-State defense is one of the best in the conference but is geared more toward facing spread teams than a unit like the Bears which will put tight ends and even a fullback on the field at times.
By “November ball” metrics it’s really unclear who wins this contest between a pair of disciplined teams who run the ball well…so let’s boil this down to space force matchups to try and get a sense of who will have the edge in a competitive matchup.
Baylor’s left tackle Connor Galvin and K-State right end Felix Anudike-Uzomah are among the best at their positions in the league. I don’t know how that matchup will go but it could prove decisive in this game.
The Wildcat secondary has good answers for the Baylor receivers, particularly putting Ekow Boye-Doe in man coverage on Gavin Holmes outside. There’s certainly a chance K-State could cause problems for Baylor’s pass game and force them to out-tough them in the trenches where the Bears are bigger but K-State has a lot of quickness, veterans, and knowhow. Their safeties in particular will all come down and tackle and limit any gains you make up front and nose tackle Eli Huggins and inside linebacker Austin Moore are warriors.
On the other side, K-State doesn’t have a dominant deep threat receiver, they spread the ball around to a number of good players. Baylor doesn’t have a top cornerback either, this comes down to how well the Bears cover their route patterns underneath.
Finally, the K-State offensive line lacks a great left tackle or overall pass protection and Baylor lacks a dominant Edge but can generate pressure with blitzes. That’s probably the ball game. Baylor’s well coordinated pressure packages tend to be backed this season by iffy coverages while K-State’s well coordinated passing schemes tend to be launched from iffy protections.
I guess tie goes to the home team, Baylor.
Our other Big 12 contest is much higher profile but also much less even in terms of the matchups. TCU’s playoff run has to go into Austin at night in front of 100k fans against a team well built to handle their best attributes.
I broke down the game here in a free article. It’s another contest between two teams playing reasonably good “November ball,” although the TCU run defense is nowhere near as good as the Longhorns’ unit. I’ll give the game some space force treatment here for your enjoyment.
TCU’s tackles and pass protection are all iffy, they’re doing their work in the run game and with play-action. However, Texas doesn’t have a great Edge rusher to attack them so it washes out. The Frogs do have a premier deep threat in Quentin Johnston, he might be dinged up for this game but it’s unclear what his status will be. Texas has a big boundary corner named Ryan Watts and athleticism and experience at field corner in D’Shawn Jamison so they’re less vulnerable to him than most. Johnston is one of the chief hopes for a TCU upset on the road but he’s facing a lot of obstacles between the ankle injury and an athletic cornerback group.
TCU has really done their serious damage this season running the ball and then hitting QJ or the slots on play-action and Texas is less vulnerable to that style. The Longhorns are more easily beat up by a pure passing set-up which can abuse their lack of great edge rush.
On the other side, Texas has Xavier Worthy as their deep threat likely matched against Trevius Hodges-Tomlinson in a premier matchup which will have some NFL scout attention. I think Worthy has the edge but Texas hasn’t been consistent about hitting him down the field.
TCU’s defensive ends aren’t great pass-rushers and outside linebacker Dee Winters is a good blitzer but facing perhaps the best tackle tandem in the league (5-star freshman Kelvin Banks has been a revelation for Texas) and will miss the first half after a targeting call last week. A truly tough loss.
By November ball comparison, Texas has the stronger team. Gauging by Space Force, the Longhorns are slightly ahead as well. None of the matchups really favor the Frogs in this game, nor the fact this is their 8th consecutive Saturday of playing football and they’re heading into probably their toughest game yet. I think their playoff bubble bursts on Saturday night, but they should get another chance to beat Texas (or whomever) in the Big 12 Championship.
TCU needs two losses to be vulnerable to losing their Big 12 title berth place and the remaining schedule goes at Texas, at Baylor, and then Iowa State. It’s possible their season could unravel here at the end on the road against in-state opponents but they could probably go 1-2 and still limp in.