The first few weeks of the football season have featured plenty of upsets and in the process, the road to the College Football Playoff has been blown right up. Ohio State and TCU have managed to stay perfect but there has been plenty of movement at the top. It was the ugliest week of the season in the Top 10 as four teams dropped from the ranks. Here’s who has come tumbling down:
Ole Miss Gets Smoked At Florida
The warning signs were certainly there when Ole Miss followed up a statement win over Alabama with a sluggish win over Vanderbilt. They hit a wall this past weekend in a 38-10 blowout loss as the betting favorite at Florida. The Rebels had virtually no running game against Florida, they turned the ball over four times and went 5-for-14 on third down in the lopsided loss.
The fact that as many as 25 Gators were battling the flu in that win doesn’t make the overall outlook any prettier for Ole Miss. It will be back to the drawing board for Hugh Freeze and the Ole Miss staff this week with a game against winless New Mexico State but they face an extremely difficult schedule to close out the season. They’ve got games against Texas A&M, Auburn, LSU and Mississippi State left, so they will certainly be in tough to regain the ground they lost this past weekend.
Notre Dame Can’t Recover At Clemson
Injuries finally caught up to the Fighting Irish in a 24-22 loss at Clemson as they had four second-half turnovers and still had a chance to tie the game at the end when they were stopped on a potential game-tying two-point conversion. The loss cost them nine spots in the AP rankings as they fell from No. 6 to No. 15. More important is how they pick up the pieces in an effort to regroup in time for back-to-back home games against Navy and USC.
The Trojans and Stanford Cardinal are the only two ranked opponents remaining on their schedule. After all of the talk about how Notre Dame would have to go perfect to contend for the College Football Playoff, there is an obvious concern now about whether they still have a chance.
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Bruins Crumble At Home
No team fell harder in the AP rankings than the Bruins, who dropped 13 spots down from No. 7 to No. 20 in the country following a 38-23 blowout loss at home against Arizona State. The perfect storm came together as Mike Bercovici threw for 273 yards and two touchdowns while DeMario Richard and Kalen Ballage combined to torch UCLA on the ground with a combined 138 yards and a touchdown for the Sun Devils. Meanwhile, Arizona State absolutely shut down the Bruins offense, holding running back Paul Perkins to 34 yards on 17 carries other than his one long 29-yard rush.
They kept freshman quarterback Josh Rosen in check for the most part as he completed just 55% of his passes. The Pac-12 is still wide open so one loss won’t eliminate them from contention in their conference yet but they are going to have to find a way to re-establish some sort of run game and get the defense in order if they are going to have any chance at bouncing back and being considered a legitimate contender this season.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmBpuZDBAUA
Georgia Pulls A Georgia
Build expectations, fail in a big game, then repeat. Georgia hadn’t played against Alabama since 2008 and they probably wish they still hadn’t after they were punched in the mouth in a 38-10 loss to the Crimson Tide. Sophomore running back Nick Chubb still managed to run for 145 yards and a touchdown but quarterbacks Greyson Lambert and Brice Ramsey combined to complete just 11-of-31 pass attempts for 106 yards with three interceptions.
There was no way the Bulldogs were going to beat Alabama with that kind of play from their passers. Georgia dropped 11 spots to No. 19 in the AP rankings after being outclassed in nearly every area of the game by the Tide. It might very well have cost them an opportunity to contend for a spot in this year’s College Football Playoff out of the SEC West.
