College football Week 15 roundup with the 5 things that matter, winners and losers, overrated and underrated parts of the weekend, and what it all means.
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College Football Week 15 Roundup
Week 15 Roundup
Rankings AP | Coaches
CFN 1-127 Rankings | Week 16 Early Lines
Bowl Projections | Week 15 Scoreboard
5. Winners & Losers From Week 15
– USC saved the Pac-12: One Really Big Thing
– Florida losing to LSU: Most Overrated Thing
– Coast Carolina survival: Most Underrated Thing
– The surprise ending: What It All Means, Week 15
Winner: Every decent college football head coach’s agent
Oregon head coach Mario Cristobal is the 11th-highest paid head coaching a 12-team Pac-12. Don’t think for a second his agent wouldn’t like to see his name on a few 5 Top Head Coaching Options For The (insert job opening here).
Hugh Freeze, Lane Kiffin, Billy Napier, Matt Campbell, and on and on and on. With the openings at Auburn, Illinois, and Arizona – and more to come – it’s a good time to be a decent college football head coach.
Loser (but not really): Gus Malzahn, (former) Auburn head coach
68-35. Three wins over Alabama in eight years and two in the last four. A drive away from a national championship, an SEC title, an appearance in another, what will be eight bowl appearances in eight years, five top 25 finishes and. four in the top 15, no losing seasons, and five top three finishes in the always-loaded SEC West.
Ol’ Gus … he did alright.
Winner: North Carolina rushing offense
North Carolina RB Javonte Williams ran for 236 yards and three touchdowns in the 62-26 win over Miami. That was a good day – Michael Carter’s was better.
Carter ran 24 times for 308 yards and two touchdowns – averaging close to 13 yards per carry – as a part of the unstoppable 1-2 rushing punch that blew past the Hurricanes for 554 rushing yards and six touchdowns.
Loser: Miami Hurricanes in December
All Miami had to do was win at home and it was off almost certainly off to the Orange Bowl. Instead, the blowout loss to North Carolina knocked it out of the New Year’s Six and off to one of the ACC’s other bowls that will probably be in December.
One issue – with the loss, Miami is now 0-5 in December since beating West Virginia in the 2016 Russell Athletic Bowl. To make this worse the Canes are 1-11 in December since winning the 2006 MPC Computers Bowl over Miami.
Winner: Cade York, PK LSU
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Marco Wilson shoe-throwing incident will be the signature moment of the LSU 37-34 win over Florida, but give the kickers some credit, especially York.
Florida’s Evan McPherson hit a 31-yarder to tie it up with under three minutes to play, and he barely missed a 51-yard bomb to would have sent it into overtime.
York hit field goals from 39 and 30 yards out, but he nailed an all-timer 57-yard shot through the fog with 23 seconds to play.
Loser: LSU defense
To make this even more painful for Florida … 609 yards.
The Gator O started the season with what would be a season-high 642 yards in the win over Ole Miss, and the 609 yards against LSU were the second-most.
Winner: JT Daniels, QB Georgia
How good is Georgia now with Daniels kicking it all in? He might have only thrown for 139 yards and two touchdowns against South Carolina two weeks ago, but he wasn’t needed. Against Missouri he threw for 299 yards and three touchdowns, giving him 839 yards, nine touchdowns, and a pick in three games.
He’s averaging 10.4 yards per throw. The last time a Georgia QB averaged over 10 yards per pass against an SEC team was late October of 2018 against Florida, and Daniels has done it twice in three games.
Loser: Passing in Army/Navy
Passing, schmassing. 2-for 7, 37 yards. That’s what Army and Navy combined to do throwing the ball in the 15-0 Black Knight win. Army QB Tyhier Tyler attempted one pass, and he connected for 28 yards.
– USC saved the Pac-12: One Really Big Thing
– Florida losing to LSU: Most Overrated Thing
– Coast Carolina survival: Most Underrated Thing
– The surprise ending: What It All Means, Week 15
NEXT: The really big thing was …
4. The Really Big Thing Was …
USC came back to beat UCLA.
Of course the Florida gaffe was massive – more on that in a moment – but that loss probably didn’t matter all that much.
However, USC getting by UCLA 43-38 with a Kedon Slovis eight-yard touchdown pass to Amon-Ra St. Brown with 16 seconds to play might actually be more important.
Had USC lost, that’s it for the Pac-12. It would be totally ignored this weekend, the entire season would be seen as a disappointment with Oregon clunking and Washington struggling, and that would be it.
Now, combine that Trojan thriller with the Florida loss to LSU, and now the Pac-12 is in the discussion along with the five realistic options – Alabama, Notre Dame, Clemson Ohio State, Texas A&M – for the College Football Playoff.
USC is a long shot, but it has as many wins as Ohio State, it’s got the brand name, and it might have the designation of Undefeated Power Five Conference Champion USC.
That matters.
It’s still going to take something crazy for the Trojans to get into the College Football Playoff – Clemson has to lose to Notre Dame convincingly, USC has to wallop Washington in the Pac-12 Championship, and it wouldn’t be a bad thing if Ohio State at least looked awful against Northwestern – but at least this is now going to be a discussion over the next several days.
– Week 15 Winners & Losers
– Florida losing to LSU: Most Overrated Thing
– Coast Carolina survival: Most Underrated Thing
– The surprise ending: What It All Means, Week 15
NEXT: The most overrated thing was …
3. The Most Overrated Thing Was …
Florida lost to LSU.
It’s all broken down here with what the Florida loss really means, who wins, and who loses, but really, the only way this actually mattered is that it made the SEC Championship no big whoop.
If Florida blows out Alabama, then things get weird and interesting, but the projection was always that the Tide was going to win, Florida would be out with two losses, and that would be that.
So the Gators probably aren’t going to the Orange Bowl now – whatever. It’ll go to one of the other New Year’s Six bowl games.
The win means everything for LSU, though. After a horrible season, the program has something to build on for next year, the O appears to have found its quarterback in Max Johnson, and now it really does look like this is simply a rebuild and not a gut-job after last year’s historic campaign.
For Florida, if anything, this might make it even more dangerous. The pressure is off now in the SEC Championship. Now the team might have a chip on its shoulder – even more than it would have – and it’s all on Alabama to get the job done.
But even if the Gators managed to pull that off, that wouldn’t stop Alabama from being Alabama next week.
– Week 15 Winners & Losers
– USC saved the Pac-12: One Really Big Thing
– Coast Carolina survival: Most Underrated Thing
– The surprise ending: What It All Means, Week 15
NEXT: The most underrated thing was …
2. The Most Underrated Thing Was …
Coastal Carolina survived Troy.
Oh sure, the Mullets vs. Mormons win over BYU was as good as it gets, but the 42-38 victory over Troy was even better.
The Chanticleers appeared to have the game in control up 35-23 with five minutes to play, but Troy managed to rally for two touchdowns and 15 points – helped by an interception – in less than two minutes to take a 38-35 lead with just over a minute to play.
Coastal Carolina QB Grayson McCall hit three passes and came up with a short run before finding Jaivon Heiligh for a 23-yard touchdown with 23 seconds to play for the win.
Thanks to this comeback win over a totally mediocre Trojan team – it was a huge help that almost no one seemed to actually watch this game on ESPN+, at least those who vote in the polls didn’t see it – Coastal Carolina was able to move up to No. 9 in the lates AP poll and 12th in the Coaches Poll.
The win kept alive the possibility of a New Year’s Six appearance for the Sun Belt if Cincinnati slips.
– Week 15 Winners & Losers
– USC saved the Pac-12: One Really Big Thing
– Florida losing to LSU: Most Overrated Thing
– The surprise ending: What It All Means, Week 15
NEXT: What It All Means: Week 15
1. What It All Means: Week 15
As if this season wasn’t strange enough, the next-to-last week took a turn to the truly surreal.
Most of the games were awful.
When it came to the big games, it started with the 70-7 Arizona State win over Arizona and it just got worse from there.
Six of the games involving Top 25 teams were canceled. The battle of ranked Georgia and Missouri teams was a blowout, North Carolina over Miami was a fun-bad, Northwestern over Illinois was boring, Iowa over Wisconsin was even worse, Alabama and Oklahoma State each had a light scrimmage, and game after game after game was …
Yuck.
Even Army-Navy was – let’s just say it – bad, too. Of course that’s always interesting beyond the game, but the quality of football in the fog and rain was lousy and the conditions were just plain eerie.
But just as it seemed like the 2020 college football season had overstayed its welcome even more than it already has, we got USC-UCLA and LSU-Florida.
Week 15 Roundup
Rankings AP | Coaches
CFN 1-127 Rankings | Week 16 Early Lines
Bowl Projections | Week 15 Scoreboard
The near-empty Rose Bowl at night for one of the best games of the season was odd enough, but LSU and Florida playing in what appeared to be a swamp in The Swamp just sent us all a little reminder that college football always has a way of coming up with something special.
To dive into the deep cuts, even the late games – Stanford 27-24 over Oregon State and New Mexico’s explosion of a fourth quarter for a 49-39 win over New Mexico – helped end things on a high note.
And now we’re here in Championship Weekend, followed up by a sprint of a bowl season, the College Football Playoff, and then … relax.
– Week 15 Winners & Losers
– USC saved the Pac-12: One Really Big Thing
– Florida losing to LSU: Most Overrated Thing
– Coast Carolina survival: Most Underrated Thing
