College football Week 6 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 6 Roundup
Rankings AP | Coaches | CFN 1-127 Rankings
Week 7 Early Line Predictions
College Football Playoff Chase, Who’s Alive?
Bowl Projections | Week 6 Scoreboard, Predictions
5 Thoughts: Texas A&M – Florida | Texas – OU
5. Winners & Losers From Week 6
– The One Really Big Thing
– Most Overrated Thing
– Most Underrated Thing
– What It All Means, Week 6
Winner: The Over
If it seemed like every game was a wild and wacky offensive fun-fest, you’re right. Out of the 27 main FBS vs. FBS games this weekend, 20 of them hit the over on the Vegas point total, and seven went under.
The SEC went particularly insane, with Texas A&M-Florida going 21.5 over the total, South Carolina-Vanderbilt going 6.5 over, Missouri-LSU going 35 over, Georgia-Tennessee going 20 over, Arkansas-Auburn going 12.5 over, and Alabama-Ole Miss went a whopping 40.5 points over the point total.
There was one SEC game that didn’t quite get there …
Loser: Mississippi State
The Bulldogs lost 24-2 to Kentucky – the point total was 57.5, by the way – despite outgunning the Wildcats 295 to 157 and holding on to the ball for almost 35 minutes. The problem? Six turnovers, all interceptions.
Winner: RB Najee Harris, Alabama
He’s not close to leading the nation in rushing, but is ten touchdown runs are two more than Iowa State’s Breece Hall. No one else has more than seven. In the win over Ole Miss, Harris ran 23 times for a hard 206 yards and five scores – averaging nine yards per carry – with three catches for 42 yards.
Rip up Georgia this week, and he’s in the lead for the Heisman. There’s one problem with that …
Loser: Tennessee running game
Georgia leads the nation in run defense, allowing just 38 yards per game on the ground. Pitt is No. 2 allowing 52 yards per game, and everyone else has given up 70 or more. So you’ll forgive Tennessee – who was great on the ground in its first two games – for its problems on Saturday in the 44-21 loss with -1 yard on 27 carries.
Winner: QB Phil Jurkovec, Boston College
How this for a transfer coming though better than expected? Jurkovec came to Boston College from Notre Dame to run new head coach Jeff Hafley’s offense, and so far he hit the 300-yard passing mark in three of the four games with eight touchdown passes, two picks, and three rushing scores. He threw for a season-high 358 yards and three touchdowns in the 31-30 upset overtime win over Pitt.
Loser: Syracuse offensive line
It’s been a rough start for the Orange front five, allowing a nation-high 21 sacks in the first four games. Only Duke with 19 has allowed more than 16, but it only gave up two in the 38-24 win at Syracuse. How many times did the Blue Devils get to the quarterback? Six, with nine tackles for loss.
Winner: North Carolina
Roll call on the great – or, at least, pretty decent – state of North Carolina. Appalachian State and Wake Forest were off, but …
Charlotte beat North Texas 49-21; Duke won at Syracuse 38-24; East Carolina whacked USF 44-24; North Carolina got it done against Virginia Tech 56-45; and NC State rolled Virginia 38-21.
By the way, four of those five games were on the road.
Loser: Florida
UCF didn’t play this weekend. That’s the most positive thing to happen to any FBS team in Florida.
Florida Atlantic had to postpone its game against Southern Miss due to COVID-19 issues.
Florida’s defense went bye-bye in the 41-38 loss to Texas A&M; Florida State got trucked by Notre Dame 42-26; Miami got blown away by Clemson 42-17 in a game that wasn’t even that close; East Carolina got its first win of the season at USF with a 44-24 blasting; and FIU, at home, handed Middle Tennessee its first win of the year.
At least the Dolphins were fantastic.
– The One Really Big Thing
– Most Overrated Thing
– Most Underrated Thing
– What It All Means, Week 6
NEXT: The really big thing was …
4. The Really Big Thing Was …
The SEC is absolutely insane – and this matters in a big, big way for the College Football Playoff chase.
Granted, this is a weird year and the CFP committee will take into account every factor, but no two-loss team has ever made it into the final four.
We’ve had teams that didn’t win their own conference championships or even their divisions, but the one-loss barrier has yet to be broken.
The Big 12 is all but done in the playoff chase. Oklahoma State will get in if it wins out and goes unbeaten, but the conference is so down – thank you, Sun Belt – that it’s going to be tough for a one-loss champion to get in.
The Pac-12 will have a hard time getting a team in with just six regular season games and a championship, and if it’s not Cincinnati, forget about a Group of Five program slipping in.
That leaves the ACC, Big Ten and SEC as the most likely conferences to make up the four CFP teams. However, only two unbeaten SEC teams are left standing, and one of them will get knocked off this weekend when Alabama and Georgia go at it.
Of course the committee will take into account if the loser of the SEC championship has two losses but is still fantastic – like if the Tide-Bulldog loser drops a rematch in the championship – and there’s a degree of difficulty added to the dismount when it comes to SEC teams in a year without any non-conference games for the league, but there are problems.
The Georgia offense hasn’t been even or consistent. The Bama defense leaves a whole lot to be desired, and the Florida secondary doesn’t seem to know the season has started. Those are the three most likely SEC teams in the playoff chase.
Auburn can’t seem to score, Texas A&M doesn’t look like it’ll be the least bit consistent, LSU has decided to take the year off, and Tennessee isn’t going to win out.
It’s a long-winded way of saying that after this weekend, don’t automatically assume two SEC teams are getting into the College Football Playoff.
That leads to …
NEXT: The most overrated thing was …
3. The Most Overrated Thing Was …
The big-game ACC losses by Miami and Virginia Tech matter, but they’re not a deathblow to either one.
With the Big 12 a mess and the SEC all floopy, all of a sudden, the ACC looks like it might actually have a shot of not just getting two teams into the College Football Playoff, but almost being a lock to do it if the SEC keeps eating itself up.
It’s why Clemson’s 42-17 whacking of Miami was and will be way overblown.
Clemson hasn’t been perfect, but until we see what Ohio State can do, it’s certainly been the easy No. 1 team in college football so far. Considering how hard it is get anything to go quite right – like a blocked field goal for a touchdown – the Tigers have been as close to perfect as possible over their first four games.
If that’s Miami’s one big loss in the rest of the regular season, so be it.
As it looks now, blasting through UAB, Louisville and Florida State – Miami’s first three games – just isn’t that big a deal. Can it beat Pitt this week? If it picks it back up in a hurry, yeah.
The Canes should be better than Virginia – next on the schedule after the Panthers – and then come tests on the road at NC State and Virginia Tech. Get through those clean, and it’s possible the regular season finale against North Carolina will be for a spot in the ACC Championship.
Far, far, far easier said than done, but don’t write off the Hurricanes yet, however …
Don’t write off Virginia Tech, either, after its 56-45 loss to North Carolina.
Give credit to the Hokies for 1) beating an NC State team that now looks like it might end up rolling through most of the ACC season considering its relatively manageable schedule, and 2) not having a full team yet.
Virginia Tech has managed to play through the COVID issues as well as anyone, missing a ton of depth from the start, several starters early on, and three starters against UNC. However, even though Boston College looks more dangerous now, that’s a winnable game.
The Hokies have a run of at Wake Forest, at Louisville, Liberty, Miami, at Pitt. If they can somehow field a full team, this might just be the second-best squad in the ACC. They don’t play Notre Dame, and they get their one shining moment against Clemson in early December.
NEXT: The most underrated thing was …
2. The Most Underrated Thing Was …
Kansas State 21, TCU 14.
While the whole world was transfixed on the phenomenal theater of Oklahoma-Texas and the wild finish of Florida-Texas A&M, Kansas State – a 9.5-point underdog – went to TCU without its starting quarterback able to go and pitched a gem.
Freshman QB Will Howard did what he needed to in place of an injured Skylar Thompson, running for a game-high 86 yards with a touchdown to make up for his mediocre passing. The defense held time after time after time, the game was mucked up a bit tempo-wise, and boom – K-State is now 3-1.
Not only is it 3-1, it’s 3-1 with the road trip to Oklahoma out of the way with a win.
Going to Iowa State will be an interesting showdown, and West Virginia is no pushover on the road, but the Oklahoma State and Texas games are in Manhattan, and there’s still the Kansas free-space to enjoy.
It’s highly unlikely that the Wildcats will get through the rest of the regular season without a Big 12 blemish, but it can handle one and still make its way into the Big 12 championship, depending on where that is.
But this team is finding ways to win after collapsing late against Arkansas State in the opener.
NEXT: What It All Means: Week 6
1. What It All Means: Week 6
Forget about everything you thought you knew about all the teams currently playing college football in 2020, because almost none of it makes sense.
Clemson has been who we all thought it would be, and no one’s shocked that Alabama and Georgia are unbeaten as they go into their showdown this week.
Six months ago, did you ever think Stetson Bennett was going to be the Georgia quarterback over Jamie Newman, D’Wan Mathis, and eventually, JT Daniels?
Did you ever think Alabama would give up 647 yards of total offense, 48 points, and look as helpless defensively as it did against Ole Miss? Against a Clemson or a 2019 LSU, maybe, but the Rebels?
LSU is 1-2 and can’t play a lick of D.
Oklahoma and Texas might as well be Georgia Tech and Tulane – they all have the same 2-2 record – in terms of relevance, UTEP and UTSA each have 3 wins, and the three independent teams currently playing – BYU, Liberty and Army – are a combined 12-1.
If you don’t want to acknowledge Notre Dame as a true ACC team, the independents are 15-1.
Rankings AP | Coaches | CFN 1-127 Rankings
Week 7 Early Line Predictions
College Football Playoff Chase, Who’s Alive?
Bowl Projections | Week 6 Scoreboard, Predictions
5 Thoughts: Texas A&M – Florida | Texas – OU
Florida State is awful at college football, Arkansas is pretty good, and the Sun Belt is 3-0 vs. the Big 12.
The Coastal Carolina vs. Louisiana game on Wednesday night is sort of a big deal, the LSU vs. Florida game sort of isn’t, UCF vs. Memphis is going to be for mere survival in the American Athletic Conference, and then there’s this …
The point total for Ole Miss vs. Arkansas on Saturday is 77, and that doesn’t seem the least bit crazy.
The SEC can’t play a lick of defense – sorry, Georgia, you’re excused – Mississippi State scored 44 points at LSU and a combined 16 at Arkansas and Kentucky, and …
All the research, all the analysis, all of the interviews, studying, and time logged in trying to figure out each team is all thrown out the window.
After a rough start and with things still not seeming quite right during a global pandemic, the fun factor of college football keeps going up because of its wild unpredictability.
By the way, the Big Ten starts on October 24th.
– Winners & Losers From Week 6
– The One Really Big Thing
– Most Overrated Thing
– Most Underrated Thing
