College Football Roundup Week 6: Overrated, Underrated, What It All Means
College football Week 6 roundup with the 5 things that matter, winners and losers, overrated and underrated aspects to the weekend, and what it all means
College Football Week 6 Roundup
College Football Week 6 Roundup
CFN 1-131 Rankings | Rankings by Conference
Bowl Projections | Week 6 Scoreboard
Week 6 Early Lines | AP Rankings | Coaches Poll
What 12-Team Playoff Would Look Like
Top 10 Hot Seat Coach Rankings
Contact/Follow @ColFootballNews & @PeteFiutak
– Alabama struggled again One Really Big Thing
– Texas blew out Oklahoma Most Overrated Thing
– Quarterback injuries Most Underrated Thing
– CFP might be wide open What It All Means, Week 6
Winners & Losers From Week 6
Winner: Interim head coaches
Mike Sanford’s Colorado team didn’t play, but the other interim guys went 4-0.
All of a sudden, some of the teams whose seasons were lost are starting to have some fun. Georgia Tech’s Brent Key and his staff pitched a gem in the win over Duke. Interim – and likely new – Wisconsin head coach Jim Leonhard got the win over Northwestern.
Under Mickey Joseph, Nebraska finally won a close game as it slipped by Rutgers. Arizona State’s Shaun Aguano go the job done in the win over Washington.
Loser: Tenured head coaches
The five coaches who have been with their schools the longest are Kirk Feretnz (1999), Mike Gundy (2005), Kyle Whittingham (2005), Pat Fitzgerald (2006), and Rick Stockstil (2005). Gundy was the only one of the four get a win this weekend.
Winner: Troy QB Jarret Doege
The sixth-year senior started out at Bowling Green, left for West Virginia, went to Western Kentucky for a cup of coffee, and he stepped in at Troy last week.
After throwing for 237 yards in the win over Southern Miss, he’s now 78th on the all-time NCAA passing list with 10,926. Why is that a big deal? In that one game he passed Matt Leinart, Marcus Mariota, Ben Roethlisberger, and Danny Wuerffel.
Loser: Virginia passing game
The Virginia Cavaliers lost to Louisville 34-17 to go to 2-4, but Brennan Armstrong had one of his best passing games of the season with 313 yards and five scores.
In six games Virginia has thrown five touchdown passes and seven picks. In 2021 Virginia finished second in the nation in passing – Armstrong threw five touchdown passes in a game over Illinois.
Winner: Colorado State
The Rams were 0-4 going into Nevada. They went 1-of-11 on third down conversions, turned it over three times, committed 14 penalties, and only finished with 255 yards of total offense.
They technically didn’t score an offensive point in 60 minutes of play, getting gifted an untimed down on a questionable running into the kicker call to get a field goal for a 17-14 win – the defense scored the two touchdowns.
Loser: Memphis
Everything was going fine against Houston with a 29-13 lead with eight minutes to play. And then it all fell apart.
Jayce Rogers returned the ensuing kickoff for a score, but Memphis went back up 32-19 late on a field goal. Houston – helped by an onside kick – got two Clayton Tune touchdown passes to KeSean Carter in the final 1:17 to pull off the improbable 33-32 win.
Winner: San Diego State QB/S Jalen Mayden
The woeful Aztec offense came into the game against Hawaii with the nation’s worst passing attack. In the 16-14 win – thanks to a walk-off field goal – defensive back Jalen Mayden got the starting quarterback nod – it was his former position at Mississippi State – and went 24-of-36 for 322 yards and a touchdown.
Loser: Ohio pass defense
The Bobcats beat Akron 55-34, but it allowed 418 passing yards. That made it the sixth straight game this season allowing over 300 yards through the air, and now the nation’s worst pass defense is allowing 387 yards per game – 63 more than the second worst, Vanderbilt. Western Michigan is up next this week.
– Alabama struggled again One Really Big Thing
– Texas blew out Oklahoma Most Overrated Thing
– Quarterback injuries Most Underrated Thing
– CFP might be wide open What It All Means, Week 6
NEXT: The really big Week 6 thing was …
The Really Big Week 6 Thing Was …
Alabama needed a big late play to survive … again.
Everything can be true at once about Alabama.
Is it one of the best teams in America? Of course it is. Should it be No. 1 like it is in the Coaches Poll – did you watch that Texas A&M game?
Are there massive problems that need fixing in the secondary and at wide receiver? Yeah. Is Alabama in trouble if Bryce Young can’t his shoulder 100% right? Yeah. Is the schedule a murderer’s row with at least one loss sitting out there waiting to pounce? It sure as shoot looks like it.
Beating up the Vanderbilts and ULMs of the world is fine, but the Tide needed a late stop – and maybe a break on what might have been pass interference – to survive a plucky but inferior Texas A&M.
It needed a field goal off a phenomenal drive from Young to beat Texas a few weeks ago. It struggled in the first three quarters against Arkansas. It’s surviving, but it’s not playing No. 1 well.
So no, Alabama shouldn’t be ranked ahead of Ohio State, or Georgia, or maybe even Clemson, Michigan, or maybe even Tennessee or UCLA right now – it can’t be based on the big game performances.
However, if this team gets to the College Football Playoff, are you sleeping well picking against it winning it all? Of course not, because the talent level is so strong it can overcome just about everything.
And there’s your really big thing this week. Alabama could absolutely come out and truck Tennessee 55-3 and no one would blink. However, be prepared for the possibility that Alabama might actually lose a game again. Or potentially more.
More on how wide open the College Football Playoff chase is in the What It All Means section.
– Winners & Losers Passing games, interim coaches
– Texas blew out Oklahoma Most Overrated Thing
– Quarterback injuries Most Underrated Thing
– CFP might be wide open What It All Means, Week 6
NEXT: The most overrated thing was …
The Most Overrated Thing Was …
Texas beat Oklahoma 49-0.
It’s not like there haven’t been ugly games in Red River Showdowns/Rivalries/Shootouts before.
The difference is that this time the blowout was on the other side of the field.
Oklahoma destroyed Texas 63-21 back in 2012, and that was a year after winning 55-17.
Texas got its licks in with a 45-12 win in 2005, but that came two years after OU squeaked by 65-13, which was only slightly more interesting than the 63-14 win in 2000, and … you get the idea.
Of course Oklahoma is going to have to get through an adjustment period after losing head coach Lincoln Riley and a slew of transfers. Of course the program should be better and stronger than 0-3 in the conference – it has been strangely unappreciated just how dominant Oklahoma has been in the Big 12. Of course head coach Brent Venables should get a few years to try getting his parts in place.
But this was so ugly, so boring from the start – Oklahoma didn’t look like it had the ability to do much of anything, especially with QB Dillon Gabriel out – that it made a huge splash across the early part of the college football Saturday.
The reality, though, was that this game didn’t matter nearly as much as Kansas-TCU, but Horns-Sooners got the big network treatment and you had to look to find the battle of unbeaten Big 12 teams in a far more entertaining showdown.
Texas had already lost to Texas Tech. It might end up in the Big 12 Championship, but Oklahoma almost won’t certainly get there even if it runs the table.
Is Texas “back” to whatever lever you want it do be? Nah. Is Oklahoma over now that it lost this big game in this way? Nah. However the two future SEC programs are probably also-rans this year.
– Winners & Losers Passing games, interim coaches
– Alabama struggled again One Really Big Thing
– Quarterback injuries Most Underrated Thing
– CFP might be wide open What It All Means, Week 6
NEXT: The most underrated thing was …
The Most Underrated Thing Was …
The backup quarterbacks aren’t as good as the starting ones.
From the Department of No Duh, yeah, the team probably isn’t as strong with the No. 2 guy on the depth chart at the most important position.
Unlike the NFL where injury reports force coaches and teams to disclose the quarterback situations before games, college football teams don’t have to say a thing until the offense is on the field for the opening snap.
Oregon State was able to come back and beat Stanford without normal starter Chance Nolan. However, Arkansas sure wasn’t the same team without KJ Jefferson against Mississippi State, and Kentucky was a shadow of itself without Will Levis.
Texas was able to rip trough Oklahoma without Dillon Gabriel, Alabama almost lost to Texas A&M without Bryce Young, Kansas wasn’t able to keep up the pace with Jalon Daniels out after getting hurt against TCU.
Texas Tech’s No. 3 QB Behren Morton was good, but he wasn’t able to put enough points up on the board in the second half against Oklahoma State.
Now more than ever – considering how concussions have become front and center as an existential crisis for the NFL – quarterback safety will take on a whole new scrutiny, and rightly so. But in a transfer portal era that spreads out the talent level across college football – things will get a tad thin at times over the second half of the season.
– Winners & Losers Passing games, interim coaches
– Alabama struggled again One Really Big Thing
– Texas blew out Oklahoma Most Overrated Thing
– CFP might be wide open What It All Means, Week 6
NEXT: What It All Means: Week 6
What It All Means: Week 6
The College Football Playoff chase is more exciting than you probably think it is.
The problem over the CFP era is the fun new-blood outlier teams often get annihilated.
Cincinnati, Michigan, Michigan State, Washington – they got t-shirts. All of the top teams have had rough games where nothing worked – Bama, Clemson, Ohio State all know what that’s like.
It’s about getting there. It’s about the honor of being in the final four and getting that one shot with … no, I won’t break into the schmaltz basketball uses to pump up moments that shine.
And with that said, it’s not even expanded yet, and we’re in a better College Football Playoff race than you might think.
All of a sudden, Alabama doesn’t seem like its a mortal lock. It’s not playing great, and the remaining schedule would turn most teams into a quivering pile of goo.
Georgia has looked vulnerable for moments over the past few weeks, Ohio State is starting to count up the various big injuries to key players and Michigan isn’t exactly representing its best work lately.
So what does this all mean? Look elsewhere.
College Football Week 6 Roundup
CFN 1-131 Rankings | Rankings by Conference
Bowl Projections | Week 6 Scoreboard
Week 6 Early Lines | AP Rankings | Coaches Poll
What 12-Team Playoff Would Look Like
Top 10 Hot Seat Coach Rankings
There’s nothing for the College Football Playoff from the Group of Five, but the Pac-12 has a slew of teams alive and in the race.
Oregon made it through the brutal Week 1 loss to Georgia to look like the best team in the Pac-12, if it’s not unbeaten UCLA or USC.
The Big 12 will eat itself, but Clemson is starting to put it together, and the Big Ten has a real shot at getting two teams in if Michigan and Ohio State are both 11-0 going into their late showdown.
Without getting too crazy, you could make a case for roughly 15 teams out there to be on the CFP radar, and they all have a path.
UCLA, Oklahoma State, Tennessee, and Penn State. Could we get four new teams? Probably not, but after all the twists and turns this last week, don’t just assume Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State, and Clemson is a sure-thing foursome to make the College Football Playoff.
– Winners & Losers Passing games, interim coaches
– Alabama struggled again One Really Big Thing
– Texas blew out Oklahoma Most Overrated Thing
– Quarterback injuries Most Underrated Thing
