Power
Rankings After Week 11
1. Oregon 10-0 (2nd)
2. Kansas State 10-0 (3rd)
3. Alabama 9-1 (1st)
4. LSU 8-2 (4th)
5. Georgia 9-1 (5th)
6. Texas A&M 8-2 (13th)
7. South Carolina 8-2 (7th)
8. Florida 9-1 (6th)
9. Stanford 8-2 (8th)
10. Oregon State 7-2
(10th)
11. Notre Dame 10-0 (9th)
12. Oklahoma 7-2 (11th)
13. Florida State 9-1
(12th)
14. USC 7-3 (14th)
15. Clemson 9-1 (15th)
Out:
None.
Comments:
After one of the stranger weeks of the college football season there was a
pretty major shakeup at the top of my power rankings. Overall, however, my top
15 didn’t change all that much compared to the rest of the year.
Last week just 7 of the
15 spots in my rankings experienced change; the lowest number of the year and
the first time all season that less than 10 spots changed. This week only 9 of
15 spots in my rankings experienced change; the second lowest number of the
year and the second consecutive week that less than two thirds of the teams in
my rankings moved.
Plus, for the first
time all season I did not switch a single team out of my top 15. This is the
sixth time in seven weeks that at least 14 of my top 15 teams remained in the
power rankings.
3 teams moved up in my
rankings this week, while 6 teams moved down.
Of the 3 teams going up
in the power rankings, only 1 moved up more than 1 spot. Texas A&M was
obviously the major climber in this week’s edition of my power rankings. The
Aggies pulled off a stunning upset over Bama on the road to get to 8-2 on the
year and they moved up 7 spots in my rankings this week, climbing from #13 to
#6.
Of the 6 teams going
down the rankings, 3 fell off more than 1 spot. Alabama, Florida, and Notre
Dame each moved down 2 spots this week. Florida lost their QB to injury and
very nearly lost at home to Louisiana-Lafayette. I moved the Gators down 2
spots from #6 to #8. Notre Dame came away with a hardly impressive 15 point win
over lowly Boston College to improve to 10-0 on the year. Still, ND dropped 2
spots in my rankings from #9 to #11.
But the big story this
week is obviously Alabama. The Tide were not themselves for a second straight
week and this time it cost them, as they dropped their first game of the
season, losing at home to A&M. Bama fell out of the #1 spot in my rankings,
dropping 2 spots to #3.
Yes, you are seeing it
correctly. I have Bama behind both Oregon and Kansas State. Alabama’s streak of
10 straight weeks atop my power rankings came to an end this week. Oregon moves
up 1 spot from #2 to take over as the #1 team in my top 15. KSU also moves up 1
spot from #3 to #2. Oregon had been the #2 team for the last 7 weeks.
Oregon is just the
third different team to hold the #1 spot in my rankings this year. Alabama took
over the #1 spot from LSU after week 1 and held it until this week. Oregon is
obviously the first non-SEC team to be #1 in my power rankings this season, but
it really goes much further than that. This week’s edition of the power
rankings ends a streak of 31 consecutive weeks that an SEC team held the #1
spot in my rankings, nearly 2 full seasons worth. This is the first time a team
from outside the SEC has held the #1 spot in my rankings since week 13 of the
2010 season.
For the first few years
of this blog, I attempted to keep a well defined, hard and fast law for how I
determined my top 15, but that plan has fallen to the wayside in recent times
and I pretty much just go by feel nowadays. It doesn’t always make sense from
every angle.
I think that at this
moment, if you told me that Alabama would have the next 2 weeks off and would
then play for the national title on a neutral field, I would take Bama over any
other team in the country. In the past, that would have led me to keep the Tide
at #1.
Also, if I’m being
honest, I think I’m violating one of my main tenets of these power rankings,
which is to never be overly influenced by the outcome of an extremely close
game. And let’s be real: this was indeed a very, very close game that could
have gone either way. Sure A&M deserved to win; there wasn’t anything fluky
about their victory. But if you look at it, this was also a game that Bama
seemingly should have won, considering that they had 1st and goal in
the closing moments, and had they scored a TD they would have taken the lead.
So let’s say Bama
scores on that 4th down and the Tide win it to remain undefeated.
Would they be #3 in my power rankings? No. They’d be #1 for sure. So in this
case, I suppose I am letting the outcome of 1 play have a major, major impact
on my rankings.
But for me, the fact
that Bama didn’t score; that they did commit an egregious penalty which cost
them one more shot; and that they did lose at home was enough of a final push
for me to change my rankings. I say “final push,” because this was really
something that took place over 2 weeks.
Bama has looked to be a
full level above the rest of college football all season. Going into the LSU
game, I thought Bama was as clear a #1 team as there has been since I’ve been
doing these rankings. And then they beat LSU and my reaction felt really
strange. They had gone into what is without question the toughest place to play
in college football and beaten a truly great team. On paper, it was their best
win of the season. And yet, I was less sure about Bama’s status than I had been
a few days earlier.
Maybe that speaks to
how highly I had thought of them, but there were just some things in that game
that startled me. We’ve known that Bama’s offense is not the strength of the
team, but the defense had been dominant up until the LSU game. But then an LSU
offense that has looked decidedly limited all year long had some real success against
Bama’s D.
And then there was the “Mad
Hatter” part of the story. I think Les Miles is a much bigger part of LSU’s
success than most people seem to think, and in my opinion the LSU fans are way,
way, way too hard on him. However, some parts of his strategy in the Bama game—while
not necessarily unsound---seemed to end up being totally wrong for this
particular night.
Miles seemed to go into
the game thinking that in order to win he had to coach as if he had nothing to
lose. He took gambles throughout the evening. Had the gambles gone his way LSU
would have won. As it turned out, had he merely played things close to the vest—as
he had on the road at Bama the previous season—LSU probably would have won
anyway. But since he did gamble, and since those gambles didn’t turn out well,
he ended up giving Alabama a chance to steal a victory.
And then it was almost
as if Miles realized that he didn’t need to coach with reckless abandon at the
worst possible time. He’d coached the entire game as if he had to take the game
and couldn’t afford to let the game come to him, and then he suddenly realized
that this wasn’t necessary, at the exact moment when he needed to guard against
Bama taking the game away from him.
LSU’s defense had held
Bama mostly in check, but they seemed to be guarding against giving Bama a
chance for a big play on their final possession. The more cautious defensive
strategy allowed Bama’s offense to do what they are capable of doing: executing
and making the smart, available play.
As we know, the Tide
went down and scored to take the lead and the game. While it was certainly impressive
to see AJ McCarron lead the Tide down the field for a game winning score
against LSU’s defense, in Death Valley, at night, there was also that feeling
after the game that Bama probably shouldn’t have won.
So with that surprising
development in mind, we all saw Alabama fall down 20-0 at home last Saturday
against A&M. They couldn’t get anything going offensively and they couldn’t
stop Texas A&M’s offense. They made a comeback and I thought they were
going to take the lead and win the game. But they couldn’t get the score they
needed on offense and then the defense let up.
The Aggies appeared to
have the game won, but somehow Bama came off the deck and was in position to
win it with that 1st and goal, down by 5. To my surprise, they came
up empty, and then committed that wholly uncharacteristic penalty that wiped
out any chance of a last second score. So in the end, they appeared to have
been outplayed for the second week in a row, but at the same time, it seemed
like they should have won because of that 1st and goal situation.
Anyway, we saw them
struggle again on both sides of the ball. While we’ve all come to understand
just how good Johnny Manziel is, Bama’s defense was supposed to be good enough
to stop him or at the very least limit him. And while we’ve known all along
that Bama’s offense was not the team’s strength, they were supposed to be good
enough offensively to have more success against an Aggie defense that is still
more of a Big XII defense than an SEC defense.
Amazingly, though all
Bama had done was win on the road in the toughest environment in the sport
against a great team and then lose a close game at home to another great team a
week later, Bama’s stature compared with the rest of college football had gone
down drastically over the last two weeks.
And then you have to
consider what Oregon and Kansas State have done. While no conference comes
close to matching the SEC as far as the number of truly great teams, the Pac-12
and Big XII have arguably been the 2 deepest conferences in the sport this
season. Oregon has run over every team they’ve played. They haven’t even been challenged.
Kansas State has been nearly as dominant as the Ducks, doing it with an elite
defense rather than an elite offense. But both teams have also been balanced,
getting good play in all areas.
And so that’s how I got
to this point. I don’t know if any of this explains how I could say that I’d
favor Bama over any other team on a neutral field if they played for the
national title in two weeks, while still having them ranked behind both Oregon
and Kansas State in my top 15, but that’s where we’re at. I’m just kind of at
the point where my gut says Bama is the best team and that their loss on Saturday
was simply a result of the week-in week-out meat grinder that is the SEC, but
my brain is telling me that Alabama simply doesn’t look as good as KSU and
Oregon right now.
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