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Jay LaPrete/Associated Press
The college football season is in full swing as Week 2 brought drama despite not having many ranked matchups. The early games held chalk into the evening as high-ranked teams had no issues scoring.
We saw Heisman Trophy candidates Jonathan Taylor and Dwayne Haskins have great games, while Arizona's Khalil Tate struggled once again to meet expectations.
With conference play coming soon, there were surprises such as Eastern Michigan over Purdue, Duke over Northwestern and East Carolina over North Carolina to highlight the early slate.
But the late games led to white-knuckle finishes among the top teams. Clemson barely survived as Texas A&M surged late, and Florida State had to pull out all the stops to defeat Samford. Florida lost to Kentucky after 31 straight wins against the Wildcats. Even Herm Edwards' Arizona State squad was able to get into the upset fun and beat Michigan State 16-13.
We have you covered on the Week 2 winners and losers.
Clemson was put to the test in Week 2 with a talented and dangerous Texas A&M team pushing the three-time ACC champions to the limit in a 28-26 win. But the Aggies aren't the only SEC team continuing to push Clemson as Georgia has started to close the gap on the No. 2 spot in the AP Top 25.
There's very little change in this week's AP Top 25 -- South Carolina and Florida out, Arizona State and Oklahoma State in near the bottom of the top 25 -- but there is an interesting shift in terms of the battle at the top. Clemson has lost first-place votes to Alabama after each of the first two weeks of action, and heading into Week 3, the Tigers hold a narrow lead over the Bulldogs with a 23-point margin.
Check out the full AP Top 25 below:
Dropped out: South Carolina (24), Florida (25)
Others receiving votes: Utah, Texas A&M, Boston College, Houston, Maryland, Colorado, Iowa, Kentucky, Duke, NC State, Ole Miss, Hawaii, Washington State, USF, South Carolina, Florida State
There is no change among the teams in projected to be in the College Football Playoff or the other New Year's Six games this week. Those 12 teams mostly dominated their games, winning by an average of 39 points.
That includes No. 2 Clemson's two point win at Texas A&M. The Tigers were the only team that got challenged in any significant way. In fact, if not for a few mistakes by the Aggies, we would be talking about the most important upset of the early season. Clemson survived though, and there really isn't any reason to be concerned about the Tigers yet. Rarely does anyone win a championship wire-to-wire without being challenged once or twice during the regular season.
Even Stanford had it relatively easy in the best game on paper among the teams projected for the New Year's Six. The No. 10 Cardinal downed No. 17 USC and were never seriously threatened by the Trojans in a 17-3 win.
2019 College Football Playoff
Date Game / Loc. Time / TV Matchup Prediction Jan. 7 National Championship
Santa Clara, Calif. 8 p.m.
ESPN Title game Semifinal winners
Dec. 29 Cotton Bowl
Arlington, Tex. 4/8 p.m.
ESPN Semifinal (1) Alabama vs. (4) Oklahoma Dec. 29 Orange Bowl
Miami 4/8 p.m.
ESPN Semifinal (2) Clemson vs. (3) Ohio State
Selection committee bowl games
Date Bowl / Loc. Time / TV Matchup Prediction Jan. 1 Sugar
New Orleans 8:45 p.m.
ESPN SEC vs. Big 12 Georgia vs. West Virginia Jan. 1 Rose
Pasadena, Calif. 5 p.m.
ESPN Big Ten vs. Pac-12 Wisconsin vs. Washington
Jan. 1 Fiesta
Glendale, Ariz. 1 p.m.
ESPN At-large vs. At-large Stanford vs. Boise State Dec. 29 Peach
Atlanta Noon
ESPN At-large vs. At-large Auburn vs. Penn State
One new team to this week's projections is Kentucky, which ended a 31-game losing streak to Florida by beating the Gators 27-16 in Gainesville. I guess Dan Mullen has a lot of work to do to get Florida back to being competitive in the SEC East. Of course, that is true for everybody after the message Georgia sent to the rest of the division in a 51-10 pummeling of South Carolina.
Arkansas showed why SEC teams rarely leave the South for a nonconference game. The Razorbacks went to Colorado State and lost 34-27. The Rams entered the game at 0-2 and had not looked very good in either loss but scored 25 unanswered points in the last 18 minutes to stun Arkansas. Mississippi State did look good in its Midwestern test, easily handling Kansas State 31-10 in Manhattan, Kansas.
The league has two more nonconference games outside the South. Next week, the SEC invades the state of Indiana. Missouri figures to be a heavy favorite at Purdue, while Vanderbilt will likely be a huge underdog at Notre Dame.
Weather played havoc with a lot of games again this week, but fortunately, none were canceled. Last week, Akron at Nebraska and South Dakota at Iowa State were both canceled, leaving all three FBS teams involved with just 11 games on their remaining schedules.
Each of those teams could find themselves in the same position Florida State was last season. The Seminoles needed to reschedule its canceled game with Louisiana-Monroe to have enough wins to become bowl eligible. Currently, Akron and Iowa State are projected to have five wins, while the Cornhuskers are projected for four. Nebraska is a pretty strong APR team and would be a good candidate for a spot at 5-7 if such a team is needed this season.
However, in the current projections, there are no 5-7 teams. I have exactly 78 bowl eligible teams for the 39 games, so no 6-6 teams are being left out either.
Check out the rest of Jerry Palm's college football bowl projections after Week 1.
College football’s second weekend is complete, and though the really big stuff hasn’t happened yet, we’ve still got some movement to account for.
Herm Edwards’ unranked Arizona State knocked off previous No. 15 Michigan State on Saturday, with ranked Georgia and Stanford handling ranked conference rivals South Carolina and USC, respectively. Previous No. 25 Florida was the only other ranked loser, to Kentucky.
The usual disclaimers apply. The only ranking that matters in the end is the Playoff selection committee’s ranking on Selection Sunday, and the committee can change its mind suddenly. It doesn’t even start to release weekly Playoff rankings until around Halloween.
We’ll update each of the following rankings as they release.
The historical gold standard of human polls.
Alabama Clemson Georgia Ohio State Oklahoma Wisconsin Auburn Notre Dame Stanford Washington Penn State LSU Virginia Tech West Virginia TCU Mississippi State Boise State UCF Michigan Oregon Miami USC Arizona State Oklahoma State Michigan State
Every poll and rating smashed into one continually updating ranking, more or less. We’ll update this one a couple times throughout Sunday as rankings come out.
Alabama Ohio State Clemson Oklahoma Georgia Wisconsin Auburn Penn State Notre Dame Mississippi State TCU Washington Stanford Oklahoma State Virginia Tech LSU USC Michigan State Iowa Boise State Michigan UCF Miami Northwestern Boston College
Bill Connelly’s S&P+ ratings
SB Nation’s favored college football advanced stat, which tends to perform well against the Vegas spread, along with offering much deeper evaluations of teams.
Alabama Ohio State Georgia Oklahoma Boise State Mississippi State Wisconsin Clemson Michigan Washington Oklahoma State LSU Boston College Texas A&M Penn State Missouri Notre Dame Auburn Toledo Memphis West Virginia TCU Vanderbilt Utah UCF
A long-running computer that also includes FCS teams.
Alabama Ohio State Oklahoma Clemson Penn State Georgia Auburn Wisconsin Washington Mississippi State Stanford Michigan Virginia Tech IOWA! Oklahoma State LSU Boise State TCU Texas A&M DUKE! Michigan State West Virginia Notre Dame Utah Miami
Doesn’t matter much, and often is more a poll of PR directors than actual coaches.
