LGHL An entirely-too-early reassessment of the Big Ten’s top teams
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An entirely-too-early reassessment of the Big Ten’s top teams
Jami Jurich via our friends at Land-Grant Holy Land
Visit their fantastic blog and read the full article (and so much more) here
Photo by Jason Mowry/Getty Images
Two weeks of football is enough to predict the playoffs perfectly, right?
Heading into this year’s college football season, the Big Ten’s pecking order seemed pretty clear-cut. There seemed to be an obvious divide between the top four teams (Ohio State, Oregon, Penn State, and Michigan) and everyone else, though Iowa and USC both earned themselves preseason rankings and the analytical discussions that accompany them.
Football analysts, writers, bloggers, and fans debated the order in which those six teams would finish, but it was never really a question that those would be the teams at the top.
Now, a mere two weeks into the college football season, almost everything we thought we knew about the Big Ten has been blown to smithereens, and conference play hasn’t really even begun in earnest.
Heading into the season, I flip-flopped a bit on the order of finish I expected of the Big Ten’s ranked teams. It was never a question in my mind that Ohio State would win the Big Ten Championship, but I felt pretty strongly they would lose to Oregon during the regular season, leading to an Ohio State-Oregon rematch in the championship game to determine the ultimate winner.
Behind them, I felt Michigan was a better team than Penn State but had a harder schedule, so I ranked Penn State higher while feeling Michigan was still not a team to write off. This Michigan team isn’t the national championship team of just one year ago, with plenty of unknowns, plus no Harbaugh, no Blake Corum, and no real quarterback to speak of. As such, I never felt Michigan would beat the Buckeyes, but I did think the Wolverines would take down Oregon (I actually still think that), forcing a three-way tiebreaker.
It felt like there was a substantial chasm here, a split between the top teams and the second bananas, with teams like Iowa and USC, plus dark horse Rutgers, making nice sleeper hits but ultimately falling outside of my playoff predictions.
Sweet, naive angel that I was. It seems, just two weeks later, that my list was completely wrong (and as I am never wrong, this is difficult for me to admit. Please clap).
So while it is still very early in the season, it seems like a good time to reassess what we thought we knew: Who are the top teams in the Big Ten and where does the chasm fall now that we’ve played some football?
I’m sorry I ever doubted them. No Buckeye team in recent memory seems to be having this much fun — with this much talent to boot, and as the season has started to unfold, it’s looking like they are just as good as everyone predicted they’d be. Add to that the fact that in many regards, their competition has kinks to work out (to put it nicely), and it’s clear the Buckeyes are alone at the top here. Now, before we get ahead of ourselves, they have yet to play a conference game or a ranked matchup, and a game like that will tell us how far they can go, but in two weeks of football, they haven’t let a single person on the opposing side even get in the endzone, so dominance isn’t out of the realm of possibility for this team.
In their first year with the Big Ten and their first season without star quarterback Caleb Williams since he went to the NFL, the Trojans have been a pleasant surprise. No one doubted that they would be good, but without Williams, it was unclear what their ceiling would be. It seems they haven’t skipped a beat. They opened the season with a win over a then-No. 13 LSU team before completely dominating Utah State, 48-0, this past weekend and jumping to No. 11 in the AP Poll. The Trojan defense has looked exceptional, and junior quarterback Miller Moss has taken the reins beautifully, putting up 607 yards, 2 touchdowns, and no interceptions while leading his team to a 2-0 start. They’ll face Michigan this weekend, their next test against a ranked opponent, and all signs point to a 1-2 start for the Wolverines, whose quarterback play hasn’t looked like a matchup for USC’s defense so far this year.
Despite being down at halftime to Bowling Green, in no small part due to one of the worst halves of football in years for Penn State’s defense, the Nittany Lions rallied beautifully in the second half. Do they have some issues they need to regroup on internally? Yeah, absolutely. But isn’t that also what those early games are for? They don’t seem infallible by any means, but they’ve already proven they can dig deep when they need to and rally to get the job done—that’s an intangible quality that can take you far if you let it, and I still think with Drew Allar at quarterback and the arsenal this team has, they can go far. Aside from the Buckeyes, they’re pretty much the only unchanged thing about my rankings after the first two weeks.
Look, Nebraska hasn’t played anyone yet who really tells us what they will or won’t do this season, but they did look exceptional—particularly on defense—against their old rival Colorado this weekend, and I don’t take rivalry games lightly. People show up to play those games like they’re the Super Bowl. Heck, Quinn Ewers, the quarterback at Texas who is a former Buckeye, showed up to Saturday’s matchup against the Wolverines saying he still holds a personal grudge against the Maize & Blue after his short stint in Columbus. Rivalries fuel people. And Nebraska had all the fuel it needed. Shedeur Sanders, who just a week prior was being discussed among Heisman contenders, got sacked five times, and Matt Rhule’s Huskers accomplished exactly what he wanted them to: Total Dominance. They don’t have a truly tough challenge until they face Rutgers in October, so they could very well be 7-0 by the time they face the Buckeyes later this year. If they keep doing it at this level, they could certainly be in playoff contention by season’s end.
The Oregon team I was worried might beat the Buckeyes in October? Sure, they’ve started 2-0, but barely. Their record is deceptive in that they very nearly lost both games—to two teams out of Idaho (Idaho and Boise State, albeit this is a very good Boise State team). Their narrow wins over teams they should have beaten handily tell us they have quite a few issues they’ll need to figure out, and fast if they want to stay in playoff contention. With two wins that felt more like survival than victory, their offense has looked off-kilter, Dillon Gabriel—who had been among many people’s Heisman top contenders—has been underwhelming,
Sitting just outside the top five is Michigan, whose game against No. 2 Texas made them look unnerved and amateurish but who, quite frankly, could still get things together with enough time to play Oregon, for example. Iowa, for their part, has fallen out of my top team considerations completely after falling to Iowa State in the Cy-Hawk Trophy game. Heading into the season, Iowa felt like a team that could easily sneak its way into playoff contention with a few key wins, and instead, they’ve shown that while the talent is there, they haven’t quite gotten their gameplay there yet.
Look, I know it’s far too early to be reassessing these things in general. Probably in three weeks, I’d be able to write another one of these. We’re also entering an era of college football where, like it or not, teams are going to lose games and still make the playoffs. If a team like Iowa starts taking down ranked opponents, for example, they could easily climb back up into people’s minds. But for now, with what we know so far, these are my very correct, definitely not-going-to-change top five teams in the Big Ten to keep your eye on as the season unfolds.
Continue reading...
Jami Jurich via our friends at Land-Grant Holy Land
Visit their fantastic blog and read the full article (and so much more) here
Photo by Jason Mowry/Getty Images
Two weeks of football is enough to predict the playoffs perfectly, right?
Heading into this year’s college football season, the Big Ten’s pecking order seemed pretty clear-cut. There seemed to be an obvious divide between the top four teams (Ohio State, Oregon, Penn State, and Michigan) and everyone else, though Iowa and USC both earned themselves preseason rankings and the analytical discussions that accompany them.
Football analysts, writers, bloggers, and fans debated the order in which those six teams would finish, but it was never really a question that those would be the teams at the top.
Now, a mere two weeks into the college football season, almost everything we thought we knew about the Big Ten has been blown to smithereens, and conference play hasn’t really even begun in earnest.
Heading into the season, I flip-flopped a bit on the order of finish I expected of the Big Ten’s ranked teams. It was never a question in my mind that Ohio State would win the Big Ten Championship, but I felt pretty strongly they would lose to Oregon during the regular season, leading to an Ohio State-Oregon rematch in the championship game to determine the ultimate winner.
Behind them, I felt Michigan was a better team than Penn State but had a harder schedule, so I ranked Penn State higher while feeling Michigan was still not a team to write off. This Michigan team isn’t the national championship team of just one year ago, with plenty of unknowns, plus no Harbaugh, no Blake Corum, and no real quarterback to speak of. As such, I never felt Michigan would beat the Buckeyes, but I did think the Wolverines would take down Oregon (I actually still think that), forcing a three-way tiebreaker.
It felt like there was a substantial chasm here, a split between the top teams and the second bananas, with teams like Iowa and USC, plus dark horse Rutgers, making nice sleeper hits but ultimately falling outside of my playoff predictions.
Sweet, naive angel that I was. It seems, just two weeks later, that my list was completely wrong (and as I am never wrong, this is difficult for me to admit. Please clap).
So while it is still very early in the season, it seems like a good time to reassess what we thought we knew: Who are the top teams in the Big Ten and where does the chasm fall now that we’ve played some football?
1. Ohio State
I’m sorry I ever doubted them. No Buckeye team in recent memory seems to be having this much fun — with this much talent to boot, and as the season has started to unfold, it’s looking like they are just as good as everyone predicted they’d be. Add to that the fact that in many regards, their competition has kinks to work out (to put it nicely), and it’s clear the Buckeyes are alone at the top here. Now, before we get ahead of ourselves, they have yet to play a conference game or a ranked matchup, and a game like that will tell us how far they can go, but in two weeks of football, they haven’t let a single person on the opposing side even get in the endzone, so dominance isn’t out of the realm of possibility for this team.
2. USC
In their first year with the Big Ten and their first season without star quarterback Caleb Williams since he went to the NFL, the Trojans have been a pleasant surprise. No one doubted that they would be good, but without Williams, it was unclear what their ceiling would be. It seems they haven’t skipped a beat. They opened the season with a win over a then-No. 13 LSU team before completely dominating Utah State, 48-0, this past weekend and jumping to No. 11 in the AP Poll. The Trojan defense has looked exceptional, and junior quarterback Miller Moss has taken the reins beautifully, putting up 607 yards, 2 touchdowns, and no interceptions while leading his team to a 2-0 start. They’ll face Michigan this weekend, their next test against a ranked opponent, and all signs point to a 1-2 start for the Wolverines, whose quarterback play hasn’t looked like a matchup for USC’s defense so far this year.
3. Penn State
Despite being down at halftime to Bowling Green, in no small part due to one of the worst halves of football in years for Penn State’s defense, the Nittany Lions rallied beautifully in the second half. Do they have some issues they need to regroup on internally? Yeah, absolutely. But isn’t that also what those early games are for? They don’t seem infallible by any means, but they’ve already proven they can dig deep when they need to and rally to get the job done—that’s an intangible quality that can take you far if you let it, and I still think with Drew Allar at quarterback and the arsenal this team has, they can go far. Aside from the Buckeyes, they’re pretty much the only unchanged thing about my rankings after the first two weeks.
4. Nebraska
Look, Nebraska hasn’t played anyone yet who really tells us what they will or won’t do this season, but they did look exceptional—particularly on defense—against their old rival Colorado this weekend, and I don’t take rivalry games lightly. People show up to play those games like they’re the Super Bowl. Heck, Quinn Ewers, the quarterback at Texas who is a former Buckeye, showed up to Saturday’s matchup against the Wolverines saying he still holds a personal grudge against the Maize & Blue after his short stint in Columbus. Rivalries fuel people. And Nebraska had all the fuel it needed. Shedeur Sanders, who just a week prior was being discussed among Heisman contenders, got sacked five times, and Matt Rhule’s Huskers accomplished exactly what he wanted them to: Total Dominance. They don’t have a truly tough challenge until they face Rutgers in October, so they could very well be 7-0 by the time they face the Buckeyes later this year. If they keep doing it at this level, they could certainly be in playoff contention by season’s end.
5. Oregon
The Oregon team I was worried might beat the Buckeyes in October? Sure, they’ve started 2-0, but barely. Their record is deceptive in that they very nearly lost both games—to two teams out of Idaho (Idaho and Boise State, albeit this is a very good Boise State team). Their narrow wins over teams they should have beaten handily tell us they have quite a few issues they’ll need to figure out, and fast if they want to stay in playoff contention. With two wins that felt more like survival than victory, their offense has looked off-kilter, Dillon Gabriel—who had been among many people’s Heisman top contenders—has been underwhelming,
The Rest
Sitting just outside the top five is Michigan, whose game against No. 2 Texas made them look unnerved and amateurish but who, quite frankly, could still get things together with enough time to play Oregon, for example. Iowa, for their part, has fallen out of my top team considerations completely after falling to Iowa State in the Cy-Hawk Trophy game. Heading into the season, Iowa felt like a team that could easily sneak its way into playoff contention with a few key wins, and instead, they’ve shown that while the talent is there, they haven’t quite gotten their gameplay there yet.
Look, I know it’s far too early to be reassessing these things in general. Probably in three weeks, I’d be able to write another one of these. We’re also entering an era of college football where, like it or not, teams are going to lose games and still make the playoffs. If a team like Iowa starts taking down ranked opponents, for example, they could easily climb back up into people’s minds. But for now, with what we know so far, these are my very correct, definitely not-going-to-change top five teams in the Big Ten to keep your eye on as the season unfolds.
Continue reading...
