Mississippi is currently the highest-ranked of the 10 SEC teams in the US LBM Coaches Poll.
Despite a recent loss, Georgia’s manageable remaining schedule could still lead them to the playoff pool.
Penn State’s ability to compete against playoff-caliber teams remains a concern for the program.
Now that the first month of the college football season is in the books, we have all the answers about every team, right?
Ha! Well, that’s how we do things here at Overreaction HQ, and the action in Week 5 certainly provided us with a lot of possibilities. Such is the nature of this sport, in which coaches can go from program saviors to inspiring fire chants or vice versa in a matter of weeks – or sometimes just a quarter or two.
For the uninitiated, the following statements are overreactions. Some of them might prove to have been accurate, while others will turn out to be wildly off the mark.
Here are the top five.
Mississippi is the best team in the SEC
For now at least, the conference of ‘just means more’ apparently means more ranked teams. There are 10 in the US LBM Coaches Poll Top 25, and the No. 4 Rebels head that list for the moment.
Should they? They do have three conference victories in the bank already, though two of them came at the expense of the minority of programs in the league that are not ranked. Saturday’s home win against LSU is unambiguously the best of the three, but how valuable will that one ultimately be? The Tigers, remember, had a shaky resume themselves despite entering the weekend with a top-five ranking, as their victories against Clemson and Florida haven’t exactly held up.
By the time all is said and done it probably won’t matter where Ole Miss or any of the other league contenders are ranked heading into October, but whenever SEC fans are involved, there’s always debate.
Georgia will be fine
We’ll now turn our attention to a couple of the teams that were on the short end of the weekend’s marquee contests. We’ll start with the Bulldogs, who were in a similar position a year ago thanks to an early loss to Alabama. Things worked out for the 2024 edition of UGa, as the Dogs went on to win the SEC title.
There might be a few more red flags with this year’s version, however. Yes, like last year, the team already had a solid win in the bank. But even in the victory at Tennessee a couple of weeks ago there were concerns about Georgia’s pass defense, and the Crimson Tide also found areas to exploit. The good news for Georgia is its remaining schedule is manageable, or at least as manageable as an SEC slate can be. Dates with Ole Miss and Texas are the biggest apparent hurdles, and at least a split of those two home games should keep the ‘Dogs in the playoff pool. Losses in both or any other upset specials would cause some early December angst in Athens.
Penn State will be fine
Had the Nittany Lions not mounted a fourth-quarter rally to force overtime with Oregon, there would be a lot more reason to question the team’s viability going forward. But though the loss became somewhat less damaging, there’s still reason for worry in Happy Valley.
As matters stand now, a three-game stretch over four weeks of at Iowa, at Ohio State and home against Indiana beginning Oct. 18 will determine PSU’s fate. Going 2-1 through that part of the slate should earn them a return trip to the field of 12, while a sweep would almost certainly mean a spot in the conference finale.
The real concern, however, is that there’s still no actual proof the Nittany Lions can beat a playoff-caliber team. Until that happens, the feeling of a next step yet to be taken will linger.
The SEC and Big Ten will get the entire at-large pool anyway
With only seven at-large spots available in the 12-team playoff format, space is limited even for other members of the so-called power conferences. We won’t really know how the committee’s emphasis this year on schedule strength will manifest itself until we see the group’s first set of actual rankings, but it’s fair to assume quality wins will be prioritized in some fashion, and those two conferences that are currently dominating the polls will present more opportunities to earn such victories.
The ACC and Big 12 already had limited paths to multiple berths, and a number of results over the weekend lengthened their odds. Notre Dame finally looked the part of a postseason contender in its demolition of Arkansas, but the Fighting Irish will ironically help other teams more than themselves by winning out. A lot can still change in the next two months, but it looks like a case of the rich getting richer.
The Heisman winner will be …
… Probably someone nobody is talking about yet. Will someone like Diego Pavia, Fernando Mendoza, or even Trinidad Chambliss bring a statue to a school that’s never claimed one before, or will someone from a traditional power like Ty Simpson, Jeremiah Smith or Dante Moore start putting up numbers too good to ignore? As we used to say before the age of computers, stay tuned.