If defense is what the College Football Playoff selection committee wants from its top teams, the 12-member panel is going to have a tough time filling out the front of its first rankings.
A day after Southeastern Conference fans scoffed at Oregon’s tackling-optional 59-41 victory against California, Mississippi State put up a similar performance against Kentucky on Saturday.
Surely Florida State fans took note, too. The second-ranked Seminoles were jumped by the Bulldogs in the AP poll a few weeks ago and a come-from-behind victory against Notre Dame wasn’t enough for Florida State to take the top spot back from idle Mississippi State last week.
While Jameis Winston has been brilliant, the Seminoles’ defense is nowhere near what it was during their perfect championship run last year.
The Bulldogs and Seminoles are two of three remaining unbeaten teams from the Big Five conferences and will likely be near the top of the committee’s first top 25 when it comes out Tuesday night. The Ducks should be up there, too, among the best teams with one loss.
If anybody wants to take issue with Oregon’s defense, or Florida State’s, they’ll need to dock Mississippi State, too.
Heisman Trophy contender Dak Prescott and Josh Robinson continued to churn out yards and points for the Bulldogs on Saturday in Lexington, Kentucky- and they needed pretty much all of them in a 45-31 victory. The Wildcats put up 504 yards, 401 through the air.
The SEC is still the most powerful conference, but defense isn’t the calling card it used to be. Coming into this weekend, only Mississippi and Alabama ranked in the top 10 in total defense out of the SEC.
In college football’s golden age of offense, good defense is hard to define and maybe not quite as necessary.
TCU coach Gary Patterson understood that after his team finished 4-8 last year. So he hired a new offensive coordinator to install an up-tempo, spread offense. The results have been spectacular for the 10th-ranked Horned Frogs, and never better than Saturday when they beat Texas Tech 82-27.
”I don’t think we played well all game,” said Patterson, the former defensive coordinator whose team gave up four plays of 48 yards or longer in the first quarter. ”Fortunately for us, we didn’t play very well and we won a ballgame. That hasn’t happened around here in the last two years.”
The Horned Frogs don’t win with defense anymore, but they’re in the mix for the playoff so they must be doing something right.
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