2023 Blog Poll Week 3: Tide Tumbles, Texas Towers To Top

On to Week 3, after a wild second-half yesterday, that saw tons of late scoring, dumb endings, and furious rallies.

Usual caveats apply: The criteria are nebulous, far-ranging, and capricious — strength of schedule, bad and good coaching, injuries, exigent circumstances, home/away results, defense or lack thereof, offense or lack thereof, line play, power poll-ishness, can you cover a spread (Vegas is pretty smart about how good a team is), head-to-head where possible or prudent, advanced stats, and my own lying eyeballs.

Quick notes follow:

• Is there any doubt that this Texas team is for real? FSU may have looked more impressive, but that’s the single best win of the season — or was, until the advanced stats are updated following last night, and reveal a very pedestrian Alabama team going into Week 3
• Notre Dame is the complete package: Not eye-turning wins, but shellacking Toledo at home, then picking up a tough NCSU road win is very solid. See also: Utah, UCLA, Oregon, Washington, Wazzu, and Oregon State, who have nice road Ws and/or some combination of good home win, or not screwing around with bad teams.
• Wish we could say the same about Tennessee and Kentucky, who looked like crap yesterday.
• Ole Miss is devastatingly good when Lane Kiffin decides to play defense and schemes up half-time adjustments like that. That team can challenge for a very soft West.
• Alabama is unranked because: It is 26th in overall efficiency, 39th in offensive efficiency, and 33rd in defensive efficiency. It is a Top 3 special teams unit though, thanks to Burnip and Reichard! In short, it’s not a Top 25 team at the moment. Can it be? Sure. Will it? That’s totally up to a coaching staff that appeared either disinterested on in over their heads last night...again.
• Fraud check: Wisconsin and Texas A&M failed their tests. Though, Miami looks really good with much better coordinators under Mario.
• K State, Michigan, and Georgia are just strangling people quietly under the radar. K State has the best win of the bunch, but UGA/UM have the talent and efficiency on their side.
• Something still feels off about Ohio State.
• Anyone else think Mack Brown is playing on borrowed time at UNC? The Heels are going to get into the ACC schedule and either contend or implode. 2-0 is 2-0.
• We have no idea how good USC and Penn State are, do we? USC’s defense looks a little better; Penn State’s offense looks a little better. But that competition has been...well, almost as bad as Michigan and Georgia.
• Iowa did Iowa things again in El Assico — just your bog-standard 20-13 road win at Ames, and Jack Trice has been their own house of horrors for two decades. The offense is still trash, BTW.
• James Madison showed me something yesterday, when it stormed back on the road against an ACC team and won with something other than defense: an explosive offense. 36-35 Dukes.
• Speaking of Duke(s), was there anything more predictable than the Blue Devils being hung over this week?
• I fear we may have to contemplate a world where Oklahoma is good again. They can win shootouts, and they can strangle SMU’s high-flying passing attack with a much improved defense. The Red River Shootout is likely being played for the de facto B12 title.