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

Texas scores the best win of the season, and is duly rewarded

<p zoompage-fontsize="15" style="">NCAA Football: Texas at Alabama

Austin American-Statesman-USA TODAY NETWORK

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:

2023 Blog Poll Week 3

  • 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.

Poll

Where would you rank Alabama?

This poll is closed

  • 12%
    Top 10 team
    (60 votes)
  • 64%
    Not Top 10, but Top 25 for sure.
    (308 votes)
  • 22%
    Until they notch some wins, they’re not a Top 25 team
    (106 votes)
474 votes total Vote Now