The AP's Number One Ranked Team Isn't Even In Our Top Five
A look at who the numbers say is a fraud, who's flying under the radar, and one undefeated team with a real problem hiding in plain sight.
Let's start with the one that's going to make people mad. The AP has Texas ranked number one in the country. We have them seventh. Not close either, there's a real gap. Texas is fine, 3-0 is 3-0, but nothing in the offense or the defense screams best team alive, it screams solid top-ten team that beat the right people at the right time. Being number one on reputation and being number one on production are two different jobs.
Texas isn't even the worst offender. Ole Miss is 3-0, sitting at 8 in the AP poll, and our numbers have them all the way down at 20. Texas A&M is 9 in the poll, 17 with us. SMU is the biggest gap on the board, 16 in the poll and 30 in reality, a 14-spot swing. None of these teams are bad. They're just being graded on a curve built out of good vibes and a favorable schedule so far.
Here's a fun one nobody's talking about: basically everybody is undefeated right now, so stop being impressed by it. Fifteen of our top twenty teams haven't lost a game. USC is the only team in the country that's played four and won four, and even they're only ninth. Three games in, an unbeaten record just means you haven't played anybody good enough to expose you yet, not that you're actually great.
Speaking of USC, here's the actual problem hiding under that shiny record: their offense is the best in the country by our numbers, and their defense ranks 40th. Weirdly, Oklahoma is the exact opposite team. Offense 53rd, defense 2nd. Two top-twenty squads getting there through completely different paths, and both have a real hole on one side of the ball that's going to get exploited eventually. Wisconsin's got the same problem as Oklahoma, for what it's worth, offense 90th, defense 21st, surviving purely on stops.
Now the sleepers. Florida isn't ranked anywhere in the AP poll, zero votes, and our numbers have them at 13. Right behind them, quietly good and completely ignored: Kansas State, Nebraska, Washington, South Carolina, Mississippi State, Virginia Tech, Auburn.
And a word for LSU. Yes, Ole Miss beat them. No, that doesn't mean their defense stopped being elite, because it's still fourth in the country. LSU is the real deal that had one rough Saturday.
Last thing, and it cuts the other way: Florida State is 1-2, which reads like a disaster, but they're sitting at 56th overall, basically a normal middle-of-the-pack team stuck in a bad stretch. The record can lie in both directions. Remember that before you write anybody off completely, too.
That's the board. See you next week.