Bill ConnellyOct 19, 2025, 06:30 PM ETCloseBill Connelly is a writer for ESPN. He covers college football, soccer and tennis. He has been at ESPN since 2019.Follow on X
play0:48Omar Daniels takes Duke fumble 95 yards to the houseGeorgia Tech strikes first as Omar Daniels recovers a Duke fumble and returns it 95 yards for the touchdown.
play0:48Cal forces UNC fumble at the goal line for a touchbackCal’s Brent Austin punches the ball out of Nathan Leacock’s hands at the goal line to force a fumble and subsequent touchback.
Finebaum: Alabama has separated itself in the SEC (1:17)Paul Finebaum and Heather Dinich share why they have Alabama as their top team in the SEC. (1:17)
Omar Daniels takes Duke fumble 95 yards to the houseGeorgia Tech strikes first as Omar Daniels recovers a Duke fumble and returns it 95 yards for the touchdown.
Georgia Tech strikes first as Omar Daniels recovers a Duke fumble and returns it 95 yards for the touchdown.
Cal forces UNC fumble at the goal line for a touchbackCal’s Brent Austin punches the ball out of Nathan Leacock’s hands at the goal line to force a fumble and subsequent touchback.
Cal’s Brent Austin punches the ball out of Nathan Leacock’s hands at the goal line to force a fumble and subsequent touchback.
And in the SEC, No. 4 Texas A&M barely survived 2-4 Arkansas, while No. 16 Missouri (against 3-3 Auburn) and No. 21 Texas (against 2-3 Kentucky) needed overtime to secure road wins.
Parity has been the watchword in college football this year — the elite teams don’t seem quite as elite, and the sport’s middle class seems closer to the top of the pack than usual. It rules, frankly. Week 8 certainly reinforced that notion. It was a breathless mess from start to finish.
It would help if they had some elite opponents to look toward, but the Big Ten opponent on their schedule that was supposed to be elite (Penn State) is anything but, and the Buckeyes aren’t scheduled to play Indiana. Instead, they’ve been left to alternate between second-gear blowouts of iffy to bad teams and comfortable 18-point road wins over solid-but-unspectacular opponents such as Illinois and Washington.
Day at least let Julian Sayin throw some pitches Saturday. In front of a less-than-robust Wisconsin crowd (perhaps just hours before the inevitable firing of head coach Luke Fickell), Sayin, who averaged just 26.8 dropbacks per game in his first six starts, went 36-for-42 for 393 yards and four touchdowns. He distributed the ball to 10 receivers, though the dynamite duo of Jeremiah Smith and Carnell Tate combined for 15 catches and 208 yards.
We entered Week 8 with five teams looking at odds of 25% or higher to finish 12-0: Ohio State, Texas Tech, Indiana, Memphis and Miami. Three of them lost; the other two — Ohio State (now 49%) and Indiana (45%) — are on a collision course to meet in Indianapolis.
Omar Daniels takes Duke fumble 95 yards to the house
SP+ pinpointed Miami as more of a top-15 team than an elite one weeks ago, and as such, the Hurricanes could struggle in road trips against SMU (which has won three in a row) and the aforementioned Pitt in a series that has produced upsets in five of the past nine meetings. Louisville’s offense isn’t quite trustworthy yet, but the Cardinals have only one more SP+ top-40 opponent on the schedule (No. 37 SMU).
Translation: This race probably has a few more plot twists to go. The spirit of the ACC Coastal division lives. Trust no one.
For what I believe was the first time since it expanded to 16 teams last year, the SEC had eight conference games going on the same Saturday. Two went to overtime, and others were decided by two, three, seven and eight points.
Alabama indeed eased out in front thanks to Saturday’s 37-20 win over Tennessee. Who knows how the game might have played out if Zabien Brown hadn’t picked off a Joey Aguilar pass at the goal line and taken it 99 yards for a touchdown as the first half expired — instead of a 16-14 or 16-10 halftime lead for Bama, it was 23-7. But the Tide once again got the two things they have come to rely on: red zone stops from the defense and just the right plays from Ty Simpson.
I’m also struggling to trust quite a few aspects of Kirby Smart’s Georgia Bulldogs. They struggled to run efficiently against either of the two good defenses they’ve faced, they continue to lack in the big-play department, and while they’ve played against three top-15 offenses, per SP+, we still expect a Smart defense to rank higher than 49th in points allowed per drive or 48th in success rate allowed.
When the Bulldogs need to score 40-plus, they do it. When they need to hold an opponent to 10, they do it. It would be awfully boring if, in this year of epic SEC parity — when Texas A&M, Missouri, Ole Miss and Vanderbilt all have at least a puncher’s chance at the crown — we got another Georgia-Bama conference title game. But it’s pretty damn hard to think we won’t at this point, isn’t it?
I called Ohio State’s defense the best in the country above, and I certainly believe it is. SP+, however, still leans toward Texas, which held the Buckeyes to 14 points in the season opener and has allowed only one opponent to score more than that. The Longhorns rank fourth in points allowed per drive and 10th in yards allowed per play — quite possibly the second-best defense in the sport to my eyes.
The Longhorns survived when Kentucky foolishly called two straight halfback dives into the teeth of Texas’ enormous defensive line and turned the ball over on downs in overtime, setting up Mason Shipley’s game-winning field goal. But this offense is still failing to clear an increasingly low bar. It has underachieved against SP+ projections in five of seven games and needed a special teams touchdown to overachieve its projection against Oklahoma last week.
Thanks primarily to the early defensive struggles, the Irish were 21st in SP+ after three games. They’re now sixth after seven games. Only one remaining game is projected within 17 points, per SP+, and if they make the CFP they could do some serious damage. We’ll have to see what fate has in store in that regard.
The SP+ rankings have been updated for the week. Let’s take a look at the teams that saw the biggest change in their overall ratings. (Note: We’re looking at ratings, not rankings.)
After losing to Delaware and UConn by a combined 89-26, FIU unleashed a nearly perfect performance out of nowhere Tuesday, heading up to Western Kentucky and winning 25-6. James Madison, meanwhile, knocked Old Dominion out in a delightful Saturday slugfest, scoring 42 straight points to turn a 27-21 deficit into a 63-27 rout.
Minnesota sure does love playing Nebraska. The Gophers pummeled the Huskers on Friday night 24-6 to move to 5-2 on the season. Without that ghastly egg-laying loss at Cal in Week 3, they’d be ranked and looking at a potential 9-3 finish or so.
I am once again awarding the Heisman every single week of the season and doling out weekly points, F1-style (in this case, 10 points for first place, nine for second, and so on). How will this Heisman race play out, and how different will the result be from the actual Heisman voting?
1. Gunner Stockton, Georgia (26-for-31 passing for 289 yards and 4 touchdowns, plus 59 non-sack rushing yards and a touchdown against Ole Miss).
2. Fernando Mendoza, Indiana (24-for-28 passing for 332 yards and 4 touchdowns, plus 18 non-sack rushing yards against Michigan State).
3. Jeremiyah Love, Notre Dame (24 carries for 228 yards and a touchdown, plus 37 receiving yards against USC).
5. Alonza Barnett III, James Madison (17-for-25 passing for 295 yards and 2 touchdowns, plus 165 non-sack rushing yards and 4 TDs against Old Dominion).
6. Taylen Green, Arkansas (19-for-32 passing for 256 yards and 3 touchdowns, plus 131 non-sack rushing yards and 2 TDs against Texas A&M).
7. Diego Pavia, Vanderbilt (14-for-22 passing for 160 yards and a touchdown, plus 94 non-sack rushing yards and 2 TDs against LSU).
10. Haynes King, Georgia Tech (14-for-21 passing for 205 yards, plus 120 non-sack rushing yards and a touchdown against Duke).
It was tempting to just give each of the top three names a share of No. 1 for the week. Love’s domination of USC was vital to Notre Dame’s playoff hopes (and really fun to watch), and Mendoza was ridiculous yet again — his Total QBR has now topped 90.0 in four of the past five games, and he’s completing 74% of his passes with a 21-to-2 TD-to-INT ratio. Kurtis Rourke was so good for the Hoosiers last season, and Mendoza is raising the bar.
I had to give No. 1 to Stockton, though. He had to be great for the Dawgs to keep up with Ole Miss, and when the Georgia defense finally showed up, Stockton raised his game even further. Awesome stuff.
Byrum Brown, USF (14-for-24 passing for 256 yards and 3 touchdowns, plus 123 non-sack rushing yards and a TD against Florida Atlantic).
Brad Jackson, Texas State (26-for-38 passing for 444 yards, 2 TDs and 1 INT, plus 77 non-sack rushing yards and a TD against Marshall).
Nick Minicucci, Delaware (32-for-50 passing for 422 yards and a touchdown, plus 20 non-sack rushing yards against Jacksonville State).
Dante Moore, Oregon (15-for-20 passing for 290 yards, 4 TDs and 1 INT, plus 49 non-sack rushing yards against Rutgers).
Kejon Owens, Florida International (22 carries for 195 yards and a touchdown, plus seven receiving yards against Western Kentucky).
(By the way, a quick shoutout to Curry College’s Montie Quinn, who broke the Division III record with 522 rushing yards … on 20 carries! The Colonels beat Nichols 71-27, and his seven touchdowns alone gained 399 yards, including jaunts of 85, 84, 76, 64 and 58 yards.)
1. Ty Simpson, Alabama (29 points) 2. Taylen Green, Arkansas (27) 3T. Fernando Mendoza, Indiana (19) 3T. Gunner Stockton, Georgia (19) 3T. Demond Williams Jr., Washington (19) 6T. Luke Altmyer, Illinois (16) 6T. Julian Sayin, Ohio State (16) 8. Trinidad Chambliss, Ole Miss (15) 9. Diego Pavia, Vanderbilt (14) 10. Jayden Maiava, USC (12)
For the first time all season, the points race and the current Heisman betting odds have begun to match up. Six of the above names are also in the top 10 per ESPN BET: Mendoza (No. 1 betting favorite), Simpson (No. 2), Sayin (No. 3), Stockton (No. 5), Pavia (No. 8) and Chambliss (No. 9T).