Irish Breakdown College Football Top 25 - Week 8
The last two weeks of college football action have been wild, with a lot of upsets and teams making big jumps, only to come crashing down. Others suffered tough losses only to bounce back.
With all the games concluded let's look at the latest IB Top 25.
DROPPED OUT: #21 UCLA Bruins (lost 36-24 at #13 Oregon State), #22 Washington State Cougars (lost 44-6 at Arizona), #24 Maryland Terrapins (lost 27-24 to Illinois)
Notre Dame jumped up from No. 17 to No. 13 in my latest ranking. Notre Dame fell from No. 9 to No. 17 after its loss to Louisville. Notre Dame ranking 13th is about the overall resume. Notre Dame has a win over #14 Duke on the road, and a blowout win over #18 USC at home. Not many teams have those types of wins, and both losses are to ranked opponents. The only "bad loss" was to #21 Louisville.
My Top 8 teams all remained the same, partly due to all but Washington either having a play or playing an inferior opponent. North Carolina leaped Oregon after its convincing second half performance against Miami. Oregon remained at #10 despite the loss. The Ducks went on the road and played my #2 team down to the wire. They showed they are a legit Top 10 team right now.
Missouri at #19 with LSU at #20 is something that was tough to gauge. Obviously LSU beat Missouri on the road, just last week. The reasoning for that is two-fold. For one, LSU has more losses overall, and one of their losses was a blowout at the hands of #6 Florida State. For two, Missouri's overall quality of wins is better. Missouri just beat a Kentucky team that was previous ranked, and they did so impressively (38-21) on the road. Their 30-27 win over Kansas State was also a quality win. Their margin of victory in some games concerns me, and had me contemplating putting LSU ahead of them, especially with the head to head, but LSU's second loss dropped them one spot below.
I'm having a really tough time with Iowa. Their offense is one of the worst in the country. It's just a brutally, brutally bad offense. The issue is their defense is elite and they keep winning. Their only loss was about a month ago and it was on the road to the #7 team (Penn State). They don't have any great wins, but the 15-6 road win over Wisconsin was quality, and the fact is there just aren't a lot of impressive teams once you get past #21.
*** NOTE: The Irish Breakdown rankings are redone every week, and each week the overall resume is examined. This is done to attempt to avoid recency bias and overreactions to the most recent week.
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2023 Football Schedule
Notre Dame 2024 Scholarship Offers
2024 Commit Rankings - Offense
2024 Commit Rankings - Defense
2023 Recruiting Class Grades - Offense
2023 Recruiting Class Grades - Defense
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