Observations from wild Week 7 of college football

Here are the quick thoughts from an upset-filled weekend that shook up the College Football landscape:

1. This sport is the best

At one point Saturday afternoon, you needed three sets of eyes and about six TV screens to take in everything that was happening at once. And it was all breathtaking, every bit of it. LSU coming back from a 20-0 deficit against Auburn, Oklahoma blowing the lead, then taking it right back against Texas, Miami coming back on Georgia Tech in a monsoon and a few other great games at the same time made for a terrific viewing experience.

And even though we know how crazy this sport is from week to week, the sheer unpredictability of when and where the great games will be – and the wild emotional swings during the games themselves – make this the most exciting sport going right now bar none.

2. Clemson isn’t done

I’m willing to write Friday night off as an extremely uncharacteristic performance for the Tigers. They were disinterested at times, undisciplined at others, and the management of the quarterback position was baffling. Why start Kelly Bryant if he’s gimpy and can’t run the usual playbook, a huge part of which is the quarterback run game? Bryant couldn’t move around well enough to protect himself, and it eventually got him hurt worse. Let’s hope his concussion isn’t serious and he’s able to come back quickly. (Clemson’s bye week is well-timed in this case.)

Let’s not go overboard about the playoff here. If the Tigers win the rest of their games, they’re probably good to go.

3. We should be talking about Ohio State

Look, the schedule has been bad. And the Oklahoma loss can’t be erased from the record. But we have to at least allow for the possibility that the Buckeyes have figured some things out offensively over the last month. In the end, we know this team has one of the three most talented rosters in college football. And if J.T. Barrett can manage a functional passing game against top-level competition, Ohio State has as good a chance as anybody to win it all.

4. Butch Jones is near the end

It’s not official, of course, but how can Tennessee continue with him as the head coach? The offensive ineptitude is truly awful, as the Vols haven’t scored a touchdown since the first half September 23 against UMass. Obviously Jarrett Guarantano was not an upgrade over Quinten Dormady at quarterback. The Vols can run the ball a little bit, but South Carolina just teed off on Guarantano in passing situations and killed drives. At 3-3 with road games against Alabama and Kentucky coming up, the Vols have dug a huge hole, and probably too big for Jones to climb out of.

5. Miami is living a lie

This isn’t a top-10 team, much less “back” as some of its fans want to proclaim. Hey, give Mark Richt and his guys credit for getting to 5-0 after coming from behind to beat Georgia Tech 25-24 on a last-second field goal. This is now consecutive weeks in which Miami has had to drive the length of the field and score to win. Against Florida State, the Canes took a risk and went for the touchdown rather than settle for a field goal and watched it pay off on an incredible play.

This time, Miami faced fourth-and-10 beyond field goal range but converted on an extremely fortunate carom after Georgia Tech’s defensive back appeared like he would knock it down. A win’s a win, sure, and Miami is riding a wave right now. But that luck will even out at some point, and a loss is coming sooner rather than later.

6. Gus Malzahn won’t have a fun week

Auburn’s drive chart in the second half was U-G-L-Y. Punt, punt, punt, punt, turnover on downs, turnover on downs. That’s how you end up blowing a big lead on the road. Auburn just didn’t have the margin for error to lose this game if it was going to be in the national title race. Maybe – and it’s a big maybe – the Tigers can recover and beat both Alabama and Georgia at home.

But this was a massive missed opportunity after the Tigers had started to look like a somewhat dominant team.

7. Kevin Sumlin trending up, Jim McElwain trending down

It’s time to say it. Kevin Sumlin has done a hell of a job with this team since the UCLA disaster. The Aggies are 5-2 after a 19-17 win at Florida, and there’s a very good chance they’re going to win nine games. This is a young team, too, and Kellen Mond’s development week by week has been impressive. Who knows what the big money at A&M is thinking right now, but how can you look at this team and think a coaching change is going to be a magic wand to make them compete with Alabama?

It’s time for the adults at Texas A&M to look in the mirror and slow way, way down on running Sumlin out of town.

8. Louisville is a tire fire

We are going to look back at Lamar Jackson’s career as one of the poorest jobs any coach has done of surrounding a true superstar with players who can help him. Jackson is still terrific, and he still puts up numbers, but Louisville is just 4-3 after losing at home to Boston College. Boston College!

Louisville has lost six of its last nine games against FBS teams dating to 2016. For all the talk about Petrino going to other schools, maybe the better question is whether he has already peaked as a coach. Because he just hasn’t done a very good job with this team at all.

9. Michigan’s offense needs creativity

The Wolverines are a hard to team to watch. The offense is super predictable, there aren’t a lot of big play threats, and they seem to hit a wall when they get into the red zone. It’s been a problem all year and it was again at Indiana, where Michigan escaped with a 27-20 overtime victory. This doesn’t seem to be a fixable problem for this year.

John O’Korn was 10-for-20 for 58 yards passing. Do you realize how ridiculous that is for a team coached by Jim Harbaugh? Michigan is still technically in the mix at 5-1, but they’re going to need to be way, way, way better next week against Penn State.

10. For a week without two top-25 teams

playing each other, it didn’t turn out too bad. Let’s do it again next week.