Staying in playoff race
Several teams that look to make the playoff had to overcome obstacles.
Chris Dufresne says top contenders got the job done on weekend.
An incredible weekend of action produced remarkably little movement.
Call it “almost” upheaval.
Several championship contenders had to beat back defeat, yet all met the challenge.
A cursory look at Sunday’s rankings suggested it was business as usual.
A month from now, though, teams still in the mix for the four-team College Football Playoff will look back on Oct. 10 as the day things could have slipped away.
Top-ranked Ohio State stayed top-ranked with a misleading 49-28 home win over Maryland, which fell to 2-4 and promptly fired Coach Randy Edsall.
Maryland led, 7-0, and had the game tied, 21-all, before Ohio State finally pulled away.
The Buckeyes still don’t look right but are working out the kinks while winning. That puts them way ahead of last year’s schedule, when they had to rally back from a home defeat to Virginia Tech to win the national title.
Urban Meyer threw a wrinkle into a complicated situation by using Cardale Jones as his middle-field quarterback and J.T. Barrett in the red zone.
Both were effective but it begged the question: why isn’t Barrett good enough to play all 100 yards?
“We just won, man,” Meyer said. “I’m going to enjoy a nice Gatorade tonight.”
Braxton Miller, the starting quarterback for two years before missing last season because of a shoulder injury, also chipped in Saturday from his hybrid receiver spot.
“The attention to this thing, I’m exhausted from it,” Meyer said of his quarterback situation.
Texas Christian woke up Sunday as No. 3 in both polls — but you had to know the back story.
The Horned Frogs trailed at Kansas State, 35-17, and then by 11 points with 12 minutes to go before being rescued by, arguably, the new leading candidate for the Heisman Trophy.
Quarterback Trevone Boykin outraced the secondary on a 69-yard run to trim the lead to three.
Kansas State tied the game with a late field goal it should not have kicked, because it left too much time on the clock for Boykin, who won the game on a 55-yard scoring pass to Josh Doctson with 1:10 left.
“I’m tired of hearing about style points,” TCU Coach Gary Patterson said. “It’s just hard to win so we just try to win.”
Michigan State raced out of Piscataway, N.J., with a 31-24 win over Rutgers that could not have made fans comfortable in advance of next week’s game at resurgent Michigan.
The Spartans trailed early, 14-7, and then needed LJ Scott’s three-yard run with 43 seconds left to break a 24-24 tie.
“We have to get better,” Michigan State Coach Mark Dantonio said.
He could have added the word “fast.”
Rutgers’ late attempt to tie the game was foiled when quarterback Chris Laviano spiked the ball on fourth down.
Hey, cut the Scarlet Knights a break — they just started playing football in 1869.
Interim Coach Norries Wilson said Laviano only did what he was told.
“I told him the wrong thing,” Wilson said.
Alabama actually moved up one spot in the coaches’ poll, to No. 9, after a 27-14 home victory against Arkansas.
Full disclosure: The Crimson Tide trailed a mediocre opponent, 7-3, late into the third quarter before quarterback Jake Coker tossed an 81-yard scoring pass. Alabama added 17 fourth-quarter points to make it seem like the game was comfortably won.
“This is when you find out who you are,” Alabama Coach Nick Saban said.
The Crimson Tide will learn more next week when it plays at College Station.
We’re just guessing undefeated Texas A&M might be a little amped after last year’s 59-0 loss in Tuscaloosa.
Florida State remained undefeated with a 29-24 home win over archrival Miami.
The Seminoles scored the game-winning touchdown on Dalvin Cook’s 23-yard run with 6:33 left and then held off a late Miami charge.
Bottom line was no damage was done. Florida State is No. 8 and No. 11 in the two major indexes, while Coach Jimbo Fisher got a chance to watch a young team mature under pressure.
“There was a bunch of babies out there, but they grew up tonight,” Fisher said.
Oklahoma State took a different track to narrow victory. The Cowboys never trailed at West Virginia, but let a 23-9 lead get away. West Virginia scored late to force overtime at 26-26, but Oklahoma State prevailed on J.W. Walsh’s fourth-down run from the two.
In late-night action, Utah claimed one of its biggest wins as a Pac-12 member when it held off California, 30-24, in a mistake-filled game in Salt Lake City.
The Utes spotted Cal an early 7-3 lead and managed only 30 points off six turnovers.
Golden Bears quarterback Jared Goff, a projected first-round NFL draft pick, threw five interceptions — the most by a Cal team since 1998.
“This is probably the worst game of my life,” Goff said.
Cal still had a chance to win, though, and was driving for a possible gamewinning score when Utah’s Boobie Hobbs knocked away Goff ’s pass on fourth down.
Utah woke up smiling, moving up one spot to No. 4 in the latest Associated Press poll. The voting coaches, which have Utah at No. 7, still aren’t sold. They must still think the Utes play in the Mountain West.
Utah has seven straight Pac-12 games to prove it belongs.
“We feel like we’re the No. 1,” Hobbs said. “We just want to show the world we can play with the Alabamas and LSUs.”
Utah needs to earn that chance and, of course, avoid the usual “Boobie” traps.