And with that, most teams around college football have reached the midpoint of the regular season.
It was a fairly quiet Week 6, although we were treated to a stellar game in the headliner as Oklahoma took back the Red River Rivalry in Dallas with an upset win over No. 3 Texas. We saw another top-10 team go down as No. 10 Notre Dame suffered its second loss of the season, this time on the road against Louisville, which is now 6-0 under first-year coach Jeff Brohm.
No one else in the top 10 fell on Saturday, though No. 9 USC had quite a close call as it had to overcome an early deficit and ultimately won in triple overtime against Arizona.
Perhaps the most stunning result of the day came in Coral Gables as previously unbeaten Miami suffered its first loss of the season — but more on that later.
Here are the winners and losers from Week 6 of the college football season.
Winner: Brent Venables, Oklahoma make a statement
It’s quite rare for a coach’s job security to be called into question heading into Year 2, but that’s what happens at a program like Oklahoma, which isn’t accustomed to anything resembling mediocrity.
Brent Venables’ 6-7 finish in Year 1 could certainly be described that way. The team’s defensive issues, specifically, called Venables’ aptitude for a job like this into question, especially given his background.
Venables’ 2022 squad reached its nadir in Red River last year against Texas, falling 49-0. It’s only fitting that his program would announce its ascendance in the same matchup.
Oklahoma is 6-0 after going blow-for-blow in a thriller with the Longhorns, and now Venables has a signature win under its belt. The defense looked much-improved to begin the season, and that was vindicated with Saturday’s performance.
While Texas accumulated more than 500 yards, it was held from scoring a touchdown in the red zone and had to lean on a lot of chunk plays. Offensively, Dillon Gabriel looked like a Heisman contender and led a gutsy game-winning drive.
This team looks good, it may be a legitimate playoff contender, and while its path to the CFP may require beating Texas again, this is a much better team than many (myself included) anticipated heading into the season.
Loser: Texas' red zone woes catch up with it
Perhaps the most frustrating part about this loss for Texas, which I still think is very good and easily still a contender to make the playoff, is the fact that moving the ball wasn’t really an issue.
As mentioned above, the Longhorns managed 527 yards of offense — 41 more than Oklahoma, in fact. However, Texas failed to capitalize on many of its best opportunities.
It had just three trips to the red zone, which is pretty hard to believe given the yardage total. On those three trips, only one resulted in points, which came in the form of a field goal.
Contrast that with Oklahoma, which was a perfect 6-for-6 on red zone opportunities, scoring all 34 of its points while down near the goal line. Add in three Longhorns turnovers to the Sooners’ zero, and it just wasn’t a recipe for success for Steve Sarkisian’s team.
If this were a one-off for Texas, it wouldn’t be as big of a concern. But problems in the red zone, where the team has now scored a touchdown on just 11 of 24 trips on the year, have been an issue throughout.
It’s why the Longhorns had early struggles against Wyoming and Kansas, it’s part of the reason they had a hard time pulling away against Alabama, and it’s definitely the reason they now have their first loss on what was and still could be a very promising season.
Winner: Louisville and an early native son success story
We’ve seen the “Beloved Former Player Takes Dream Job” story play out quite a few times in college football, and more often than not, it seems to not work out how anyone hoped.
The ghost of Scott Frost still haunts our recent memory, after all.
But perhaps Jeff Brohm is giving us a new, more positive example of that kind of hire working quite well. Brohm’s Cardinals are 6-0, and they passed their first major test in the form of a 33-20 win over Notre Dame in which they pulled away to a big second-half lead.
The Scott Satterfield era, in spite of some surprising recruiting success, brought overall bad vibes to Louisville. The peak was at eight wins in Year 1, and an early flirtation with the South Carolina job made his relationship with the school and fanbase a bit standoffish before Satterfield ultimately jumped ship for Cincinnati last offseason.
Brohm, on the other hand, has immediately injected some much-needed energy into this program after it swung and missed trying to pull him away from Purdue a few years ago. The Cardinals got their guy this time, and things are right in Louisville.
Given the fact that Louisville managed to dodge Clemson, Florida State and North Carolina, this team looks like a real contender in the ACC, which didn’t seem at all possible entering the season.
Loser: Mario Cristobal's victory-costing mistake
Miami should be 5-0 right now with a tremendous amount of optimism about Mario Cristobal’s second season. Miami is not 5-0 right now, and optimism in Cristobal is certainly waning after a 23-20 loss to Georgia Tech that simply shouldn’t have happened.
Miami had the ball with under 40 seconds to play, and the Yellow Jackets didn’t have any timeouts. Had the Hurricanes taken a knee, the clock would have hit zero, and there was nothing Georgia Tech could have done about it. According to ESPN’s Football Power Index, Miami had a 97.9% chance of winning the game at that point.
Instead, Cristobal chose to run the ball with Donald Chaney Jr., who fumbled and allowed Georgia Tech to take the game with a Haynes King touchdown pass in the final seconds.
Needless to say, it was an absolutely mind-boggling decision for Cristobal, but what might make it even worse is that it seems to have been fully deliberate.
Cristobal is apparently philosophically anti-kneeling. He lost a game at Oregon in 2018 under similar circumstances, and in every game this season in which he’s had the ball with the lead at the end of the game, he’s chosen to run the ball instead of kneeling.
There are some coaching stylistic idiosyncrasies you can look past. Flat-out refusing to do what gives your team by far the highest win expectancy, in every situation, is not one of them.
To Cristobal’s credit, he said he should have kneeled the ball after the game, so perhaps he’s rethinking that philosophy. But it shouldn’t have taken a result like this for that to happen, and it’s especially poignant given Cristobal’s track record of suspect in-game coaching.
This was a mistake that wouldn’t be acceptable if it was made by a volunteer youth coach. It certainly isn’t when it’s made by one who makes more than $10 million to coach a premier college football brand.
Quick Hitters - Winners
Jacksonville State: The Gamecocks overcame a 23-7 halftime deficit to beat Middle Tennessee State, and though they aren’t postseason eligible, they are 3-0 to begin Conference USA play.
Oklahoma State: It’s been a rough start for the Cowboys, but they got back on track with a win over Kansas State. They’ve also seemingly found their quarterback in Texas Tech transfer Alan Bowman.
Ohio State: Many had the Maryland game pegged as one to watch, and while the Buckeyes faced an early deficit, they ultimately rolled to a convincing 20-point win.
LSU: The Tigers still have defensive issues, but that unit did enough to get the win this time around in a shootout at Missouri.
UCLA: The Bruins look like a really good defensive team after shutting down Washington State in a win that keeps the Bruins in the mix in the Pac-12.
North Carolina: Drake Maye had his best game of the year, and the defensive may be making significant strides after a 40-7 win over Syracuse.
Kansas: The Jayhawks look like a legitimately good team after demolishing UCF 51-22 in Lawrence on Saturday.
UConn: A winless campaign seemed like a real possibility for the Huskies, but they got a nice win on the road against JT Daniels and a Rice team that entered the game at 3-2.
Georgia and Michigan: The top-two teams in the country looked about as good as you could hope on Saturday, with each winning by 40+ against conference opponents. Georgia demolished a ranked Kentucky team while Michigan shut down Minnesota on the road.
Wyoming: In one of the top Group of Five matchups in the season, Wyoming outlasted a ranked Fresno State team and may now be the favorite to win the Mountain West. Yet another good team falls in Laramie.
Quick Hitters - Losers
Illinois: After losing 20-7 at home to a bad Nebraska team, it seems things in Champaign have fallen off considerably since last season’s surprising run.
Washington State: Cam Ward’s hot start to the season and possible dark-horse Heisman candidacy came to an end as he struggled quite a bit in a loss against a stifling UCLA defense.
Texas A&M: The Aggies controlled the loss to Alabama at one point, but it just didn’t have enough on defense to hold on and replicate Jimbo Fisher’s 2021 upset over Nick Saban.
Kentucky: The Wildcats tried to beat Georgia at its own game, and that went about as well as you would expect. Losing this game isn’t really a surprise, but the defense really struggled against Carson Beck and Brock Bowers, which was a bit disappointing.
Notre Dame: I think this program is trending in the right direction, but it’s easy to see a narrative start to build against Marcus Freeman if they keep losing winnable games.
Baylor: Any hope that Blake Shapen’s return and the UCF comeback would spark things for Baylor was erased on Saturday with a 39-14 loss at home to a struggling Texas Tech team.
Arizona: Credit to the Wildcats for playing well in this game, but Jedd Fisch opted not to go for two and the win in overtime and instead gave more opportunities to Caleb Williams, which was certainly a choice.
