College Football’s Top 25 after 10 weeks

#24 Boston College

As you might have read already, I’m not incredibly fond of ACC teams this season – outside of Clemson of course. So it should come to no surprise that I have Boston College seven spots lower than the AP Top 25 and CFP rankings do. Once again I look at what their biggest wins were and I think those came against Miami and Virginia Tech these last two weeks.

However, they are one game above and right at .500 respectively even with a weak ACC schedule for the most part. They both lost badly when they faced top ten teams. I guess Temple was a solid win as well, but other than all of BC’s opponents are having losing seasons.

Plus they lost to Purdue by 17 and at N.C. State. Alright, back to the positives – the Eagles are rushing for 225 yards per contest, their scoring average lies at 37.2 and they are almost +1 in the turnover department on average. With A.J. Dillon you feel like you can hand him the ball 50 times a game and while the opponent keeps him in check for large stretches, his punishing style of running has a cumulative effect on the defense and at some point he breaks a big one.

Quarterback Anthony Brown might not be a big name in college football and his numbers have taken a dip compared to where they were at the start of the year, but he can push the ball down the field off play-action and burn man-coverage on the outside. When I watched his tape versus Wake Forest I saw that his team can rely on him as well if defenses single in on Dillon and the ground game.

Their defense might not be quite up to par, but they have allowed just over 18 points a game through these last three weeks. BC hosts Clemson this weekend, so we’ll see what they are really made of.

#25 Michigan State

This was pretty much the hardest team to pick for me. Texas Tech is my favourite four-loss team in the country because of how tough they have played some of the best opponents, Wisconsin is averaging a monstrous 6.24 yards per rush, 274 yards on the ground per contest and still have an outside shot of playing for the Big 10 title and then you have Utah State, whose only loss came in the final moments of the season-opener against these Spartans and has the highest average margin of victory behind only Alabama and Clemson.

However, I went with Michigan State for this reason – they have more quality wins than any of the other teams while being competitive in basically every game, even though Michigan kind of helped them stay in that game with fumbles. Sparty’s losses came by a field goal versus a hungry Arizona State game in the desert in the late window, versus the West-leading Northwestern who has only lost one in-conference game so far and then against the aforementioned Wolverines, who would have probably blown out any other squad that isn’t as feisty as this MSU team.

On the other hand they have won three Big 10 road games, including facing then-number eight ranked Penn State in a hostile environment, and they beat Purdue by ten a week after they dismantled the Buckeyes. While the numbers might not be very impressive, I don’t think there are many other teams who fight in every game more than the Spartans do. Their quarterback Brian Lewerke has to be more cautious with the ball, but they are getting their top back L.J. Scott back.

Defensively, they hold opponents to 19 points and allow them to get into the end-zone on just 45 percent of their red-zone trips, plus they have recorded 17 takeaways and it feels like all of them came in crucial situations. They are facing their third matchup against a top-ten team this Saturday against the Buckeyes.

---

Just missed out: Texas Tech, Wisconsin, Missouri, N.C. State, Boise State, Cincinnati, Texas A&M, Utah State, Stanford, Oregon, Purdue, South Carolina