College Football’s Top 25 after 10 weeks

#12 Kentucky

It was really cool to see Kentucky have a chance to compete for the SEC title for the first time in about 40 years, but all good things come to an end. The Wildcats won some tough games as underdogs at Florida and versus Mississippi State plus they came back late to defeat Missouri on an untimed down of that game.

With that being said, this team wants to get a lead early on to pound you in the running game and get after opposing quarterbacks. Benny Snell has been their bell-cow back with just one carry away from 200 and having crossed the 1000-yard mark last Saturday, but with Georgia being up big early on the Wildcats were forced to put the ball more into the hands of QB Terry Wilson, who had been attempting less than 20 passes up until that point.

This also slowed down their pass rush and gave the most productive edge rusher in the nation less opportunities, since their run defense is only average. Josh Allen still pounced onto two fumbles, but he never really got off in terms of making life hard on Jake Fromm. Even after that 34-17 defeat they are still eight in the country in points allowed.

The East now belongs to the Bulldogs, but how good is this Kentucky team? Outside of Alabama, Georgia and LSU there are only four other SEC schools that received votes in any of the polls – Mississippi State, Florida, Missouri and Auburn. Kentucky has beaten all three of them that actually were on their schedule.

I never thought they could compete with Bama even if they stunned UGA, because they have no shot of keeping up with that type of offense, but I love their gritty style of play.

#13 Washington

A team that I think is criminally underrated is the Washington Huskies. When this week’s College Football Playoff rankings were revealed, they just made the list, coming in at number 25. There is no way there are 24 better teams in the country and the FPI backs me up on this.

They have them ranked ninth overall, ahead of teams like West Virginia, LSU and division rival Washington State – that one by quite a wide margin. I know they have three losses, but let’s look at them more closely. They lost to top-ten ranked Auburn in a one-possession contest to kick off the season at a supposedly neutral site, which was full of Tiger fans.

Then they lost a heart-breaker in overtime at Eugene against Oregon, which was number 17 at that point. Yet, what really hurt them was the 12-10 defeat at Cal two weeks ago, but the Bears also just played Wazzu very tough at their place.

Obviously, Washington is not in any playoff race at this point, but as long as they don’t completely mess up versus Oregon State and beat the Cougars on the road, they will qualify for the Pac-12 championship and I expect them win that game no matter if it’s against Utah, USC or Arizona. This team is still loaded with talent. Byron Murphy will be a first-round corner, Taylor Rapp is one the most well-rounded safeties in the country and Ben Burr-Kirven leads the nation in total tackles.

The Huskies have ten players with at least three sacks and they are a top ten scoring defense for god’s sake. I know Jake Browning has times where he doesn’t nearly take good enough care of the football, but he is tough and comes through for them when they really need to extend a drive. Plus Myles Gaskin probably is the most underrated college back and he might not even be their most talented option out of the backfield.