AAC Football Power Rankings 2017: Houston rising in Week 3

Unless you’re counting faith in the Owls’ ability to get their running game back to a functional level, there’s really not much fuel for putting the two-time defending East champions much higher.

They were outclassed against Notre Dame from the opening whistle, and needed a late field goal to squeak past FCS Villanova at home. If it’s any consolation, we’ve seen the Owls bounce back from slow starts to have fantastic seasons before, and we know that this team still has a bunch of impressive pieces (e.g. Ryquell Armstead). It remains to be seen if Geoff Collins can find a way to put them together.

Reader beware: we may very well be entering an era of “Tulane Green Wave: Perfectly OK at Football.” Sure, there’s not quite enough data to draw from, but the Greenies have been impressive so far, and with a couple more fortunate bounces really could have toppled Navy on the road on Saturday.

Related Story: Group of Five Power Rankings: Week 3 edition

The defense has always been stingy, but Willie Fritz appears to have a reasonably effective offense in place much quicker than many thought he would. A run at bowl eligibility is very much on the table.

The Golden Hurricane were absolutely miserable in their opening-week showdown against Oklahoma State, but that can reasonably be chalked up to Oklahoma State being really, really good. Last weekend’s shootout against UL-Lafayette was better, and certainly fun to watch, but still troubling insofar as TU looks to have very, very real problems on defense.

There’s been a noticeable gap in performance between the top six teams and the rest of the pack in the AAC, and Tulsa currently find themselves on the wrong side of the line. That’s not where a program that had championship aspirations wanted to be, but it’s still early.