Pac-12 Football Power Rankings, Week 7: Down goes Washington

Washington was the biggest loser in this week’s Pac-12 football power rankings, but who would be the biggest winner heading into Week 7?

Another week, another crazy list of Pac-12 performances. As the state of California and the conference take their stands in the “Fair Pay” Act, football has become as compelling as can be. Each and every week we’re seeing contenders go down and new ones rising.

But after all the craziness, we felt at the beginning of the season the conference was Oregon, Utah and everyone else. What have we learned now? That it is mostly Oregon, Utah and the “everyone else” is just aligned maybe a little differently than we originally thought. We’ll dive into these tiers of Pac-12 teams.

Who sits where this week’s Pac-12 power rankings, starting with Tier 4, the bottom-feeders?

A lot of people thought the Bruins may have finally figured it out, knocking off Washington State a few weeks ago. Since then, they put up a good fight against an impressive Arizona team, and then laid an absolute stinker against Oregon State.

This team quite simply just can’t defend anybody. They’ve given up 226 points on the season, and it’s not looking better for them going forward, with games against Colorado, Utah and USC still to come.

UCLA truly deserves a tier to their own, but I cannot sacrifice slides to make that happen, and with Oregon State having the only other losing record, they’re still at the bottom. The Beavers’ offense is really impressive — they sit at No. 34 in total yards and average 37 points a game — led by wide receiver Isaiah Hodgins who’s one of the best in the nation.

Another crazy stat: Oregon State has only one turnover through five games. It’s not perfect, but good things are coming in Corvallis.

Ah, perhaps there still is some fight within the Cardinal after all. Just when it looked like David Shaw’s tenure hit rock-bottom, Stanford holds off Oregon State and knocks off Washington 23-13.

Stanford has done a great job of getting back to its roots: a well-balanced, ground and pound style of approach. And the results have shown in Cameron Scarlett, who has over 250 yards in the last two games, and he’s been very impressive.

I think Stanford has dug themselves too big of a hole to make this season a success, but the pieces are still there to win a couple of games.