Gut reactions to College Football Week 6: Surprise teams shine, Oklahoma hits rock bottom
Notre Dame football should be ranked
When Notre Dame lost its first two games of the 2022 college football season, a lot of people wanted to pronounce their season dead and the career of Marcus Freeman over.
The first two weeks of the season were ugly. Well, the loss to Marshall was. Remember, folks were saying that Notre Dame football looked good after the Ohio State loss.
As I said following the win over North Carolina, Notre Dame is finding its formula. BYU had a chance to take a big step toward a major bowl berth and the Irish had a three-score lead until a late rally by the Cougars which fell short.
Drew Pyne completed 22-of-28 passes for 262 yards and three touchdowns in college football Week 6 against BYU. The running game went off for 234 yards and the defense also held the Cougars to just 280 total yards.
The Irish still probably need to win out to reach a New Year’s Six Bowl game, which means beating Clemson and USC. But if Notre Dame football plays the way it has the past two weeks, that’s looking much more likely than a few weeks ago.
And after a neutral win over BYU, as well as a road win over North Carolina, Notre Dame (3-2) in my opinion is one of the top 25 teams in the country.
Winning conference games isn’t easy
This shouldn’t come as a shock but winning conference games isn’t easy, even if people view you as a college football playoff contender such as Alabama, Michigan, or USC, Saturday was still a struggle.
Michigan was tied with Indiana at the half; USC pulled away but led Washington State by just a few points in the third quarter and Alabama also had a tough time finishing off Texas A&M (2 yards from a loss).
There were close games all over the place as Oklahoma State also nearly lost to Texas Tech. Many losses happen in the ranked matchups but just as many college football teams see their aspirations end as the hands of a conference opponent they have overlooked (looking at you Kentucky).
Next. Top 5 Heisman contenders going into Week 6. dark
We did see some of that in College Football Week 6. But we also saw the highly-ranked teams with college football playoff aspirations survive. At least for one more week.