Table for 12 Week 8: Lane Kiffin couldn't land the knockout

You might be sick of conference realignment. You might hate the transfer portal, NIL, and revenue-sharing. And you may not even like the 12-team College Football Playoff. But if you’re a college football fan, you loved Week 8. 

Week 8 brought us CFP elimination games, five ranked-on-ranked matchups, and more shocking upsets. And none of that happens without realignment, the expanded playoff, and most importantly, the transfer portal, NIL, and revenue-sharing. Like it or not, college football has more meaningful and compelling games than ever, and has achieved a level of parity that seemed to be reserved for the NFL. 

I won’t bore you with the numbers to prove it because CBS’s Chris Hummer already has. The margins on Saturdays are slimmer than ever, and that puts coaches and quarterbacks under the microscope, even more than they already were. More often than not, it’s the best ones who are coming out on top, and it’ll be the best ones who lead their teams to the 2025 CFP. 

First Course

1. Is coaching more important than ever? (Louisville 24 No. 2 Miami 21)

The great flattening has finally come to college football. The introduction of revenue sharing, in addition to the freedom of movement the transfer portal presents, has finalized the sport’s newfound equality, and there is overwhelming evidence that the difference between the very best teams and the middle of the pack is as slim as ever. So, if you can’t overwhelm your opponents with a talent advantage, how do you separate? Much like the NFL, coaching, in terms of scheme, play-call, and game management, can have an outsized impact on the outcome of games. 

So, maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that the teams are on the wrong end of this season’s most surprising upsets; Clemson, Penn State, and now Miami are (or in Penn State’s case were) led by “program-builders.” Strong recruiters who set the culture delegate much of the game plan to their coordinators and aren’t particularly aggressive on gameday. 

It’s easy to boil Miami’s loss to Louisville on Friday night down to Carson Beck’s four interceptions, and maybe it is that simple. Still, it’s hard not to recognize the discrepancy between Cristobal’s conservative approach and Jeff Brohm’s bespoke attack, especially in the first half. 

Coming out of the bye week, Brohm threw the kitchen sink at Miami. Three different players took snaps on the first drive of the game with a series of jet sweeps, screens, QB keepers, a quick passing game to negate Miami’s pass-rush, and a fake field goal for a first down inside the 10-yard line. On the second drive of the game, Brohm brought three quarterbacks onto the field and split them all out while wide receiver Caullin Lacy took the direct snap. It didn’t work, but the Cardinals still needed just four plays to take a 14-0 lead. 

Eventually, Brohm, who is now 4-2 against top 5 teams as a head coach, ran out of tricks, and Miami punched back. Louisville ended the game at -0.11 EPA/play, and without Beck’s four interceptions, the Cardinals would have lost, but they didn’t. Their coach, one of the best gameday coaches in the sport, gave them a chance to negate the ever-shrinking talent gap and insert themselves into the crowded CFP race in the ACC. 

With the number of jobs open this offseason continuing to grow, programs need to consider whether they want the coach who gets the most talent or gets the most out of it. 

Second Course

2. Kiffin’s best shot didn’t kill Kirby (No. 9 Georgia 43 No. 5 Ole Miss 35)

Lane Kiffin spent three full weeks gameplanning for Kirby Smart’s defense. A defense he’s seen since he and Smart were coordinators for Nick Saban in 2015. It’s obvious Ole Miss hadn’t prepped much, if at all, for Washington State coming out of the bye last week, but they were ready for the Bulldogs. 

Kiffin’s Rebels scored a touchdown on each of their first five possessions, continuing a trend of Georgia’s defense struggling in the first half and Smart’s team trailing at halftime. Georgia has now trailed at halftime in four of its five SEC games, with Kentucky as the lone exception. Yet, in all four of those games, including the loss to Alabama, Smart’s defense has flipped the switch. 

In Week 8, it took until the fourth quarter, but finally the Dawgs bit down on Ole Miss QB Trinidad Chambliss and didn’t let go. Georgia held Ole Miss to 13 total yards in the fourth quarter with two punts and a turnover on downs. The Rebels’ two scores in the third quarter will hurt Georgia’s staggering second-half defensive numbers, but it’s still the same story: Smart finds a way to fix his defense. 

There are a few reasons why. Georgia tends to simplify its coverage in the second half, allowing its athletes in the secondary to play more man coverage. Though that wasn’t necessarily the salve on Saturday. The biggest difference in the fourth quarter was the pressure Georgia was able to generate. 

The Dawgs don’t have a dominant pass-rusher this year. Linebackers Chris Cole and Raylen Wilson lead the team in QB pressures, and according to SharpFootballAnalysis, Georgia ranks 73rd in pressure rate this season. The defense pressured Chambliss on just 11 percent of his dropbacks and did not sack him once.

Yet, the coaching staff’s propensity to use a deep rotation along the defensive line, with 12 players coming into Week 8 with over 50 defensive line snaps this year, keeps the group fresh late in games. Fresh rushers and simplified coverages allow Smart and Glenn Schumann to crank up the blitz rate with their athletic linebackers, and it’s led to dominant late-game defense. Chambliss went 0-4 on his four pressured dropbacks and completed just five of 13 passes when blitzed. Now, Georgia needs to figure out the other 30 minutes of the game. 

Third Course

3. Josh Heupel needs help (No. 6 Alabama 37 No. 11 Tennessee 20)

Josh Heupel got hired at Tennessee for his veer-and-shoot offensive system and high-scoring attack, not for his game-management skills. However, the latter continues to cost the fifth-year head coach of the Volunteers. 

Let’s set the scene. Tennessee is trailing 16-7 late in the second quarter and is driving to score. With 37 seconds left and one timeout remaining with the ball at the 14-yard line, the Vols ran the ball three times after an incompletion, gaining 13 yards and draining the clock to nine seconds left before using their final timeout. Then, on second-and-goal from the one-yard line, Tennessee came out of the timeout with Joey Aguilar under center and a jumbo package. 

Now remember, with no timeouts left, Tennessee can’t risk running the ball and getting stopped short. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, Aguilar play-faked to the running back before targeting tight end Miles Kitselman in the flat. Alabama cornerback Zabien Brown, of course, didn’t bite on the fake, undercut the route, and returned it 99 yards for a 16-point halftime lead. 

For good measure, Heupel burned his first timeout, then left his offense on the field for fourth-and-11 from the Alabama 16, down 17 with 3:09 left in the game, rather than kicking the field goal to make it a two-score game with over three minutes and all three timeouts. By that point, Alabama’s win probability was over 99 percent, but Heupel essentially made sure it went to 100 by failing to convert. 

Despite losses to Georgia and Alabama, Tennessee’s CFP hopes are still alive, but it’s hard to trust the Vols in a close game until Heupel brings some game-management help on the sidelines. 

Check Please!: When it’s clear there won’t be a seat for you at the CFP table, it’s time to pay your check and go

4. Is Rhule ready to roll? (Minnesota 24 No. 25 Nebraska 6)

Year 3 is always when Matt Rhule finally puts it together, and it’s also about the time when he’s ready to leave for a better job. This time, it could be his dream job at his alma mater. Rhule was with Penn State AD Pat Kraft at Temple, and it’s hard to imagine Kraft moving on from James Franklin without a clear plan in place. Rhule might be that plan, and his attention may have been elsewhere this week. 

That’s the overly simplistic analysis of Nebraska’s loss, which will drop the Cornhuskers back out of the Top 25 and the CFP race. The more in-depth look brings you back to the offseason, when Rhule added Elijah Pritchett from Alabama to be his starting right tackle. It was a whiff. The type of miss that can cost a program like Nebraska, still not quite up to speed in the NIL era, its season. 

Dylan Raiola was sacked nine times, four of them courtesy of Gunnar Gottula, now the starting right tackle, as Pritchett splits time on the left side. Ultimately, sacks are a quarterback stat. Raiola needs to speed up his processing in the backfield and play with more urgency as a dropback passer, because when he does, he has success. He finished 10-for-14 for 102 yards and a touchdown on dropbacks of under 2.5 seconds. Still, pressures are largely a reflection of the line in front of him, and Raiola was pressured 19 times on Friday night. 

5. LSU springs another leak (No. 17 Vanderbilt 31 No. 10 LSU 24)

The coaching carousel is already spinning at full tilt, and with LSU poised to miss the College Football Playoff again, in Brian Kelly’s fourth season, it doesn’t feel like a certainty that he’ll be in Baton Rouge next fall. With this loss, Kelly is now 7-7 in true road games as the head coach of the Tigers and 11-11 away from Baton Rouge. 

After two frustrating 10-win seasons to start his tenure, the directive was clear: fix the defense. It wasn’t good enough under Blake Baker last year. Then, with an influx of transfer portal talent, it finally looked like a championship unit in 2025. Until it didn’t. 

The LSU offense, even with injuries along the much-maligned offensive line, was good enough to win, but Baker’s defense had no answer for Diego Pavia. Baker’s blitz-heavy, man-coverage system that relies on stunts and twists along the defensive line to generate pressure failed to contain Pavia and left wide-open rushing lanes all day. 

Pavia burned LSU for 86 yards and two touchdowns on the ground, just two weeks after Ole Miss’s Trinidad Chambliss went for 71 yards on the ground. Kelly has constructed a talented roster, but every time he seemingly plugs one hole, the team springs a leak somewhere else. 

6. The Trojans don’t travel (No. 13 Notre Dame 34 No. 20 USC 24)

It’s not a conference matchup, but the Trojans had to venture into Big Ten country for a de facto CFP elimination game against Notre Dame, and that part of the country has not treated Lincoln Riley well. Since joining the Big Ten, USC is now 2-6 on the road, with five of those losses coming in conference play. 

The road struggles have carried over from last season and have mostly come on the defensive side of the ball. A USC team that last week in LA looked like the more physical team against Michigan, allowed 308 rushing yards to the Irish, with Jeremiyah Love accounting for 228 on just 24 carries. Meanwhile, Riley’s offense, which gashed the Wolverines for the most efficient rushing performance against their program since 2022, managed 2.3 yards per carry with a 30 percent rushing success rate. 

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7. Georgia QB, Gunner Stockton (No. 9 Georgia 43 No. 5 Ole Miss 35)

If you’ve been reading this column, you might know that Gunner Stockton isn’t my favorite quarterback. He doesn’t see the field well against zone coverage, and throws everything like a fastball with very little touch or ability to layer the ball over defenders. Yet, despite those limitations, Stockton carved Ole Miss between the hedges, throwing for 289 yards on 26-of-31 passing with four touchdowns and another 59 yards and a score on the ground. 

Georgia fans may want to run him out of town, but offensive coordinator Mike Bobo is a massive reason why. He was constantly putting Stockton in advantageous situations, allowing Stockton to get the ball out quickly to his playmakers against man coverage and using play-action, pre-snap motion, and the threat of Stockton’s mobility to create holes in zone and simplify his progressions. The Dawgs’ offense managed 0.64 EPA/dropback, a 95th percentile performance, and an absurd 0.54 EPA/pass when you strip out explosive plays.

Just look at that absolute beauty of a play-call by Bobo, the pre-snap motion and play-fake to hold the safety in the middle of the field, and the slant from the outside receiver to clear out the corner. Just fantastic stuff. And there’s more where that came from. 

Still, no matter how deep in his bag Bobo was, Stockton hit throws all day, going 12-for-12 in the second half for 135 yards and three touchdowns. And for good measure, he did it on the same weekend that his predecessor threw four interceptions and lost as a 10.5-point favorite at home. Yet, for as good as Stockton was, the Carson Beck-led offense in 2023 posted six games with a higher EPA/pass. It was Georgia's most efficient passing performance since the 63-3 2023 Orange Bowl win over Florida State.

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8. It’s nice to have a healthy quarterback (Arizona State 26 No. 7 Texas Tech 22)

Arizona State made the inaugural 12-team CFP as the Big 12 Champion last season, and started the year at No. 11 in the country, so to say they’re emerging as a contender may seen wrong, but with a loss to Mississippi State and a 42-10 loss to Utah without Sam Leavitt last week, Kenny Dillingham’s team all but slipped off the radar. Well, they’re back, taking down the No. 7 team in the country in Leavitt’s return to clear a path to the Big 12 Title game. 

This time, however, it was Texas Tech that was without its starting QB. Redshirt freshman Will Hammond made a cameo against Utah early in the season and nearly sparked a quarterback controversy, but after Hammond’s performance in his first start, Red Raider fans will be happy to see Behren Morton get back on the field. 

Still, Arizona State’s win was massive, and it was largely because of Leavitt. Last year, with Cam Skattebo as the offensive focal point, Leavitt thrived within the structure of the offense, attacking downfield off play-action while using his athleticism to limit negative plays. 

This season, however, he’s had to become a playmaker. Now it hasn’t always been clean, and with four sacks and a fumble against one of the best defensive lines in the country, it wasn’t on Saturday either. But he’s shown a level of creativity that we only caught glimpses of in 2024, and that shines through in big moments, like a 10-play, 75-yard game-winning touchdown drive and a crucial fourth-down conversion. 

9. Bear Bachmeier will have a water (No. 15 BYU 24 No. 23 Utah 21)

BYU debuted in the column last week with 19-year-old true freshman quarterback Bear Bachmeier’s heroics to hold off Arizona, but now it might be time to take the Cougars a bit more seriously as a Big 12 contender. Not just because of their 24-21 win over Utah in Provo on Saturday night, but because with Behren Morton injured and star defensive tackle Skyler Gill-Howard out for the year, Texas Tech might be vulnerable. 

Still, Utah bested BYU by EPA/play, success rate, yards/play, explosive play rate, yards/dropback, 3rd-down success rate, and red zone success rate. Do you want to know where BYU’s biggest advantage over Utah was? Punting EPA at 7.12 to -0.10 because of a Utah muffed punt that led to a BYU field goal. 

Bachmeier is a fine quarterback with enough athleticism to get by in the Big 12, but conference commissioner Brett Yormark desperately needs the Red Raiders, not the Cougars, to win the league because this team wouldn’t be a top-six team in either the SEC or the Big Ten. 

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10. Missouri is Hard(l)y hanging on (No. 16 Missouri 23 Auburn 17 (2OT))

Jackson Arnold is costing Auburn over a tenth of a point every time he drops back to pass this season, and with an interception and four sacks on Saturday night at Jordan-Hare, he was even worse than that in Week 8. If he had only cost -0.10 EPA/dropback, Hugh Freeze may not have started 0-4 in SEC play for the third straight year. That’s how close Auburn was to beating Missouri. 

Eli Drinkwitz’s team escaped, largely aided by back-to-back 15-yard penalties on a five-play 60-yard touchdown drive in the fourth quarter, which ultimately sent the game to overtime. Missouri preserved its CFP hopes, but that doesn’t mean Tigers fans shouldn’t be concerned, because for the second-straight week, Ahmad Hardy was held to 52 yards rushing after averaging 146 per game through the first five weeks of the season. 

Hardy’s productivity is crucial for Mizzou because Beau Pribula is perfectly capable as an RPO-thrower, accurate enough to keep an offense above water with underneath throws in the quick-game, along with the threat of the QB run-game. However, when he’s forced to become a true dropback passer, he isn’t comfortable and doesn’t have the arm to make throws outside the numbers. 

11. Texas's offense is broken (No. 21 Texas 16 Kentucky 13 (OT))

Speaking of struggles as a dropback passer, did somebody say Arch Manning? It doesn’t feel healthy to litigate his play every Saturday night, often at 2:00 a.m. as I strain to finish the column while some wild ACC West Coast game unfolds. Yet, when Texas needs a goalline stand in overtime to beat Kentucky by a field goal, it’s warranted. 

Ultimately, he’s not consistently accurate enough. He misses open throws, both from the pocket and on the move, and against Kentucky, he went 11-for-25 for 109 yards, and generated -0.39 EPA/dropback, with a 25 percent passing success rate. That could be the end of the story, but it’s worth mentioning that he’s also being put in a very difficult situation. Texas’s offense is broken. 

The Longhorns, altogether, averaged 3.40 yards per play with a 27 percent success rate. The offensive line is a disaster; they have no semblance of a running game, and Manning is constantly under pressure. He hardly has time to Steve Sarkisian’s long-developing screens off play-action, which have long been an easy button for his quarterbacks. His accuracy tends to deteriorate over the course of games as he gets sped up by the accumulation of hits. Manning is a problem, but so is everything else, and it’s made Texas possibly the least effective passing game in the SEC. 

This game against Kentucky, now 2-4 overall and 0-4 in SEC play, was Texas's worst by offensive success rate since the 30-15 Week 8 loss to Georgia last season (27%), and was barely worse than that performance by yards per play (3.41). By yards per play, it was the worst Texas offensive performance since Week 11 in 2022, a 17-10 loss to TCU, the eventual national runner-up.

If it weren’t for that defense and a relatively easy schedule the rest of the way, Texas would’ve been paying its check after a win this week. Sarkisian's CFP hopes are hanging by a thread.

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12. American Conference Chaos (UAB 31 No. 22 Memphis 24) (Tulane 24 Army 17)

It wasn’t a good idea for UAB to hire Trent Dilfer, but that doesn’t mean all ESPN connections are off limits. UAB’s interim head coach, Alex Mortensen, son of legendary NFL reporter Chris Mortensen, led the Blazers, previously winless in American Conference play, to a 31-24 win over No. 22 Memphis as a 23.5-point home underdog. 

The race for the American just got quite a bit more interesting with the Tigers’ loss, and was on the brink of descending into chaos if it weren’t for a bit of voodoo in New Orleans. After trailing Army 10-3 and 17-1- in the second half, Tulane scored the game-winning touchdown with 27 seconds left on a tipped ball thrown into double coverage.