College football's 14th weekend was the kind of wild we've come to expect at this point: lots of weird, unexpected results down the totem pole and very little at the top. Notre Dame, Clemson and Ohio State all won with ease, and, as has been the case for a few weeks now, Alabama kept inching away from the pack.
Following a 55-17 win that felt like it could have been much worse -- Alabama threw only 10 passes in the second half, and DeVonta Smith caught his last ball with 25 minutes remaining -- the Tide not only remained No. 1 in SP+ this week but extended their lead. They are now 4.3 adjusted points per game ahead of No. 2 Clemson (Translation: SP+ would see Bama as a 4.3-point favorite over the Tigers), 6.6 ahead of No. 3 Ohio State and 10.2 ahead of No. 4 Notre Dame. They are further ahead of the Irish than the Irish are ahead of No. 19 Texas.
The Bama offense remained dominant on Saturday, and the defense continued its improvement -- LSU generated nearly one-third of its yardage on two plays (a 54-yard run and 43-yard pass in the second quarter) and otherwise did next to nothing. This is increasingly looking like the best Nick Saban team yet on paper, though as I wrote last week, the last time we were here Bama stumbled at the finish line.
The work isn't over, but this Alabama team is all sorts of ridiculous.
What is SP+? In a single sentence, it's a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. I created the system at Football Outsiders in 2008, and as my experience with both college football and its stats has grown, I have made quite a few tweaks to the system.
More than ever, it's important to note that SP+ is intended to be predictive and forward-facing. It is not a résumé ranking that gives credit for big wins or particularly brave scheduling -- no good predictive system is. It is simply a measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football. If you're lucky or unimpressive in a win, your rating will probably fall. If you're strong and unlucky in a loss, it will probably rise.
(Those last few sentences are particularly important to remember as we gaze upon a set of rankings that has five teams with losing records among its top 30. Everything is possible in 2020, friends.)
With most teams having finally played a healthy number of games, we saw less movement this week than we have all season -- only seven teams moved up seven spots or more.
Troy: up 16 spots from 79th to 63rd
Kentucky: up 13 spots from 82nd to 69th
Rice: up 13 spots from 108th to 95th
Tulane: up nine spots from 51st to 42nd
NC State: up nine spots from 52nd to 43rd
Air Force: up eight spots from 86th to 78th
Missouri: up seven spots from 69th to 62nd
Heading into November, NC State was 71st in SP+ and what you might call a fortunate 4-2. They had been well and truly pummeled by Virginia Tech and North Carolina and had gotten awfully lucky to beat Pitt 30-29 in early October. They were not nearly as impressive as their record.
Since then, however? A different story. The Pack scared the hell out of Miami in a narrow loss on Nov. 6 and have proceeded to win four straight. It's hard to rise too much in SP+ once you've played a healthy number of games, but State has managed to rise 28 spots since the loss to UNC. They jumped out to a 20-7 lead against Georgia Tech on Saturday and held the Yellow Jackets at arm's length from there to win, 23-13, and post an 8-3 regular season record. After going 4-8 last year, Dave Doeren's team has managed to change the program's trajectory a good amount in this odd, odd season.
Moving down
Similarly, seven teams moved down eight or more spots.
Marshall: down 14 spots from 23rd to 37th
Oregon State: down 14 spots from 64th to 77th
Cal: down 12 spots from 76th to 88th
SDSU: down 12 spots from 45th to 57th
Memphis: down nine spots from 43rd to 52nd
Boston College: down eight spots from 63rd to 71st
UAB: down eight spots from 37th to 45th
Cal suffered an unlikely rivalry loss to Stanford last week; my postgame win expectancy measure said that with the stats that game produced, the Golden Bears would have won it 66% of the time. Instead, they lost 24-23.
On Saturday against Oregon, the Bears got their revenge on math. Oregon averaged 6.1 yards per play to Cal's 3.4 and finished six drives in opposing territory to Cal's four. But the last three of those trips produced fourth-and-short stuff and two fumble recoveries, and despite a 6% postgame win expectancy, Cal won 21-17. It was the Bears' first win of the season -- and, perhaps needless to say, it didn't impress SP+ at all.
Hello there, top-25 Penn State
Remember back in 2016, when, after going 10-3 the year before, Notre Dame collapsed to 4-8? The Fighting Irish suffered seven one-score losses that year while averaging a 22-point winning margin in their four wins, and despite the gaudy-in-the-wrong-way record, they finished a healthy 18th in SP+. That got me yelled at a lot, but it was vindicated the next year when the Irish looked perfectly normal the next year and went 10-3. Sometimes the breaks go against you.
That brings us to Penn State. The Nittany Lions began the year 0-5 for the first time in their history. Devastating program collapse? Not really. They outgained Indiana and Nebraska by 200+ yards each and generated postgame win probabilities of 95% and 83%, respectively ... while losing both games by a combined eight points.
There was no redeeming a terrible performance against Maryland, but the Nittany Lions had only fallen to 29th five games in and are now back up to 22nd following solid wins over Michigan and Rutgers. It remains to be seen whether they go 10-3 like the 2017 Irish next year, but this season's start might end up looking far more like a speed bump than a change in trajectory.
