Can the Buffs bounce back? Will the Nittany Lions take the next step? And what can the Trojans do to protect Caleb Williams?
With the college football season at its midpoint, it's a good time to assess what we've seen so far and what it might mean the rest of the way.
From the moment Colorado rallied past Arizona State on Oct. 7, Deion Sanders focused on the team's habit for slow starts, saying he was"sick of it," even after the Buffaloes rallied for their fourth win. Colorado answered its coach Friday night, storming out to a 29-0 halftime lead against one-win Stanford, scoring touchdowns on its first four possessions and outgaining the Cardinal 324-114."Finally put it together ... like I desired," Sanders said.
There's a lot of work to be done between now and the first Friday in December, and the focus will be on each team's defense to continue to complement two of the nation's top three offenses. The Ducks, who have permitted their first six opponents to average 15.8 points , sit 13th in total defense , and the Huskies are 87th in the country at 394.3 YPG, allowing only 20.8 points a game.
"I think the biggest thing that we did was we put ourselves in so many situations where we were backed up in long-yardage situations," USC head coach Lincoln Riley said postgame."It becomes almost like third-and-long ball and they're pinning their ears back. Do we need to protect better? Yes. But there's a lot of things that go into that. The big thing is you can't continually put yourself in just bad situations against a good defense.
Freeman has had some difficult moments in his first year-plus on the job: losing to Marshall at home to drop to 0-2; losing to a bad Stanford team, also at home, midway through last season; the 10 defenders on the field fiasco against Ohio State on Sept. 23; getting drubbed by Louisville two weeks later. But his teams have responded admirably and recorded two dominant signature wins -- 35-14 over Clemson last November and 48-20 against USC -- that show the potential of Freeman's program.
Freeman's process to become a top-level coach might not be linear, but growth spurts like the USC and Clemson wins show he's on his way. --One of the biggest knocks against the ACC in the College Football Playoff era -- or really in any era -- is that the conference never had multiple teams in the hunt for a national championship in the same season.
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