Texas and Ohio State both survived the kind of Week 2 that reshapes a poll, but for very different reasons.
Texas has the best win in the country right now, and the Longhorns backed it up with one of the wildest comebacks of the young season. They were down 23-3 to Ohio State at the start of the fourth quarter, then flipped the game and left with the kind of result that demands attention. That comeback also gave quarterback Arch Manning and the Texas offense a major lift.
Ohio State, meanwhile, took the loss and still stayed near the top of the rankings at No. 2.
That wasn’t automatic. Julian Sayin looked shaky again against an elite defense, and coughing up a 20-point lead is the sort of thing that normally sends a team sliding.
But the Buckeyes controlled the game on the road for three quarters, and the bigger question is simple: who has actually shown they’re better? Texas has.
Beyond that, the list of convincing challengers is thin.
Indiana has not faced a Power Four conference team. LSU turned the ball over four times in four straight possessions against Louisiana Tech on Saturday.
Notre Dame let Wisconsin hang around last week. Miami’s toughest opponent so far is Stanford.
The rest of the top of the poll reflects a weekend full of movement. Here’s how the latest AP Top 25 looks after Week 2: Texas, 2.
Ohio State, 3. Indiana, 4.
Notre Dame, 5. Miami, 6.
LSU, 7. Georgia, 8.
Southern Cal, 9. Alabama, 10.
Ole Miss, 11. BYU, 12.
Texas A&M, 13. Tennessee, 14.
Florida, 15. Louisville, 16.
Penn State, 17. Texas Tech, 18.
Houston, 19. Oklahoma, 20.
Boise State, 21. Virginia, 22.
Arizona, 23. Mississippi State, 24.
SMU, 25. Michigan.
Mississippi State and Michigan are the newcomers. Oregon and Minnesota dropped out. Virginia Tech, Missouri, Utah and Iowa were just missed.
Oregon took the biggest hit of the week. A top-five team after one week, the Ducks followed up their opening stumble against Boise State with another poor showing, this time losing to Oklahoma State, a team that began the season with a defeat to Tulsa.
It wasn’t a close call, either. The Cowboys outgained Oregon 554 to 281, and without two interceptions from Oklahoma State quarterback Drew Mestemaker that directly set up 14 Ducks points, the final margin could have looked even worse.
That kind of two-week body of work is hard to ignore. Oregon was my No. 1 team in the preseason, and there’s still plenty of talent there, but the Ducks have not played like a top-25 team so far. If the poll is supposed to reflect what has actually happened, leaving them out became difficult to defend.
Michigan is back in after last week’s omission, and the win over Oklahoma did enough to get the Wolverines back in the mix. Their defense showed up, even if Oklahoma’s offense was very poor, and quarterback Bryce Underwood looked better against a tough defense. The Western Michigan game still hangs over the résumé, which is why Michigan sits at the bottom of the poll, but this was a needed response after last week’s mess.
Oklahoma didn’t escape the weekend cleanly either. I considered pushing the Sooners lower than No. 19, but kept them there because the game was in Ann Arbor and Michigan, even with obvious flaws, still looks like a top-15 team on paper. If Oklahoma’s offense keeps looking like that in SEC play, staying in the rankings will get a lot harder.
There were other results that carried real weight. Mississippi State may have turned in the weekend’s best win outside of Texas, handling the No. 25 team from last week in convincing fashion. If quarterback Kamario Taylor keeps playing like that, the Bulldogs won’t be a brief appearance in the poll - they’ll be a team worth watching every week.
Alabama also did enough to impress, shaking off an uneven start against Kentucky before pulling away late from a spirited Wildcats team on the road. The Crimson Tide looked better than Texas A&M, which posted a lopsided win over Arizona State mostly because the Sun Devils kept hurting themselves.
BYU also earned a result that stood out, beating Arizona 28-17. A critical fourth-down stop in the fourth quarter turned into seven points at the other end, and that sequence helped separate the Cougars in a game where Arizona still looked dangerous enough to stay in the rankings. Even in defeat, the Wildcats played like a top-25 team.
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