Boy. That escalated quickly. That got out of hand fast. Teams that were ranked 1 through 11 were not safe against unranked opponents. So how crazy did it get?
This was the biggest one of them all. Alabama was a three touchdown favorite, ranked #1 and fresh off their win against Georgia. What happened Saturday was a shock. Throughout the years, Alabama was immune to clunkers against teams they were expected to beat and this time, it was their turn to take a loss. Alabama’s late down defense did them in as Vanderbilt converted on 12 third downs. To put it in perspective, Alabama’s defense allowed 11 third downs leading up to the game.
Most of you are asking how did Arkansas do it against Tennessee when they had 31% of their carries being stopped at or behind the line of scrimmage and Tennessee was able to run it with some success? There were 10 scoring opportunities (drives where the team is inside the opponents 40 yard line) between the two teams. Arkansas had seven while Tennessee had three. That 70% scoring opportunity rate was huge for Arkansas to stay in the game. No matter who you are playing, you can’t give a team so many chances to score while you’re having trouble generating consistent chances.
In terms of ranking, this was an upset, but if you’re talking about Vegas, this was expected. A&M was a -2.5 favorite over Mizzou. I think everyone was shocked at Mizzou getting handled the way they did.
Another game where Vegas had the lower ranked (well, Washington was unranked) team favored over the ranked team. In 20 years, this game will be counted as a big upset, but we’ll not remember that Vegas had Washington as the favorite. And as you see, it’s another game where generating scoring chances is pretty important in college football.
USC getting into playing football in the Big Ten. Play physical defense and focus on field position. Unfortunately, you need to score as well. The success rates of both teams was crazy high for a low scoring game, but the points per scoring opportunity was low for both. That is not something you see every day.