College Football Week 6 Takeaways

 Week 6 Takeaways

Credit: USA Today

Sage Rubin, Swish Tribune

It's hard to believe that we have already made it past week 6 of the college football season but here we are... now that half of the season has been completed, here are the latest takeaways after this past week's slate of games occurred.

USC is NOT a Playoff Contender:

Despite having arguably the best offense in the country, the team also holds the one of worst defenses in the Power 5 maybe even the country. Despite a 3OT win over Arizona, the red flags are too big to ignore on this team. Alex Grinch has been Lincoln Riley's defensive coordinator even back when Riley was at Oklahoma. To add to the defensive struggles, five teams out of the last 6 are ranked including a road trip to #8 Oregon and a home game against #7 Washington. Overall, despite Caleb Williams still playing at a totally elite level, this doesn't seem to be the year for USC due to their poor defensive play and tough conference schedule remaining.

Louisville is the Real Deal:

In year one at his alma mater, Jeff Brohm has rejuvenated a once-struggling Cardinals team through the use of the transfer portal. Bringing in Jack Plummer from Purdue (Brohm's previous job) was one of the best things Louisville did as Plummer has helped this offense adjust to Brohm's system very quickly leading them to a dominating win over Notre Dame in what was one of the best crowd environments in Cardinal Stadium since their 62-20 win over Florida State in 2016. Louisville seems like they could make the conference championship because of their very favorable schedule, but the question is can they keep this up and if they make it to the conference championship can they win it because it seems like they'd have to play either a Drake Maye led UNC team or a Jordan Travis led FSU team.

Miami Made an 80 Million Dollar Mistake:

It's only year two for Mario Cristobal, but the Miami Hurricanes don't seem like they're on the right path with the head coach they paid 80 million dollars to get. In what should've been a blowout win against a Georgia Tech team that had just lost to Bowling Green 38-27, the Miami Hurricanes played it close but seemed to have control of the game throughout holding a 20-17 lead over the Yellowjackets who had no timeouts remaining... that was until there were about 30 seconds left in the game. In a situation where Cristobal could've chosen to have the quarterback take a knee and let the clock run out, he chose to call a run. When the team lined up in formation and ran the play, the running back fumbled the ball, giving Georgia Tech an opportunity to win the ball game which they would eventually do after Miami's defense looked lost on the final play. Miami then tried to complete a series of lateral passes in the final seconds but that did not work causing many of the players to cry on the sidelines with the camera showing one player asking why they ran the ball. The worst part of all of this is that during the post-game press conference, Cristobal had the audacity to blame the running back for dropping the football instead of taking accountability for his poor playcalling which he has had a history of even with his time at Oregon. Now Cristobal has to hope he didn't lose the trust of his players after blaming them for his mistakes as Miami has to go on the road in a primetime matchup against #12 UNC.

Venables is the Answer at Oklahoma:

Unlike Miami, it seems like the Oklahoma Sooners found the right guy as head coach. In only year two Brent Venables has fixed a team that was left with little talent after Lincoln Riley took most of the players with him to USC, into the #5 team in the country. Venables already has the Sooners at 6-0 after they took down then-#3 Texas too. The rest of Oklahoma's schedule doesn't seem too bad either as the Big 12 hasn't showed any consistent signs of strength. Another thing that isn't talked about a lot at OU was last year's addition of UCF transfer QB Dillon Gabriel. Gabriel has been playing lights-out football and has put himself in a position to potentially win the Heisman trophy this year. There's no doubt that the future is bright in Norman, Oklahoma.