The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - Trinidad Chambliss ruins Kiffin’s return: should Ole Miss be #1? Ohio St’s issues + Klatt’s Top 10

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

Fox Sports’ lead College Football analyst Joel Klatt reacts to Ole Miss spoiling Lane Kiffin’s return to Oxford behind Trinidad Chambliss’ big night. Klatt discusses who the best player in college football is after the Ole Miss QB’s star performance and whether the Rebels should be his new #1 in this week’s Top 10. He also breaks down Kiffin’s coaching performance in the game and where LSU goes from here.  Following Ohio State’s easy win over the weekend, Klatt marvels at Jeremiah Smith’s record-breaking career before pointing out some underlying issues that the Buckeyes need to get sorted out with Big Ten play about to start. He also shouts out an under-rated Head Coach who picked up another ranked win this week and deserves more recognition before wrapping his head around the crazy finish as NC State somehow managed to lose to  Vanderbilt. Klatt also reveals his full Top 10 list for the week and wonders whether everyone is sleeping on Georgia right now. Chapters 🏈0:00 - 0:36 Intro0:37 - 21:20 Ole Miss vs LSU21:21 - 28:52 Ohio State vs Kent State28:33 - 34:29 - Louisville vs SMU34:30 - 37:13 Viewing College Football In Absolutes37:14 - 41:29 NC State vs Vanderbilt41:30 - 42:39 Utah vs Utah State42:40 - 43:32 Alabama vs Florida State43:33 - 44:17 Notre Dame vs Michigan State44:18 - 49:09 Joel reveals rest of top 10 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Trinidad Chambliss is the best quarterback in college football right now, period. He's unbelievable. Jeff Brom, he's one of the best coaches in America. The AP poll, you know how I feel about this. It is awful. At some point, you've got to put down what you thought in August and watch what we see in September. What a weekend again in college football. Welcome to the Joel Clatt show.

I'm Joel Clatt. This show is sponsored by Hilton. Hilton for the stay. and we thank them for their support. Let's get right into it. Ole Miss, LSU. What an emotional night that was. That was so much fun to watch.

I mean, my goodness. The energy in that building was palpable. Coming through the television screen, even if you're at 30,000 feet. That was an amazing night of college football. And kudos to Ole Miss. What a win for the Rebs. My goodness.

32, 34. And couldn't be any sweeter than that. could not be any sweeter than that. And there's a lot to get into because there's a lot of football to evaluate, but then there's also the lane side of things because everything in college football and certainly in this game kind of revolved around Lane Kiffin. So we'll get into all of that. But first and foremost, I thought Ole Miss did an incredible job and Pete Golding as the head coach allowing his team to use that emotion and energy early in that game to just totally dominate the first half. It was an avalanche of emotion.

and passion, everything that you would want your players to play with. They were playing with it in that first half. It was fantastic. I'll get to Chambliss in a little bit because I got to tell you what. Trinidad Chambliss is electric. He's unbelievable. I can't wait to tell you what I saw. I went back and watched the entire film of what he was able to do. But early in that game, I was actually surprised, and even Kirk and Chris were surprised calling the game about how well each line of scrimmage. was playing for Ole Miss. And I think they were using that energy that was in the building, and they used that to their advantage,

and they started winning the line of scrimmage. They were able to protect Trinidad Chambliss, run the ball pretty effectively. And obviously, with Kiwan Lacey, you can do that because he's an excellent player. But even the defensive side, they weren't allowing LSU to have any time to throw the ball. Levitt was run for his life.

He did not play well. They couldn't run the ball in the first half. That's changed in the second half. But early, they used the energy to their advantage. and that was amazing. In particular, I want to shout out one guy, their defensive tackle. Will Eccles was a monster in the game.

Seven quarterback pressures, three tackles for loss, one sack. That's pretty darn good right there. Just to give you some food for thought on this, LSU only had three tackles for loss as a team for the entire game. And Eccles is in there, all by himself, three tackles for loss. Now let's get to Trinidad Chambliss. guys, Trinidad Chambliss is the best quarterback in college football right now. Period.

He's unbelievable. He played an insanely good game on Saturday night in the biggest moments. And by the way, he did it against Louisville as well. And he's done it his entire career in particular in the fourth quarter. This guy is unreal. I said it a couple of weeks ago. I said if I had one two-minute possession and I've got a one possession, and I've got a one possession game. I just had one possession. What quarterback am I taking from this sport? I'm taking Trinidad Chamblis. Doubling down on that, I think I would take him just period.

If I had one draft pick right now, the top draft pick in all of college football, I'm a head coach, I'm a GM, I've got unlimited NIL. Who am I going to with a bag, Trinidad Chamblis? I think he's that good. I think he is that good. Look at his fourth quarter stats in his career. This blew my mind. I knew he was good in crunch time.

Fourth quarter in his Ole Miss career, 13 total touchdowns, no turnovers, over 10 yards per attempt, no sacks taken. That is mind-boggling, in particular for a guy that is going to extend plays and create, and all of that is almost done 100 passing attempts. He's thrown 99 passes in the fourth quarter at Ole Miss. That's insane, guys. That's insane. I remember a few years ago, you remember when the Patriots beat the state,

Seahawks on that wild ending in the Super Bowl. What got lost in that wild ending when they didn't run the football is that Tom Brady against the Legion of Boom played as insane a fourth quarter of football as a quarterback ever plays. And it's like, Trinidad does that. And he does that in the biggest moments. He's got five game winning drives since the start of last season. That's the most in college football. This guy is dynamic. Now, I told you I went to the film and I want to tell you exactly what I saw in that film. A couple of weeks ago, I told you about what makes a great college quarterback. All right, because listen, there's a lot of guys that are a lot of guys that just go out there. But what makes the great ones are you've got to have talent. He's got that check.

You've got to have experience, I think, to be great. He's got that. You have to have the ability to process information. And he's excellent in this area. And you see this. Anytime that LSU wanted to change things up from a structure standpoint, bring more pressure, bring a simulated pressure and drop guys out, he knew exactly where to go with the football, exactly where to go. That ball is out, it's quick, it's accurate. This guy is all over it as far as processing speed. And even when they drop out and they're playing eight defenders back,

they've got a spy, all these different things, he knows where to go with the ball. He knows where the leverage is. He knows where the free throw is. So that's why he doesn't take sacks in those big moments. because he processes pre-snap information as well as anybody in college football. And post-snap. I don't want to just say it's pre-snap.

He processes information and he does it insanely well. My next bullet was, can you win with the passing game when you're not running it well? And guess what? Even though they ran the ball okay at times, there were series when that was taken away from them by the LSU defense, which is a very good defense. They're fast, they're physical. They do a lot of things well on that defensive side. And he still won even when they couldn't.

run the ball. Like, not many guys can do that. Not many guys can do that. Here's how you do that, by the way. You have to have every single pitch and you've got to know when to throw it. So he knows when to drive the football on the frame. Almost every single in-breaking route, whether it's a short route, like a slant or an intermediate route, like a dig route, or even a bender that's more than an almost a deep route. He is driving the football on the frame of his wide receivers. Then on the Outbreaking routes, everything is leveraged away from the defense. It's really, really good. He knows how to layer it. He knows how to throw with touch, even on the run. And he does all those things and makes all those throws even off platform. So it doesn't matter if he's outside of the pocket. It doesn't matter if he's about to get hit. The guy is absolutely excellent. And then there's this last thing that only the real true elite talented quarterbacks do. And that's their ability to create success even when the defense wins. And he does that. He does that. I think the best example was that play where LSU has the perfect play call on. They blitz him. They've got three free rushers on him. And he escapes somehow

out of the pocket. And he's running towards his left and just shovel passes it down the field. It's a first down and it's an explosive play. That was unbelievable. The defense won. Perfect call. Great execution by the defensive players on the field. and he still won. He's still won. My favorite throw of the night was the one right before half, where he splits the defensive tackles, he scoots up into the pocket,

manipulates the pocket perfectly. Then on a dead sprint straight ahead, throws an absolute missile to a bender right in front of two LSU players. One of them is a middle safety, and he's there just like, boom, correct. Shoulder away from the free safety in the middle of the field. Touchdown Ole Miss. Guy is sensational.

And the next part of that is can you do all of those things in crunch time? When the snaps mean the most, you see, some guys can do this on first and second down in the middle of the field. Not many guys can do this in the right situations and in the right time. Third down. Did it constantly on third down against LSU. Do it in two-minute situations, fourth quarter situations, one possession situations. He does all of those things. He elevates his team as well as anybody out there.

If I had one draft pick in college football, I'm just going to double down on this. If I had one draft pick right now, number one draft pick, it's Trinidad Chamblis. He is your September Heisman. I don't care how many catches and yards some of these other guys have or yards these other quarterbacks have because guess why? They're playing against air right now. They are playing against air. He has faced Louisville, which has turned out to be a very good team.

And he's faced LSU and maybe one of the most emotional nights that you're ever going to see in this sport. that he is that good. So I just wanted to take a moment there. And that leads me to this question of like, where do you rank Ole Miss now? I'll talk a little bit more about this, but I'm just going to drop this quick hint coming up later. The AP poll, you know how I feel about this. It is awful.

The AP poll is garbage. Garbage. You need to tell me that Notre Dame is ranked higher than Ole Miss. I'm sorry for what? Excuse me? Come again? So where do you have them, Joel? Well, let me answer that question.

I had a big tug of war at the top of my rankings because I wanted to put Ole Miss number one. Nobody has done more than Ole Miss in the first month of the season. Now, I would still argue that Texas has a better overall win, but I'm going to go Ole Miss at two and I wanted to put them at one. I really did. I really did. And even right now, I still want to.

to do it, but Ole Miss is going to be number two. They've earned it. They've earned it. And they have, outside of Jeremiah Smith, the best player in college football. So they're going to be number two. I'll unveil this kind of during the course of the show, and then we'll go back to it and I'll fill in all 10 teams. Real quick, I love the strategy, by the way. Towards the end of the game, they go in and they score. He runs in for a touchdown. Superman puts the cape on. Boom. There he goes to the pylon, and he's in for a touchdown. And then they go in there and they give the hard clap. You know what I'm talking about? The hard clap, they walked up there and it's like, wait, wait, are they going for two? Is this the analytics? What's going on? And I don't know this for sure, but I just going to speculate. I don't think they had a play called. I really don't. Kudos to you, Pete Golding, because this is incredible strategy. And I guarantee you we're going to see this from other teams during the course of the year. They go up and give the hard clap and LSU jumps offside. Everyone is frozen like a statue. That's why I'm telling you, I'm telling you, I'm going to see this. I'm going to see this. I'm going to see this. I'm going to see. I'm going to see. I

I don't think he didn't even snap the ball. Sometimes you snap the ball just to like, you know, oh, we got a jump guy and you snap the football and then you just try to take a shot or throw something out there and you run the play that you were intending to run. The reason I don't think they had a play called is because he didn't snap the ball. Nobody even moved an inch. I think it was just a freeze play, hard clap, see if they can jump off sides and then we're going to allow our short yardage to take over at that point and pound it in there for a

two-point conversion. Then they do it again, give the hard clap, and they go, inside of the one, punch it in, and now they've got an eight-point lead. That was awesome. That was such good strategy from Pete Golding. And by the way, what's the downside of that? You could be thinking of yourself, well, Joel, if they don't jump, they have to take a time out. No, they don't.

No, they don't. All they've got to do is just take the delay a game. It turns a regular extra point, which is about a 20, 21-yard field goal into a 25-26-yard field goal. They've got one of the best kickers in all of college football. No downside whatsoever. beautiful strategy from Pete Golding right there. Is there a concern with this team? Well, let me first say this, and I'll talk about this more when I get to the top 10.

I do not believe that there's a flawless team in college football right now. So there are some concerns, but you still have Superman. You've got Chambliss. So he puts some of this to rest. What is one of my concerns? It would be the volume of snaps. I love tempo. I love offense.

I was a quarterback. You know, like, I get it, and I love it. But when you see a game like that, when both teams are trying to play with that level of volume, and when I say volume, I mean like all they're trying to do is snap it as many times as they can. Ole Miss snapped it like, I think 76. When watching the film, it gets up to 80, but of course some of those are penalties or a false starter, some of them along those lines. The offside by LSU is an example of that.

I think they actually snapped it about 75 or 76 times. That's a lot. That's a lot. Well, LSU is also trying to do the same thing. And what happens if you play a volume-based game and a speed-based tempo on offense, is that your defense is going to have to face more snaps. We talked about this a lot last year with Ohio State and Indiana, and they were purposely going slow to limit the snaps of the defense.

I don't know if you can play at that tempo through a nine-game SEC schedule and then into a lengthy playoff. I just, I don't know. And by the way, we saw the evidence of that because they're, defensive line wore down and LSU was able to run the football in the second half, and that's what really propelled their comeback. Because it wasn't really just Levitt, although he made some plays in the second half. It was more the idea that they were able to run it on the defense that had to face a high volume of snaps. So that would be a concern moving forward. By the way, they play that emotional

game. That volume could show up right away. They play all of those snaps, and now they're going to have to face Florida, and that's a really improved Florida team. And Jaden Bach can run the football. He can get it done. They beat Auburn this week. Just the last thing on this. That's a great win for those players. That isn't

such a sweet feeling. Do you remember when you all played sports as a kid or even in high school? And you remember the games that were the most emotional were the ones that were close. Like you know, you know, the opponent intimately. That's what made high school football so great, or any high school sport,

is because when you play your crosstown rival, you've grown up with those kids. It is ultimate bragging rights. It's personal. And that game between Ole Miss and LSU was obviously personal. So I just felt great for those kids from Ole Miss who rightly feel totally, scathed by the opposite head coach on the other sideline. How good did that feel? How good did it feel for Pete Golding? And by the way, Ole Miss fans, I know you're excited,

and that had to feel amazing. But at the end of the night, wasn't the best feeling the fact that your coach, Pete Golding, who stuck around, stuck with those kids, a lot of them stuck with him, stayed at Ole Miss, he outcoached Lane Kiffin on Saturday night.

It's true. The film proves it. You get to the LSU portion of this and you start thinking to yourself like, well, Sam Levitt wasn't really ready to go in the first half. Man, his clock was sped up. He was taking half a look one direction and then just running all over the place.

They had no offensive rhythm. They could not run the football at all. And here's this idea that I had before the game. I was dead wrong. I thought they would have the advantage because Lane would know Ole Miss so well. And it was the exact opposite. I could not have been more wrong. And I'm happy to admit it.

I was dead wrong. I thought that Lane and LSU would have a decided advantage schematically in terms of what they could do to the opposition because they knew them so well. Lane knew them so well. He knew Trinidad. He knows Pete Golding. And yet it was the opposite. It was the exact opposite. That's why Pete out.

coached Lane. Lane has an opportunity down inside of the five, third and goal, and he calls the backup quarterback in and does a little wildcat with a backup quarterback. Old Miss doesn't care that the backup quarterback is in. He kind of just like jogs out of there. They both ran the same play, but at least Ole Miss did it with Trinidad in the game. That was not a good play call. Meanwhile, Ole Miss goes down and they score and they execute the perfect hard cadence clap and get free yardage to go for two and put themselves up. eight. So not only did they out-coach him in those scenarios, they out-executed them in those scenarios. And that, if you're an Ole Miss fan, that's got to be the sweetest part of Saturday

night. That's got to be the sweetest part. Yeah, you won, and it was a moated and it was great, and your guy played well. You out-coached him. You out-coached him. I think that was easily the best part of it. Levitt's got to play better, and he can't run around like that. It's one thing if Trinidad is running around, and he doesn't invite contact all the time. Levitt's running around like he's Bo Jackson. He's doing the Lway helicopter at the 5. He will not last this season if he continues to try to run around like that and invite SEC contact.

You cannot do that. You cannot do that. So that's got to get fixed. He's got to play more within the rhythm of the offense because their rhythm wasn't there at all in the first half at all. So where do you put LSU? Let's go to the top 10 now. I didn't want to penalize Ohio State for obvious reasons

for accepting and continuing to play the out-of-conference game against Texas. I do think that in conference, you can start to penalize teams a little bit more, so I'm not going to throw LSU way up into the top 10. I don't know if Clemson is any good, even if they were able to get that win against North Carolina. That was not pretty. So the win against Clemson is not carrying a ton of water for me with LSU. They've got some injuries now.

Trade as Green avoided major injury, but he could miss some time. They're tied end, and they're clearly better with him on the field. They lose Deshawn Spears. He tore his ACL, the safety. I'm going to put LSU at 8. I think that's fair. I think that's fair. I'm not going to throw them outside of the top 10.

That's still a very good football team. There's no doubt. And you would assume that they can play better and clean some of those things up. in particular offensive execution early in games, but they do have a really tough remaining schedule. You look up, they've got to face Texas A&M still at Kentucky. By the way, Kentucky, great win over A&M. They've got Mississippi State.

That's a ranked team at this point. That's a very good team with a good quarterback. They still have Alabama. How about Russell and what he was able to do on Saturday? They still have number one Texas, and they still have to travel to Tennessee. So not out of the woods yet by any stretch of the imagination. And remember, remember now,

We talked about this in terms of expectations. What success for LSU? You've got to go to the playoff. And I don't even think you can just go to the playoff. I think you've got to win a game in the playoff. All right. So they're a bit behind the eight ball right now, obviously, with a league loss. LSU and Lane.

By the way, I'm sure you did. Lane after the game in his press conference, that was like, I'm cringing because it was the most lane thing of all time. it's like it's like the kid who's a pyro who starts a fire in his drive wire

his backyard by the way I'm going to raise my hand I did that but then like when the fire gets out of control and everyone comes in and puts it out and then the kid's like

man I'm just grateful grateful for what man you started the fire I get the human side where Lane's trying to be like introspective, I guess, and say like, I'm riding in on the bus and, you know, I was just grateful. Lane, like, come on, man, you can't have it both ways. You can't be the lightning rod and show up with Instagram models and put your quarterback

on the injury report midweek and leave your team before the playoff and try to sign NFL players and then be like, I'm just the grateful one in the corner. You know, I'm just thinking about all those good years, those great six years. I mean, like, come on, come on. I mean, it's typical lane, though. Very typical lane. I do want to give some observations on the game, although it wasn't much of a game. Ohio State beats Kent State 59 to 3, but I did want to just give a couple of observations

because if I'm going to spend a whole week really evaluating a team, I'm going to give you what I think, and in particular after their performance. So Ohio State wins. It's a route. What did I think of it? Number one, I want to, and I invite you to do the same, just appreciate Jeremiah Smith. Jeremiah Smith broke the Ohio State receiving yards, all-time record, and he did it in only 32 games. This guy is incredible. He's humble. I've loved every conversation that I've ever had with him. He's a good leader on that team. He is a remarkable talent on the field. And I just want to go back. Let's just take a little bit. Let's fire up the flux capacitor here and the DeLorean and have Doc Brown send us back three years because he was the number one recruit in the entire country. There's a big tug of war happening because he's committed to Ohio State. They're waiting for his paperwork on signing day and they're like, we know Miami is in there. Miami's likely offering more. And it's like, oh, are we going to get him? And then this is Ryan Day's reaction.

at the podium when he finally hears that the paperwork arrived for Jeremiah Smith in Columbus. That's so good. And it's so honest, right? And now you know why he reacted that way. He knew all the way back then. He knew the type of kid he was. So kudos to him. He's likely going to. Likely. I don't want to just throw it out there in definitive terms, but likely to break Ameka Abuka's reception record. He needs only 22 more grabs to do that to become Ohio State's all-time leading receiver as far as receptions goes. He's likely going to break Chris Oliva's touchdown record. He needs six to do that. And if he does all of those things, and let's hope that he does, he will leave Ohio State in three years as the greatest receiver in the history of a university that has given us some of the best wide receivers in particular in recent vintage that we've seen in a long time.

So I just want to appreciate him. Now let's get to some of the observations from the game. Matt Patricia's defense, it's going to be a little bit different from last year, but not necessarily from a scrimatic perspective, as much as it will be personnel-based. Last year, they had freak shows all over the place. You don't have a great defense unless you've got great players, and they had great players, great players. Four of the top 36 picks in the draft,

they had guys right up the middle, they had edge rushers, they had it all. Okay. Now, Caleb Downs is not walking through those doors. Sunny Stiles is not walking through those doors. Caden McDonald is not walking through those doors and R. Velrys is not walking through those doors. So how do you get similar, not the same, but similar impact out of your current roster of players who aren't those players? Well, you have to put those players in specific positions where they can succeed. Okay, so you might not have a guy like Caden MacDonald who can do all the things that you need him to do at nose tackle, but maybe you can find one guy who can really play the zero, the nose right up, head up on the center, and he can do it well, and he can shed blocks and he can play two gaps. He might not have the pass rushing ability of Caden MacDonald, and he might not be able to slide over to a one technique or a three technique like McDonald was able to do, but can he do just that one thing really well? Well, maybe. So an example of that would be like Jason Moore.

So Jason Moore is about 320 pounds, and he comes in, and they put him in the zero, and he did a nice job in there as the zero. Granted against Kent State, but again, it's just about the observation. So maybe you've got Jason Moore in there for your odd defense, and you've got John Walker who comes in and they play an even defense. What's an even defense? It's more of a four-three style of defense, where you've got a one technique, and on the other side, you've got a three technique versus a zero and two-fives. Now, you might not know what any of the... that means. But basically what I'm telling you is that there's very specific talents and skills that those techniques need to have. And that's based on the alignment, right? A one technique

is lined up as a shade or on the edge of the center. A zero is head up on the center. A five technique is just outside of the tackle. All of these things. A three is just on the outside of the guard. Well, they're different because they have different responsibilities. So he's going to build a defense using different players and get to all the same schematics. just using a deeper roster of talent. So that's the defensive side. On the offensive side, here's the observation,

and I think that it's going to be, it will be the biggest point for Ohio State moving forward this season with what is an incredibly tough schedule. I believe that their short-yardage run game issues is the exact problem that they have in the red zone. So it comes down to this, and it comes down to a very simple, mathematical equation, if you will.

Can you equate numbers? When you're in short yardage, they're always going to have one more defender than you can block. Always. Okay? So you have to combat that one of two ways if you're going to run the football. Your quarterback has to be able to run to equate the numbers or your running back has to physically be able to make that guy miss or. he's got to be able to bowl through him for the one yard.

So like, for example, Blake Corum was incredible and short yardage because he took that one defender and he would get across the line to gain or into the end zone. Kiwan Lacey, another. You don't have to be a big back to do this. It's just the idea of getting skinny, getting behind your pads and earning extra yardage for what the play is blocked. Are you a plus runner? So you either have to have a quarterback that can equate the numbers or you've got to have

a running back that is a plus runner. Real quick, let me define. plus runner. A plus runner means if it's blocked for two, you gain four. If it's blocked for four, you gain six or eight. If it's blocked for eight, you go to the house. Now you kind of get the idea versus just a neutral running back. If it's blocked for two, you get two. If it's blocked for three, you get three. If it's blocked for four, you get four. And right now, this is what Ohio State's trying to figure out because they don't have a quarterback that's going to equate the numbers for them in the run game like a guy like Will Howard or Justin Fields was able to do. And so they're

trying to find a running back in their stable that can be a plus runner in the red zone or in short yardage. Those two things are linked together, and that's what we'll be kind of watching and analyzing as this season goes along. So where do they land? They got knocked back one spot because Ole Miss has done more than they have. I'm not going to penalize them. I'm going to continue to say this. That's still one of the best teams in the country. So Ohio State is number three in my top 10.

So they moved down one spot. Ole Miss earned the spot ahead of them. Ohio State is number three. Next game I wanted to chat about real quick, Louisville. They deserve some respect now, and the guy that I want to give that respect to is Jeff Brom. Obviously, you can talk about Keenholz and a lot of the other players. Their players are playing great.

Offensively, they're doing a lot of great things, okay? And it's going to be tough to stop them because Lincoln Keenholz is one of those guys that can make your offense right even when the defense wins. He is. He's proving that. He's putting up gaudy numbers right now from an all-purpose perspective. But Jeff Brom can just flat coach. We fall into the trap in college football, all of us.

So like myself included, I'm not pointing a finger here or anything along those lines. What we do in college football is that we typically take the coaches that do the most with the most, and we crown them as the best. I think that that's understandable. They're the ones winning at the top. level. They're the ones that are winning national championships. We know Kirby is a great coach. We know Ryan Day is a great coach. What about the guys that do more with less? I think Jeff Brom is one of those guys. You can argue that it's tougher to do more with less rather than get the most

with the most. You can make that argument. And we've seen this for a long time and we always kind of give credit or flowers. I love that term. We give flowers to these. coaches at times. And we've done it for a long time. Oh, Bill Snyder was great, man. He was the Bill Snyder coach team. They're always going to be tough. When Kyle was at Utah, Kyle Whittingham, great coach, man. They're always going to be there. We talked about that with Pat Fitzgerald when he was at Northwestern. And maybe he can do this now at Michigan State. We talk about it with Kirk, Kirk Farrants, Mike Gundy at Oklahoma State. And we always knew about these guys. And we always would be like, yeah, they're great coaches. But we would never put them up on the

upper echelon because they weren't doing the most with the most. They were getting more out of less. And Jeff Brom, he's one of the best coaches in America. He went to a Big Ten championship at Purdue. Purdue. Come on now. Come on now. And now he goes to Louisville and that's one of the two best teams in the entire ACC.

That's easily one of the 12. 15 best teams in the country. Keenholz has been great. They've run it really well. Offensively, they are very difficult to stop. They ran it for 265 yards. They force three turnovers. And I'm looking up and I'm like, when are we going to start talking about Jeff Brom in the same category as some of these other great coaches? You know, isn't Jeff Brom doing as good of a job as Steve Sarkesian or Kirby Smart or Pete Golding or Lane Kiffin or Marcus Freeman? Like any of these guys? Yes, the answer is yes. Yes, he is. Yes, he is. That was a huge win, a huge win.

They played Ole Miss to the final snap, beat SMU by 10, and Keenholz is playing great. Didn't start a game at Ohio State. I know that there are some Buckeye fans. I've heard them. They came up to me this week. And they were like, oh, man, wish we had Keenholz. And I'm like, oh, that's interesting.

You got a Heisman finalist that's starting for you. But it comes down to some of those things I was talking about about Chambliss and that I mentioned for Keenholz is the ability to win when the defense wins. You know, like you can do that with precision and execution, or you can do that with athleticism and creating, like an artist. And, you know, Chambliss has some artists in him. You don't want to coach that out of Trinidad Chamblis.

So at times with Chambliss, you've got to live in the gray area as a coach. Because you've got to let him create. You've got to let him be him. Keenholz, a very similar thing. You know, and was Ohio State willing to go through those growing pains or maybe a lower floor with a Keenholz? No, they weren't willing to do so. Now, with Julian's saying, a guy like Jeremiah Smith on the outside, it's not the wrong decision,

but you're sitting there and it's like, Keenholz is a really good player. His athleticism has, I don't want to say transformed because Louisville's always been good on offense. Brahma's always been good on offense. But man, they've got something to them. So where did they fall? Did they crack my top 10? Not quite. Not quite.

They're going to be in my almost category. They were right there. I was toying around with putting them in the top 10, but they're going to be in my almost category there, just outside of the top 10. I have a lot of respect for SMU, so that's a huge win for Louisville. And Rhett Lashley knows that you can't win games, in particular big games, matchup games, closely talent-equated games when you turn the ball over. And they do it too often.

Kevin Jennings turns the ball over too much. SMU turns the ball over too much. If you look up at the end of the day, turnover margin last year, The two teams that played for the national championship were in the top 10 in turnover margin. Indiana was number one overall and won the national championship. Typically speaking, the good teams, the ones that achieve at the high end, win conference championships, go to the playoffs and succeed in the playoffs, have a positive turnover margin, not a negative turnover margin. SMU flirts with that because they're too careless with the football.

They had three turnovers in this game. They had four turnovers against Florida State. Just to give you some analysis, there were only two. teams that made the playoff last year with a negative turnover margin and they were bounced right away, Oklahoma and Texas A&M. Okay, so like that's something that has to get cleaned up for SMU and it needs to get cleaned up in a hurry. This is like a PSA real quick. I fall into this trap. So again, I don't want anything that I say here today. I hope you guys know on this program, I'm here because I love this sport.

I want to care for this sport, and I want to share with you any knowledge that will help make you smarter or enjoy the sport more. But what tends to happen on shows like this and every show like it is that we talk about college football in absolutes. We analyze college football in absolutes. We say, this team is dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. That team is. dot, dot, dot, dot. And the reality is it's just never the same weekend and week out.

I think Ole Miss could be a great example. We're all going to crown them this week. We are all going to feed them an insane amount of rat poison. I just did it with Trinidad Chambliss. And I'm not wrong, but it's not definitive either. analyzing past performance does not guarantee that performance moving forward. Right? And we see this every single weekend in college football.

We have wild results. We turn on the TV and we're like, whoa, what? That team is doing what to who? Kentucky is beating Texas A&M? What? What's going on? You know, New Mexico is about to beat Oklahoma? What?

They're driving for the tying score with five minutes to go in the game in Norman? What? Well, Jason Eck is a really good coach. He's got his team ready to play. Oklahoma's coming off an emotional loss. They didn't play well. They've got some issues and some flaws. You see, college football, there's more parity than ever,

and yet we talk about it like it's, you know, 2015. In 2015, there were a lot more definitive. We knew. We knew this team, that team, you know. Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, Ohio State. And to some degree, it's similar to that, but there's a lot more. I'm pretty confident that any of my top eight, nine teams could still win the national championship.

And so it matters how you prepare. It matters how you play. It matters how you execute every single week. And nothing's guaranteed. So I just wanted to put that into your head because it's always going to be wild in college football. You never know what's going to happen. and that was never more evident than in the North Carolina State Vanderbilt game last weekend.

Oh my goodness. NC State loses on what can only be described as, I got to tell you, the wildest play in college football history, maybe that's overboard, clatt. Maybe that's recency bias. Maybe. Maybe. But that was bonkers.

NC State has the lead. It's 3128. They are going to win the game. It's fourth down. They're on their own five-yard line. And there's six seconds left on the clock. Not the best situation to be in, but dang it, I'll take it. I'll take it.

I'd much rather be there than on the opposite sideline. And I'm Clark Lee and I'm thinking to myself, how in the world are we going to win this game? All they have to do is take a safety and punt it away, and then we're going to lose by one. We're going to lose 31.30 because we're not going to have time to get ourselves in field goal range and kick a field goal. Clark Lee is done over there. He's got nothing. All he's going to do is tell his defense, like, hey, just go play hard.

Just go run after him. Whatever they do in the back of the end zone, just play fast. That's all he can ask them to do and let the chips fall where they may. So NC State takes the snap and C.J. Bailey, their quarterback, is going to try to run out some clock but then take a safety. And Dave Doran, he talked about this after the game. And he said, yeah, that was kind of the plan. We wanted them to take some time and then not get hit.

Oh, my gosh. It's not the wrong thing to do there if you're in C State. But I would just say this about college players. And it goes back to kind of like there's no absolutes, there's no definitive. there's only a very few, select few, amount of players that you can allow as a coach to operate in the gray area with any ambiguity. The vast majority, the overwhelming majority of college football players, you've got to coach them in black and whites. I want you to do this exact thing. Don't deviate from it. Do this. Do this. exact thing. So this is all I'll say about the coaching situation there is that I don't think you

coach them to, well, take some time off the clock and don't get hit because it's both. There's really two things you can do in this situation. You can try to roll your protection, have your quarterback take as much time as possible, shuffle, shuffle, and then throw the ball as high and as far as he possibly can out of bounds. Because the clock's not going to stop, as we know, going back to the Western Michigan-Michigan game until it's touched or hits out of bounds. And then you're like, can we take the full six seconds and do that? Maybe.

Maybe. Or you can say, you know what? I don't like that. It's risky. What if there's a second left? Huh? We saw that. What if there's a second left?

So, no, let's not do that. Let's just take the safety. See, all I'm saying is that you do one or the other. You create a black and white situation for C.J. Bailey so he doesn't have to live in the gray area. So he doesn't have to live with ambiguity. You say take the safety. You retreat. And as soon as anyone gets within one body length of you, you just step out of the back of the end zone.

There's probably three seconds, two seconds. Then you're going to punt the football or try to kick the football after the free kick after the safety. They're going to have to touch it or fair catch it. That fair catch is going to be on the opposite 30, 25-yard line with two seconds. left? I think that you have to lead the players to water in college football. I really do. I really do. And the ambiguity ended up killing him. And I feel terrible for C.J. Bailey. Nobody is going to feel worse than C.J. Bailey this week. Nobody. By the way, it could have been Miami's quarterback. Before they actually got Mintsa, Miami was targeting C.J. Bailey. So that was interesting.

That was crazy, though. Absolutely bonkers crazy. I couldn't believe what I was witnessing. Let's get into the top 10, shall we? Let's finish this thing out. So we already have three of our teams in there. We've got a fourth just on the outside looking in. So we've got LSU at 8. We've got Ohio State at 3. We've got Ole Miss at 2.

Now let's fill them in. Let's start at number 10. At 10, I'm still going to go with Utah. I know a lot of you don't watch Utah. I think this is a very good Utah team. And there's something about them that reminds me a little of Ole Miss. you know, a team that feels, I don't want to say betrayed. I don't think Kyle betrayed, you know, Utah.

He was retiring. Everyone knew he was retiring and he got a call from Michigan. But there's still that sense like, wait, wait, wait, you know, like, he just left us, some players left off? What? And there was a galvanizing effort around Morgan Scali. He's a very good football coach who's been there for a long time, understands the culture, knows how to win at Utah.

They've got an exceptional quarterback in Devin Dampeer. They're sprinkling in Burr. Fickland. I like Utah a lot. They keep on trucking teams. They beat Utah State 33-0. Utah State almost beat Washington last week. Dan Pyr is playing really well. Defense looks fantastic, and we know they can run the ball. And number nine, I'm going to go with Bama. That was a weird game with FSU, and I know Kailen DeBore is going to lament their starts. They started slow against Kentucky. Now they started slow against Florida State. But I do love the way that they responded each of those times. And Kieland Russell was fantastic.

I tell you, the electric run that he had down the right side, that was amazing. They ended up scoring 50 points after falling behind 21-6. Russell threw it for 320, three touchdowns, that 57-yard run. The defense was the disappointment last week. You can't give up that many points in 400 yards to Florida State in the air. That's too good of a secondary to do that. Kane Womack is going to know that. He's going to go back to the drawing board on the defensive side.

they've got to play better on defense. We already know the number 8 team. That was LSU. I've already talked about them, the lane train. At 7, I'm going to go with Notre Dame. Now, Notre Dame is solid, but they haven't done anything that I've been like, wow, this year. They beat Wisconsin, who I think is improved.

They beat Michigan State, who I think is improved. They still need to show me that they can run the football consistently because that's part of their DNA. They're not going to turn into the girls. greatest passing team in college football all of a sudden, even if they have CJ Carr. So the run game is where I'm going to kind of need them to take the next jump. They won that game over Pat Fitzgerald's Michigan State team 27 to 10. Third straight game, by the way, under four yards per carry.

Defense looks fine. The run game is where I'm a little leery of what Notre Dame is doing. At number six, I'm going to go Indiana. Second straight shutout. They beat Western Kentucky 38-0. I think Turbo Richard ran it well. Charlie B from Nashville, Tennessee. He's still off to a great start.

So Indiana is in there at number six. They've earned that spot. I know they haven't played anybody, and you can scream at me all you want. But remember, this is still Kurt Signetti. They're still on a massive winning streak. Kurt Signetti is still not lost in his home stadium. And they've got some big ones in their home stadium this year,

namely Ohio State. At number five, I'm going to go Miami. I flipped it here from last. week. I'm going to go Miami. They looked great in the first half. It looked like a team that can go win the national championship, but then they kind of stumble through the second half. Minsa completed his first 24.

By the way, if you take those 24, and then you go back to the previous game, he was on a streak of 35 straight completions. That's pretty amazing. Tony is catching a million passes. He's second in college football on both receptions and receiving yards. He's electric. You know how I feel about him.

At number four, I'm going to go Georgia. And I know I said that there was no team that was flawless in college football. Everybody on that list so far, I can sense like, okay, like they might have a flaw. I don't know about Georgia. They're my one that I'm going to put a little asterisk beside and be like, is that the best team in the country? Because they're playing like it again against nobody really. Georgia was so bored with Arkansas. Remember, Arkansas got absolutely drilled by Utah the week before. Georgia was running defensive lineman drills

during a timeout. Totally bored with that game. Run game looks great so far. Real test coming up this week, though, against that OU defense, see if they can run it against that front. They should be able to beat OU because OU cannot play offense right now.

They just can't. And that was proven out over the last couple of weeks. You know my three and two are ready, which leaves us one. Texas, I'm still honoring that win. They kind of slept walk through that game. gave him the benefit of the doubt here because of the win over Ohio State. But I just want to make this very clear.

That was a tough decision. I wanted to put Ole Miss at number one. I really did. I really did. And the fact that there are still voters out there that are voting, even though I'm saying like Georgia might be a flawless team, giving them the number one ranking right now, if you're an AP voter and you ranked Georgia number one, Indiana number one,

there were some votes for Miami. It's like, come on, come on. At some point, you've got to put down what you thought in August and watch what we see in September. At some point. At some point, when are you going to do that? Are you that narcissistic that you think your preconceived notions are just dead accurate? Come on.

Like, Ole Miss and Texas have earned those votes. At this point, I believe that those are the only two teams that you can possibly give a number one vote. And I was torn. I was torn. I could have very easily gone Ole Miss at number one. Texas was just kind of meh against UTSA, 30 to 6. Arch 17 to 33 for 164. Neh. They ran it. He ran it nine times for 50 yards. Defense is playing well, though. Again, I'm honoring the win against Ohio State there. When I see it like this, again, I'm torn. I almost wish I would have put Ole Miss in there. Just outside, by the way, BYU was just right there. Louisville was right there. Michigan was right there.

Iowa was right there. Did not love the way Texas Tech played against Houston. Did not like the way USC played in their game against Rutgers. They got to pick six as Rutgers is going in and then they win the game by seven. That's a 14 point swing. So like USC's got to figure something out on defense. More on them on Wednesday. More on A&M. on Wednesday. I'll talk about that Kentucky team and Will Stein getting a big win in his first year as the Kentucky head coach. All that coming up on Wednesday with a lot more. Remember, folks, if you have not done it yet, please go ahead and subscribe to the video. Leave a comment down below. You know, I like to jump in and leave some comments. My weeks get busy, as you can imagine.

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