Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Week 5: Top 25 -- TFG


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Rank +/- Team WinPct SoS Adjusted
Off. Def. Pace
1 -- Alabama 0.959 0.649 19 29.7 4 9.1 2 148.8 123
2 -- Oregon 0.950 0.568 37 31.5 2 10.4 7 175.5 26
3 -- Florida St. 0.943 0.550 44 26.9 6 9.4 3 154.2 117
4 -- Texas A&M 0.899 0.740 5 32.0 1 14.1 33 185.5 7
5 -- Wisconsin 0.896 0.466 75 22.6 20 10.0 6 156.7 113
6 NA Louisville 0.879 0.307 113 24.4 10 11.6 12 153.9 118
7 -- Florida 0.872 0.629 21 18.1 51 8.8 1 158.1 107
8 -2 Oklahoma 0.869 0.510 57 21.1 30 10.4 8 168.6 50
9 +10 Baylor 0.862 0.388 95 31.0 3 15.6 51 184.6 9
10 -2 LSU 0.856 0.528 54 24.2 11 12.4 20 161.8 90
11 +9 Penn State 0.856 0.488 68 18.9 41 9.7 5 170.9 41
12 -1 UCF 0.842 0.296 116 24.1 12 12.8 24 153.2 121
13 -- Clemson 0.839 0.703 9 24.4 9 13.2 26 176.2 23
14 -5 Stanford 0.839 0.560 39 22.3 22 12.0 14 157.0 110
15 +2 Oklahoma St. 0.835 0.591 31 26.3 7 14.3 38 186.4 6
16 -6 Miami-FL 0.830 0.372 98 22.1 25 12.2 18 161.8 89
17 -5 Georgia 0.827 0.664 15 27.0 5 15.0 46 166.6 57
18 -4 South Carolina 0.806 0.708 7 22.3 21 13.0 25 159.4 102
19 +2 Notre Dame 0.796 0.586 34 20.1 34 12.1 17 164.2 74
20 +4 USC 0.795 0.534 48 18.7 43 11.3 11 156.5 114
21 -3 Ohio St. 0.792 0.464 76 23.4 14 14.1 34 166.6 58
22 +3 UCLA 0.790 0.486 71 22.1 24 13.4 28 178.5 17
23 -8 Arizona St. 0.774 0.777 1 25.2 8 15.9 58 181.2 13
24 NA Washington 0.771 0.654 18 19.5 38 12.3 19 168.8 47
25 -3 Michigan 0.763 0.446 83 23.4 15 15.1 48 156.8 112
Rankings through games of 2013-09-22

New entries: Louisville, Washington.

Dropped out: Michigan St., Kansas St..

Things we learned this week:

  • It's possible to game the TFG rankings by running up the score on a punching bag (hi, Louisville and Baylor).
  • Penn State does a better job of "all defense, no offense" than Michigan State.
  • This year's Notre Dame 'D' gave up 13 points to this year's MSU offense? Tsk tsk tsk.
  • Both the top 25 and the top 10 continue to be more competitive than last year.

With Alabama's win over A&M, and the relative decline of Stanford mean that both Alabama and Oregon should have a relatively clear path to the title game. It's not exactly uncommon wisdom right now, but it is -- as they say -- what it is. For years now Oregon has been struggling to get their strength-and-pace-adjusted defense on the same level as their offense, and so far this year they seem to be on the right track.

If Florida State can keep from Florida State-ing themselves this year, they'll be in good position to win the ACC. Then again, it's the ACC, so who knows?

Further down the rankings there's a mish-mash of teams who either are temporarily overrated (Louisville, Baylor, Penn State, and UCF), already have a loss and are in line waiting for some number of other teams to fail (Texas A&M and Wisconsin), have some serious flaw (Oklahoma, Florida and Clemson), or just don't quite have the ability to make it through a tough season undefeated (LSU, Stanford, and Oklahoma State).

Over the next week or two we'll see teams really starting to get into the meat of their schedule, and the week after that TFG will start printing our conference and undefeated projections. Until then ....


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