This was a bloodbath of a Saturday.
No. 1 Georgia lost 27-24 at home to unranked Auburn, fumbling the ball back to the Tigers with about a minute left to set up the game-winning field goal as time expired. No. 2 Notre Dame nearly came back but lost at No. 8 Brigham Young. No. 4 Indiana lost to No. 5 Ohio State.
No. 6 Texas lost – again. Once the No. 1 team in the US LBM Coaches Poll, the Longhorns have since lost to Oklahoma and Florida to inch into the mix for the biggest disappointment in the Power Four.
After narrowly losing to the Bulldogs last Saturday, No. 7 Alabama was pushed around by No. 14 Tennessee in a 26-10 loss, leaving the Crimson Tide on the brink of elimination from the College Football Playoff debate.
Never before in the poll era
had more than four of the top eight teams lost on the same weekend. This Saturday, there were five.
It’s enough to ask who’s left standing. That’s Miami, Ohio State and, to at least a little surprise, Brigham Young.
The Hurricanes will be No. 1 in this week’s Coaches Poll, taking the top spot for the first time since late in the 2002 season. BYU should crack the top three to reach the program’s highest ranking in the poll since 1991. But the Buckeyes are looking more like the current favorite for the top seed in the playoff and the eventual national championship.
Ohio State, the Big 12 and Texas lead the winners and losers from an insane Saturday:
Winners
BYU
There’s no more overlooking BYU. The Cougars delivered one of the best wins in program history by knocking off the Irish 28-24, taking the lead with under two minutes to go on a Bear Bachmeier touchdown pass and then coming up with a memorable defensive stand on the game’s final play. After CJ Carr had driven Notre Dame to the Cougars’ 8-yard line, his pass on a rollout to his right fell incomplete, triggering pandemonium. Based on preseason assumptions and what’s been put on tape so far, any team that beats Notre Dame is a legitimate national title contender.
The Big 12
The biggest winner of all might be the Big 12, which thanks to the Cougars’ win has a real opportunity to get two teams into the 12-team playoff. The other would be Texas Tech, which played much better in a rout of Arizona State and should be able to overcome a feeble schedule thanks to the insanity occurring elsewhere in the Power Four. There’s a possible scenario where BYU and Red Raiders meet in the conference title game under the assumption that both are in the tournament regardless of who wins.
Ohio State
The Buckeyes take over the lead in the Big Ten and for a first-round bye after beating Indiana 19-15. Jeremiah Smith was held to four receptions and a season-low 68 yards but did score an important fourth-down touchdown in the final quarter. Having lost to Texas earlier in non-conference play, Ohio State could afford another loss, especially to someone of the Hoosiers’ caliber, but a second defeat with so many games to play would’ve added undue stress to every moment remaining in the regular season. Now, the Buckeyes should be able to cruise into at worst an at-large playoff berth. Still, this wasn’t a perfect day. In the fourth quarter, Sayin suffered a shoulder injury that could sideline him for several weeks, according to coach Ryan Day. OSU will turn to backup Luke Faley and hope for the best.
Tennessee
Getting to 6-1 without anything like a solid offense or strong quarterback play is quite an achievement for Tennessee and coach Josh Heupel. Beating Alabama 26-10, its largest margin in the series since 1998, could be a springboard to a strong close through a manageable schedule: at South Carolina, home for No. 17 Kentucky, at Texas A&M, home for No. 21 LSU and then at Vanderbilt. But the Volunteers still need more under center after George MacIntyre averaged 6.4 yards per attempt with an interception on Saturday. But a defense that has been consistently productive played by far its best game yet, forcing four turnovers, allowing only 2.1 yards per carry and giving up just 201 yards overall.
Florida
Ride this roller coaster at your own risk. Florida was unranked in the preseason, rose to No. 8 after beating No. 10 Mississippi, dropped out of the US LBM Coaches Poll entirely after back-to-back losses and will surge back into the poll after a 27-24 win against No. 6 Texas. Down 17-3, the Gators dominated the second half to put the Longhorns’ season in peril. And they did so with backup quarterback Tramell Jones Jr., who had nearly 200 yards of total offense and two scores without a turnover. Even if not a playoff team in Jon Sumrall’s first season, Florida is building the foundation for big things in the future.
Bill Belichick
Give Belichick credit for engineering a much better product so far this season than in 2025, even if it feels weird to congratulate a six-time Super Bowl winner for being 4-2 at the halfway point. Still, North Carolina defeated Pittsburgh last week and then beat hated Duke 24-20 thanks to a 24-yard touchdown run with under two minutes to go. The Tar Heels held Duke running back Nate Sheppard, the nation’s top rusher at 148.6 yards per game heading into Saturday, to only 77 yards on 20 carries. UNC is a solid ACC team that is making impressive in-season gains.
Losers
Notre Dame
There were a few times against BYU where things seemed to be slipping away from the Irish, so give them credit for clawing back and nearly winning the game in the final seconds. Down the road, this experience could pay off in a major way for Notre Dame, especially for Carr. You can put up gaudy numbers and take the opponent’s best shot every week, but there’s no replicating what it’s like to take over with under two minutes to go in a very hostile environment and need to get six points. Look for the lessons learned Saturday to pay off at some point. But the loss does make things worrisome given how it makes next month’s matchup against Miami even more important for Notre Dame’s postseason hopes.
Georgia
The 27-24 loss to Auburn feels like one of those weird results that will look even weirder in January, when Georgia makes a playoff run and Auburn wraps up a nondescript bowl game under new coach Alex Golesh. Really, the result is much more about the Tigers and the boost this gives Golesh in his first season. The Bulldogs turned the ball over three times and gave away momentum after taking a 14-0 lead, only to come back to tie the game with a few minutes left. Gunner Stockton’s fumble helped set up Auburn’s game-winning field goal as time expired. The biggest takeaway from this one: Georgia’s running game has to get in gear.
No. 1 teams
This isn’t a good time to be the top-ranked team in the Coaches Poll. Last week, Texas lost to Oklahoma. This time, Georgia lost to Auburn. This is the first time the No. 1 team has lost in back to back weeks since 1990, when Notre Dame and Michigan both lost to help Virginia climb to the top spot. Virginia only lasted there three weeks. Miami might not want to get too comfortable.
Arch Manning
You can ask whether the expectations were fair in the first place. But there’s no question that Manning continues to come up short and is running out of time to salvage any type of positive legacy with Texas. The Longhorns’ loss to Florida likely ends any shot of reaching the SEC championship game and leaves them on the brink of playoff elimination. While Steve Sarkisian will shoulder most of the blame in the moment, Manning is the poster child of this program’s continued failures. He threw for 173 yards and a touchdown against the Gators but was under 100 yards through the air until late in the fourth quarter and had a loss-clinching turnover with under two minutes to play. There have been brief flashes, often individual throws, that show the depth of Manning’s talent. But he has not performed to the level of the best quarterbacks in the SEC, let alone the Power Four.
Indiana
This was a good barometer game that doesn’t really change Indiana’s collision course with the playoff. In reality, this could be a game that sparks the changes and updates necessary to get this offense out of neutral and back on track, joining a defense that looks good enough for the national championship. And it’s not like this one wasn’t close: Josh Hoover’s potential game-winning touchdown pass on the Hoosiers’ last possession just drifted onto the left sideline, with the difference between a narrow win and loss coming down to inches.
Penn State
Things at Penn State have gone from cautiously optimistic to borderline apocalyptic amid a four-game losing streak that hit rock bottom with a 21-18 loss at home to Michigan. The Wolverines finally replaced Bryce Underwood, who had two interceptions, and then got a spark from backup Tommy Carr’s 83 yards of total offense and a rushing touchdown. The Nittany Lions were supposed to hover around eight wins in Matt Campbell’s first year thanks to an easy schedule. But this is such an inferiorly talented team compared even to the middling Wolverines that even getting to six wins is probably too much to ask.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ohio State, Miami, BYU headline college football winners and losers of wild Week 7
