The scores and results for the first week of the 2023 college football season are finally in after Duke’s stunning win over Clemson on Monday night. The Blue Devils’ 28-7 victory over a Tigers program that has won seven of the last eight ACC championships proved to be one of the few surprising results of the weekend. After this upset, Clemson’s decline is one of the most significant changes we will see in the college football rankings.
Ranked teams outscored unranked teams 21-2, and 17 of those wins came by 21 points or more. There’s a lot to work with among the favorites – like slow-starting offenses or other mistakes in Week 1 – but at the end of the day, most of the teams that were favorites to win lived up to that expectation.
So if there is an unexpected result, the ranking adjustment will be dramatic. Clemson will drop significantly in the Top 25, although we don’t expect the Tigers to fall entirely out of the rankings after the road loss. The same cannot be said for TCU, which finished eight spots behind Florida State in Week 1 and will likely fall out of the AP Top 25 after its stunning home loss to Colorado. Deion Sanders and the Buffaloes should move up the rankings after defeating the Horned Frogs on the road, marking their first AP Top 25 appearance since 2020.
And while it wasn’t a huge surprise, the fact that FSU was able to take control of the game in the second half against LSU and pull out one of those wins by more than 21 points suggests a big jump in the AP Top 25 Upcoming We expect this to place the Seminoles in the top five, which would be the first such ranking by AP voters in five years.
Here’s what we think the new AP Top 25 poll will look like on Tuesday after Week 1:
1. Georgia (Last week – 1): Panicking over a slow start against UT-Martin is behavior reserved for fans, not AP voters. A 41-point win and the lack of an obvious replacement for the No. 1 seed are enough to keep the Bulldogs at the top.
2. Michigan (2): If any voters are looking for an option outside of Georgia, the Wolverines have raised their stakes as the second-best team in the country. Saturday’s 30-3 win over ECU was a showcase for quarterback JJ McCarthy, who had nearly as many touchdown passes (three) as incompletion passes (four) while racking up 280 passing yards for a 9.3-yard average per attempt corresponds. Michigan’s offense has been efficient and excellent in this series of College Football Playoff appearances, but it hasn’t been a group focused on the star power of its quarterback. If McCarthy has more appearances like this, the debates over first-place votes will become harder to resolve.
3. Alabama (4): Voters likely placed Alabama at No. 4, the program’s lowest preseason AP Top 25 ranking since 2009, in part because the QB position was a big question mark. That question appears to have been answered by Jalen Milroe, who scored five total touchdowns in a 56-7 win over Middle Tennessee. Tyler Buchner and Ty Simpson also played, but by the time the score was 42-0 in the third quarter, Alabama’s offense was in Milroe’s hands. With the QB questions seemingly resolved, we should see an increase in voting points for the Crimson Tide.
4. Ohio State (3): In AP voters’ preseason poll, Ohio State held a razor-thin two-point lead over Alabama and ranked No. 3 in voting points – 1,400 points for the Buckeyes, 1,398 for the Crimson Tide. Both teams are loaded with talent, but are also replacing quarterbacks who will be starting Week 1 in the NFL as rookies. While Alabama’s offense overwhelmed its competition, Ohio State managed just two touchdowns in a 23-3 win at Indiana. The different levels of competition and situations are important, but if it only takes a few voters to change their minds about Ohio State and Alabama, these two teams will trade places.
5. Florida State (8): Sunday’s win over LSU, coupled with Clemson’s performance against Duke, clearly positioned the Seminoles as the team to beat in the ACC. That makes her a legitimate CFP contender. No win in Week 1 was more impressive than the 21-run win over the Bayou Bengals, and that’s a crucial point for enough voters that should lead to a rise in the rankings.
6. USC (6): Guaranteed to be the top-ranked 2-0 team in the country, USC has put up 56 and 66 points in its two wins, with Caleb Williams already scoring a total of nine touchdowns in two blowout victories. Even though there are some moving pieces in the top 10, voters should leave the Trojans where they were, as a fringe team in the top 5. There are plenty of reasons to believe USC will soon be fighting for the top spots, but wins against San Jose State and Nevada will not move voters enough.
7. Penn State (7): Drew Allar’s arrival had been predicted for years in Penn State circles, and Nittany Lions fans finally saw it this weekend as the former five-star prospect rushed for 325 yards and three touchdowns in a 38-15 win over West Virginia threw.
8.Washington (10): Five touchdowns and 450 yards passing from Michael Penix Jr. – against a top-tier Boise State program – suggests Washington will not see a decline from last year’s form of being one of the best offensive teams in the country.
9. Notre Dame (13): The projection of a small increase for Notre Dame takes into account voters’ uncertainty about the offense following a coordinator change and the arrival of Sam Hartman from Wake Forest via the transfer portal. Hartman has scored six touchdowns in two wins, and the defense has yet to allow a touchdown, allowing the strong start to the season to close the tight gap between the Fighting Irish and 12th-ranked Tennessee or even 11th-ranked Texas.
10. Texas (11): Voters won’t be swayed in any way by a 37-10 win over Rice, and they’ll likely be even more hesitant to make dramatic moves to secure Texas’ spot when they can just wait and see what happens when the Longhorns face Alabama in Week 2.
11. Tennessee (12): No major adjustments for the Vols after a 49-13 win over Virginia that featured an impressive performance from the Tennessee defense and four total touchdowns (two passing, two rushing) from new starting quarterback Joe Milton.
12. LSU (5): The Tigers are the toughest team imaginable after their loss to the Noles, as it’s difficult to gauge how aggressive the voters will be in dropping them. If voters decide to be kind to LSU because of Florida State’s quality, the Tigers could finish closer to No. 9 or No. 10. However, LSU didn’t look like a top-10 team in the second half. There aren’t many teams on LSU’s schedule that have the kind of game advantages that FSU had on Sunday night, but the fact that they took advantage one possession after another is worth a notable demotion in the rankings.
13. Utah (14): No cam rising, no problem for a Utah team that remains one of the hardest teams in the country to beat at home. The Utes have a huge game ahead of them at Baylor that will play a role in whether they move up in the rankings, but Thursday night’s win over Florida seemed complete for what happens when teams play against Kyle Whittingham’s squad at Rice to be “business as usual” -Eccles Stadium.
14.Oregon (15): The Ducks scored touchdowns on each of their first nine possessions against Portland State to move to 81-7, which won’t result in any major changes in the rankings but certainly gives this team confidence in the offensive ceiling in 2023.
15. Kansas State (16): No big changes after a 45-0 win over FCS Southeast Missouri State.
16. Oregon State (18): The DJ Uiagalelei era got off to a strong start as the Beavers took on San Jose State on the road and never trailed in a 42-17 win. DJU finished the game with five total touchdowns (three passing, two rushing), but the performance was also a great reminder of what Oregon State has to offer from last year’s groundbreaking 10-win season. Reigning Pac-12 Offensive Freshman of the Year Damien Martinez impressed with 145 rushing yards on 18 carries.
17. North Carolina (21): It’s not just the fact that North Carolina beat South Carolina – a team that was on the verge of making the Top 25 in preseason voting – but also the manner of the victory in which the Tar Heels -Defense on more than half as many faced sacks as it did all season in 2022. An improvement in defense combined with Drake Maye’s ceiling is worth considering a slight rise in the rankings, and that’s what we’ll be after See a 31-17 win against the Gamecocks.
18.Oklahoma (20): Like Oregon, voters need to think about how they rate Oklahoma after playing in a game the Sooners clearly won in the early going. The substitutes arrived shortly after halftime, and the final score of 73-0 against Arkansas State won’t hurt their numbers at all. The difference in voting points between teams in this area was so large in the preseason that we predict a reshuffle that sees the Sooners move up just one spot, but the ceiling for their advancement could be as high as No. 16 or No. 16 . 17.
19. Colorado (NR): There’s no ceiling on what Colorado can accomplish this season, as Saturday’s win at TCU helped the Buffs prove the doubters wrong. There is an opportunity to build on that against Nebraska on Saturday.
20. Wisconsin (19): I don’t think Wisconsin falls back as much as other teams in this area after a 38-17 win over Buffalo. There was plenty to celebrate in Luke Fickell’s first win, including 298 yards rushing from the combination of Chez Mullusi (157 yards, two touchdowns) and Braelon Allen (141 yards, two touchdowns). But it was also a 14-10 game at halftime and a slightly less dominant performance than many expected.
21. Ole Miss (22): After the Rebels beat Mercer by 70 points on Saturday, no major changes in the rankings are expected. Notable takeaways include Jaxson Dart retaining his starting spot in a competitive QB room (334 yards, four touchdowns) and Quinshon Judkins also returning with a few points to match his 2022 success.
22. Texas A&M (23): A classic Week 1 overreaction is to hail the hiring of offensive coordinator Bobby Petrino as the game-changer Jimbo Fisher was looking for, but Conner Weigman’s five touchdown passes could also have been a result of the opponent (New Mexico).
23. Duke (NR): Mike Elko’s group was more physical, played with more urgency and, despite a few mistakes along the way, had slightly sharper execution than Clemson, a team that was ranked in the top 10 before Monday night’s 28-7 win in Durham. North Carolina. There’s been a lot of talk about how the nine-win team last year could be heat-tested with a tougher schedule in 2023, but early results show there’s no reason to adjust expectations for this new vintage Duke.
24. Clemson (9): In a vacuum, the fact that Clemson isn’t a top 25 team is an argument that carries some weight. But in the context of this season, there aren’t many “next team” options right now that are certainly better than the Tigers. Monday night’s loss at Duke represents a low point in the modern era of Clemson football, but a bad performance can be offset by a good win, and there’s a chance that will happen when the toughest opponents on the schedule head to Death Valley come.
25. Tulane (24): We don’t expect the reigning Cotton Bowl champions to see a big rise in the rankings, but the 37-17 win over South Alabama is an encouraging sign for Michael Pratt and the Green Wave Standard of competition for a conference championship maintained New Year’s Six bid. South Alabama is one of the best teams in the Sun Belt, and its handling of the Jaguars suggests Tulane has a chance to make a bigger splash nationally when it takes on Ole Miss in Week 2.
Projected exit: TCU (17), Iowa (25)