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crownebeach Ballot for 2019 Week 12

Ballot Type: Human

Submitted: Nov. 11, 2019, 2:31 p.m.

Overall Rationale: Yards per play stats matter to me a lot. "They didn't beat any top-10 teams!," etc. means nothing to me whatsoever. So quit asking. The "eye test" is useful in terms of determining what a team's good and bad matchups might be -- it's not super useful in determining how good a team is, so I use it but sparingly.

Rank Team Reason
1 Ohio State Buckeyes Kicking onside in the first quarter up 14-0 was cruel and pointless, but I guess that's why nobody pays me to coach college football.
2 Clemson Tigers Continue to just beat the hell out of everybody. When they coast into a semifinal and obliterate some poor unfortunate 2-seed, nobody will remember that Trevor Lawrence threw some picks in September.
3 LSU Tigers The LSU defense got caught napping in pass coverage *twice* for long touchdowns, or this could have finished a 20+ point margin of victory.
4 Alabama Crimson Tide I don't buy the "if Tua was healthy" excuse, because his injury didn't slow him down noticeably. LSU just played the better football game. But I'm only about 60% sure that LSU is actually a better football *team*.
5 Utah Utes America's best bye week.
6 Georgia Bulldogs Is it too late to get Jim Chaney back?
7 Auburn Tigers A bye week to prepare for Georgia at home? The Deep South's Oldest Rivalry is going to finish 7-3 this year, I can just feel it.
8 Oregon Ducks America's third-best bye week.
9 Penn State Nittany Lions Lost a road game to a good team, whatever. The games aren't played on paper, and Minnie is deservedly higher in the AP Poll, but I still think Penn State is the bigger threat to Ohio State.
10 Florida Gators It's hard to get a read on a weirdly top-heavy SEC. The next best team after Florida is top-30ish Texas A&M, and then...?
11 Minnesota Golden Gophers Minnesota's offense is championship-caliber. I'm still not sold on the defense; it got bailed out by some Penn State drops and some Clifford overthrows. But Minnesota as a playoff team isn't a crazy idea.
12 Oklahoma Sooners I fully expect the Sooners to lose another game at this point. The OL is showing its inexperience, Jalen Hurts is making mistakes we've never seen him make before, and the offense has developed a QB run preoccupation reminiscent of JT Barrett Syndrome.
13 Wisconsin Badgers Outgained Iowa really badly and didn't really take advantage of that. In short, a typical Wisconsin performance. Interested to see what they do with Minnesota in a few weeks -- the Big Ten West has heat again.
14 Michigan Wolverines I mistakenly marked Michigan as having had a bye last week. They had it this week. We regret the error.
15 Memphis Tigers America's nth-best bye week.
16 Notre Dame Fighting Irish Say what you want about Notre Dame in 2019, but they murder the teams they're supposed to murder.
17 Baylor Bears I was an early advocate for Baylor after two amazing games in early October. Every other game they've played has been a dreary mess and a lot of them have required some late heroics. This team has major flaws that would be picked apart by the top 10; this is a prove-it week.
18 Cincinnati Bearcats Connecticut: America's best pseudo-bye week.
19 Oklahoma State Cowboys I was on Oklahoma State big in the preseason. There is at least one reality where the Cowboys win out and make the conference title game.
20 Indiana Hoosiers Indiana's projected record is exactly 8-4. What a breakthrough season.
21 Navy Midshipmen The Mids need help from Cincinnati to win the West, but it wouldn't be a shock.
22 Boise State Broncos Boise isn't playing inspired football right now, but there's only one culprit: the offensive line is real bad, and their season is only going to go as far as their QB health situation allows.
23 Washington Huskies I have a pair of four-loss teams in here that are really good but absolutely refuse to win close games. If Washington had hit one more field goal against Cal, they'd probably be ahead of Texas or OK State in the AP.
24 Iowa State Cyclones I mean...at some point Iowa State has to win one of these, right? Four losses to FPI top-25 teams, by a combined 11 points.
25 UCF Knights UCF is a really great team with a super streaky freshman quarterback. Dillon Gabriel in wins: 20 TD, 0 INT. In losses: 4 TD, 7 INT.

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