The 12 most important College Football Playoff developments from a loaded Week 10 slate

Coming off a wild first College Football Playoff ranking of the season on Tuesday night, Week 10 had the makings of a legendary Saturday. Seven ranked matchups, including two inside the top 10, and yet somehow, in terms of drama and entertainment value, it may not have even been a top-three Saturday this season. 

Just because the games didn’t all deliver, though, with Georgia toying with Ole Miss, Tennessee burying Kentucky, Oregon pouring dirt on the grave of Ohio State’s season, and Alabama emptying Death Valley, doesn’t mean there weren’t CFP implications galore. 

That’s right, for as crazy as Tuesday’s rankings were, they won’t matter once the top teams sort it out on the field, and regardless of how short of our anticipation Week 10 fell, no other day this season will do as much in that regard than this one. So, there’s no better way to break it down than to bring you the biggest CFP developments and see who might be sitting around the Table for 12 come mid-December. 

1. Bear Bachmeier’s four picks sink BYU in top-10 Holy War

• First course: Utah’s 28-20 brunch-time win at Rice-Eccles
• Tasting note: A slightly sloppy rivalry win tastes just as good
• The takeaway: Big plays win games, and Holy Wars. Despite BYU having a success rate edge and gaining more yards/play, Utah won the game by turning over Bear Bachmeier, converting its red zone trips into points, and hitting big plays.

Despite ranking No. 66 in the country in sacks and No. 105 in tackles for loss, the Utah defense ranks No. 9 in the country with a 19.6% havoc rate. Longtime DC and first-year head coach Morgan Scalley loves to run an attack-style, Cover 1 defense that’s been known to give up more than the occasional big play. 

That style shouldn’t work without negatives, and they had none against BYU: no tackles for loss and no sacks. But it does when you can shape-shift into a bend-don’t-break operation and force turnovers with coverage disguises and simulated pressures. 

Two of Bear Bachmeier’s four interceptions were caught by dropping linebackers or defensive ends he failed to account for. Those four picks, including one on third-and-goal from the two-yard line with 4:39 left and trailing 28-20, accounted for -14.20 expected points and a win probability swing of 42.2%. 

Scalley turned Bachmeier into a dropback passer with a 57% pass rate for BYU and just 56 yards on 17 carries for BYU running backs, including LJ Martin, who returned from injury. That plan, plus an aggressive offensive approach that hunted big plays, which netted an 11% explosive play rate and a 17% explosive pass rate, carried the Utes to a win in the biggest Holy War in the rivalry’s long history. 

Now, Utah has breathing room in the CFP and Big 12 title race as it heads to Arizona next week, and BYU may not have an at-large path into the field and could need help to get to Dallas with two conference losses. 

2. Kalen DeBoer emptied Tiger Stadium… again

• Second course: An all-time bend-don’t-break performance from Alabama
• Tasting note: A bitterly disappointing big game in Baton Rouge for Lane Kiffin’s Bayou Bengals. 
• The takeaway: Kalen DeBoer hasn’t been in Tuscaloosa long, but he’s made a habit of going into Baton Rouge and coming out with a big win. And while three-loss LSU may still get in, it’s hard to feel good about how Lane Kiffin’s first year is going. 

Alabama ran 49 plays from scrimmage against LSU and scored 31 points, despite averaging a pedestrian 5.84 yards per play. LSU ran 81 plays from scrimmage, including 48 plays in Alabama territory, and scored 13 points. 

Kiffin isn’t going to go 0-4 on fourth down and cost himself 16% of win probability every week. His offense produced a 52% success rate against the Alabama defense, and in most cases, that’ll be good enough to win. But Alabama DC Kane Wommack put a lid on everything by living with two-high safeties and dared Sam Leavitt to be precise enough to beat him without explosives. 

To his credit, Leavitt finished with 391 yards and a 52% dropback success rate, but it didn’t come without the negatives, and the negatives killed drives. Leavitt was sacked four times and threw a puzzling interception over the middle of the field. That was enough to give Alabama a 13-yard average starting field position edge, so despite gaining just 35% of available yards to LSU’s 60%, Alabama controlled the proceedings most of the way. 

Wommack’s approach is the right way to play Leavitt in a vacuum. But it’s especially effective against an LSU offense that doesn’t have a clear outside-the-numbers, downfield, jump-ball threat. For all Jackson Harris and Trey’Dez Green’s production, they’re both better between the numbers. Leavitt gave his receivers just four contested catch opportunities, none to Green, and attempted just two passes over 20 yards downfield. 

3. Notre Dame proved Miami isn’t Malachi Toney proof

• Third course: Notre Dame’s fearless 31-24 win over No. 1
• Tasting note: Some sweet South Bend revenge for the Irish to “leave no doubt”
• The takeaway: Miami was by no means invincible a year ago; with a better offensive line and more difference makers along the defensive line, the 2025 Hurricanes may have been a bit more immune to the ill effects of playing offense without one of the two best players in the country. 

With Malachi Toney on the field, it’s impossible to play man coverage and blitz Darian Mensah. But after suffering an ankle injury that required tightrope surgery in practice this week, Toney wasn’t on the field, and Notre Dame DC Chris Ash teed off. 

Notre Dame blitzed Mensah on 26 of his 44 dropbacks. And in the first half, to great success. Ash didn’t fear Miami’s receiving corps without Toney, and he has one of the few secondaries capable of manning up across the board. Mensah, without his easy button, looked overwhelmed. In the second half, he got to some answers, with Elijah Lofton winning at the catch point and finding Cooper Barkate in the quick game, and notably, Notre Dame cornerback Leonard Moore going out with an injury for two drives, but it was too little too late. 

Ultimately, even without Toney, this game came down to Notre Dame cashing in all three of its red zone trips for touchdowns and Miami coming away empty-handed twice. Just as Notre Dame’s loss to BYU was decided in the red zone. But Miami is clearly reliant on Toney in a way it wasn’t, even in the CFP last year, and brittle without him in a way it wouldn’t have been a year ago. 

Injuries have something to do with that on a defense that hasn’t been a consistent tackling unit all year. As does offensive line attrition, which has rendered Mark Fletcher Jr. inefficient. CJ Carr had agency in the defensive struggles as well, putting together the most complete game against a high-quality opponent of his career, throwing for 319 yards and three touchdowns. 

Whatever it may have looked like if Toney were healthy, Notre Dame did what it needed to effectively punch its ticket into the CFP. Maybe Miami will get another shot at the Irish in the postseason. I’d take a rubber match after they split the home-and-home. And with Toney, I’d take the Canes. 

4. Georgia can blitz its way to the SEC Title game

• Reservation: The season isn’t over yet, but this team has all but locked up a spot in the CFP
• Booking: No program puts a good team in a headlock quite like Kirby Smart’s Georgia, and after choking out Trinidad Chambliss and Ole Miss for 60 minutes in a 42-7 win in Oxford, the Bulldogs are almost certainly headed to the SEC Championship Game or, at the very least, an at-large CFP bid
• Cancellation policy: The only way they won’t make the CFP is if they go worse than 2-1 down the stretch against Missouri, South Carolina, and Georgia Tech. 

It’s typically terrifying to blitz a really good quarterback like Trinidad Chambliss. He’s a particularly fast processor who knows where to go with the ball and throws with great accuracy and anticipation. But even against great quarterbacks, sometimes it’s best to dictate the terms. That’s what Brian Flores is doing in the NFL with ridiculously high blitz rates, and what Georgia did to break the Ole Miss offense in Week 10. 

Even a team that has great answers for the blitz has a decidedly smaller menu of calls against the blitz. So when you bring pressure, as Kirby Smart and Glenn Schumann did on 66.7% of Chambliss’s dropbacks on Saturday, you’re immediately limiting what the offense can get to and how they have to live. 

Sure, Chambliss can kill you as a creator, and no, with just eight pressures and two sacks, Georgia didn’t constantly kill drives with blitz packages. What it did was wipe out the Ole Miss RPO game and dragged down Chambliss’s average depth of target to the point that he averaged 3.40 yards per dropback, down from 7.87 in the Sugar Bowl last year, when he was blitzed less and not sacked once. 

If Georgia can live with a 60+ percent blitz rate against Chambliss, it can do it against anybody. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the more it does, the better it plays. 

5. It’s not just Luke Fahey, Ohio State doesn’t have it

• Check, please: When it’s clear there won’t be a seat for you at the CFP table, it’s time to pay your check and leave
• The cost: Jeremiah Smith’s legendary Heisman campaign and a shot at another title

THE Ohio State Buckeyes had not given up 38 unanswered points since 1999. That’s what they did in Columbus after going up 14-0 on Oregon in Week 10. Dan Lanning rolled the dice a number of times, including a fake punt pass from Teitum Tuioti to Matayo Uiagalelei, and the Ducks’ playmakers took over. Ohio State added two touchdowns in garbage time to make the final score (41-28) look less lopsided, but this was convincing. 

All year, I and so many others have written about how the Buckeyes don’t have options outside of Jeremiah Smith, and a lack of explosiveness on the ground left Fahey to throw it 50 times. But the bigger issue is defensively, with a pass-rush that pressured Dylan Raiola just eight times on 41 dropbacks and didn’t sack him once. 

When pressured, Raiola went 2-for-8 for 10 yards. He’s still just as pressure-sensitive as ever. But, strangely, an Ohio State roster that cost over $50 million didn’t have any way to take advantage of that. Outside of Smith, there isn’t another first-round NFL Draft prospect, so maybe, after shedding all that talent into the league last year, Ohio State is finally susceptible to the ebbs and flows of roster building that seemingly every other program in the country is. Or maybe the Buckeyes just lost their quarterback. Either way, with three losses, it’s over for this team. 

6. Will Muschamp and Arch Manning send Missouri packing

• Check, please: When it’s clear there won’t be a seat for you at the CFP table, it’s time to pay your check and leave
• The cost: A chance for Eli Drinkwitz to prove he can really win big after his “top-10” win over Florida aged like milk. 

Steve Sarkisian has Arch Manning playing faster and the run game working, so when Texas plays like that, there’s little shame in taking a loss. But the story for Missouri is how Austin Simmons and the offense fared against Will Muschamp’s mostly Colin Simmons-less defense. 

Simmons played 19 snaps as he continues to work back from injury, but he had just one QB pressure. In fact, with Simmons’ quick trigger, Texas only pressured Simmons eight times and sacked him once. But that’s far from the only thing the Texas defense is good for. 

Typically, a high blitz rate team can get burned by a QB with a time to throw south of 2.5 seconds, as Simmons had on Saturday. That didn’t happen to Texas, which limited Missouri to just 3-for-16 on third down without a conversion of longer than third-and-four. On third-down, Simmons went 4-for-15 for 16 yards and just one conversion. 

Mizzou mostly hung around, but it needed far more from Simmons and the passing game to deliver the type of program-defining win that’s long eluded Drinkwitz. That’s a huge ask in this spot, but that’s what it takes if you want to be taken seriously as a real CFP contender, not just a load-bearing win for them. 

7. Florida’s offense could only scheme itself so far

• Check, please: When it’s clear there won’t be a seat for you at the CFP table, it’s time to pay your check and leave
• The cost: From a 4-0 start to four losses in its last 5, Florida is falling apart in John Sumrall’s first year. 

The Florida Gators averaged 53.5 points per game over the first four games of the season. Across the last five, that same offense, though with two different QBs and without Vernell Brown III, has averaged 15.6 points. Buster Faulkner’s unit has scored just 15 total points across the last two games, losing to Georgia 27-8 in Week 9 and to Oklahoma 23-7 in Week 10. 

Faulkner’s scheme is still one of the best in the country, leveraging pre-snap motion, formations, and run-pass conflict to manufacture explosives. And when that run-pass conflict still exists, the offense has been largely fine, generating 0.01 EPA/play on early downs in this game with a 53% run rate and a 52.6% rushing success rate. But on passing downs, with a run rate of just 27%, Florida’s success rate dropped to just 29%. Overall, Trammel Jones averaged -0.34 EPA/dropback. 

For all Faulkner’s talents as a play-caller, an offense with a leaky offensive line and questionable quarterback play just isn’t going to be successful week-over-week in the SEC (or any Power Conference, for that matter). 

The Gators were only still on the periphery of the CFP race at No. 24, but it’s not done after this loss. And for the SEC, a win over Florida isn’t quite the resume line item it once was. 

8. Arion Carter buries Kentucky with his expensive outing

• Head of the table: The best individual performance of the week earns a seat at the head of the table
• The resume: 13 tackles, 4 tackles for loss, 2 sacks, 5 QB pressures, 7 stops
• The takeaway: Kentucky’s offense ran into a buzz saw in the form of Tennessee linebacker Arion Carter in Week 10, and with a 34-6 win over No. 6, the Vols instantly boosted their CFP standing

In a lot of ways, Kentucky and Will Stein have been getting away with it. Despite a No. 6 ranking, they came into Week 10 at No. 34 in SP+ and No. 29 in offensive efficiency. That’s a good team. That’s probably not the No. 6 team in the country, and as Alabama did back in Week 2, Tennessee showed that there are levels in the SEC, and until Kentucky gets more talent, it’s not on theirs. 

Carter’s remarkably disruptive day led a defense that finished with four sacks and eight TFLs, costing Kentucky 77 yards. The game also cost Arion Carter a healthy chunk of change too. The veteran linebacker donates money to cancer research for every sack, tackle, turnover and touchdown he record this year, and for Week 10, he’ll be coughing up $6,124 of his NIL money. 

Defensive tackle Xavier Gilliam has been the star of this Tennessee defense so far, and while he’s been dominant up front, it’s Carter’s athelticism and versatility as a 6-foot-1, 238-pound off-ball linebacker with 17 QB pressures and an 11.1% pass rush win rate as a blitzer that makes this Jim Knowles defense really sing. 

9. UCLA rode the downfield Dieffenbach formula

• Hors d’oeuvres: A little something to chew on from the week that was in college football
• Nutrition facts: 
• UCLA QB Ty Dieffenbach went 8/16 for 303 yards, 3 TDs, 1 INT (37.9 yards/completion, 18.9 ypa)
• Those 37.9 ypc are 2nd most this season
• 8 completions are the fewest in a 300-yard game for an FBS QB since 2000 (Chris Hummer)
• Dieffenbach finished with an average depth of target of 15.0 yards downfield and went 4/6 for 231 yards and 3 TDs on throws over 20 yards downfield
• Aiden Mizell caught 2 passes for 150 yards and 2 TDs

Without a reliable down-to-down passing game since Nico Iameleava went down with a season-ending injury against Oregon, UCLA is going to have to win with slim margins every week. Maybe the best way to do that is to win the explosive play battle, and the Bruins absolutely did that as Ty Dieffenbach went bombs away, generating a 24% explosive pass rate. 

If you strip out explosive plays, Minnesota was more efficient than UCLA in the Bruins’ 34-20 road win, with a -0.20 non-explosive EPA/play to UCLA’s -0.27 non-explosive EPA/play. But UCLA generated the explosives, and Minnesota didn’t.

Dieffenbach is far from perfect, but he’s navigated the pocket well this year, hasn’t taken many sacks, and clearly, he throws a pretty nice deep ball. With the No. 23 run game by success rate and an elite defense, you can win that way. At least enough to make the CFP. 

10. Texas Tech is different with Tommy C 

• Hors d’oeuvres: A little something to chew on from the week that was in college football
• Nutrition facts: 
• Tommy Castellanos is averaging 0.44 EPA/dropback this season, which would be good for No. 3 in the country.
• Will Hammond averaged 0.05 EPA/dropback. 
• In last 2 games with Castellanos at QB, Texas Tech is averaging 302 rushing yards per game, which would be good for No. 3 in the country, behind Army and Air Force and just ahead of Navy. 
• Castellanos has accounted for 725 yards of total offense and eight touchdowns across his two starts. 

Every statement in this section has to be couched in the understanding that Texas Tech got to play West Virginia’s defense in Week 10, and that is a blessing to all. Still, it’s hard not to be impressed with how this offense has morphed since Castellanos replaced Will Hammond in Week 9. 

Castellanos is a run-first player, but that tends to open up the pass. In Week 10, it opened up to the tune of 362 yards on 18/27 with five touchdowns and a 26% explosive pass rate. Texas Tech has a talent edge basically every week in the Big 12, and that’s especially true at the skill positions. While a Castellanos offense tends to be a bit heliocentric in a James Harden way, if it has the right pieces around it, can produce late-2010s Houston Rockets efficiency. 

11. A healthy Alabama offense is a scary Alabama offense

• Dessert: Whether it’s a rich play design or a decadent athletic display, here’s a sweet football treat
• Tasting note: A full-strength shot of Crimson Tide that went down smooth for Ryan Grubb

For all the consternation around Ryan Grubb from Alabama fans, he can call a heck of a game when he has a full, or at least close to a full, complement of weapons. The Tide struggled to run the ball with center Racin Delgatty out and lacked the true threat of verticality in the offense with Ryan Coleman-Williams recovering from surgery. 

Both were back on the field against LSU in Week 10, and suddenly the run game had real traction, the passing game was explosive, and the elements of Grubb’s offense, particularly in short yardage that are often maligned as too cute, were suddenly just the right amount of cute. That includes the short-yardage reverse to RCW off a zone-read fake, an old staple from he and DeBoer’s time at Washington. 

12. The Owls knocked the Roadrunners of their American Conference perch

• Kid’s menu: The CFP saves one spot at the big kids’ table for the Group of Six
• The takeaway: UTSA isn’t the same away from the Alamo Dome, and a 60-29 loss to FAU in Boca Raton not only knocks the Roadrunners effectively out of the CFP race, but it boosts North Texas up to No. 1 in the American at 7-2 (5-0)

FAU quarterback Caiden Veltkamp can really spin it, and only Thursday night in Boca, he was dealing against a UTSA defense that came in ranked No. 86 in defensive efficiency according to SP+. For as good as Veltkamp was, rushing for 339 yards on 49 carries as an offense tends to make life easy on a QB. 

If UTSA ran the table and finished with its lone loss to Texas, it had a legit shot to be considered over Boise State. New Mexico, the other real G6 contender, needs Boise State to lose, but the Roadrunners could have potentially put together a better resume on their own. Now, that ship has sailed, so it’s a two-horse race for the spot, and it’s probably not a surprise that the Broncos are winning it.