College Football Power Rankings: FSU OUT, Ohio State at the top | CBS Sports

Welcome back to HQ. We are getting ready for week one of college football and the college football power rankings out. Brandon Marcello giving us his list. He has Ohio State at number one. Georgia two, Oregon three, Ole Miss four. In Texas at five. I'm looking for one particular logo that I don't see in the top 25 power rankings. We'll get to that in a second. Welcome back inside our HQ studios, Jeremy Saint Louis Tommy Tran Danny Kanell has joined us. Brandon Marcello, the author of Said Power Rankings, is also here. Before we get started. Danny, I got it. I'm sorry, I got to ask you, how are you doing, man? Do you want to make the list too, Jeremy? Because I'll put you on there. It was a rough one. Florida State rough start to the season. I'm not ready to just jump off the ship just yet. Although our producer for spotlight, Noah, who's also a Florida State grad, I just saw him in the hallway and he goes, so is the season over? And I'm like, what are you doing? So I feel like I have to give a pep talk to all those Florida State fans out there. Remind them it is just one game. There are 11 more to go. You can bounce back. We've seen it done before. Back in 2014, Ohio State lost to Virginia Tech. First game of the season, ran the table, went back and won a national championship. So it feels bad. It feels like the sky is falling, but it's not necessarily. And you're keeping receipts. Exactly. Danny's making believe it. Danny is making a list. That's what he was referring to. Yeah. If I want to make the list. All right, let's get into the power rankings here, because atop the AP poll. Brandon, we have Georgia sitting at number one. You have Ohio State number one in your power rankings. Take us through the thinking here. Yeah I mean they're loaded. They did everything right in the off season as far as adding the pieces they need to. And the transfer portal in addition to what they've developed just with the high school recruiting rankings over the last 3 to 4 years, they've got a dynamic quarterback. And Will Howard, who has clocked in at 22 miles an hour on the practice fields at Ohio State recently. They've got all the receivers. You really need the number one receiver, Jeremiah Smith, the first player ever at receiver to be number one overall as a recruit. They are absolutely loaded and the defense is going to be stacked as we all know, the secondary is really good. Jim Knowles has taken that crew and improved them year over year, and I expect the same thing in his third season, leading that defense for right now. Ohio State going into week one is my number one. But I will say this, these rankings are going to shake up quite a bit after week one because I'm kind of wiping the slate clean. I want to see these teams play because as we just saw, much like with Florida State, I had them just outside my top ten and they did not look like a top 25 team at all. On the field against Georgia Tech this week. He's really close to making the list, but let's keep it here. We'll have time to talk about Florida State later. I actually like that you have Ohio State here as a power ranking team. Their roster, if you went through position by position and put every single one, I think quarterback in maybe, you know, linebacker potentially is where you'd have an edge. But man Ohio State's got a pretty good players at every single position. And if you were stacking them up, I think Ohio State would get the edge at almost every position. Not one but two former Ohio State coaches in Urban Meyer and Jim Tressel have called this the best roster they've ever seen in the history of the Buckeyes. So sheer roster then? Yes, I think you have to put Ohio State there. Now. If you were somebody that wanted Georgia at the top, I think you would go recent history, they've had more success recently. They've proven critics wrong. They've won the big games where Ohio State under Ryan Day hasn't yet. But power ranking I think they should be probably number one. Ohio State host Akron to start their Big Ten season. That's our debut game on CBS, coming up 3:30 p.m. eastern Time on Saturday. Shout out to Jenny Dell will be on the sidelines for that. Brandon, if we get to Ole Miss, we just saw your power rankings. You also had a conversation with Josh Pate, who said that the gap or perceived gap of talent between Georgia and the other challengers. Like an Ole Miss, like a Texas, like a Bama kind of bottlenecks up there at the top. And it also by your power rankings looks like Lane Kiffin's team you're bullish on more so than the other challengers in Texas and Bama perhaps. Yeah I mean Ole Miss just in the handful of quote unquote starters they lost. They replaced them through the transfer portal. But unlike other teams out there, they replaced them with other power five starters, not just backups or role players. Other starters on that team. And they return the nucleus of a top ten team, in my opinion. Anyway, going into this season, add in those transfers. They're going to do very well against that schedule, especially when we're looking just at the power ratings, the rankings where they stand going into this season. To me, they deserve to be in that top five discussion, and I've got them at number four right now. They are building things up the right way. I think under Lane Kiffin, they're complementing the pieces through the portal. Really, really talented roster going into this season. And as you see on the screen right now, that schedule is so conducive of making an SEC Championship run. Potentially this is a team ready to contend for a championship. But having said that, I do not consider the schedule and I rank these teams right now. Of cours, I'm looking at what they stand right now. Right now, today, Jaxson Dart and crew have a top four roster in college football. They should win some big games this year by double digits. Yeah, six and zero. The start should be and then things get real with that trip to Baton Rouge, Oklahoma at home. And I do think this is why. Speaking of schedule, why Ole Miss boosters and Collective said, you know what? This feels like a year where it could set up to be really something special. They've been pretty good and they've had historical seasons before, but they want to try to get that elusive national championship. So they go in all in on the portal. I have two question marks about this team, and that's why I'm not quite as high as Brandon is here. Jaxson Dart has been good. He needs to step up to be great. Like that's what separates the good from the great teams. He's got to take another level and he's kind of been incrementally better every season. I think he needs to take that big jump this year. The other concern I have is one of the missing pieces who they lost in the portal. Quinshon Judkins was brought in to Ohio State to close out drives to be that finisher in the red zone, something he's been for Ole Miss and is one of the top backs in the SEC the last couple of years. I think we all just assume, oh, it's the running back position. We'll just plug somebody else in. What if he is a special runner and they do miss him? That puts more workload on Jaxson dart shoulders. And then lastly Ole Miss has always been pretty good against the subpar opponents. But when they go against the likes of Georgia and Alabama, they kind of get smacked down a little bit. They need to step up to some of the big bullies in the SEC and prove they can hang in that territory. Let's hit up LSU and USC next two teams that we're used to seeing in the top ten. They're just outside the top ten. Brandon, where are you at? Where should we be at in regards to these two teams? I'll say this I'm not as confident in USC as I am in LSU right now. USC is in reload mode. They are in rebuilding mode. This season. Lincoln Riley told me as much just a month ago that he doesn't think the nation really understands what they're having to replace there, but what they have replaced, especially defensively, the off season hiring moves. Jonathan Lynn coming in to lead that defense after being at UCLA. The pieces they brought in, they are bigger across the line. They're bigger on defense. They were so light. They're always trying to close space. And Alex Wrenches scheme. They're going to be different there. Defensively I think more equipped to contend in the Big Ten this year. But offensively I do think they're going to take a step back. Obviously without Caleb Williams and Miller Moss, their quarterback. But LSU, I'm higher on than maybe most right now just because Brian Kelly going into year three at every single stop he has made, that's when they kind of hit their high water mark. You look at Notre Dame, they went undefeated in the regular season, went to the National championship game previously in the Mac. He goes there and wins. He wins at Cincinnati going undefeated in the regular season in year three. And he told me at SEC media days that that's usually when he has his culture in place. His is everybody understands what he expects there. Yes, they just lost the Heisman Trophy winner in Jayden Daniels, and that electric offense won for the generation there. But they had a generational offense just four years ago. Under our previous coaching staff under Joe Burrow at quarterback, the thing that I was most worried about LSU was their historically bad defense last season. They have improved there from talking to guys behind the scenes, the player, the personnel, the scheme. It's much better than it was last season. It's got to be based off of what the numbers they put up last year and offensively, they're not going to be as explosive as last year. No one really can be as explosive as they were last year. But Garrett Nussmeier is a gamer. I think they're going to be just fine offensively. But this team overall, it's the better, best one overall that Brian Kelly has had. Remember guys, Kelly is a hell of a coach. He does not get enough credit for that. He has the longest ten win season streak in college football right now at seven seven straight ten win seasons. And let's remember what he did in year one at LSU. Got them to the SEC Championship game despite when he got on campus having only 39 scholarship players. This guy just knows how to build a roster and coach. I really like LSU this season, really surprise a lot of folks. I'm really high on them. Brandon, I think these two teams are almost mirror images of one another, almost like that Spider-Man meme where they're just looking at each other and pointing back and forth like, no, it's you both coaches have incredible resumes, but I guess the one knock you could have against both of them is they haven't been able to win that big game, right? They've both made the playoffs, haven't been able to get that last one over the hump. They both have to replace Heisman Trophy winners Jayden Daniels from last season. Two years ago Caleb Williams won the Heisman. They have to replace him now that he's for the bears. Both have atrocious defenses that they're both trying to fix with new defensive coordinators, respectively. They both have a ton of question marks, which I think makes this one of the more compelling matchups. Weeks. Week one. We'll see on Sunday night play in Las Vegas. But I'm almost on the other side. I'm saying I think we're sleeping potentially on USC. We know about the gantlet that's in the SEC, with LSU, with the schedule and the Big Ten. There are these top four teams that kind of dominate everybody else, and everyone's like, who's going to be that next team that potentially step up behind Ohio State, Oregon, Michigan and Penn State. I think USC could be right there knocking on the door if Miller Moss hits and if Lincoln Riley's track record with quarterbacks is an indicator, he should be pretty good. Let's end with the ACC and Brandon. Even before Florida State's loss, a lot of preseason polls and power rankings basically had the top three teams in Florida State, Miami and Clemson 14 to 18 range. Where did you drop the Noles after the loss to Georgia Tech? And why do you favor Miami over Clemson, where some others have it flipped around? Yeah, Florida State is completely out of my top 25. They didn't look like a top 25 team, especially offensively. They couldn't they couldn't push the ball down the field. That was the D.J. Uiagalelei. We saw previously at Clemson. There was no trust in him being able to throw the ball down. The field, and they just really didn't even try when they tried. They weren't really explosive, you know? Also Georgia Tech just let Florida State into their own doghouse. They said you're going to play our game. And by that game they limited possessions. This game had the fewest possessions in any FBS game. The last four years. And Florida State let them dictate that. So outside of that, I dropped them out of my top 25 for right now. They certainly will and probably will get back in there. I think they're able to do that. But man, I did not really like what I saw at the linebacker spot. The defensive line didn't really step up the way I thought. And so when I look in the ACC, I'm really high on Miami now and I was in the off season again because of the roster they built through the transfer portal, getting some high profile guys. Cam Ward of course at quarterback, he is a gamer and that schedule is conducive for them to get to an ACC Championship game. Having said all that, it comes down to personnel. That defensive line at Miami could be very, very special this year. Everything we keep hearing now, closed doors there. This off season leads me to believe they're going to be one of the top three potential units in all of college football. Defensively, I think the one knock on Miami a lot of people have is coaching. Everybody thinks about Mario Cristobal's late game meltdowns, not just at Miami, but also even in big games at Oregon. That's something they can't let them hold them back this year. But man, I'm a big believer in Miami this year. This is a team that should win 10 or 11 games in that ACC schedule. Brandon we've only worked like in person a couple of times together. Like we're relatively new colleagues. I didn't know you were such a prisoner of a moment and also a knee jerk reaction guy by just discarding Florida State after one game against a conference opponent where they lose on a last second field goal. That being said, I'll be very curious to see what the AP does with Florida State. I think they'll still stay in there. I don't know if we've seen a team make a drop by just, you know, losing by a field goal. It'll be very curious to see positioning wise. But most importantly, they've got the whole season in front of them where they can prove any critic wrong and they can work their way back slowly up if they do make some of those adjustments. But I'll piggyback on what you said about Miami. I like Miami a lot. I actually had them playing Florida State in the ACC Championship game, and at Florida State, losing down in Miami during the regular season. In large part, it is because of cam Ward, who I thought was the best quarterback available in the transfer portal this offseason, and the and the canes were the ones who had the highest bidder, and they went up and got him, and we saw some of the deficiencies with DJ you. I don't think there are many deficiencies with cam Ward. He is dynamic. He can make plays when they aren't there. And by the way, Brandon hit on this. The roster is the best roster, top to bottom that Miami has had since they entered the ACC, even going back to the early 2000. It is built for them to win and win this year. I'm with you. I think ten games looks very doable. The bigger question mark, maybe more fascinating, is what if they don't? But I think they're ready to take a step up and take that next step forward. Right. And Marcelo's latest power rankings out here Danny Kanell joining us as well. And Danny you know producer Jack is someone who likes to, you know have a little go at you for. Oh geez. Here we go. Yeah. So he just wanted to remind you about Aidan Burns 44 yards. Appreciate that from. Yeah from Aviva Stadium on Saturday. That's messed up. Jack's on the list now to Danny is part of the cover three podcast. They are of course doing a week zero reactions. You already did that. It's a great pod. You should go give it a listen because some great breakdowns of what we saw over the course of the weekend. Of course, they're going to turn the page and start looking towards week on Danny is going to