College football rankings 2021: Week 10 AP Top 25 projections after 9 ranked teams lose in Week 9

20. Coastal Carolina Chanticleers

After a tough loss to Appalachian State, Coastal Carolina responded with a nice win over Troy on Thursday night. Now, it should be said that Jamey Chadwell’s team didn’t necessarily dominate in the way some would’ve liked to see them to, but a win is a win when a team is coming off of a loss.

The hard part of the schedule is out of the way, but the Chanticleers can’t climb that much further the rest of the way with the undefeated season not in the cards. Put simply, this just isn’t the same Coastal team that we saw last year.

19. BYU Cougars

BYU picked up a solid win at home over Virginia in an absolutely wild shootout. As a result, the Cougars could see a nice little jump that pushes them up to the top 20. This team faltered a bit earlier in October but has rebounded nicely. Moreover, they have several wins over decent-to-good Power 5 teams on their résumé now after taking down the Cavaliers.

Now, they should be able to coast a little bit and potentially further improve their spot in the AP Top 25. BYU has an easy slate until its final game against USC in Los Angeles. But given what we’ve seen, that might actually not be as tough of a game as it looked like coming into the year.