College football rankings 2022: Projected Week 2 AP Top 25 after Ohio State outlasts Notre Dame, Georgia dismantles Oregon

Projected AP Top 25 college football rankings after Week 1: No. 16-15

16. Pittsburgh Panthers

Though I’m not particularly high on this year’s West Virginia team, there’s no way I can possibly fault Pitt for getting a win in the Backyard Brawl. The return of the rivalry game lived up to the hype in every facet with the Panthers grinding out the win and coming out on top thanks to a late pick-six from M.J. Devonshire that ultimately sealed the 38-31 victory for the defending ACC Champions.

Despite the game-sealing turnover and score, the Pitt defense will need to be the backbone of this team for them to have similar success to what Pat Narduzzi’s group enjoyed a season ago. With that said, Kedon Slovis looked solid as the Kenny Pickett replacement and the offense showed it could move the ball in a variety of ways, all of which shouldhave Pitt believers not changing their tune.

15. Miami Hurricanes

Even when Mario Cristobal pulled Tyler Van Dyke and the bulk of the other Miami starters, the Hurricanes couldn’t stop putting the ball in the end zone against a thoroughly out-matched Bethune-Cookman.

The final score was 70-13, which is wild considering that the Hurricanes quarterback barely had to break a sweat as he threw for just 193 yards on 16 attempts for two touchdowns. Miami basically had their way on the ground and didn’t seem to feel the need to do anything but keep punching it in with that approach time and again.

As is the case with many Top 25 teams in their openers against relative cupcakes, there’s not a whole lot of information to glean about The U from this win. But it’s never a bad thing to start 1-0, which is what Cristobal did in his first game at the helm of the program.