College football rankings 2022: Projected Week 9 AP Top 25 after Alabama rebounds, Clemson survives, UCLA & Ole Miss stumble

Projected AP Top 25 college football rankings after Week 8: No. 6-5

6. Alabama Crimson Tide

The big question in Week 8 was how the Alabama Crimson Tide would respond after their narrow loss to Tennessee a week ago, one that surely took a lot out of Nick Saban’s team from an emotional standpoint. Well, it wasn’t a perfect performance at Bryant-Denny, but it was definitely a dominant one against Mississippi State.

Alabama blanked Mike Leach’s team and rarely allowed the Bulldogs to even threaten to score on Saturday night. Meanwhile, Bryce Young continued to rise above a scheme from Bill O’Brien that still looks a bit suspect as he came up with another strong performance. The end result was a comfortable victory that now sets the stage for the bye week and then a trip to Death Valley to take on a surgin LSU team.

5. Clemson Tigers

For roughly 40 minutes of action in Death Valley on Saturday, it looked like things might be falling apart a bit for Dabo Swinney and Clemson as they faced Syracuse. But with DJ Uiagalelei struggling immensely, the Tigers made the switch to much-hyped freshman Cade Klubnik and everything changed. Clemson scored 14 unanswered points after the switch and came up with a clutch interception to seal the win late in the fourth quarter.

Despite how good Uiagalelei has been overall in recent weeks, the truth of the matter is that Klubnik has always appeared to offer more upside, but we only caught a glimpse of that on Saturday. And Swinney stubbornly seems locked in with DJU at this point, but you now have to wonder if that decision will come back to bite Clemson at some point, even if their toughest matchup left on the schedule is now out of the way.