College football rankings 2023: Projected Week 3 AP Top 25 after Texas upsets Alabama, Colorado rolls again
- Texas is back, and Alabama is probably not
- UNC, Oregon, Utah and surprisngly Tennessee all held on for dear life
- Colorado rolled to another big-time win
Projected AP Top 25 college football rankings after Week 2: No. 4-3
4. Texas Longhorns
Can we call them back now?
Texas should’ve beaten Alabama a year ago in Austin. But the “Texas will never be back” detractors looked at this team and said they couldn’t do it in Bryant-Denny Stadium against the Crimson Tide. Jokes on them, because Texas dominated this game on Saturday night to make a statement.
Quinn Ewers was a bit shaky early but, in the second half particularly, he dimed up the vaunted Alabama secondary with his elite weapons. More impressively, though, Texas controlled both lines of scrimmage in this game, forcing the inexperienced Jalen Milroe into numerous bad decisions. The result was an emphatic victory that should vault Texas into the early Top 4 and have everyone believing that this time, at long last, they are back with this special group.
3. Florida State Seminoles
Coming on the heels of the monster win over LSU last week, it felt like somewhat of a letdown was inevitable for Florida State, even if they weren’t going to be in reeal danger of getting upset by Southern Miss. Though the scoreboard may not have reflected it, that’s indeed what we saw.
The Seminoles were, frankly, a bit all over the place in Week 2. The offense was anything but crisp as Jordan Travis was erratic throwing it around. But it speaks to the overwhelming talent of FSU on both sides of the ball that it didn’t completely matter. They jumped out to a 31-3 lead in the first half thanks to some big plays and didn’t look back.
Again, this isn’t a game to read too much into given the position on the schedule, but I’d expect Florida State will look much sharper next week against Boston College before visiting Clemson on Sept. 23.