Finally, an entertaining first round of the College Football Playoff. That was all we could’ve asked for.
After the first round of last year’s 12-team Playoff gave us 4 games decided by double digits, we at least got 2 games that weren’t decided until late in the 4th quarter. Cheers to that.
Was it 4 games that followed an unpredictable script? No, not necessarily. That was ambitious. There were, however, games that had significant takeaways in Round 1.
Here were the top takeaways from an eventful Round 1 of the 2025 Playoff:
“Hard to Kill” is now Alabama’s mantra after that historic comeback at Oklahoma … heads up, Indiana
Down 3 scores before picking up a first down, Alabama looked like it was dead and buried upon arrival in Norman. The team that got blown out against Georgia showed up at Oklahoma. And naturally, the team that won at Georgia back in September finished the game by scoring 34 of the final 41 points. That’s how Alabama matched the largest comeback in Playoff history.
Credit a bunch of things. Ty Simpson settled in. Lotzeir Brooks played well beyond his years. The Alabama pass rush flipped the switch. The secondary avoided the Isaiah Sategna chunk play. Even the ground game got a 30-yard rush for the first time since early September. The Tide didn’t flinch.
It was the type of complete effort that Alabama didn’t have in the final month of the season when it limped into the Playoff. Kalen DeBoer not only became the first coach to win a road Playoff game, but he moved into first place among active coaches with 4 true road wins vs. AP Top 10 teams in the Playoff era. It was darn impressive for a guy that plenty assumed was off to Michigan.
If you didn’t know any better, you would’ve thought it was Alabama’s sideline who wore “hard to kill” shirts and not Oklahoma’s. That feels like an appropriate mantra for the Tide. Say what you will about how they’ve looked in losses under DeBoer, but that was the 5th time that Alabama beat a ranked foe this season. Three of those wins were in true road games, too.
Now, DeBoer will face the Indiana program that helped him get his first FBS head coach while Curt Cignetti will face the Alabama program that was a part of on Nick Saban‘s first staff. The top-seeded Hoosiers are favored by nearly a touchdown (via BetMGM), so for once, Alabama can play the “nobody believes in us” card. At the very least, nobody can count out Alabama.
Not after that comeback.
There was no reset button for the Texas A&M offense
Or if there was a reset button, Texas A&M didn’t show any signs of finding it. It wasn’t that A&M completely failed to move the ball. But the turnovers coupled with the back-breaking plays in Miami territory told the story. That culminated with Marcel Reed throwing an interception in the end zone to close the game. It was the opposite of the Notre Dame ending. Brutal. Brutal it was to see the Aggies allow 7 sacks and 9 tackles for loss to a loaded Miami defense. Reed was ineffective for far too much of that game, but the decorated A&M offensive line didn’t step up enough to win a game that was there for the taking.
That’s the part that’ll haunt A&M fans. Losing a game 10-3 to that version of Carson Beck will sting, though Mark Fletcher Jr. and Malachi Toney did the heavy lifting down the stretch.
It was a tough pill to swallow for a team that started 11-0, but ended without a Texas win, an SEC Championship appearance or a Playoff victory. You can spin that in a variety of ways, but it shouldn’t completely overshadow the fact that Reed went into late-November as a Heisman Trophy candidate for an A&M offense that was mostly successful this year.
That’ll be easier said than done this offseason.
Hey, the ACC isn’t destined to lose every 2020s Playoff game after all!
The haters said that it would never happen. OK, I might’ve said once or twice leading up to this one that Miami was trying to become the first ACC team to win a Playoff game in the 2020s. That extended to non-Playoff New Year’s 6 Bowls, too. Shoot, the ACC hadn’t even stayed within single digits in those 8 losses.
Go figure that Miami, who has spent 2 decades hearing about that 2004 move to the ACC, was the one who ended that drought. Also go figure that it was Mario Cristobal who made that happen in his first Playoff appearance.
Cristobal enjoyed a nice moment after this game and was able to silence the pro-Notre Dame crowd, which was vocal throughout the weekend.
He’s right. Miami might not have earned its way into the ACC Championship — 5-loss Duke was the reason that James Madison made the field — but it earned a hard-fought Playoff win on the road by completely dominating that aforementioned A&M offense. Whether the Canes have the offensive balance to grind out a win against Ohio State’s top-2 defense remains to be seen. What’s undeniable is that the program earned its biggest win as an ACC member.
Now it finally has a chance to avenge the Fiesta Bowl loss to Ohio State.
Ole Miss didn’t need Lane Kiffin to beat Tulane, but it might need Kewan Lacy to beat Georgia
Let’s not call it a bittersweet win. Pounding Tulane and never having that game in doubt was a massive exhale for Pete Golding, who now has 1 more Playoff win than his predecessor, Lane Kiffin. It was a relief to see the Ole Miss offense look solid, though not perfect, in a lopsided win. The first Playoff win in program history deserved to be celebrated, even if it was against a Tulane team that Ole Miss already beat the breaks off earlier in the season with Kiffin. Nobody should take that for granted.
But one of the byproducts of winning a blowout game is that you quickly turn the page to the next matchup. In this case, that’s a rematch with Georgia, AKA the lone team who beat Ole Miss in the regular season. One of the questions leading up to that will be the health of Kewan Lacy, who left Saturday’s game multiple times with a shoulder injury. It wasn’t significant in determining the result of Saturday’s game, but Lacy has been massive for Ole Miss.
You could argue that he’s the difference between this year’s team and last year’s. It’s not just that he set the program’s single-season rushing touchdown record. Lacy entered Saturday with the most missed tackles forced of any Power Conference back, and he easily had the most carries of any FBS back while leading by 1-7 points. He’s the drive finisher. What was the issue against Georgia? Finishing. It couldn’t finish the job after it led by 2 scores in the 4th quarter in Athens.
If Ole Miss is playing with a limited version of Lacy against a top-5 run defense, it could be tough sledding in New Orleans. Alternatively, it could turn into another reminder that Trinidad Chambliss has established himself as one of the best quarterbacks in the sport, with or without Kiffin.
Whatever the case, Ole Miss would prefer to have its Doak Walker Award finalist as close to healthy as possible coming out of the 10-day break.
That wasn’t exactly the Group of 5 statement to quiet the narrative
Woof.
There was more bark in that “woof” than what we saw from the Group of 5 on the Playoff stage. Tulane and James Madison both confirmed every anti-Group of 5 narrative that they were part of leading up to Round 1. It was ugly. Even worse, it was obvious. Both teams trailed within 2 minutes of stepping on the field. Tulane coach Jon Sumrall even admitted that his team wasn’t ready for the speed that Ole Miss operated with, and that it took 20 minutes to make that adjustment. Mind you, that was in a game that Tulane still lost by 31 points.
Deep into the first half, Oregon was sitting on 17 yards per play. The Ducks got virtually every blade of grass that they wanted early on before the game was out of reach. And while James Madison dialed up some trickery and didn’t stop competing, let’s not pretend those teams belonged on the same field. They only got on the same field because 5-loss Duke won the ACC Championship and completely threw off the whole “5 highest-ranked conference champions” thing.
Will any change come of those lopsided games? It could. Lord knows the post-Year 1 tweak of no longer having the 4 highest-ranked conference champs earn byes was made. That actually aged well. If not for that tweak, Tulane would’ve had a bye and Ohio State would’ve been playing in the first round. Backwards? Absolutely. Are blowouts ever going to fade in an expanded Playoff? Absolutely not.
But given how fluid those discussions are about the future of the Playoff, we shouldn’t rule anything out.
Here’s how I’d rank the remaining Playoff QBs with the game on the line
You didn’t ask for it, but here ya go:
- 8. Behren Morton
- 7. Carson Beck
- 6. Julian Sayin
- 5. Trinidad Chambliss
- 4. Dante Moore
- 3. Ty Simpson
- 2. Gunner Stockton
- 1. Fernando Mendoza
Yes, I realize this is nearly an impossible ranking because someone like Sayin has Carnell Tate and Jeremiah Smith to throw to. It’s difficult to isolate those variables, but this is based on who I’d feel best about having the ball to lead a go-ahead drive with 2 minutes to play. Mendoza has done that at an elite rate while someone like Morton just hasn’t been asked to do that with how lopsided Texas Tech’s games have been.
Will that matter? Definitely. It could be the difference in winning a national title.
It won’t be the only thing, but keep that in mind at each stage the rest of the way.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
