College Football Week 7 proved that there really isn’t anything like the pride, passion, and pageantry of the nation’s favorite sport. At its very best, college football leaves you breathless.
At its worst, it leaves you confounded and confused. We’ve sifted through the good, bad, and the ugly of college football Week 7 to bring you the best and not-so-great moments from the past week.
College Football Week 7 | Winners
Clay Helton, HC, USC
After eight years with USC, many of which felt like he spent on the college football hot seat, Clay Helton was finally relieved of his duty by the Trojans just two games into last season.
Despite winning 65% of his games at USC, it was always felt that he wasn’t up to the job, and as a result, his reputation was tarnished in CFB circles. His hiring by Georgia Southern wasn’t met with unanimous glee from Eagles fans.
How the tables have turned. Helton is doing a stellar job, taking a team that went 3-9 last season and transforming them into an offensive force. Georgia Southern’s win over Nebraska earlier in the year could be brushed under the carpet as just another Scott Frost failure for the Cornhuskers, but their win over an ascending James Madison in college football Week 7 was something else.
Helton has taken his lumps as a head coach, and now it’s time to hand him the credit he deserves. Georgia Southern traded punches with the Dukes all game long after going down 14 early.
This is a Duke team that has earned national attention for their stunning and unbeaten start to the season, toppling some of the more established Group of Five programs as they traverse their first season at the FBS level.
Between the coaching of Helton and the acquisition of former Buffalo Bulls QB Kyle Vantrease, the Georgia Southern offense has been completely overhauled and you saw that on full show this past weekend. Vantrease threw for 578 yards and four touchdowns, including a sublime game-winner acrobatically caught by Derwin Burgess Jr.
The Eagles currently rank 24th in the nation for scoring offense, they challenged Coastal Carolina close in defeat, and Helton has them within striking distance of being bowl eligible again after their 45-38 win over James Madison in college football Week 7. Not bad for a head coach who was considered not up to the task of achieving success for a program.
Michigan’s Offensive Line
You don’t have to be an offensive line savant to understand that what the Michigan offensive line is doing to every single team that they face is not just good, not just excellent, but is at a level that no other team in college football is accomplishing.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that the reigning Joe Moore Award winners are playing at a high level, but Michigan’s O-line is playing at a level even better than last year’s highly-vaunted line.
Blake Corum is a truly talented running back, and his national attention is well warranted. Yet, his path to 13 rushing touchdowns this season has been substantially smoothed by the road graders paving the way for his success. Against Penn State in Week 7, the Wolverines racked up 418 rushing yards and four touchdowns in a devastating and humbling display.
We’ve been pounding the table about former Virginia center Olusegun Oluwatimi since before the season, and his addition to the heart of this Michigan offensive line has paid substantial dividends.
Alongside Zak Zinter, the Wolverines might have two of the best interior offensive linemen in the nation, and college football Week 7 only gave another example of their sheer dominance.
Game-Winning Kickers
I love kickers. I’m not ashamed to admit it. How it’s taken me until Week 7 to slide something into this segment about the greatest position in all of sports is unfathomable. Perhaps it’s because I’m so alone in my love of college kickers.
Often, they don’t do much to help my cause, shanking apparently easily makable attempts wide of both sides and with a vast number of kickers at this level leaving it short from anywhere north of 45 yards.
This week, however, there were multiple kicker performances to be proud of. Nothing makes me more proud than seeing a game-winning field goal at the end, and we had two in big-time Week 7 conference clashes.
MORE: College Football Bowl Projections 2022
The phenomenally and aptly named Casey Legg, erm, kicked us off as West Virginia took on Baylor in an all-Big 12 showdown. After an enthralling midweek game of mayhem, Legg stepped up for a chip shot field goal with 0:33 on the clock.
This is prime kicker mischief territory, but Legg was as automatic as always and gave the Mountaineers a famous 43-40 win. “Country Roads” on cue for one of college football’s best kickers.
There was no more historic play in college football Week 7 than Chase McGrath’s 40-yard field goal that gave Tennessee an unlikely 52-49 win over Alabama and catapulted them into College Football Playoff contention.
It wasn’t the cleanest hit, and McGrath had already missed an extra point earlier, but as game-winning kicks go, it brought the house down. Literally. The Tennessee kicker won’t need to buy a drink in Knoxville ever again.
While it wasn’t at the end of the game, shout out to Stanford kicker Joshua Karty whose 43-yard strike in the fourth quarter gave a struggling Cardinal team a much-needed win over Notre Dame. Karty was responsible for over half of Stanford’s points in the 16-14 win.
Colorado Buffaloes
And then there were none. After a torrid start to the 2022 college football season, the Colorado Buffaloes headed into Week 7 as the only FBS team to have lost every single game.
Facing a California team who has been a roller coaster to follow so far this fall, but boasts impressive freshman RB Jaydn Ott, not many gave the Buffaloes even the slightest sniff of ending their disastrous losing streak. In fact, Cal started the game as a 15-point favorite despite having not won at Folsom Field since 2011.
That streak continued in remarkable style, as the Buffaloes logged their first win of the year under interim head coach Mike Sanford. The win was remarkable on two fronts (three if you count Colorado actually winning a game).
The first was that a Colorado run defense that has been porous at best — and downright disastrous in reality — held the Cal rushing attack to just 35 yards. The second was for the incredible, acrobatic touchdown from wide receiver Montana Lemonious-Craig that gave Colorado their most improbable of wins.
College Football Week 7 | Losers
The Pac-12 Conference
I’ve just got one question for the Pac-12 Conference. Why are you the way that you are
The nation’s most cannibalistic conference continues to get in its own way in a bid to return to the College Football Playoff. They simply cannot have a team go the length of the season unbeaten.
Every team that looks like they have the potential to enforce itself on the final four finds a way to shoot itself in the foot. College football Week 7 saw the continuation of this most sorrowful of tales play out in front of a national prime-time audience.
USC, undefeated through the first six games of the campaign took on a Utah team that despite preseason expectations, had already dropped two games — Florida and UCLA — effectively ensuring their exclusion from the College Football Playoff.
The Trojans got off to a lightning-fast start and were in the lead for the longest part of the game, including with under a minute left on the clock late in the fourth quarter.
MORE: Which College Football Teams Remain Undefeated After Week 7?
Enter CFB Playoff hopes killer Cameron Rising. The Utah quarterback dragged the Utes back within a point, with a rushing score with 0:48 left on the clock.
With nothing to lose and everything to gain, Utah opted for a do-or-die, go big or go home, two-point attempt that Rising converted himself. Utah advanced to 5-2, handing USC their first loss of the year and making an assault on the College Football Playoff nearly impossible.
Their defeat leaves UCLA as the conference’s sole hope of cracking the final four. The Bruins take on an ascending Oregon Ducks team next weekend, in a game that has conference cannibalism written all over it. The Pac-12, why are you the way that you are?
Alabama’s Secondary
Alabama head coach Nick Saban made his name as a defensive backs coach, starting in the late 70s with West Virginia and coaching the position at multiple programs. Prior to the crucial SEC clash with Tennessee, the revered head coach quipped that “I would just as soon be the secondary coach. It just doesn’t pay as well. I can’t afford Ms. Terry on a secondary coach’s salary.”
Based on the secondary’s performance in college football Week 7’s crushing loss to the Volunteers, Saban might need to rethink his approach.
While facing a talented Tennessee offense, the secondary was routinely torched by the Jalin Hyatt and Hendon Hooker combination. They couldn’t live with the speed of the ascending pass catcher nor could they compete with him at the catch point. Multiple penalties — whether you agree with them or not is a different matter — also hamstrung the Crimson Tide.
Jeff Scott
While Bryan Harsin receives national attention as the most likely coach to be fired, the pressure is piling on Jeff Scott. The USF Bulls might not have the lofty expectations that Harsin is under at Auburn, but they’re going through one of the worst spells of the program’s history while under first-time head coach Scott.
Each previous coach put together a winning season at least once in their tenure, and right now you can’t imagine that happening despite there being a substantial amount of talent on the team. Scott has engineered just four wins in 28 games, and the Bulls are rooted to the basement of the AAC with no apparent sign of moving from there anytime soon.
Although there’s no shame in their Week 7 loss to a Tulane team that has New Year’s Six bowl game aspirations, USF’s second-half capitulation was only slightly masked by Dequan Stanley’s 73-yard touchdown late in the fourth that saw the Bulls lose by two scores rather than three. If USF loses to Temple in two weeks, that could be the end of Scott.
If he lasts that long.
Rice Owls
Another team capitulating over the course of their game finds themselves on the wrong side of our college football Week 7 winners and losers. Rice was 3-2 and 1-0 in C-USA play heading into the battle of Owls against a Florida Atlantic team that was 2-4 after three consecutive losses.
Despite being a four-point underdog on the road, Rice raced out to a 14-0 first-quarter lead on the back of touchdowns from Bradley Rozner and Ari Broussard.
Rozner was particularly dangerous, flashing ridiculous athletic ability for a 6’5″, 204-pound wide receiver on a 78-yard TD reception where he did most of the work after the catch. However, the highlights would end for the Owls after that. Rice failed to find the end zone again all day, succumbing to Larry McCammon III and Jahmal Edrine touchdowns in a 17-14 defeat.
To make matters worse, quarterback TJ McMahon threw two interceptions late in the fourth quarter to thwart any attempt at a comeback. A win — which seemed to be in their grasp — would have put Rice just two wins away from being bowl eligible for the first time since 2014.