Blog Article
What We Learned: Week 7
Saturday was the day college football’s royalty found out the rest of us get to play, too.
The No. 1, No. 2, No. 5, No. 6, No. 7, No. 13, No. 16 and No. 18 teams in the AP poll all lost, five of the top eight on the same day for the first time since 1989. The national recaps covered every one of them. Almost none of them bothered with Berkeley, where Cal lost 41-7 at home after benching the quarterback its head coach flew to Hawai’i to keep.
Somebody has to cover the dumpster fire, so pull up a chair. We brought marshmallows.
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1. Cal benched the quarterback it flew to Hawai’i to keep and still won’t say who starts Saturday.
Cal held the ball for 12:14 of the first quarter, which sounds terrific until you see what Wake Forest did with its 2:46.
It scored 14 points and gained 163 yards. The Deacons scored touchdowns on their first four possessions, needing all of 22 plays to cover 286 yards, and led 34-0 at the half, Cal’s biggest first-half hole since a 41-3 mess at Oregon in 2013. Wake Forest finished with 509 yards, 349 of them on 15 big plays, which is a lot of big plays against a team whose head coach made his name coaching defense.
Cal won time of possession, and that’s the only thing it won.
The plan was set on Monday
Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele (JKS) was upgraded to probable Friday night and off the injury list by Saturday.
Jackson Brousseau started anyway and said afterward both quarterbacks were told on Monday. Lupoi said Brousseau earned it with 321 yards against Virginia Tech, which made sense right up until Brousseau averaged 4.7 yards per completion in the first half. You can gain 4.7 yards falling forward.
Lupoi had all week to change his mind and five drives to admit he should have.
Did JKS just get Alex Smith’d?
One of Tosh Lupoi’s first moves as head coach was a late-night flight to Hawai’i to talk JKS into staying.
It worked. JKS threw 18 touchdowns and just nine interceptions as a freshman, made the Davey O’Brien watch list, and Ron Rivera went out and raised the money to keep him. This year, against FBS teams, he has five TDs, five picks and a 50.2 QB rating that ranks 84th, so nobody’s calling him perfect.
The Daily Cal compared it to the 2012 San Francisco 49ers, when Alex Smith got hurt, Colin Kaepernick took over, and Smith never got his job back. The difference is Kaepernick kept winning. JKS didn’t get in until 41-0, went 15 of 18, and led Cal’s only touchdown drive, in his first real snaps all season with Pat McCann calling plays.
So, who starts at SMU? Lupoi says he’s “going to assess,” which is coach for “please stop asking me that.”
The fourth-down call he’d make again
Down 7-0, Lupoi went for it on fourth-and-1 from his own 34.
The pass was broken up, and Wake scored 11 seconds later. Before the half, Cal got to the Wake 4 and came away with nothing on fourth down again. Afterward, Lupoi said he loved the first call and got exactly what he wanted.
He got exactly what he wanted, and it was 14-0, Wake Forest. I’d hate to see what he didn’t want.
Three offensive coaches, no answer
The most experienced offensive mind on Cal’s staff isn’t calling plays.
Nick Rolovich is the associate head coach and quarterbacks coach, a former head coach at Hawai’i and Washington State who ran big-time offenses as a coordinator at Hawai’i and Nevada. He developed JKS as a true freshman and went 1-0 as interim head coach last year, knocking off No. 21 SMU. Lupoi kept him, then handed the offense to Jordan Somerville, a 30-year-old whose only previous coordinator job, by his own account, was in 12-U football.
At halftime during the UNLV game, Lupoi took the play sheet away from Somerville and gave it to McCann, a former Fresno State OC, not to the former two-time head coach sitting one chair over. McCann’s Virginia Tech plan worked once. Wake Forest owns a film projector.
Cal keeps changing who’s in charge of the offense, and the offense keeps getting worse.
Who’s running this?
Rivera fired Justin Wilcox last November, hired Lupoi, and supervises him by contract, reporting straight to the chancellor.
In August, Rivera was talking 11 or 12 wins and the playoff. Cal raised a record $88.5 million in donations from July 2025 through June 2026. Two weeks ago, Rivera had to sit in on Lupoi’s weekly press conference to help explain why the offensive coordinator lost his play sheet.
A head coach shouldn’t need his GM at his own press conference explaining how the head coach is running the team. Lupoi did, in Week 5.
What the fans are saying
Cal fans have suffered through a lot, but they still have ears.
Some of the 33,792 booed at halftime, and Lupoi said he didn’t hear it. The most-liked comment under Write for California’s recap told Chancellor Rich Lyons to fire both Rivera and Lupoi. Others dug up Rivera’s run as Washington’s GM and compared this team to Tom Holmoe’s, which in Berkeley counts as fighting words.
Cal fans now want two people fired, and one of them is the guy who does the firing.
The CHS read
Lupoi said afterward his staff got outcoached and didn’t put the players in position to succeed.
Good for him, because that’s also the whole indictment. Seven games in, he’s walked back his OC hire, his starting quarterback, and his own fourth-down math. Rivera hired him and supervises him, so a 3-4 team headed into three straight road games, starting at No. 24 SMU, now sits on both their desks.
Year 1 is supposed to buy patience. Cal is spending it like donor money.
“You know it! (What?) You tell the story! (What?) You tell the whole damn world! This is Bear Territory!”
2. Georgia’s aura has an expiration date.
Auburn 27, No. 1 Georgia 24, on a walk-off field goal in Athens, and no, that’s not a typo.
Gunner Stockton threw two interceptions and lost a fumble, which is a lot of generosity from a No. 1 team at home. Tied 24-24 with 58 seconds left, Auburn drove 40 yards, with a Georgia penalty pitching in, and Alex McPherson hit a 34-yarder to end it. Georgia had won 53 straight against unranked teams, and Auburn became the first unranked team to beat a No. 1 on the road since 2007.
Alex Golesh won’t be paying for his own dinner on the Plains for a while.
3. BYU beat Notre Dame with a quarterback who had a score to settle.
No. 8 BYU 28, No. 2 Notre Dame 24, and it was the best game of the day, unless you’re from South Bend.
This one was personal
When Notre Dame offered Bear Bachmeier in July 2023, he got the news at his grandmother’s house in Lemoore and called it special, because his late grandfather was a die-hard Irish fan.
That September, Notre Dame took a commitment from another quarterback in his class. Bachmeier went to Stanford, then BYU, and on Saturday night he had a hand in all four Cougar touchdowns: two runs, a catch on a double-pass trick play, and the go-ahead throw on third-and-goal from the 6 with 1:47 left.
Afterward, Bachmeier said Notre Dame disrespected him and his family coming out of high school. He wouldn’t say how. He did say BYU is tired of being disrespected. Notre Dame recruiters may want to sit this week out.
And a personal shout-out from us to Walker Lyons, who caught that go-ahead throw. That was a big-time catch on the biggest throw of the night, and we loved seeing it.
The game Notre Dame gave away
The Irish lost defensive lineman Boubacar Traore to targeting on BYU’s first series, and then things got weird.
With nine seconds left before halftime at the BYU 5, CJ Carr tried to spike the ball, never fully held onto it, and replay ruled it a fumble. Marcus Freeman said he’d never seen anything like it at Notre Dame. Neither had anyone else.
Points left at the 5 are the ones you remember when you lose by 4.
Sitake almost gave it back
Kalani Sitake called a fake punt in the second half that went nowhere and handed Notre Dame the ball at the BYU 24.
To his credit, Sitake owned it. His defense bailed him out by holding the Irish to field goals on short fields, and Freeman admitted his team had to score touchdowns there and didn’t.
The coach who made the worst call of the night is the one doing interviews on a stormed field.
The ending nobody will forget
Notre Dame converted a fourth-and-2, then a fourth-and-5 with four seconds left, to reach the BYU 8.
Carr’s last pass was deflected in the end zone, there was contact but no flag, and the fans were on the field before anyone checked the clock. On Sunday, the Big 12 admitted a second should have remained and Notre Dame deserved one more play. Sitake said postgame it didn’t matter because it was fourth down. It was first down.
The conference promises a complete review of its end-of-game process, which Notre Dame fans can frame and hang next to the loss.
Somebody better make Kalani happy
This is the part BYU’s administration should read twice.
Last winter, Penn State came after Sitake, and BYU had to scramble to keep him with a long-term deal and what his wife called a “love bomb” from Cougar fans. By summer, he was publicly pushing for more resources, and when reporters asked about NIL, recruiting budgets and facilities, he said his agent would handle all that. In late August, BYU pulled football out from under athletic director Brian Santiago and had Sitake report straight to a university vice president.
Sitake has options, and Saturday night he added the best line on his résumé.
Somebody in Provo better make him happy, because after beating Notre Dame, the next school that calls won’t take no for an answer.
The CHS read
BYU was a double-digit underdog and won its first game over Notre Dame since 2004.
The Cougars jumped to No. 3 in the Coaches Poll, and the Irish fell to No. 8. Freeman isn’t on anybody’s hot seat, but this one exposed a red-zone problem and some first-half discipline issues, and he said as much himself.
Sitake just made the best case of his career that BYU belongs in the playoff conversation, fake punt and all.
4. Sarkisian’s seat is heating up, and he still won’t give up the headset.
Florida 27, No. 6 Texas 24, in Austin, where the Longhorns are now experts at losing leads.
Texas blew a 14-point lead for Arch Manning’s first home loss as a starter, and Florida collected its second top-10 win of the year. A week earlier, the Longhorns blew a 17-7 halftime lead to Oklahoma and lost on a walk-off field goal. That’s two straight losses to teams Texas was supposed to beat, and now Steve Sarkisian won’t rule out benching Manning.
Everything’s on the table, except the headset
After the Oklahoma loss, Sarkisian was asked whether he’d considered handing off playcalling.
“Not a chance,” he said. He’s been telling people for two seasons that calling plays is why he got hired. So, the quarterback with the most famous last name in football might sit, but the guy calling his plays isn’t going anywhere.
A coach who’ll bench his star before he’ll bench himself is a coach who feels the heat.
5. Alabama isn’t Alabama right now.
No. 14 Tennessee 26, No. 7 Alabama 10, in Knoxville, and the cigars were lit in the other locker room.
The Vols pushed Bama around all afternoon behind DeSean Bishop’s 159 yards and two touchdowns, and Keelon Russell threw two interceptions. It’s Alabama’s first back-to-back regular-season losses in nearly two decades, a week after losing at home to Georgia. The last time it happened, Nick Saban was still unpacking boxes in Tuscaloosa.
Kalen DeBoer’s honeymoon ended a while ago. Two straight losses just made it official.
6. Mike Norvell’s road problem is now a résumé problem.
No. 3 Miami 43, Florida State 35, in double overtime, which is Mike Norvell’s version of a moral victory.
FSU tied it with a 75-yard Duce Robinson touchdown late in regulation, then watched a second-overtime Hail Mary get wiped out by a holding call before Miami ended it with an interception. The Seminoles have now lost 14 straight games away from Tallahassee and are 0-13 since 2017 in true road games against ranked teams.
At some point, “close” stops being a compliment, and Norvell is well past that point.
7. Indiana is mortal, and Ohio State paid for proving it.
No. 5 Ohio State 19, No. 4 Indiana 15, in Bloomington, and the Hoosiers finally remembered what losing feels like.
The Buckeyes snapped the defending champs’ 22-game winning streak, Indiana’s first loss since 2024. They also lost quarterback Julian Sayin along the way, and his health is now the only thing anyone in Columbus wants to talk about.
Ryan Day finally beat the team that’s been beating everybody. It may have cost him his quarterback.
8. Penn State’s freefall has a new chapter.
Michigan beat Penn State in Ann Arbor, in a game billed as a Big Ten showdown that turned out to be two teams trying to stop the bleeding.
Matt Campbell’s Nittany Lions came in 3-3 on a three-game skid, and Kyle Whittingham’s Wolverines were 0-2 in the Big Ten. Whittingham yanked Bryce Underwood after his second first-half interception, and freshman Tommy Carr came off the bench to spark the win. A late Rocco Becht fumble set up Carr’s first career touchdown, and Penn State is now 3-4.
Whittingham found a quarterback. Campbell lost another week he didn’t have to spare.
9. The SEC is officially a coin flip.
Alabama, Georgia and Texas lost on the same day for the first time since 1996, which is around when some of these fan bases last panicked this much.
There are no unbeaten teams left in the SEC. Ole Miss held No. 13 Missouri to three points, LSU shut out Mississippi State, and nobody can tell you with a straight face who the best team in the league is.
Parity is great for TV ratings and terrible for job security.
The bottom line: everybody’s coach can’t be No. 1
Every fan base that got its heart broken Saturday wants its coach at the top of the hot seat list, preferably by Monday.
This week, my inbox had votes for Matt Rhule, Kirby Smart, Tosh Lupoi, Steve Sarkisian, Lane Kiffin, and Kalen DeBoer, all for No. 1. Kirby Smart, people. They can’t all be No. 1, and one loss doesn’t put anybody there. It takes seasons of pressure to get to No. 1, and a few angry emails after one bad Saturday won’t do it.
For the record, it’s also the first week all season nobody texted me that Lincoln Riley needs to be No. 1. Enjoy it, Lincoln.
The new Coaches Hot Seat Rankings land Tuesday. Keep the emails coming; the best ones end up in Behind the Numbers, and the angriest ones end up on my refrigerator.
