Michigan Football: College Football Rankings After Week 2

After a somewhat ugly performance against Cincinnati, Michigan football still got a slight bump in the AP poll. Here’s how they’re doing elsewhere.

These are all four of the main polls that I go by in one spot:

SB Nation does a good job of putting all four polls right there for you to see. To save you a little work I’ll give you a spoiler for Michigan Football’s Week 3 ranking:

AP — No. 7
Coaches — No. 7
Massey — No. 10
S&P+ — No. 9

This is my top 11:

Key: = means unchanged in ranking, +1 means they moved up one, etc.

1. Alabama — 2-0 = King of the Hill.

2. Clemson — 2-0 = The Tigers beat No. 13 Auburn soundly. I like the new quarterback, and they are the champs.

3. Oklahoma— 2-0 +2 They are up to the task of revenge in Columbus. Mayfield even planted a flag in the center of their field.

4. USC — 2-0 +2 Beat Stanford by more than one score. OK, I’m impressed.

5. Penn State — 2-0 -1 Not as good as USC, but good work winning that non-rivalry game. Yeah, Narduzzi likes producing rivalry games out of thin air. It’s a habit he picked up from Mark Dantonio.

6. Meechigan — 2-0 +1 Ohio State lost and the Wolverines move up? Cool, let’s burn the film on that game and have a great week of practice!

7. Wisconsin — 2-0 +2 Another solid win. The Badgers stay ready to pounce.

8. Oklahoma State — 2-0 +2 You the law? You here to evict us? Go on, deputy, get!

9. LSU — 2-0 +3 A dangerous team until proven otherwise. And they usually are sooner or later.

10. Washington — 2-0 +1 You get that Rutgers stench out of your uniforms yet? Just hold your place then.

11. Ohio State — 1-1 -9 But J.T. Barrett is setting records for touchdown passes; he must have a great arm, right?

Michigan’s offense totally stunk up the Big House. It was offensive. The defense wasn’t as great as what we may have thought either. But Ohio State lost. That makes everything better, yes?

I have the Wolverines at No. 6 and the two big guys have them at No. 7. The main difference seems to be that they weren’t as bothered by Washington’s close game against Rutgers in Week 1.

Massey is a computer ranking that takes inputs from all the major polls and averages them.

Bill Connely’s S&P+ is a very complex formula based on many metrics, having to do with team performance on offense, defense and special teams. It’s also correlated by the strength of the opponent. But don’t worry that it has Michigan down at No. 9. It’s notoriously based on last year’s performance at this time of year. November S&P+ rankings get very interesting.

Michigan did have a rough week—or at least some very rough patches with the offense this week. But I just don’t think the polls are sensitive enough to catch that.

Next: Top 10 running backs in Michigan history

In short, I think the Wolverines pretty close to where they should be. The main factor is whether the coaching staff can get these guys all moving in the right direction before the polls start to notice.

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