Week 8 Stock Report: Michigan is best team in the country, Kyle Whittingham is Top 5 coach, Michigan State is a dumpster fire
Week 8 wasn’t exactly a chaos Saturday, but a bevy of close-calls from a bunch of contenders continues to make the 2023 season look more and more wide open. Except for Michigan, which is crushing teams’ souls every Saturday.
Each Monday, I take note of whose stock — be it team, head coach, player, assistant, unit, Heisman candidacy, preseason narrative, etc. — is trending upward, whose is down and whose is holding.
Here’s the Week 8 Stock Report:
📈 Stock Up: Michigan as the No. 1 team in the country right now
The Wolverines may not have the sparkling resume win like Ohio State, Washington or Oklahoma, but they’re the undisputed top team in the country in 2023 with their weekly nameless, faceless bully-ball domination.
They have become 2021 Georgia.
They bludgeon teams, with ruthless consistency. J.J. McCarthy is the most efficient quarterback in the country (No. 2 nationally in completion percentage, yards per attempt and QB rating) with 18 touchdowns to just three interceptions. Their defense doesn’t have a singular star, but it’s a deep unit that rotates constantly and has scored more touchdowns (four) than they’ve allowed (three) all season.
Every other national title contender has survived a scare this season, sans Jim Harbaugh’s team. No matter the off-field distraction — the latest being the alleged sign-stealing scandal — they show up every Saturday and bulldoze opponents, with all eight wins coming by at least 24 points including Saturday’s 49-0 shellacking over rival Michigan State. They not only look like the class of the Big Ten again, but the best team in the nation.
📉 Stock Down: Dabo Swinney and a microphone
Within the last week, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney has…
A. Whined about fans’ spoiled expectations, telling Tigers faithful that “We’re at a point in time, and I hate that, where people think if you don’t go undefeated, you’re losers and you’re terrible. Maybe we need to lose a few games and lighten up the bandwagon. Sometimes the bandwagon can get a little too full.”
B. Lost to Miami’s freshman backup quarterback making his first-career start — moving Clemson to 5-5 in its last 10 games.
C. Tossed his starting quarterback Cade Klubnik under the bus after the sophomore made an ill-advised QB-option on the failed 4th-and-goal attempt to end the game.
D. Made a crude mental health joke when asked if Clemson’s program would consider using a sports physiologist amid the team’s struggles this season. “We’ve got one. He’s probably on suicide watch right now.”
E. All the above.
F. All the above is never what you want here.
After another loss, that bandwagon is leaking oil fast. Clemson now has three ACC losses (and it’s not even November) for the first time since 2010. Thanks to Swinney’s stubbornness, the Tigers are now an also-ran ACC program this season. Maybe it’s time to say less, Dabo.
Stock Holding: A rematch of Red River in the Big 12 Championship
Texas and Oklahoma both won their clunkers Saturday, but it no longer seems like a foregone conclusion the two Big 12 rivals will meet again in the conference championship game.
Still likely. Just not a given.
The Longhorns survived a scare from Houston, but in its 31-24 win, starting quarterback Quinn Ewers exited the game with a shoulder injury. I’m no doctor, but it didn’t look great, and Texas could be down its QB1 for a couple of weeks. Maalik Murphy was awesome in the spring game, but Steve Sarkisian did not trust Murphy to throw the football Saturday (just 1 of 2 for seven yards).
Texas can hand the ball off 50 times next weekend and beat BYU, but that won’t cut it in two weeks against a Kansas State squad that’s found some real juice with its two-man QB rotation. Lose again and a Red River rematch is out the window.
Meanwhile, Oklahoma has a game to play with and an easier remaining schedule, but the Sooners were pushed by a bad UCF team. They play on the road at Kansas and Oklahoma State the next two weeks — both very losable games if they show up with similar efforts.
📈 Stock Up: Kyle Whittingham is a Top 5 coach
This offseason, I ranked the head coaches in every Power 5 conference, and then released my overall Top 25 rankings. I had Utah’s Kyle Whittingham at No. 8 overall, and I clearly shortchanged him multiple spots.
Dabo Swinney has two championships, and Ryan Day is a bonafide winner, too, but outside of Kirby Smart, Nick Saban and Jim Harbaugh, is there another coach in America better than Whittingham?
He just beat USC and Lincoln Riley for the third time in two years, and despite a roster riddled with injuries, he continues to duct tape and superglue the Zombie Utes into Pac-12 title contention for the third straight season. His decision to go back to walk-on Bryson Barnes, who was working at Lowes as recently as two months ago to pay for school, worked. Same for deciding to play starting safety Sione Vaki both ways to give the offense a boost. Two weeks ago, Vaki had 158 rushing yards and two touchdowns in the win over Cal, and on Saturday, he had 217 total yards and two scores in the comeback win over USC.
Whittingham is 63 and has been in charge at Utah since 2005. He’s unlikely to ever coach anywhere else, but I’d imagine almost every AD in America would happily trade their HC for Utah’s.
📉 Stock Down: Michigan State
Where is the bottom? Can a program stink to any lower depths? I guess we’re going to find out. The Spartans are a dumpster fire of epic proportions right now.
They’re awful — five straight losses including a 49-0 waxing at home to their chief rival. Their team might be on quit watch moving forward. They fired their head coach for allegedly masturbating on a phone call with a sexual harassment advocate, and after Saturday’s embarrassing loss to Michigan, the school had to apologize after an image of Adolf Hitler was displayed on the video board during a trivia question in pregame warmups about his place of birth.
This is Onion stuff. And it’s not even Halloween! Is this the nadir for a once proud, successful program? Well, there’s still five weeks to go in the season — including games against Nebraska, Ohio State and Penn State — so probably not.