As chaotic as October 5th turned out to be with upsets and close games across the country, everyone's eyes remained on the 12th as the premier Saturday of the season. It proved to be everything fans hoped for and more. The slate pitted many ranked teams against one another and most of those games turned out to be races to the finish line.

The Red River Shootout was the exception to the rule of quality games on Saturday and we'll get that out of the way first. OU fans have claimed that Texas had not faced real competition going into the game and while that was true, it remained true after the battle for the golden hat. Oklahoma is frankly not a quality team this year and they struggle to play a second of complimentary football. The first quarter saw the Sooners' defense put up a fight while Texas QB Quinn Ewers looked terrible. The second quarter was a complete breakdown for OU and Texas quickly ended the game there. Numbers can absolutely lie but the final score of 34-3 tells a pretty truthful story of the day in Dallas. Oklahoma's offense was anemic and barely dodged being shutout. QB Michael Hawkins Jr. clearly does not trust himself to throw the ball down field and consistently pulled from the pocket in duress early. QBs simply cannot afford to do that against a very solid Longhorn defensive line. Oklahoma's defense which has held the team together all year finally collapsed and ran out of energy. It is hard to blame the squad when they know their offense is incapable of scoring for them. Overall, the Sooners preformed about as bad as they could have, and they deserved the score that came. Texas on the other hand did not look as good as I perceived them to be. They could easily win the title this year, but they didn't appear to be capable of doing so on Saturday. In fairness to the Austin men, they did not need to perform anywhere near 100% to beat OU and they have Georgia to look to this coming Saturday. Beating a rival feels good. Dominating a rival feels great. What feels better is dominating a rival and not having to try very hard. That is what Texas did. They will have to leverage their extra energy to push Ewers further as the offense simply did not look as efficient with him as it has the past few games with Arch Manning. If they hope to continue their undefeated season, Ewers will have to step up more or prepare to be on the bench.

Florida vs Tennessee was a game that the average fan was prepared to see a blowout in. It turned out to be an overtime showing and low scoring one at that. This was not a surprise to me and Tennessee's struggles from their Arkansas loss persisted. Nico Iamaleava showed his youth and struggled to get anything going in the air without his explosive plays. Florida's ability to prevent the downfield pass or long rush panicked Tennessee and forced them to win a game that they are not accustomed to. While this game was a scare for Volunteer fans, I believe the team improved with an unusual win. The adversity of going wire to wire with a seemingly inferior opponent two weeks in a row and finding a way to win after the previous loss was important. It shows growth and maturity as the young players learn how to adapt. Florida fans on the other end must be happy. This game proved that the Gator's roster is enough to beat high quality teams and that coaching is what is holding them back. Billy Napier cannot stop hurting himself in these games. He is a major reason that the Gators cannot finish in close games. In many instances, he cannot even elevate the roster to being competitive where they should be. Napier is on his way out and has not given the administration a reason to retain him much longer. Florida fans are also celebrating the loss of Ole Miss and Lane Kiffin, who they hope will take over in Gainesville. Ole Miss was expected to be a playoff team and now are sitting at two losses just halfway through the year. This means when Napier is finally finished, Ole Miss likely will not be in the playoff and the Gators can pursue Kiffin right away instead of waiting him out.

The Ole Miss loss was not as surprising against LSU as it was Kentucky. The weird part of the loss is that the statistics say that the Rebels won the game. QB Jaxson Dart said everything in the postgame press conference. A defeated Dart explained that he simply did not understand how they lost the game. He stated that they did everything right and pulled out all the stops, yet when overtime ended, 29-26 showed Ole Miss lost. LSU did not even lead the entire game until the very end. The Tiger defense is what changed the game. This seems odd as they gave up 464 yards total to the high-powered Rebel offense. The difference here is that LSU's defense generated an interception, six sacks, a forced fumble, and a turnover on downs within the redzone. The redzone was Ole Miss's least favorite place to be in Baton Rouge on Saturday. They had five trips there and came away with a dreadful 13 points combined. The defense made stands all night. LSU has been wildly talented under Brian Kelly, yet the defense had immense struggles last year. Kelly went out this offseason and found a whole new defensive staff and that made all the difference in the world. If you missed this game, go, and watch it. It is one of the best games of the year so far. However, there was another game this Saturday that takes the crown for game of the year in my opinion.

The game of the year in my opinion so far has been Oregon and Ohio State. There are simply too many dynamics involved in that game to properly write about it in a recap article such as this one. It is only just to give the game and the weekend around Eugene its own feature on the site and that is what I will do.

This coming weekend features many games to tune into. Alabama returns to Tennessee for the first time since the 2022 chaos in Knoxville. It will be highly interesting to see the two teams face off after they both have struggled in the last two weeks to come away with wins and both have lost to teams they should not have. On the other side of the SEC, Georgia will travel to Austin as previously stated to challenge Texas. I believe that Texas will beat Georgia as I feel they are stronger on defense than the Bulldogs although they have yet to face a QB like Carson Beck so far. It should be entertaining to see new elements for both squads. I am back and forth on the Tennessee vs Alabama game. Currently, I lean on the side of Tennessee to win as they can generate more of those explosive plays against the weak Alabama secondary. On the other hand, Justice Haynes or Richard Young could surprise people and run effectively against the Volunteer defensive line and flip the game on its head. Even writing this very paragraph, I have flipped my opinion three times on the game so if you take anything away, it will be an influential game and we will understand both teams much more than we did before.