Georgia, Kamario Taylor lead college football five biggest questions for Week 5
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A whole month of the world’s greatest sport’s season in the books.
Four full weeks of college football.
Fourteen – 14!! – undefeated teams remain in the US LBM Coaches Poll Top 25.
Does that guarantee more chaos in the 12-team College Football Playoff? (No).
Does it mean at least one of the quartet of Duke, Iowa, UCLA and Utah reaches the CFP? (NO!).
It does, however, set the groundwork for this week’s edition of the “Five Biggest Questions in College Football.”
1. Is this the weekend Georgia shows it’s No. 1?
Yes.
The Bulldogs already are playing the most complete football of the season, of any Power Four conference team, and if we’re going to credit Michigan for surviving Oklahoma, it’s time to further credit the Kirby Smart Bunch for positively eviscerating the Sooners, inflaming Brent Venables’s seat – at least more so Ben Arbuckle’s – in the process.
Get a load of this stat: No FBS team has been inside of three touchdowns this season against Georgia. At halftime. HALFTIME.
Gunner Stockton is outperforming Arch Manning – and virtually every other college signal-caller. He’s got 10 touchdown passes, 854 total yards of offense and one pick.
The Bulldogs dog-walk Vanderbilt this weekend.
2. Who has the upper hand in the Heupel Bowl?
Josh Heupel took the Tennessee job when no one else wanted it, and when athletics director Danny White turned back to his ex-coach, Heupel still at Central Florida, after getting “nos” from more high-profile coaches.
Tennessee absolutely is better off for the rekindled marriage that traded in Disney World for Dollywood (RIP, Queen).
But Heupel’s best work arguably came when he had Alex Golesh on staff – both at UCF and again on Rocky Top.
Now, Heupel faces his former offensive coordinator with Golesh in charge of upstart Auburn, which is extremely short of physical stature (especially for the SEC) but long on scheme.
Courtesy of an illegal onside kick, the Vols were throwing deep with a chance to upend No. 1 Texas at home a week ago. Despite giving up 10 sacks.
If an Auburn team that’s had one memorable defensive moment this year – the goal-line stop to preserve a win against Baylor in Atlanta – and little else can take the Vols to the fourth quarter, Heupel is going to face more questions about the direction of his offense from the performance of the line to his play-calling.
3. Can Kamario Taylor hard launch a Heisman campaign?
Mississippi State, under Jeff Lebby, is sniffing the rare air it hasn’t experienced since Dak Prescott triggered the offense and Dan Mullen ran the program – before an ill-fated decision by the coach to jettison the Bulldogs to ultimately get fired at Florida.
Hailing from Macon, Mississippi, a town with a population around 2,400, Taylor already is more popular than Prescott – who led State to a brief No. 1 ranking by the College Football Playoff committee and major polls.
Is Taylor – and the cowbells – enough to topple Alabama? Probably not. Keelon Russell is doing his own offensive magic for the Crimson Tide.
But Taylor does nothing in this game to mitigate his breakout-campaign, and he continues to be an emerging Heisman candidate after helping the Bulldogs take the Tide to the wire.
4. Marcus Freeman faces Bill Belichick. Who wins the non-ACC showdown?
By kickoff, it will have been a whopping 329 calendar days – five weeks shy of an entire damn year – since the mighty Bill Belichick Experience at North Carolina has generated a stateside-win against an FBS foe.
Not after beating Stanford on Nov. 8, 2025, has UNC thwarted a like-powered foe here in the good, ole, U-S-of-A. By the way, that Stanford team was in lame-duck status, razing and rebuilding to eventually hire Tavita Pritchard.
The Heels opened this season with a survivalist win against TCU in Ireland. It beat up on East Tennessee State and had a dramatic meltdown to lose at Clemson.
Marcus Freeman, meanwhile, is back at Notre Dame after serious NFL pursuit last offseason – including Freeman’s talks with the New York Giants, among others.
Now, the coach’s third-ranked Fighting Irish have a Heisman Trophy candidate in quarterback C.J. Carr and what most Irish Eyes view as the program’s deepest roster on both sides of the ball since the halcyon days of Lou Holtz.
Can UNC muck it up enough to give Notre Dame a rare second-half scare?
Not against the nation’s best defense, and that’s what Notre Dame has.
5. Does Northwestern open new Ryan Field with a signature win?
Let’s get crazy: Yes.
The Wildcats will ride their sold-out, capacity crowd – deliberately shrunken to some 36,000 – to an iconic win against Matt Campbell’s suddenly reeling Nittany Lions.
Northwestern looked better in its loss at defending champ Indiana a week ago than Penn State looked in its come-from-ahead home loss to perpetually embattled Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell’s Badgers.
Homefield. Massive energy. A flyover of F-16s. A United States flag the size of the playing field. It’s more magic for David Braun’s Northwestern program.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Georgia, Kamario Taylor lead college football five biggest questions for Week 5
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