College Football Contenders Showing Early Season Flaws

Five weeks into the college football season, a few perceived title contenders are starting to show some cracks.

Close wins in conference play can often mask those flaws for a while, but the long haul has a way of exposing them.

Look at Louisville -- it fought valiantly against Ole Miss in an opening shootout, beat SMU in a top-25 battle and then dropped the ball at home against Wake Forest. Once conference play heats up, there's no place to hide deficiencies.

The concern isn't the same for every contender. There are a few who need cleaner execution or healthy starters. Others are dealing with problems that may continue to grow if they're not rectified in a timely fashion.

Here are some ranked teams leaking oil through four weeks and how much trouble each one is really in.

Indiana

Why the worry? The reigning national champions center their game plan primarily on winning in the trenches first, but that's going to be hard to do if the injury bug continues to sting this group. Two of the three ballcarriers in Indiana's rotation are hurt after Khobie Martin broke his arm and Turbo Richard suffered a leg injury in last week's win over Northwestern. Lee Beebe Jr. is the team's leading rusher with 398 yards on 71 carries and must carry the load until help returns.

Then, there's the lack of explosive plays. The Hoosiers are currently 52nd in the country in that category, the lowest rate of any top-10 unbeaten. There's nothing glaringly wrong given Josh Hoover's numbers -- 11 touchdowns, no interceptions and a 70% completion rate -- but the lack of big-play potential could catch up with them at some point.

Is it fixable? This is a program on a nation-leading 20-game winning streak, so Curt Cignetti likely sees this and rolls his eyes. In fact, he warned fans not to whine before the Big Ten opener against Northwestern following a 38-0 victory over Western Kentucky that, by heightened program standards, was pretty lackluster.

At any rate, this team hasn't reached its second gear yet, and there's concern there might not be a third and fourth gear like last season's group had down the stretch. One positive take? Bryant Haines' defense still looks the part sans a couple of 75-yard touchdown drives from the opposition in the fourth quarter last time out.

Ole Miss Rebels

Why the worry? Pete Golding harped on horrid angles and broken coverages from his secondary the first few weeks of the season, but the SEC slate thus far has magnified a far bigger issue -- his team's lack of physicality in run support.

Ole Miss got by with a bottom-tier rush defense last season before reaching the CFP, but this unit is allowing other teams to impose their will.

The Rebels have already allowed 19 runs of 10 or more yards this season, second-worst in the SEC, and eight plays on the ground spanning 20 or more yards, tied for 128th nationally.

Rebels against the run this season

OpponentRushing yards allowedRushing TDsPoints allowedvs. Louisville162 (4.2 YPC)238vs. Charlotte143 (4.3 YPC)09vs. LSU172 (4 YPC)224at Florida302 (5.7 YPC)652

Is it fixable? After giving up 302 yards on the ground during Saturday's loss at Florida, the Rebels stayed in last place in the SEC after four weeks. Opposing offenses are rushing for 194.7 yards per game against Ole Miss — 67.7 worse than the next-closest league team and 126th in the country. This is not an easy fix, since it's primarily a matter of mentality. Though it may improve in October since all four of the Rebels' opponents rank in the bottom half of the conference in rushing average.

Golding didn't mince words with his reaction to a dreadful second-half defensive effort against the Gators.

"We had a lot of guys trying to ankle bite, diving at ankles and all those things," Golding said. "I addressed the manhood at halftime a little bit. There was a lack of courage, in my opinion, at times, that we were picking and choosing. That's an elite back, and he's a big back, and you've got to go chest-to-chest with him whether you like it or not."

Texas Tech

Why the worry? Ask Joey McGuire what he thinks about his team's offensive output right now. Slow starts are officially a thing for a football team no longer slotted as the Big 12's highest-ranked team in the polls.

The Red Raiders trailed 10-0 after the first quarter during a 28-26 win over Houston and had to shake away the cobwebs in the second half over the weekend to fight off Sam Houston.

"Our message this week is take practice to the game," McGuire said after another sluggish first half in Week 4. "What I mean by that is, when you have a play that you've repped four, five, six times -- it's gonna be a home run play -- and all of a sudden in the game you don't do that, it doesn't make any sense."

Is it fixable? Well, the quarterbacks are who they are for the Red Raiders, and they'll have to live with the results. Will Hammond has shown a lot of good -- and a lot of bad -- this season after throwing at least one interception in three of four starts, including three in the first half of Saturday's victory. Had it not been for back-to-back defensive touchdowns from linebacker Austin Romaine, the Red Raiders would've trailed at intermission as a 35.5-point favorite.

There's very little pressure to get it handled right now with Texas Tech playing Colorado (1-3) this weekend before an open date. However, a home date with Arizona State might get tricky on Oct. 17 if this offense digs itself an early hole. And considering the Big 12's unpredictability this season, there's little margin for error for what appears to be a one-bid league in the CFP.

USC

Why the worry? It's Year 5 for Lincoln Riley, and it ain't fixed on defense. Gary Patterson is not the savior on that side of the football, and there have been signs since the opener when the Trojans took their foot off the gas against San Jose State, gave up 30 points to Louisiana and nearly suffered a catastrophic loss at Rutgers to open Big Ten play.

Riley is being paid to win games against ranked opponents like Oregon -- a game he failed to win over the weekend.

USC's defense under Lincoln Riley

SeasonTotal defenseScoring defenseRush defense2022423.9 YPG (8th in Pac-12)29.2 PPG (8th in Pac-12)159.7 YPG (8th)2023432.8 YPG (10th)34.4 PPG (10th)186.4 YPG (12th)2024377.1 YPG (15th in Big Ten)24.1 PPG (12th in Big Ten)141.2 YPG (13th)2025350.8 YPG (13th)23 PPG (11th)143.2 YPG (12th)2026354.8 YPG (14th)26.4 PPG (15th)118.6 YPG (13th)

Is it fixable? Unless you put someone else in charge of the program, that's unlikely.

Riley's 5-15 against top-25 teams at USC, and now there's real pressure to make a move, given the investment the decision makers in Los Angeles have made in him. It seems those in power have had enough of the promises and failure to yield results.

Riley was confident this summer that this was the year the Trojans would make the CFP under his watch after signing the nation's top-ranked recruiting class and welcoming back several key starters off a nine-win team. But it's the same old USC, a program that has struggled to match opponents' physicality since entering the Big Ten.

Tennessee

Why the worry? The Vols have a freshman quarterback who failed to look the part against Texas. Yes, this was the top-ranked team in the country, but you're going to see similar talent the rest of the way, and the last thing you need is a gun-shy signal caller who constantly has edge rushers breathing down his neck.

Is it fixable? Maybe this was a product of facing an elite pass rush for the first time and Tennessee's offensive line simply not holding up its end of the bargain, but the success of Josh Heupel's offense is predicated on getting junior DeSean Bishop going in the run game. That didn't happen in the league opener after he averaged 3.1 yards per carry, his lowest output since the Vols' CFP loss at Ohio State in 2024.

Tennessee has produced a bevy of talented backs during Heupel's tenure and needs to "keep the main thing the main thing," as coaches like to say -- pound the opposition off the snap and put your quarterback in position to pick apart a defense that's forced to crowd the box.