AP Top 25 Poll: Updated college football rankings for Week 12
The AP Top 25 poll for Week 12 has seen a lot of interesting developments. This is not used for the College Football Playoff rankings as those come out on Tuesday, but gives us an idea of what these AP voters think.
There were some major movements, but the top teams remained locked into their positions with two regular season games left to go.
AP Top 25 poll for Week 12
For the second consecutive week, we have no movement in the top eight positions on the AP Poll. However, there was a lot of movement from the rest of the poll.
AP Top 25 poll: College football's top losers
Oklahoma State Cowboys
The Oklahoma State Cowboys had the furthest drop for any program on the AP Top 25 poll as they dropped nine spots to 24. Not only did they lose to the UCF Knights on the road, they were blown out by a team that did not have a Big 12 victory against a team in the conference last year.
The game was never close as Oklahoma State trailed 24-0 after halftime. They were unable to get stops as they allowed the Knights to record 592 total yards of offense with only 19 passing attempts. Their offense was not good either as the Cowboys finished with 15 total first downs and 2-of-12 on third down tries.
Their three losses have them shaking, but they are still in the second spot in the Big 12 standings due to tiebreakers. With the Houston Cougars and BYU Cougars remaining, expect them to bounce back, but anything can happen in college football as we were saying the same thing heading into Week 11.
Tennessee Volunteers
The Tennessee Volunteers are the only other team that dropped more than three spots in the AP Top 25 poll that still remained from last week. They were unable to do much of anything in terms of finding the end zone as they lost to the now 11th-ranked Missouri Tigers 36-7.
Their offense was just not able to muster a lot of sustained drives, as they were 5-of-13 on third-down attempts and only recorded 15 total first downs. The team struggled to stay disciplined, as they committed nine penalties for 95 total yards also.
Quarterback Joe Milton III had a good game statistically, but the team could not get a running game going as they ran 23 times for 83 yards (3.6 yards per attempt).
With three losses on the season and having to go up against the Georgia Bulldogs next week in the penultimate game of the regular season, it is going to be a tough test for the program.
However, if they can pull off the upset, they'll be able to shake off this lacklustre performance quickly and people will immediately forget about this.