College football Week 10 takeaways

Chaos has been the common theme throughout the 2021 college football season.

Two more undefeated teams lost (sorry, Michigan State and Wake Forest). A few other College Football Playoff contenders survived after being taken to the brink. And no one has run away with the Heisman yet.

Our reporters put Week 10 into perspective.

It’s time to acknowledge Alabama’s flaws

Six rushing yards. Repeat: 6 rushing yards. That’s what the No. 2 team in the country had on Saturday night — at home — against a now 4-5 LSU team.

Even coach Nick Saban knows the Tide have to be better than that. Alabama won’t win the SEC, let alone the College Football Playoff, if it has to rely on its defense as heavily as it did against LSU.

“I think there are a lot of the things in the game that we probably didn’t do well,” Saban said. “We didn’t block them up front really well. We didn’t run the ball very well on offense. We couldn’t run it at the end of the game when we needed to. We weren’t as effective on third down. We had some protection issues. A lot of things that we can fix, and I think we need to fix them so we can be a little more consistent.”

All of those things could add up to the Tide dropping to No. 3 or No. 4 in Tuesday’s ranking. Fans already think Alabama gets the benefit of the doubt in the selection committee meeting room, and if the Tide don’t drop a spot or two this week, they’ll have more ammunition to their claim. While Oregon’s win at Ohio State trumps anything the Tide have on their résumé, it’s getting more difficult each week to identify Alabama’s best win. Ole Miss is a two-loss team. Mississippi State, which the committee deemed a top-25 team in its first ranking, now has four losses. Five-loss Florida has embarrassed itself

So what is it? Four-loss Miami?