CFP Vibe Check: Keelon Russell Elevates Alabama, ACC Faces Week 5 Disaster

Every week, the CFP Vibe Check tries to put its finger on where things stand in the College Football Playoff race without overreacting to what it just saw, but also probably overreacting to everything it just saw.

Keelon Russell is terrifying. I couldn't shake this feeling as I watched Russell and No. 7 Alabama take the September Cinderella Story known as No. 16 Mississippi State and mash it into an unrecognizable paste. The Tide won 56-23, and it was eerily reminiscent of every Alabama performance we've seen so far this season.

The Tide are now 5-0 and have outscored opponents 248-104. They've scored at least 45 points in every game, and mind you, this hasn't been against your typical early-season schedule. While plenty of teams have run it up against FCS and G6 foes, four of Alabama's first five games have been against Power Four teams. The Tide is already 3-0 in SEC play and has a win over Florida State as well.

And Keelon Russell is a primary reason why.

I'm not going to argue that he's the best quarterback or player in the country. But he might be the guy defensive coordinators least want to see in a playoff game. Don't get me wrong, I know Jeremiah Smith exists, and there aren't many defenses out there with a concrete plan on how to stop him, but you can at least slow him down if you put pressure on Julian Sayin .

I don't know that you can pressure Russell. I swear there are no fewer than three times per game when, by all rights, Russell should be sacked. The defense has him surrounded in the pocket, with nowhere to go, but then the next thing you know, he's found somewhere to go, and he's gone there. Often going even further.

They're the kind of plays defenses can't plan for, and they're the kind that break your spirit. You do everything right, and it doesn't matter. First down, or touchdown, Alabama. Ya done been Keelon'd. All things considered, Mississippi State actually did a decent job with Russell on Saturday. The Bulldogs did sack him four times, which brought his rushing total down to 16 yards.

Unfortunately, Russell isn't one of those mobile quarterbacks who are neutralized when you make them into passers. He had no problem throwing for 285 yards and three touchdowns on 22 attempts, which is why he's terrifying.

You take away one thing, he'll just do the other. You have to take away both, and I don't know that there's a defense that can. Perhaps we'll finally see one next week when Alabama takes on No. 2 Georgia . Or perhaps we won't.

All I know is that right now, Keelon Russell should terrify you if he isn't on your team, and the fact that he's on Alabama's is what makes the Tide an extremely dangerous team in the national title picture.

Welcome to the conversation, Mizzou

No. 25 Missouri was catching strays all week for being ranked. A team that hadn't beaten a ranked team or a team with a winning record since the start of the 2025 season was holding onto a place in the polls after wins over Arkansas Pine-Bluff, Kansas and Troy .

As you'd expect, it made Missouri fans mad. Still, it was a perfectly justifiable argument against Missouri being ranked. When your best accomplishment is a close loss on the road to Mississippi State, it's fair to wonder if you genuinely deserve to be ranked ahead of undefeated teams from other Power Four conferences. It'd be one thing if you had a tremendous strength of schedule, but you didn't.

Well, nobody will complain when Mizzou is ranked this week. That thing where they couldn't beat winning teams or ranked teams? Yeah, they won one. Big. No. 8 Florida came to CoMo as the talk of the college football nation. Some idiots even t alked about the Gators as being legitimate playoff contenders after wins over Auburn and Ole Miss .

Maybe they still are, but we've often seen 28-point losses held against teams while fighting for an at-large bid, and now the Gators have one on their resume courtesy of the Missouri Tigers.

And it was every bit the ass-whipping the score suggests. Austin Simmons threw for 340 yards and two touchdowns. Cayden Lee caught eight passes for 110 yards, and Donovan Olugbode had six catches for 94 yards and a score. Then there was Jamal Roberts , who rushed for 211 yards and three touchdowns of his own.

Missouri dominated Florida along the lines of scrimmage on both sides of the ball. Missouri snuffed out Florida running back Jadan Baugh's Heisman hopes, holding him to 13 yards on 12 carries. Yeah, it's only one game, but you don't see many Heisman winners survive performances like that when the ballots are due.

Eli Drinkwitz has had big wins with the Tigers, but this might be the biggest. It's a win that vaults Missouri into the playoff conversation, despite last week's loss. The Tigers' playoff odds at DraftKings went from +1200 (7.7%) entering the weekend to +700 (12.5%). That may not seem like much, but there was a huge gap between the Tigers and the top seven in the SEC heading into the week. Now, that gap has not only disappeared, but the Tigers have better odds than Mississippi State.

Of course, one win against a ranked team won't be enough. They'll likely have to win quite a few more to stay in the picture, but there's proof of concept now. The Tigers have NFL talent at QB, WR and RB. They have a defense that took a Florida team averaging 53.5 points per game and held it to 17.

The ACC had a nightmare weekend

Pitt and Virginia Tech were two of the undefeated Power Four teams many felt deserved to be ranked ahead of Missouri last week. They met Friday night, and in typical ACC fashion, played a very entertaining game. But, in the end, it ended up hurting the ACC as a whole.

Pitt won, but it did so at tremendous cost. Panthers QB Mason Heintschel suffered a torn ACL in the game that will keep him out the rest of the season . It's an injury that will seriously hurt Pitt's chances of competing going forward. Seriously, despite the win, Pitt's playoff odds fell from +500 (16.7%) to +1050 (8.7%).

But the problems for the league didn't end there. No. 4 Miami crushed Clemson 41-13. It came as no surprise, but it put to bed the fever dream of Clemson maybe getting its act together and resembling the Tigers of old.

No. 21 SMU struggled to beat Boston College , 25-16. Syracuse needed overtime to beat UConn 42-41. Cal lost to UNLV 39-31.

NC State , which had already lost to Virginia and Vanderbilt , beat Louisville 31-28. Now the Louisville team, with a close loss to Ole Miss and a win over SMU, has three losses on the season and is effectively eliminated from the playoff.

Now the ACC is looking at a situation where its best hopes for a second team are a Pitt team without its QB, an SMU team with a loss to a Louisville team that is fighting to reach a bowl, and Wake Forest and Duke . Now, I don't mean to sound dismissive of Wake Forest or Duke. I find them to be two good teams that don't get nearly enough respect nationally, but they just don't get respect nationally. Nor do they have the kind of schedule that will help them earn it from this point forward. Hell, you could argue that if Duke beats Miami later this season, it would hurt the ACC!

But don't just take my word for it! As of right now, Miami has the best odds of any ACC team to make the CFP at -1200. Only Notre Dame has better odds. The next best odds in the league are SMU at +1000. That ranks 24th nationally and is behind 20 other Power Four teams, as well as Group of Six teams like Boise State , James Madison , and New Mexico . The Mustangs have the same odds as UTSA .

The Big Ten has a faint pulse

If somebody had told you before the season began that the Big Ten would have six teams that started conference play 2-0, and four of them were Minnesota , Nebraska , No. 23 UCLA and Wisconsin , how would you have reacted? Because that's where we sit right now.

The other two are No. 6 Indiana and No. 5 Ohio State , who are supposed to be there, and No. 15 Oregon is 1-0. Those are the three Big Ten teams that still feel like the league's playoff teams, and all three saw their odds slightly improve or stay steady this weekend.

The problem for the Big Ten is that No. 18 USC saw its odds worsen after a narrow 25-21 win over a Washington team that's looked bad all year. As for Michigan , well, we're not proclaiming the Wolverines dead after their 20-14 loss to Minnesota, but they currently have the same odds as the Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns .

All of which means that if the league is to get a fourth team, USC needs to get its act together, or one of those early season success stories needs to keep it up. Oddly enough, after Oregon, No. 14 Iowa still has the best odds of making the field at +450. They didn't budge even after a 31-14 loss to the Buckeyes. It's fair to say the books had already factored that loss in ahead of time.

But elsewhere in the league, Wisconsin's odds moved from +1850 to +1200. Northwestern jumped from +2000 to +1300, and Minnesota went from +3000 to +2000. Those aren't great odds, but they're moving in the right direction. If the Big Ten does somehow manage to squeeze a fourth team in this year, it isn't likely to be a team we were expecting before the year began. I'd still bet on UCLA before anybody else , but more candidates are emerging, which is what the league needs.

Week 6 vibe shifters

A look ahead to the five games on this week's slate most likely to impact the playoff race

- Georgia at Alabama - UCLA at Oregon - Indiana at Nebraska - Boise State at Fresno State - Texas vs. Oklahoma

This week's CFP projection

- Notre Dame - Georgia - Miami - Ohio State - Alabama - Oregon - Texas - Indiana - Utah - LSU - Florida - Boise State

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_Originally reported by [CBS Sports](https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/college-football-playoff-vibe-check-projections-alabama-keelon-russell-acc/)._