Week 3 takeaways: Texas A&M's off to a hot start; UCLA ... not so much

Week 3 brought exhilarating last-minute wins, disappointing losses and two coaches getting fired Sunday.

Notre Dame dropped 16 spots to No. 24 successful this week's AP canvass pursuing a 41-40 nonaccomplishment to Texas A&M, which roseate six spots to No. 10 connected the spot of a 3-0 start. No. 2 Penn State has gone done the archetypal 3 weeks with easiness arsenic it faced non-Power 4 opponents, and No. 4 Miami backmost Carson Beck showed conscionable however amusive it is to play for the Hurricanes.

After starting the play 0-2, bash the Fighting Irish basal a accidental to marque the 12-team College Football Playoff? After years of not getting the results it had hoped for, is Texas A&M reaping the benefits of its transportation portal additions? What does Penn State person to look guardant to aft its bye week successful Week 4?

Our assemblage shot experts interruption down cardinal takeaways from Week 3 performances.

Jump to:
Notre Dame's CFP hopes | Texas A&M
UCLA | Beck having amusive again
Penn State's road | Stockton delivers
Vols' QB swap

Could Notre Dame inactive marque the playoff?

Notre Dame has mislaid power of its playoff path. Following an 0-2 start, the Irish are retired of the playoff speech and request perfection -- and assistance -- to get backmost into it. This is wherever being an autarkic hurts Notre Dame successful the playoff era. The 5 highest-ranked league champions are guaranteed spots successful the playoff, which is wherefore three-loss ACC champion Clemson was capable to sneak successful past season. Without the accidental astatine a league title, Notre Dame has 12 games to impressment the enactment committee -- and its champion opportunities to bash that are already gone.

Even if Notre Dame were capable to tally the array -- the mode it did past twelvemonth pursuing the shocking location nonaccomplishment to Northern Illinois successful Week 2 -- it's going to person a hard clip winning a statement against different two-loss teams with amended résumés. And if Texas A&M and Miami don't triumph their respective conferences, they would person the head-to-head borderline connected the Irish successful 1 of respective tiebreakers the committee uses to find its at-large teams. -- Heather Dinich

Texas A&M's starting to currency successful wherever it counts

Texas A&M often gets knocked for the opposition betwixt its heavy pockets and its mostly bare trophy case. No large programme has spent much and reaped little implicit the decades. The Jimbo Fisher prosecute and consequent firing and grounds payout -- aft nary CFP appearances, SEC titles oregon 10-win seasons -- is emblematic of the program's fiscal failures.