Suffice to say, the Top 10 of the Associated Press Top 25 will have a decidedly different look come early Saturday afternoon.
No. 6 West Virginia entered Saturday’s game against Iowa State in Ames as a touchdown(ish) favorite. Thanks in very large part to a suffocating ISU defense, the Mountaineers will head back to Morgantown with a 30-14 loss tucked into its back pocket.
Quarterback Will Grier was one of a handful of Heisman frontrunners as Week 7 kicked off, but likely saw that candidacy snuffed out for good as he was held to just 100 yards and a lone touchdown pass by the Cyclones. Grier’s running game was no help whatsoever as the Mountaineers managed just 1.9 yards per on its 25 carries. For good measure, Grier was sacked seven times by an unrelenting ISU defense that allowed WVU to establish no rhythm at all offensively.
In the first five games of the 2018 season, Grier had passed for at least 332 yards in every one of them. His 363.8 yards per game were second nationally; Saturday night, he was held to 100. Since taking over as WVU’s starting quarterback at the beginning of the 2017 season, and aside from the game at Texas last season in which he was injured and didn’t return, his previous low for a single game was 285 in an Oct. 28 loss to Oklahoma State last season.
True freshman quarterback Brock Purdy threw for 254 yards and three touchdowns in ISU’s huge upset win, while David Montgomery ran for a game-high 158 yards.
Not that it will assuage their Appalachian anguish, but the Mountaineers weren’t the only ones swept up in Upset Saturday.
In addition to WVU, three other Top 10 teams went down in defeat -- No. 2 Georgia (36-16 to No. 13 LSU), No. 7 Washington (30-27 to No. 17 Oregon in overtime) and No. 8 Penn State (21-17 to Michigan State). Not only that, but No. 5 Notre Dame, No. 9 Texas and No. 10 UCF all won, but won by a combined 12 points to unranked teams.
West Virginia and Georgia were the undefeated teams that suffered their first losses of the 2018 season. Colorado, at 5-0, faces USC in a game that kicked off at 10:30 p.m. ET tonight.