How the Sabres changed their culture to change their results
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Kristen Shilton, ESPN NHL reporter
BUFFALO, NY — The Buffalo Sabres didn’t rebuild from scratch.
Don’t let the franchise’s headline-generating class of rising young stars convince otherwise.
Buffalo was reforged through strategy, embracing fundamentals and a return to the basic principle of walk before you run — or more aptly, lose (copiously) before you can win.
Yet, there was no scorched-Earth scenario. Rather, it was a pack of Sabres’ veterans — namely Kyle Okposo, Zemgus Girgensons, Jeff Skinner and Craig Anderson — quietly nurturing the club’s foundation with seeds waiting to bloom.
“Our veterans have gotten that room to the point where today, right now, the players know they should go out each night and know they’re capable of winning. It’s much different than before,” head coach Don Granato told ESPN in September. “We’ve grown from where, two years ago, we drafted Owen Power [No. 1 overall], which means we were not in a good position in the standings. The focus then was on getting our things in order. We had to get our culture in order. We had to learn to work, we had to learn to compete. We had to learn to do it every day. And then we could start talking about winning.”
That conversation has reached fever pitch, not just in Buffalo but around the NHL. The Sabres are no Atlantic Division afterthought. Despite a tough start with two losses to begin the season, they’re expected to be contenders.
That shift took patience, perseverance and a resounding all-in commitment from Buffalo, to where now reaching its full potential should include slaying a few inner demons. Chief among those is the organization’s 12-year playoff drought, longest among any team in the four major pro sports leagues. Put mildly, it has been a rocky stretch.
Since the Sabres’ most recent postseason appearance in 2010-11, they’ve finished last in the Atlantic Division five times, twice ended up 31st overall in the league (in back-to-back seasons no less, in 2013-14 to 2014-15), churned through seven different coaches, and drafted — before trading away — two top-tier talents in Sam Reinhart (picked second overall in 2014) and Jack Eichel (second overall in 2015).
It has been a long road bringing these Sabres back to contention. And Buffalo is aware of the stakes — externally, but internally, too. And if anyone forgets, Okposo will be there with a reminder. It’s what the Sabres’ captain has done since Buffalo dedicated to a long-haul retooling.
He won’t stop until they finally get it right.
“We know what’s expected; we believe that we’re a good team,” Okposo said. “And we know the standard. That’s something that hadn’t been here. We were trying to find an identity for a long time and couldn’t. And then we basically stripped it down and started something different. And we were building that identity for about two years. And now that phase of our organization and our team is over, and now it’s time to go be a good team. And that’s what it feels like.”
BUFFALO IS BANKING on long-term prosperity from here. So, before the Sabres’ season started, GM Kevyn Adams invested long term in players to make it happen.
First up was Rasmus Dahlin, and an eight-year, $88 million contract that will carry the 23-year-old through a critical bulk of his career. The Sabres drafted Dahlin first overall in 2018, and their blueliner produced a breakout campaign in 2022-23 with 15 goals and 73 points in 78 games to establish himself as one of the league’s finest emerging talents on defense.
After Dahlin, it was Power signing a seven-year, $58.45 million pact. The defenseman was selected first overall by Buffalo in 2021 and, after some early growing pains, appears ready to handle an increasingly heavy workload on the Sabres’ back end.
Simply having a pair of recent No. 1 picks playing prominent roles in the lineup would be an embarrassment of riches for most teams. Buffalo’s enviable list of 20-something talents in the prime of their careers hardly stops with them:
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There’s Mattias Samuelsson (23), drafted 32nd overall in 2018 and proving to be a reliable stay-at-home defender in his own right. He agreed on a seven-year, $30 million deal in 2022.
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Dylan Cozens — selected seventh overall in 2019 — is fresh off a 31-goal season that rightly drew attention to his solid two-way game. The 22-year-old signed a seven-year, $49.7 million extension in February.
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Jack Quinn — nabbed eighth overall in 2020 — generated excitement in his first full NHL season last year, but the 22-year-old will miss the start of this one recovering from a ruptured Achilles tendon.
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And then of course there’s Tage Thompson. It wasn’t Buffalo that drafted him in the first round — St. Louis did that at 26th overall in 2016 — but the Sabres brought Thompson in as part of the Ryan O’Reilly trade with the Blues in 2018. Thompson, 25, graduated from wing to center two seasons ago under Granato’s suggestion and eventually thrived, collecting 47 goals and 94 points in 78 games last season to put the league on notice about its dynamic new scoring threat. And that was before Thompson inked his own seven-year, $50 million extension in 2022 to stick with the Sabres.
Those skaters are integral pieces of the Sabres’ core. Each one repeats the same refrain, about Buffalo being the only place for them.
It’s easy to say that now and mean it. But building Buffalo into a desirable landing spot didn’t come out of nowhere — or without critical groundwork laid by the likes of Okposo.
Before that crew of young standouts came on the scene, it was Okposo — as an unrestricted free agent in 2016 — pledging his own commitment to the team with a seven-year, $42 million agreement.
That kicked off a roller-coaster tenure for Okposo in Buffalo. He produced a set of strong seasons out of the gate, but declining play thereafter had fans calling for a buyout of his contract. Okposo bounced back in 2021-22 and was named Buffalo’s captain before the following season. Even that didn’t protect Okposo last summer from a fraught contract negotiation to stay in the fold, but he eventually settled on a one-year, $2.5 million deal.
Okposo might be in the twilight of his career now, but the 35-year-old echoes the same sentiment about Buffalo as teammates a decade his junior.
“There was nowhere else I wanted to play,” he said. “And I think that the organization recognized that, and I know that the organization wanted me back as well. So, we figured it out. And I never really considered retiring. I tried to work as diligently as I could this summer so I could get back to being the player that I wanted to be, and I know that nobody defeats Father Time, but I was just wanted to be as prepared as I could. So, I’m really looking forward to my game personally this year.”
It has been some time since Okposo felt worthy of focusing on his achievements. The past two seasons especially had been devoted to the Sabres’ bigger picture and creating traditions for the next generation to carry on.
In many ways, he believes that work has been accomplished.
“Something I’ve put at the forefront is myself, in my game, and how I feel,” he said. “It’s something I hadn’t done in the past because I’ve been worried about a lot of other things. And the mental space that’s freed up in my brain because I’m not worried about the culture really anymore at all is awesome and it’s huge, so I’m really looking forward to a good year.”
Okposo’s contributions haven’t gone unnoticed, or unappreciated, by the ones now benefiting from Buffalo’s renaissance. The team’s captain is clearly beloved.
“He’s the best leader for sure,” Cozens said. “He’s so smart, he’s so well spoken and he’s just a true leader. He leads by example. He always knows what to say about everything. We’re super grateful to have him because he’s so great.”
“Kyle’s got the respect of everybody around here and for good reason,” Granato added. “He comes to the rink and brings a lot of joy, pure love of the game, but he also works, and he works hard. And beyond that he’s competitive. So not only does he work, but he also works to win. The way he carries himself through life and then onto the ice, that’s what we want in our culture; that’s our culture driver.”
There’s no one better than Okposo to ask, then: What is Buffalo’s culture now? How can something so seemingly arbitrary even be defined?
“The culture that we created is one of respect,” he said. “That’s first and foremost from an identity piece. And then that translates into work ethic. There’s a difference between the elite teams and how they prepare and take care of themselves and work versus the teams that are in the mushy middle and on the bottom. There are teams on the bottom that are going through a rebuild that have that work ethic, but to get into the upper echelon, you need a very high work ethic, and that’s something that I think is a big part of our group.”
Another key element in getting to the top: Consistency. Okposo stresses its importance regularly to the Sabres’ through his own conduct, while still leaving the door open for collaboration with a new generation of players.
“I’m going to be that guy to make sure everybody knows the path,” he said. “There was going to be no way that [those young guys] came in and said, ‘Oh, I wonder if we’re going to do this today.’ It’s like, ‘Nope, this is what we’re doing. And this is the right thing to do.’ But if there was something that somebody else wanted to do, or [they had] an idea, they know that it goes back to that respect piece where I will respect their opinion and take it into consideration and then we’ll make a decision as a group. So that’s something that I try to do as a leader.”
CULTURE ISN’T BORN from nothing. Neither is belief.
It’s fitting then that, once Buffalo got its identity straightened out, belief began to follow. But that didn’t come easily for the Sabres, either. There have been heartbreaking outcomes in the drawn-out retooling process, the worst of which might have been falling just one point short of a postseason berth in 2022-23 after an impassioned run to end the regular season.
“In the past, you’d go in and think you believe. Everyone wants to believe that they can make playoffs and get a push,” Thompson said. “But there’s a lot of uncertainty throughout the season, a lot of ups and downs, and it’s all about how you handle those. Last season showed us we’re capable of going through that adversity. It taught us a lot. When that adversity happens this season, I think we’ll be a little better prepared for it. And I think that’s what gives us that hindsight that we know that we’re a playoff team, and I think anything short of that now is a letdown.”
Similar messaging permeated from the height of the organization on down. It had to, particularly in preparation for the season at hand. Buffalo undeniably turned heads with its strong second half, going 21-14-4 from mid-January on to nearly snag the final Eastern Conference wild-card spot. It was a surprising photo finish at the time. Comparable shock value is long gone.
If anything, that belief Buffalo has in itself is permeating elsewhere. At the NHL Player Tour in Las Vegas last month, a handful of players skating for the Sabres’ rivals told ESPN outright they were most excited to see what Buffalo could do this year. The hype is real — and it’s strongest of all in the Sabres’ dressing room.
“My expectations are to win, and we’ve gotten to where when I say that I think our players believe it,” Granato said. “There’s another level of confidence. I would say we were confident last year that we could win. This year we have the conviction that we should win. And that only happened through the process. We were one win from making the playoffs [last season], and that could have happened on any given night. We were that close. I think that really helped guys to understand that you’ve moved to that point. Now we have to put our foot down and demand a little more in that sense, and that comes in conviction. There’s confidence in conviction, and we’ve moved toward that.”
Raising the bar naturally includes added pressure, something often claimed in sports as a burden of privilege. It’s also unfamiliar territory for a majority of the Sabres’ lineup — at the NHL level, anyway. Until now the Sabres have been keeping their heads above water. In the immediate future, it’s seeing how high they can fly.
“I think the expectations are always rising and I don’t think anybody shies away from the outside noise or what we expect of ourselves,” Samuelsson said. “I think the window is open. There’s so much young talent here, so many young players that could have breakout years and take the next steps. I think there’s a lot of expectations, but I also think that’s good. Guys feed off pressure. We’re all competitive, so we all want to perform.”
“It’s not an option. We know we need to make playoffs,” Cozens added. “And we know we can make playoffs, so that’s the feel in the room. That’s what everyone thrives on.”
OKPOSO HELPED MOLD the Sabres into what they are today. He might not be around, though, for the brightest days of their tomorrow.
It’s a reality of business Okposo admits coming to terms with. His time in Buffalo has been marred by losing; to miss out on the franchise’s anticipated winning seasons ahead could be deemed disappointing.
But Okposo’s mindset, as always, is centered on something larger: legacy. It’s reasonable to predict one of those rising talents will eventually wear the “C” now emblazoned on Okposo’s chest. When that transition happens, and it’s someone else’s responsibility to uphold Buffalo’s core values, Okposo’s hope is that he has succeeded in giving the upcoming wave of leaders a firm foundation from which to start.
“I just want to make sure when I’m gone, everything is seamless, and there’s no [sense of], ‘OK, I need to try to be somebody other than myself,'” he said. “I just want everybody to make sure that they know they can be themselves and be the best that they can be every day. And that will be enough to sustain the culture here for a long time.”
Given the lengths it took Buffalo to reach this pinnacle, maintaining a standard of excellence will — in theory — become their new norm. The Sabres were stoic in navigating a fair share of hardships. Here, and now, is when they can aim to enjoy the fruits of that labor. And maybe silence a few former critics.
“For years, everyone said, ‘You can’t accept this losing, we can’t accept this losing,'” Granato said. “Well, we had to accept where we are. We couldn’t be in denial that we need to get better. And we turned our focus to that. And I know these guys have improved every day, to the point where there’s going to be a tipping point. And we’re going to make sure we get closer to that every day, and it’s going to happen.
“And when it happens, everything that was hard becomes much easier. And I think we’re close, and that’s the excitement moving forward. It’s how close are we?”
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Bill Connelly
Week 7 gave us a perfect set of games for wrapping up the first half of the college football regular season.
Ohio State solidified its best-in-the-country status. Indiana and Texas Tech proved that they weren’t even slightly interested in fading away after a fast start, while Penn State proved it wasn’t slightly interested in a rebound, then fired its coach 15 days after he led the No. 3 team in the country onto the field.
Georgia won another very silly SEC game with nothing but grit and guile (and, yes, some fortunate calls). Ty Simpson once again came through exactly when Alabama needed him to, further positioning himself as a major Heisman contender. Texas pulled off exactly the kind of season-saving win that Red River often provides. And USF Bulls further enhanced a résumé that, aside from a pesky loss to Miami, is easily the best the Group of 5 has to offer.
With seven weeks down and seven more to go before Championship Week, let’s step back and take stock. Who have been the best players and coaches of the year to date? Who has most defied (or fallen most short of) preseason expectations? Let’s recap Week 7 by recapping all of the season’s first seven weeks.
Jump to a section:
Coach of the year | Biggest disappointment
Top offensive players | Top defensive players
Heisman race | SP+ risers, fallers
Favorite games
Midseason coach of the year: Curt Cignetti
Fourteen years ago, a midlife crisis of sorts sent Curt Cignetti to Indiana, Pennsylvania. He had established a pretty cushy career as an assistant coach and had spent 2007-10 as Nick Saban’s receivers coach and run game coordinator at Alabama. But he didn’t want to be an assistant anymore. “I was hitting the big 5-0,” he told me a few years ago, “and I was tired of being an assistant coach. … I was just ready to be a head coach.”
His restlessness took him from Tuscaloosa to a head coaching gig at Division II’s Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where his father, Frank Cignetti Sr., had coached for 20 years with two D-II title game appearances. “It was a big risk,” Cignetti said. “It was an unconventional risk. There were many mornings early on when I woke up and thought I was nuts for doing what I did. That’s probably a move not too many people have ever made in this profession. But it worked out. Sometimes you’ve got to bet on yourself.”
Yeah, I’d say it has indeed worked out. After six years, 53 wins and three playoff appearances, Cignetti moved up to the FCS’ Elon, which had gone a combined 11-46 over the previous five seasons. He immediately led the Phoenix to back-to-back playoff appearances. That brought him to James Madison, where he went 33-5 in three seasons at the FCS level, then 19-4 in the Dukes’ first two years after jumping to FBS. And that, in turn, led him to the Big Ten in 2024. Well, sort of. It led him to Indiana, a program that had gone 9-27 in the three years before his arrival. The Hoosiers had never won double-digit games in a season, and in the previous 50 years they had played just two games as a top-10 team, losing both.
On Saturday, the Hoosiers beat No. 3 Oregon, 30-20, in Eugene. It ended the Ducks’ 23-game regular-season winning streak and their 18-game home winning streak. And this wasn’t some sort of smash-and-grab, turnovers-based upset. The Hoosiers actually gave up a fourth-quarter pick-six, in fact. No, they beat Oregon by beating them, allowing just 64 yards in the second half and, aside from a single 44-yard touchdown pass in the first quarter, 213 yards for the game. Even with the pick-six, Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza outdueled Oregon’s Dante Moore, a onetime Heisman front-runner, and Hoosiers receiver Elijah Sarratt, one of many players to follow Cignetti from JMU a year and a half ago, torched a previously untouchable Oregon secondary for eight catches, 121 yards and a touchdown.
This was Indiana’s first-ever top-10-versus-top-10 win in five tries. It was also the Hoosiers’ 17th win in 19 games under Cignetti. The Hoosiers reached the first 12-team College Football Playoff last season, and the lessons they learned along the way have positioned them for a return trip. The Allstate Playoff Predictor currently gives them a 92% chance of reaching the CFP; only Ohio State (95%) has better odds. This is a new time for college football, with legal player compensation and open player movement completely redefining how roster management works. And no one has made it work better for himself than the guy who set off for a different Indiana a decade and a half ago.
This being college football, we can’t ever live in the present tense — we always have to spin it toward the future. Expect loads of “Cignetti to [insert big-name school]???” rumors in the coming weeks, especially since he’s a Pennsylvania guy and Penn State suddenly, and rather shockingly, has an opening. Who knows, maybe he’s destined to end his career somewhere closer to home. But let’s embrace the present tense; Indiana has, in this very moment, become one of the surest things in college football. I could type that out another 100 times, and it would still give me a jolt of surprise every time.
And besides, considering how many times he’s bucked what conventional wisdom would have told him to do, there’s nothing saying he won’t remain in Bloomington, creating his own football Valhalla, for a few more seasons.
Biggest disappointment (and most shocking firing): Penn State
Last offseason, in a strange moment of stasis, only five power-conference teams changed head coaches (North Carolina, UCF, Purdue, Wake Forest and West Virginia). With the House settlement and the age of player compensation approaching, financial caution was the name of the game. (Well, sort of. We still saw 22 coaching changes at the Group of 5 level.)
Apparently, however, when our offseasons aren’t crazy enough, the pressure builds and ferments and takes us to a very strange place. At the midway point of the season, we’ve already seen five power-conference teams fire their head coaches: Virginia Tech, UCLA, Oklahoma State, Arkansas and, as of Sunday, Penn State. Wisconsin will probably be making a move soon — especially after Saturday’s humiliating 37-0 home loss to Iowa — and lord only knows if or when the SEC (Florida? Auburn?) or ACC (Florida State? North Carolina?) might further join the party. Let this be a lesson to our future selves: If we don’t hit the pressure release button quickly enough, things get wild.
It was painfully obvious where things were headed with Penn State after the Nittany Lions suffered their third straight loss and their second straight as a massive favorite. They came achingly close to beating Oregon two weeks ago but fell in overtime and evidently never recovered. Even after the shocking loss to winless UCLA, it was fair to assume they would return home, get right against Northwestern, and move on to a semi-respectable 8-4 or 9-3 season. Instead, the offense no-showed in the middle of the game, the defense no-showed late, quarterback Drew Allar was lost for the season to injury and Northwestern prevailed 22-21.
Even if we knew a split would probably end up happening at some point, Franklin’s sudden firing is a jarring development, both because of how close Penn State came to saving itself — even with unacceptably poor play over the last two weeks, the Nittany Lions are basically three plays away from an unbeaten record (just as they were a play away from the national title game last year) — and how quickly the end came. Franklin led the No. 3 team in the country onto the field 15 days ago! Now he’s unemployed.
His incredible run of steady success, with two nine-win seasons at Vanderbilt (the school’s only two in the last century) and five top-10 finishes in the last nine full years at Penn State, will almost certainly earn him another power-conference job pretty quickly. But his nearly decade-long inability to get PSU over that final hurdle meant this season had now-or-never vibes from the beginning. As soon as the school realized that “never” was the verdict, it made a move, $49 million buyout be damned.
As is the zero-sum nature of sport, I guess, the emerging top-five prowess of teams like Indiana and Texas Tech meant that someone had to be ejected from the top five to make room. Preseason No. 1 Texas, No. 2 Penn State and No. 4 Clemson are a combined 10-8, and while both Texas (with a Red River thumping of Oklahoma) and Clemson (with blowouts of cratering North Carolina and Boston College teams) have both recently gotten their feet back underneath them a bit, Penn State did the opposite. Goodness, what a stunning ending.
The 10 best offensive players of the season
It’s fair to assume that, when Ohio State actually needs Jeremiah Smith to do something, he will. The obvious No. 1 in our preseason player rankings, Smith has gotten plenty of fresh air and easy calisthenics of late as the Buckeyes have won their opening six games by an average of 37-7. But in four games against power-conference opponents, he’s also caught 26 balls for only 233 yards — that’s 9.0 yards per catch and 58.3 yards per game.
The Buckeyes know as well as anyone that the goal here isn’t to entertain — it’s to peak in December. Smith & Co. are well on their way. But it’s hard to say Smith has actually been one of the best offensive players of 2025 when he hasn’t actually done anything. Here are the 10 who, to my eyes, have best combined skill and actual production.
1. OL Francis Mauigoa, Miami. Consider Mauigoa a placeholder for the Miami line as a whole. The Hurricanes rank second in pressure rate allowed and 16th in stuff rate allowed; they really haven’t had to ask quarterback Carson Beck to do much — he’s averaging just 28 passes per game and 11.9 yards per completion — because they’re always on schedule and never uncomfortable. Best offensive line in college football.
2. QB Jayden Maiava, USC. He wasn’t amazing in Saturday’s 31-13 win over Michigan (265 yards, 2 TDs, 1 INT), but he was still very good, and for the season he’s a comfortable No. 1 in Total QBR, just as he was No. 1 on my P4 QBs list two weeks ago.
3. QB Ty Simpson, Alabama. Since the season-opening dud against Florida State, Alabama has played in five games, and Simpson has made my weekly Heisman top-10 list five times. He has a 16-to-1 TD-to-INT ratio for the season, and since the start of Week 2, he ranks third nationally in completion rate (76.0%), fourth in touchdowns (14) and sixth in Total QBR (87.2).
4. RB Ahmad Hardy, Missouri. Bama played ball control well enough against Mizzou — 38:33 time of possession, 75 snaps to 56 — that Hardy and Jamal Roberts combined for only 17 carries Saturday. (Hardy had 12 for 52 yards.) But he’s still on pace for 1,700 rushing yards, and he’s still an absolute yards-after-contact star.
5. QB Fernando Mendoza, Indiana. He was steady in wins in two of the most raucous road environments in the country (Iowa and Oregon), and he’s almost untouchable at home. It was easy to wonder if Cignetti could conjure more transfer magic after losing some key pieces, including quarterback Kurtis Rourke, from last year’s remarkable run. Instead, Mendoza waltzed in and raised the bar.
6. QB Carson Beck, Miami.
7. RB Cam Cook, Jacksonville State.
8. QB Demond Williams Jr., Washington.
9. RB Justice Haynes, Michigan.
10. WR Danny Scudero, San Jose State.
The 10 best defensive players of the season
In FBS vs. FBS games, teams averaged just 21.8 offensive points per game (and 23.0 total) in Week 1 but have hit at least 25.0 (and 25.9) in every week since. Offenses have found their rhythm to a degree, but if I were to rank the top overall units in the sport, I would probably have four defenses (Ohio State’s, Texas’, Oklahoma’s and Indiana’s) in the top five. Similarly, if I were making a “10 best overall players” list, I might have six or seven defenders.
1. S Caleb Downs, Ohio State. It’s a shame Downs doesn’t play a natural, box score-filling position because this would be a pretty fun year for a defensive player to make a Heisman run — and not just a Travis Hunter-style two-way player. Downs, however, is content to simply do his job better than any player in the sport. Need an extra run defender? He’ll meet you in the backfield. Lock someone down in the slot? Yep, he’ll do that too. He’s otherworldly. (And he should still start returning punts again and show up for some offensive snaps, Ryan Day! A Heisman run’s still on the table! The lane’s wide open, let’s go!)
2. LB Jacob Rodriguez, Texas Tech. For all the talk about the difference standout transfers have made for Texas Tech, the best player on this 6-0 Red Raiders team has been in Lubbock even longer than the current coaching staff. Rodriguez, a senior who transferred to town back in 2022, has been a dynamite do-it-all man, leading the team in tackles (50) and recording 5.5 TFLs, 2 forced fumbles, 1 sack, 2 INTs and 3 pass breakups.
3. DT Rueben Bain Jr., Miami. I must say, I laughed out loud when I saw that Bain, a 270-pound defensive lineman, is tied for the team lead in tackles. He makes a tackle for basically every eight snaps he’s on the field, which is pretty wild considering how much offenses try to avoid him altogether. His pressure rate is an elite 16.6%, and his interception against Notre Dame was one of the most delightful (and important) plays of the season.
4. S Louis Moore, Indiana. Moore left Indiana for Ole Miss in 2024, then returned and sued for an extra year of eligibility. Now the 24-year-old might be the second-best player on the second-best team in the sport. A modern college football story!
5. DE Cashius Howell, Texas A&M. A&M’s defense has enjoyed a recent renaissance, allowing 12 points per game in its last three contests, but the Aggies have had an elite pass rush all year thanks to Howell, who has already enjoyed two three-sack games and has eight for the season.
6. DE Vincent Anthony Jr., Duke.
7. CB Hezekiah Masses, California.
8. CB Leonard Moore, Notre Dame.
9. DE Caden Curry, Ohio State.
10. CB Elijah Green, Tulsa.
Midseason Heisman points race winner: Ty Simpson
Each week near the bottom of this column, I award the week’s Heisman, doling out weekly points, F1-style (in this case, 10 points for first place, 9 for second and so on). Here is this week’s Heisman top 10:
1. Demond Williams Jr., Washington (21-of-27 passing for 402 yards and two touchdowns, plus 143 non-sack rushing yards and two touchdowns against Rutgers).
2. Cameron Dickey, Texas Tech (21 carries for 263 yards and two touchdowns, plus 16 receiving yards against Kansas).
3. Tucker Kilcrease, Troy (30-of-39 passing for 415 yards and five touchdowns, plus 25 non-sack rushing yards against Texas State).
4. Taylen Green, Arkansas (21-of-31 passing for 256 yards and two touchdowns, plus 98 non-sack rushing yards and a touchdown against Tennessee).
5. David Bailey, Texas Tech (six tackles, three sacks and a forced fumble against Kansas).
6. Ty Simpson, Alabama (23-of-31 passing for 200 yards and three touchdowns, plus 32 non-sack rushing yards against Missouri).
7. Desmond Reid, Pitt (8 catches for 155 yards and two touchdowns, plus 45 rushing yards against Florida State).
8. Desmond Purnell, Kansas State (5 tackles, 2 TFLs, 1 sack, 2 interceptions — including a pick-six — and 2 pass breakups against TCU).
9. King Miller, USC (18 carries for 158 yards and a touchdown, plus 14 receiving yards against Michigan).
10. LJ Martin, BYU (25 carries for 162 yards and a touchdown against Arizona).
Granted, he did it against Rutgers’ increasingly listless defense — the 3-3 Scarlet Knights are potentially going to waste their best offense in ages because they can’t stop anyone — but Demond Williams Jr. did something we almost never see late Friday night.
Here’s a list of players to combine 400 passing yards with 140 non-sack rushing yards in a game in the past 10 years:
• Williams
• Lamar Jackson vs. Syracuse in 2016
Granted, Jackson topped 200 rushing yards in that game, but anytime you can do something comparable to that quarterback and that game, you get to top the week’s Heisman list. Even in a week that also saw Cameron Dickey ripping off multiple long touchdown runs, Tucker Kilcrease leading an incredible second-half comeback and Ty Simpson making some of the most clutch passes of the season.
Honorable mention:
• Micah Alejado, Hawai’i (34-of-54 passing for 413 yards, 3 TDs and 1 INT, plus 32 non-sack rushing yards and a TD against Utah State).
• Anthony Colandrea, UNLV (20-of-32 passing for 361 yards and a touchdown, plus 62 non-sack rushing yards and two touchdowns against Air Force).
• Cam Cook, Jacksonville State (31 carries for 218 yards and two touchdowns, plus 15 receiving yards against Sam Houston).
• Jalen Garner, Houston (7 tackles, 2 sacks, 2 forced fumbles and a pass breakup against Oklahoma State).
• Haynes King, Georgia Tech (20-of-24 passing for 213 yards and a touchdown, plus 60 non-sack rushing yards and two touchdowns against Virginia Tech).
• Fernando Mendoza, Indiana (20-of-31 passing for 215 yards with one TD and one INT, plus 40 non-sack rushing yards against Oregon).
• Danny Scudero, San José State (10 catches for 180 yards and four touchdowns against Wyoming).
• Nadame Tucker, Western Michigan (seven tackles, 3.5 sacks against Ball State).
Through seven weeks, here are your points leaders:
1. Ty Simpson, Alabama (29 points)
2. Taylen Green, Arkansas (22)
3. Demond Williams, Washington (19)
4. Luke Altmyer, Illinois (16)
5. Trinidad Chambliss, Ole Miss (15)
6. Jayden Maiava, USC (12)
7T. Jonah Coleman, Washington (10)
7T. Nico Iamaleava, UCLA (10)
7T. Fernando Mendoza, Indiana (10)
7T. Diego Pavia, Vanderbilt (10)
7T. Sawyer Robertson, Baylor (10 points)
It’s still early, and of the current top four Heisman favorites, per the ESPN BET odds — Carson Beck, Ty Simpson, Fernando Mendoza and Jeremiah Smith — two haven’t made the top 10 of our weekly list even once. Things are obviously still pretty uncertain. But Simpson’s consistently steady performances have put him in front in the points race. The second half of the season always carries far more weight than the first when it comes to awards and whatnot, but Bama needed Simpson to raise his game after the trip to Tallahassee, and he has very much done so.
Largest SP+ risers and fallers
The SP+ rankings have been updated for the week. Since we’re in midseason mode, it seems like a pretty good time to look at which teams have moved up and down the most since the preseason.
Moving up
Here are the 10 teams that have seen their ratings rise the most since August. Naturally, teams that started lower had more room to rise, but a couple of projected good teams have taken turns toward greatness.
1. San Diego State: up 16.2 adjusted points per game (ranking has risen from 103rd to 54th). A 23-point loss to Washington State in Week 2 made it seem like the Aztecs were destined to carry their terrible 2024 form into Sean Lewis’ second season. Instead, they’ve won four straight, three by at least 21 points, and per SP+ they now have a 79% chance of going 9-3 or better.
2. North Texas: up 13.7 points (from 95th to 52nd). Friday night’s midgame collapse against USF was disappointing. The Mean Green, unbeaten to that point, gave up a 28-0 run in just four minutes to turn a potential program-defining win into an eventual 63-36 loss. But they’re still 5-1 with a 57% chance of going 10-2 or better.
3. Vanderbilt: up 13.3 points (from 54th to 19th). Red zone miscues marred a shot at a second straight win against Alabama in Week 6, but the Commodores sure seem like a sturdy and deep team, one capable of winning a few of the many relative tossups on the back half of their schedule.
4. Kennesaw State: up 13.2 points (from 132nd to 93rd). In the Owls’ first season in FBS, they went 2-10 and fired the only coach in the history of the program. In their second season, with Jerry Mack in charge, they’re 4-2 and have the second-best odds of winning Conference USA (per SP+).
5. Texas Tech: up 12.7 points (from 29th to fourth). If Indiana isn’t the story of 2025, the Red Raiders are. For the second time in three games, they lost quarterback Behren Morton to injury and still comfortably overachieved against SP+ projections in a 42-17 win over Kansas. They appear deeper, faster and meaner than anyone else in the Big 12.
6. Indiana: up 11.9 points (from 23rd to third). Cignetti is magic. So is this defense.
7. Old Dominion: up 11.8 points (from 101st to 69th). A week ago, the ultra-explosive Monarchs would have led this list. But even after Saturday’s devastating no-show – a 48-24 loss at Marshall – they’re still in the top 10.
8. New Mexico: up 11.6 points (from 130th to 94th). Jason Eck’s Lobos have mastered the art of the competitive loss, and despite defeats to San Jose State and Boise State in the past two weeks, they still have a 61% chance of bowling, per SP+.
9. Temple: up 11.5 points (from 124th to 88th). First-year coach KC Keeler’s Owls have pretty drastically exceeded projections in four of six games and, at 3-3, shouldn’t have to wait too much longer to top three wins for the first time since 2019.
10. Memphis: up 11.3 points (from 52nd to 24th). This looked like a retooling year for Ryan Silverfield after some heavy turnover. Instead, the Tigers have already zipped past last year’s No. 32 SP+ ranking, and they currently have a 33% chance of getting to 12-0.
Moving down
Here are the 10 teams whose ratings have fallen the most. It probably shouldn’t be surprising that of the top five teams on this list, three have already dismissed their head coaches and the other two have overwhelmed first-year coaches ineffectively working through massive roster turnover. (Penn State collapsed so quickly that the Nittany Lions haven’t even had a chance to fall this far yet.)
1. Oklahoma State: down 14.5 adjusted points per game (ranking has fallen from 57th to 112th). Less than two years ago, the Cowboys were playing in the Big 12 championship game. They’ve now lost 13 straight games to power-conference teams, and the last five have come by an average score of 49-12.
2. North Carolina: down 13.4 points (from 53rd to 103rd). It’s not good when the athletic director who was steered by boosters into hiring your coach already has to give the dreaded vote of confidence after five games.
3. Virginia Tech: down 12.3 points (from 42nd to 86th). Their play has improved a hair since the firing of Brent Pry, but after two seasons of inconsistency, the bottom has dropped out after an offseason of heavy turnover.
4. Oregon State: down 10.7 points (from 75th to 114th). The Beavers have alternated between terribly unlucky losses and absolute duds, and Trent Bray coached his final game Saturday, a 39-14 home loss to Wake Forest.
5. Sam Houston: down 9.9 points (from 109th to 134th). Keeler won 10 games at SHSU, then left for Temple, and with an almost completely flipped roster and no home stadium – the Bearkats are playing an hour away in Houston while their stadium undergoes renovations – Phil Longo’s first season in charge has been a dud.
6. South Alabama: down 9.8 points (from 78th to 117th). Major Applewhite’s second season has been wrecked by portal departures and reasonably competitive losses.
7. Georgia Southern: down 9.4 points (from 80th to 115th). The offense is still sprightly, but the Eagles have allowed at least 34 points in five of six games and have won only twice.
8. Clemson: down 9.2 points (from 10th to 39th). Dabo Swinney’s Tigers have their footing again after easy road wins against two of the other teams on this list, but they’re still 3-3 and have only barely entered the top 40. Now the competition levels ramp up again.
9. Wisconsin: down 9.2 points (from 38th to 72nd). Good early defensive play had the Badgers at 2-0 and 35th after two weeks. But they’ve lost four straight by an average of 32-9, and their next four games are against Ohio State, Oregon, Washington and Indiana. Yikes.
10. Boston College: down 9.2 points (from 62nd to 97th). I thought BC could be pretty physical and competitive this season, but competitive early losses — 42-40 to Michigan State, 28-24 to Cal — evidently broke the Eagles. They were outscored by a combined 89-17 the last two weeks against Pitt and Clemson.
My 10 favorite games of the weekend
1. UNLV 51, Air Force 48. Air Force went on a 21-3 run, then UNLV went on a 16-0 run (which included an 86-yard touchdown pass), and then the back-and-forth began. We saw nine lead changes in the second half, including two in the last 75 seconds. Liam Szarka‘s 9-yard touchdown gave Air Force a 48-44 lead with 1:13 remaining, but UNLV’s Anthony Colandrea raced 19 yards for the go-ahead score 37 seconds later. The Rebels almost left too much time on the clock — the Falcons quickly drove 52 yards to set up an attempt for the game-tying field goal, but Jacob Medina pushed it wide right.
Total combined yards: 1,200. A glorious track meet.
2. Navy 32, Temple 31. Temple nearly doubled Navy in first downs (27-15), limited Blake Horvath to 6-for-16 passing and held the ball for nearly 10 more minutes — against a really good service academy team! That is a feat in itself. The Owls led by 10 in the second half too. But with the game on the line, Horvath did what he has done on so many occasions over the last two seasons: Break into the open field at just the right time.
Horvath House Call!!!
📺 https://t.co/hzHfs5YHD4#RollGoats | @ESPNCFB | @American_Conf pic.twitter.com/nzx1M7lGy8
— Navy Football (@NavyFB) October 11, 2025
3. No. 8 Alabama 27, No. 14 Missouri 24. You don’t get many realistic shots at beating Alabama, and Missouri couldn’t quite seize its best chance in 50 years. A pair of huge fourth-down completions, including a Ty Simpson-to-Daniel Hill touchdown, gave Bama a late 27-17 lead, but Mizzou looked like it might charge back to tie it before Dijon Lee Jr. picked off Beau Pribula with 37 seconds left.
4. No. 18 BYU 33, Arizona 27 (2OT). BYU jumped out to an early 14-0 lead, but Arizona charged back out of the gate after a lengthy storm delay. A 24-0 run gave the Wildcats a healthy lead heading into the final five minutes, but two late BYU scores, including a Bear Bachmeier sneak with 19 seconds remaining, sent the game to overtime. Neither team could put the ball in the end zone on their first OT possessions, but Bachmeier scored again in the second, and Noah Fifita‘s last-gasp pass to Javin Whatley fell incomplete.
5. FCS: No. 14 Jackson State 38, Alabama State 34. I love it when the Small-School Showcase games in my Friday previews exceed expectations. Played in front of 44,000 at Jackson’s Veterans Memorial Stadium, JSU-ASU was a battle for early SWAC supremacy. ASU took the lead twice in the second half, but JSU charged back both times. Nate Rembert‘s 18-yard touchdown catch gave the Tigers the lead with 50 seconds left, but the Hornets quickly drove the length of the field and needed just 2 yards on the final play to win the game.
They only got 1. Jamarie Hostzclaw was knocked out of bounds just short of the goal line. Game, Tigers.
6. Bowling Green 28, Toledo 23. Few rivalry games are as reliably wild as BGSU-Toledo, with loads of recent comebacks and surprise results. This one was both. Toledo, a comfortable favorite — and a loser of more games than just about anyone as a comfortable favorite — led 21-0 late in the first half and finished with a plus-223 yardage margin. But the Rockets’ eight second-half possessions produced six punts and two turnovers, and BGSU slowly reeled them in. Chris McMillian‘s 1-yard touchdown made the difference in a game with a cliff’s-edge win probability chart.
7. FCS: Dartmouth 17, Yale 16. Can I interest you in a 51-yard field goal at the buzzer to cap a 10-point fourth-quarter comeback? Yes?
Owen Zalc hits it from 51 yards as time expires!
BIG GREEN 17, Bulldogs 16.#GoBigGreen | #TheWoods pic.twitter.com/oBRKU0bE76
— Dartmouth Football (@DartmouthFTBL) October 11, 2025
8. Wyoming 35, San José State 28. Wyoming’s defense bought time, and eventually the offense made it pay off. Down 28-14 with 10 minutes left, the Cowboys’ Brayden Johnson took an interception 65 yards for a touchdown, and Kaden Anderson‘s 45-yard touchdown pass to Charlie Coenen tied the game with 2:44 left. Overtime? Nope! SJSU went four-and-out, and while attempting to position the ball for a potential game-winning field goal, Terron Kellman just kept churning his legs and raced 28 yards for the game-winning TD instead.
9. NAIA: Midland 60, No. 17 Concordia 52 (2OT). Ho-hum, just your typical, run-of-the-mill 31-point comeback. Midland trailed this battle of Nebraska rivals by a 38-7 margin with seven minutes left in the third quarter, but Brodey Johnson threw touchdown passes to four different players to give the Warriors a stunning 45-38 lead … only for Concordia to tie the game back up with 21 seconds left. But that wasn’t anything a couple more Johnson TD passes couldn’t solve. His 13-yarder to Tae Marks provided the winning points of this utterly ridiculous track meet.
10. Northwestern 22, Penn State 21. This wasn’t a track meet, but it was certainly ridiculous.
Honorable mention
• Division II: Clarion 48, Gannon 46
• Colorado 24, No. 22 Iowa State
• Jacksonville State 29, Sam Houston 27 (Thursday)
• Division III: No. 3 Johns Hopkins 28, No. 17 Carnegie Mellon 27
• Pitt 34, No. 25 Florida State 31
• FCS: Richmond 24, Colgate 19
• Troy 48, Texas State 41 (2OT)
Penn State has fired coach James Franklin after 12 seasons, the school announced Sunday.
Franklin is owed more than $49 million, according to his contract. It’s the second-biggest buyout in college football history behind only Jimbo Fisher’s $76 million buyout from Texas A&M.
Associate head coach Terry Smith will serve as the Nittany Lions’ interim head coach for the remainder of the season, the school said.
Less than a year removed from an appearance in the College Football Playoff semifinals, Franklin’s program appeared to hit a new low when the Nittany Lions traveled out to Los Angeles two weeks ago only to lose to UCLA, a team that not only was winless but hadn’t previously held a lead all season.
The woes flew back home with the team to Penn State, and with them came “Fire Franklin!” chants at Beaver Stadium on Saturday. The Nittany Lions dropped their second straight home game, and third overall, when they fell to Northwestern 22-21 in front of a stunned crowd at Happy Valley.
With the two losses, Penn State became the first team since the FBS and FCS split in 1978 to lose consecutive games while favored by 20 or more points in each game, according to ESPN Research.
In Saturday’s defeat to the Wildcats, the Nittany Lions committed six penalties for 71 yards in the first half alone. They simply could never get out of their own way, and that was before quarterback Drew Allar suffered a season-ending injury in the fourth quarter.
Earlier in the season, when the losing streak began against Oregon at Happy Valley, Franklin fell to 4-21 at Penn State against AP top-10 opponents, including 1-18 against top-10 Big Ten teams.
Franklin’s .160 winning percentage against AP top-10 teams is tied for the third-worst record by a coach (minimum 25 games) at a single school since the poll era began in 1936, according to ESPN Research.
Hired in 2014 in the wake of Bill O’Brien’s departure for the NFL, Franklin inherited a team still feeling the effects of unprecedented NCAA sanctions in the wake of Jerry Sandusky’s sexual-abuse crimes.
Armed with relentless optimism and an ability to recruit, Franklin’s program regularly churned out NFL-level talent, from Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley to Green Bay Packers edge rusher Micah Parsons. Franklin guided the Nittany Lions to the 2016 Big Ten title and a seemingly permanent spot in the rankings.
There was hope this fall might be the season when Penn State would finally break through and win its third national championship and first since 1986. Yet after three easy wins during a light nonconference schedule, the Nittany Lions crumbled.
Athletic director Pat Kraft said the school owes Franklin an “enormous amount of gratitude” for leading the Nittany Lions back to relevance but felt it was time to make a change.
“We hold our athletics programs to the highest of standards, and we believe this is the right moment for new leadership at the helm of our football program to advance us toward Big Ten and national championships,” Kraft said.
The move will cost Penn State at a time the athletic department has committed to a $700 million renovation to Beaver Stadium. The project is expected to be completed by 2027.
Former athletic director Sandy Barbour signed Franklin to a 10-year contract extension worth up to $85 million in 2021. According to terms of the deal, Penn State will have to pay Franklin’s base salary of $500,000, supplemental pay of $6.5 million and an insurance loan of $1 million until 2031.
It’s a steep price, but one the university appears willing to pay to find a coach who can complete the climb to a national title.
“We have the best college football fans in America, a rich tradition of excellence, significant investments in our program, compete in the best conference in college sports and have a state-of-the-art renovated stadium on the horizon,” Kraft said. “I am confident in our future and in our ability to attract elite candidates to lead our program.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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