Connelly's Week 8 recap: What ugly wins by Ohio State, Oklahoma, Washington mean - ESPN

For at least one Saturday in a given college football season, everything stops making sense. Up becomes down, left becomes right, Virginia's offense forgets its destitution, and things get weird.

The actual damage was minimal in Week 8 — UVA shocked No. 10 North Carolina, but the only other top-20 teams that lost fell to higher-ranked opponents — but things were definitely weird. Washington, Oklahoma, Florida State and Texas were favored by a combined 83 points; the latter three trailed in the fourth quarter, and the former was tied. All four ended up winning, as did Ohio State over Penn State and Alabama over Tennessee.

It has been the theme of the 2023 season so far: Things feel unstable, chaos lurks on the horizon… and most of the top teams keep winning anyway. Saturday was the weirdest «survive and advance week» of the season, and it was all about winning ugly. So let's talk about the degrees of ugly.

Jump to a section:
Ugly wins: OSU, UW, OU, Texas | Ugly for a while: FSU, Bama
Ugly losses: UNC, Iowa | Ugly in a good way: Michigan, LSU
Heisman of week | Top games

Ohio State Buckeyes

No. 3 Ohio State 20, No. 7 Penn State 12

We knew heading into Saturday's Ohio State-Penn State game that the defenses held most of the advantages. PSU entered the game ranked second in defensive SP+, and Ohio State wasn't far behind in fourth. Throw in a drastically banged up Ohio State skill corps and the fact that this was the first enormous start of Drew Allar's Penn State career, and low point totals were certainly possible.

For the second time this season, Ohio State won a low-point-total game. The Buckeyes averaged just 4.8 yards per play — it was just the second time in five seasons that they were below 5.0 — but finished seven