I created a template to write these newsletters, and the auto-populated text in this intro section when I start writing is the intro of the newsletter I wrote last year after Penn State lost its third consecutive game to fall to 3-3, leading to James Franklin’s firing.
I considered just leaving it in there.
– Rodger Sherman
Today’s Lineup
Should your team go for two? A checklist. (But if you’re Will Stein, then yes.)
Per tradition, Red River was very not normal
Who could have predicted that a guy who won a lot would make UCLA good?
2️⃣✌️ Two for Two on Twos ✌️2️⃣
Sometimes at the end of football games, coaches face a very specific dilemma: Should they kick a game-tying extra point and force or prolong overtime, or go for an all-or-nothing two-point conversion that will either win or lose the game?
In this scenario, I think coaches should consult this checklist to decide whether to go for two:
How has the game gone so far? If the score is 7-6 and you just scored your only touchdown of the game, you shouldn’t trust the offense to score again on a do-or-die two-point play. If it’s 42-41 and the offenses have been finding their joy all day, why should they stop now? Go for it!
Which team is better? The bigger the underdog, the bigger the advantage to putting the entire game on a single play. Heavy favorites should extend the game and bet that their talent and physical advantages will win eventually; underdogs that have fluked their way into a close game should try to get away with one more fluke.
Would it be sick as hell? Like, would it kick ass? Would it totally rule?
Saturday night, new Kentucky coach Will Stein ran down the list and made three checkmarks. Stein went for two and the win and got it on a completely undefended QB draw by Kenny Minchey, beating 10th-ranked LSU, 35-34, and triggering an instant field storming.
Believe it or not, the exact same thing happened last week, when Kentucky beat South Carolina 35-34 in overtime. The Wildcats are the first team in college football history to win back-to-back games in overtime by exactly one point. They could easily be 0-2, but I love what the Cats are cooking:
I absolutely loved the sequencing by Stein that led up to this play. First, Stein sent the Wildcats out in the heaviest package possible — no quarterback, no receivers, no running backs, just seven offensive linemen and four tight ends, with one under center.
This provoked a timeout from LSU coach Lane Kiffin to figure out the best way to deal with a cartoonish array of big bodies. Then Kentucky came out in the same super-stacked formation, and called timeout themselves.
Then Kentucky came out in the lightest package possible — a quarterback and five wide receivers — and spread the receivers across the full width of the field.
Then the Cats ran QB draw. Nobody was home. They made LSU pack everybody in, and then made them spread everybody wide, and the Tigers just forgot about the middle of the field.
Did any of Stein’s tomfoolery matter? I don’t know, but I loved it.
Last week, Stein was a little more straightforward with his overtime two-point conversion playcalling. After rallying back from a 17-0 deficit, Kentucky beat South Carolina on a pass to tight end Willie Rodriguez.
I think the most important part thing is that Stein seems dedicated to calling actual football plays on game-winning two-point conversion attempts. Michigan State and UMass both ran the Philly Special yesterday in this exact same scenario, and both got stopped hard. (That Super Bowl was almost a decade ago! It’s not so special anymore!)
Newton’s Second Law of Coach Hiring states that every good hire should have an equal and opposite effect on the team they left, and that seems to be the case here. Stein was the offensive coordinator at Oregon, which lost 17-15 to UCLA on Saturday. (More on that later.)
But Stein is not just a great coach; he’s a Kentucky Guy. He played football at Louisville … but his dad played for Kentucky, and he grew up rooting for the Cats. Stein says he rushed the field in 2007 when Kentucky beat LSU in triple overtime, a year before he began playing for Louisville.
Stein’s Cats already have more wins this season than they did in all of 2025 or 2024. No Kentucky coach has had a winning record in their first season since Blanton Collier in 1954; no Kentucky coach has started 5-1 since Alpha Brumage in 1913. (Dudes used to be named “Alpha.”)
That 1913 Kentucky team won games over Cincinnati, Butler, Ohio Northern, Earlham, and Wilmington (Ohio.) This 2026 Kentucky team has won two SEC road games and two games over Top 10 opponents. (The win over Texas A&M doesn’t look like a Top 10 win in hindsight, but whatever, we’ll count it.)
LSU is now 4-2 with two road losses and two raucous field stormings at their expense. The Tigers could still make the College Football Playoff if they win out, but I just don’t think this team is good enough to do that. For now, I think they’re just going to be a traveling Field Storming Road Show that sells out opposing stadiums with fans itching to film themselves giving Kiffin the finger.
Kiffin seems to have forgotten Rule Number One of Being An Insufferable Dickhead Who Breaks Rules And Burns Bridges In Pursuit Of Wins: You have to … you know … win.
🔫🔫🔫 Red River 🔫🔫🔫
There’s nothing normal about the Red River matchup between Texas and Oklahoma. There are no home and road teams; the crowd is split 50-50 between the two fanbases. It’s not played in a typical college football stadium; it’s played in the Cotton Bowl, right in the middle of the Texas State Fair.
Saturday, the two teams were about to kick off when they realized they forgot to bring pylons:
And instead of “the better team winning,” Red River is almost destined to end in an upset. Something about playing a football game in a sea of carnival games, prize livestock, and stands selling fried everything turns a competent football team to mush.
That tradition continued Saturday, as a dismal Oklahoma team that has struggled to score dropped top-ranked Texas, 24-21, on a last-second field goal by short shorts sensation Tate Sandell:
Saturday was the 16th time since 1989 that Red River featured a matchup between a ranked team and an unranked team. Of course, you’d expect the ranked team to win these games more often than not. So far in 2026, ranked teams have won 92.3 percent of their games against unranked teams.
In Red River, though, the unranked opponent has a winning record: 10-6. Last year, unranked Texas beat #6 Oklahoma; this year, unranked Oklahoma beat #1 Texas.
Saturday was also the sixth time since 2013 that an underdog of more than a touchdown has won outright. (This is my occasional reminder that if I ever bring up betting odds or spreads, it’s not to encourage you to bet, but to remind you that betting is a bad idea and you will probably lose money.)
I cannot stress enough how ass Oklahoma had been this season. The Sooners scored 51 points in a season-opening win over hapless UTEP, and then 44 points in their next three games combined.
The Sooners ranked 78th in offensive SP+ and 101st in points per game. Their quarterback, John Mateer, threw four interceptions in the team’s three games entering Red River. Their running game was even worse, ranking 137th out of 138 teams in yards per carry.
Did Oklahoma end its ass-y ways on Saturday? Not really! It was outgained by nearly 150 yards, 382-238. It went 2-for-13 on third down.
But Texas succumbed to Oklahoma’s defense and the fog of Red River. Oklahoma blocked a punt in the end zone — any one of three Sooners could’ve blocked it — and recovered it for a touchdown.
And Arch Manning threw two awful fourth quarter interceptions, including this what-was-he-thinking pick-six:
Arch baffles me. He’s clearly an incredible talent, with a great arm and great athleticism. But of all the players to make dumb choices like this, I can’t believe it’s this guy. His family famously runs a “passing academy” for talented QB prospects. His uncles spend every Monday night talking through the nitty gritty of QB decision-making on live TV. He’s been prepping for the spotlight since his early teens, and has spent four years now at the same school with the same coaching staff. He should be polished, not raw. Why is he still making such bad decisions?
(I’m mainly talking about on the field, but, well, he’s clearly having decision-making problems off the field as well.)
If this sounds like the same thing I wrote about Arch Manning 13 months ago … it is! Either I’m locked into my priors, or Manning’s lack of development has become glaring.
🦆🐻 Ducks Down 🐻🦆
After Indiana won the national championship last season, everybody asked: who’s the next Curt Cignetti? Which out-of-nowhere coach will emerge to flip a long-dormant program into a powerhouse overnight? We searched far and wide.
We didn’t need to look so hard. Cignetti’s successor at James Madison, Bob Chesney, has UCLA off to an incredible start in his first year with the Bruins. Saturday, UCLA beat the 13th-ranked Oregon Ducks for its first win in Eugene since 2004:
In 2023, Indiana went 3-9, then hired Cignetti from JMU and started the next season 9-0. Last year, UCLA went 3-9, then hired Chesney from JMU and is off to a 5-0 start. How did everybody mess this up?
Hey, remember, like, two weeks ago when I devoted a significant portion of this newsletter to writing how having former 5-star QB Dylan Raiola as a backup gave Oregon a significant advantage after the injury to starter Dante Moore? Yeah, trash it, toss the whole thing out, pretend it never happened. Raiola was egregiously bad Saturday, going 6-for-19 for 43 yards with two interceptions and a lost fumble. It was easily the worst performance of his career, and he started as a true freshman for a mediocre Nebraska team in 2024. Raiola was eventually benched for Brock Thomas, Oregon’s third-stringer and a former walk-on.
UCLA also had to go with a backup QB, Ty Dieffenbach, after an injury to starter Nico Iamaleava. The two starters in this game threw no touchdowns and four interceptions; the backups threw two touchdowns and no interceptions.
But UCLA won with solid defense and a third consecutive 100-yard rushing day from Wayne Knight. (And he had 97 yards the game before that.) He’s got ten touchdowns this season, third in the nation.
Knight is one of many JMU players who followed Chesney to L.A. He had 110 rushing yards when James Madison played at Oregon in the College Football Playoff last year, but the Dukes lost by 17.
Last year I did an episode of Split Zone Duo about Curt Cignetti’s career path. The thing that stood out to me: He won everywhere: Division II, FCS, JMU, and then Indiana. The same is true of Chesney: He went 23-9 at Division III Salve Regina in Newport, Rhode Island. Then he won two conference championships at Division II Assumption in Worcester, Massachusetts. Then he got called across town to coach Holy Cross, turning it into a surprise FCS powerhouse. And in Year 2 at James Madison, his Dukes made the Playoff.
(Seahawks, Greyhounds, Crusaders, in case you’re wondering the team names on those schools.)
I think winning is really important. That’s why I would’ve made Chesney the #1 coach on my hypothetical hiring board last offseason. Somehow he got overlooked by everybody else and found his way to Westwood. Now Chesney is off to the best start of any UCLA head coach ever.
(No, nobody went 5-0, even in 1913.)
And here’s the thing: it might get a lot better. The Bruins’ next three games are home matchups with Wisconsin, Michigan State, and Nevada; UCLA should be double-digit favorites against all of them. Oregon was the highest-ranked opponent on the Bruins’ schedule. They don’t play Ohio State this season. Their only remaining opponent with a higher SP+ rating is USC, and they play each other in the final game of the season. That game could decide whether UCLA makes the Big Ten Championship Game or the College Football Playoff.
But I’m sure things are going well at all the schools that didn’t hire Bob Chesney, like Penn State.
