Week 3 Rankings Update: Baylor Now #17 in Coaches, AP Polls

The post-Week 3 CFB rankings are out, and the Baylor Bears are #17 in both major polls, Coaches and AP, after a 42-7 win over Texas State last night. We probably would have been higher but for BYU’s big loss at Oregon and Penn State’s big win over Auburn. Both the Ducks and the Nittany Lions jumped the Bears in this week’s AP Poll, which had Baylor at the same spot as last week. Penn State made a similar jump in the Coaches Poll because SEC teams are just by default amazing, so beating them makes you amazing, too, regardless of whether their coach is openly referred to as a lame duck across social media.

Baylor is now either the second or third-highest ranked 2-1 team in the country in each poll behind Utah (Coaches) or Utah and Oregon (AP). That the AP Poll reacted so strongly to the Pac 12’s supposed resurgence this week while so many media (read: AP voters) have been so strongly pro-Pac over the last few months is pure coincidence, I’m sure.

As far as the Big 12 goes, Baylor is the third-highest ranked team behind OU (#6 in both) and Oklahoma State (#9 in AP, #8 in Coaches). Joining us in the rankings is, of course, Texas (#22 in AP, #19 in Coaches), fresh off their win over UTSA last night. BYU is basically the reverse of Texas at #19 in the AP, #23 in the Coaches. KANSAS, of all teams, is now getting votes in both polls based on their incredible 3-0 start, and both ISU and TCU are getting votes in the Coaches.

Also dropping earlier today was Bill C’s SP+ rankings over at ESPN.com, where Baylor is now 25th, down from 22nd. Most of that drop is attributable to two things: a relatively lackluster performance (in the eyes of the metrics) against Texas State by Baylor itself, and BYU’s bomb of a game against Oregon. BYU dropped from #19 last week in SP+ all the way to #32, and their defense (#18 last week, #42 this week) was especially hard-hit. That, in turn, affected our offense, as you might expect. Elsewhere, OU has risen to #4 in SP+, OSU is now #13, Texas is #14, KSU is #28, and this week’s opponent ISU is #37. We’ll talk more about that later this week.