College football winners and losers: Oregon and Texas A&M headline the most disappointing teams of the first 6 weeks

Somehow, the college football season is nearly half over.

Many teams across the country completed the first half of their 12-game seasons on Saturday. And we've already got a pretty good idea of who is in line for an underwhelming season. Here are our most disappointing teams of the first six weeks, headlined by two teams that were eyeing return trips to the College Football Playoff.

It's incredibly hard to see Oregon as a national title contender. Yes, the Ducks were without Dante Moore, but Saturday's game against UCLA is the perfect example of why you add an experienced quarterback like Dylan Raiola.

Raiola turned the ball over three times and was just 6-of-19 passing for 43 yards before he was replaced by Brock Thomas in the second half. Thanks to a fumble on the final play of the game as Oregon frantically tried to lateral the ball to no avail, the Ducks finished with seven turnovers.

Yet Oregon should have at least had the chance to send the game to overtime. After the Ducks pulled within two on a late fourth-quarter touchdown, UCLA stopped the game-tying 2-point conversion.

Oregon shouldn't have needed to go for 2.

The Ducks only needed that attempt because they failed on a 2-point conversion after their first touchdown of the day. Had Oregon simply kicked the PAT in the first quarter, it would have needed a simple PAT to tie UCLA with 2:16 to go.

That falls squarely on the shoulders of Oregon coach Dan Lanning. Oklahoma State's defense noted that they had cues on Oregon's offensive plays in the Cowboys' Week 2 win over Oregon. This is a roster that has a ton of talent that simply isn't being maximized.

The Aggies' offense is sorely missing former offensive coordinator Collin Klein and receiver KC Concepcion. Klein is now the head coach at his alma mater, Kansas State. Concepcion was a first-round draft pick of the Cleveland Browns.

They were integral to the Aggies' offensive success in 2025. But perhaps we underestimated just how much they mattered. Texas A&M's offense is an absolute mess and had no shot on Saturday in a 27-6 loss at Missouri.

A&M had fewer than 80 yards in the first half and was incredibly fortunate to only trail by seven at halftime. In the second half, the offense wasn't much better until the game was out of reach following Jamal Roberts' game-clinching TD run.

Coach Mike Elko sounded a lot like a broken man in search of an offensive repair guide in his postgame news conference. He opened by saying it was "another extremely disappointing road performance" before responding with this when asked what gives him confidence about his offense's ability to get on track.

"I mean, does this look confident to you?" Elko replied.

He then went on to take a shot at the Aggies fans who are active on the well-known fan site TexAgs.com.

"Again, I mean there's a difference to me between the fan base and social media," Elko said. "And so there's one group that I really don't care much about, [site owner Billy Liucci's] cesspool can go be Billy's cesspool. Our fan base, stay with us. Be behind us. We're going to build something that we told you we're going to build. We're in a really bad spot right now but we'll work our way out of it."

With games remaining against Alabama, Tennessee and Texas, we can safely say the Aggies won't be making back-to-back playoff appearances. And their Week 12 game vs. Oklahoma could be must-see TV if you love offensive offenses.

Another season, another coach, another midseason losing streak.

A year after a three-game losing streak cost James Franklin his job six games into the season, the Nittany Lions are in the exact same spot under new coach Matt Campbell. After beating Marshall, Temple and Buffalo to start the season, Penn State is now 0-3 in Big Ten play after a 31-23 home loss to No. 19 USC on Saturday night.

The loss to the Trojans comes after Penn State was run over by Northwestern's diverse run game in Week 5 and gave up a late touchdown in a Week 4 loss to Wisconsin. This time, the culprit was the USC passing game and the abject lack of a run game.

Trojans QB Jayden Maiava was 21-of-33 for 301 yards and three touchdowns. The USC defense, which had given up 6 yards a play through its first six games, held Penn State to 68 rushing yards on 31 carries as the Nittany Lions were just 2-of-12 on third downs.

If you're looking on the bright side, there are no more ranked teams remaining on Penn State's schedule. But this is also a team that has only played one ranked team through the first half of the season and is still .500. It wouldn't be a shock if Penn State won out, but it's also highly, highly unlikely given this team's deficiencies.

Any reasonable Florida State fan would probably have taken a 3-3 record through the first six games of the season given the Seminoles' schedule. But the way that 3-3 record has happened is cause for some serious disappointment.

In Week 1, the Seminoles forced four SMU turnovers yet still lost on a game-winning field goal. And what unfolded Friday night was even more disastrous than that.

The Seminoles took an early 14-0 lead and had first-and-goal at the Louisville 10-yard line with 10:53 to go before halftime. A three-TD lead was well within reach. Heck, a three-possession lead seemed like a given. Instead, FSU turned the ball over on downs after going for it on fourth down at the Louisville 2-yard line.

And then on the very next play, Louisville running back Isaac Brown did this.

Brown's TD was the first of 35 straight points for the Cardinals as they built their own 21-point lead. After that turnover on downs, Florida State punted the ball on five straight possessions and went three-and-out three times against a Louisville defense that's allowing 5.6 yards a play and is outside the top 100 in scoring defense.

By the way, No. 4 Miami awaits in Week 7.

Things seemed to be lining up for Washington's first Big Ten win of the season Friday night. The Huskies were favored at home and No. 20 Iowa was starting backup QB Jeremy Hecklinski as Hank Brown suffered a shoulder injury in the Hawkeyes' Week 5 loss to Ohio State.

Instead, Iowa opened the game with 27 straight points and Washington QB Demond Williams Jr. left the game with a rib injury and a potential concussion just before halftime. He didn't return in the second half of the Huskies' 41-24 loss.

Williams has powered Washington's offense nearly by himself. In addition to throwing for nearly 1,400 yards, he's the team's second-leading rusher and one of only two players with multiple rushing touchdowns.

Now, Washington — which was ranked No. 17 in the preseason AP Top 25 — faces the prospect of missing their most important player for multiple weeks as simply getting bowl eligible may be the season's ultimate goal. Even with Williams on the field, Washington could be underdogs in at least four of its remaining six games.

Here are the rest of this week's winners and losers.

Wake Forest: The Demon Deacons should absolutely be in the AP Top 25 on Sunday after moving to 5-1 with a 38-14 win at NC State. QB Gio Lopez is flourishing after his transfer from North Carolina and was 26-of-33 passing for 303 yards and three touchdowns in the win. The Wake Forest defense sacked CJ Bailey three times and held the Wolfpack to 15 rushing yards on 24 carries. Don't be surprised if Wake is 8-1 ahead of a trip to No. 24 SMU on Nov. 14. This is a team that can absolutely make the ACC title game.

Missouri RB Jamal Roberts: The Tigers are letting Roberts eat. A week after he rushed 24 times for 211 yards and three touchdowns in Mizzou's win over Florida, Roberts got even more carries in No. 14 Missouri's 27-6 win over Texas A&M. Roberts had 34 rushes for 222 yards and two touchdowns as he put the game away with a 54-yard run late in the fourth quarter.

Roberts has rushed for at least 125 yards in all but one of Missouri's games against FBS opponents and has gotten at least 22 carries in each of those games. It's a carry rate that may be unsustainable, but it's also working. Roberts has rushed for 828 yards and eight scores through six games.

BYU QB Bear Bachmeier: With star running back LJ Martin out for at least a month, even more of the BYU offense is going to run through Bachmeier. And the Cougars' sophomore QB was up to the task on Friday night. Bachmeier was 22-of-30 passing for 329 yards and two scores while rushing nine times for 109 yards as the No. 8 Cougars beat Iowa State 24-10 to move to 5-0 ahead of a massive game against No. 3 Notre Dame in Week 7.

Florida: The Gators rose dramatically in the rankings and have fallen just as quickly. That's what happen when you lose consecutive games by a combined 47 points. A week after getting blown out at Mizzou, Florida lost 38-19 at home to a South Carolina team that went 1-7 in SEC play in 2025 and was 0-3 in the conference entering Week 6.

There's always a team that comes back to earth after a big September rise, and Florida is clearly that team in 2026. After rushing for 600 yards in Florida's first four games, RB Jadan Baugh followed up his 13-yard day against the Tigers with 59 yards against the Gamecocks. And QB Aaron Philo turned the ball over twice. Games against No. 1 Texas and No. 2 Georgia suddenly look a lot less winnable.

USF coach Brian Hartline: The first-year Bulls coach alluded to UTSA pumping in artificial crowd noise during its home games ahead of his team's game against the Roadrunners Thursday night, saying that he didn't know "how it gets so loud if there's not a lot of people there."

We're guessing that Hartline has now learned to bring things like that up after a game. After his team took a 24-23 lead with 1:56 to go, UTSA went 74 yards in 10 plays as A'Marion Peterson scored the game-winning TD with 15 seconds left for a 31-24 win. The victory dropped USF to 4-2 overall and 1-2 in the American after a Week 6 loss to Temple, while UTSA is now 5-1 and 2-0 in conference play.

West Virginia's defense (again): After the Mountaineers were torched in Week 6 by Iowa State, head coach Rich Rodriguez was exasperated. So was defensive coordinator Zac Alley, who said during his mid-week news conference that he thought his unit was "the worst defense in college football."

Well … there wasn't any improvement on Saturday. Arizona was missing its top three wide receivers and still torched West Virginia for 482 yards in a 52-31 win. QB Noah Fifita was 16-of-23 passing for 341 yards and a touchdown as the Wildcats averaged 9.5 yards a play. West Virginia's offense is really good — the Mountaineers had over 500 yards of offense again — but the defense is doing everything it can to counteract that. The loss dropped the Mountaineers to 3-3 overall and 0-3 in the Big 12.