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College football Week 8 primer: Michigan, MSU renew hostilities

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Here are the key matchups, storylines, and people to watch in Week 8 of the college football schedule:

Top 5 games to watch

5. No. 20 Cincinnati at Temple (12 p.m. ET, ESPNU)

Looking for a fun defensive battle? These teams have you covered.

In his second season as Cincinnati's head coach, Luke Fickell, a former defensive coordinator at Ohio State, has the Bearcats' defense playing at an elite level. The team fields a top-five defense in the country in success rate and efficiency.

Not to be outdone, former Florida defensive coordinator Geoff Collins is now the head honcho at Temple, and this team is all sorts of frisky. The Owls play relentlessly, quelling explosive plays and creating plenty of negative ones.

However, Collins isn’t as creative as Fickell. Cincinnati lines up in many personnel packages and will show wonky blitz and bluff looks, though in coverage they don't disguise much.

Temple, meanwhile, plays straight three-match. Collins sticks in his pattern-matching system - a hybrid man-zone defense - and lets his guys fly to the ball. You won’t see a great variety of fronts or coverages. But you will see a lot of speed and sound fundamentals (exciting, I know).

Temple’s defense leads the nation in defending explosive plays (20-plus yard plays). Collins has crafted a group that can do all the little things right. His team makes opposing offenses work hard.

Chapelle Russell, the off-ball linebacker who zooms all over the field, is the man to keep an eye on. Russell is versatile and well polished at 6-foot-1 and 215 pounds.

When efficiency squares off against explosiveness, the latter typically wins. That would give the edge to Temple, a team able to restrict big plays. This game could be a race to 27 points.

4. No. 6 Michigan at No. 24 Michigan State (12 p.m. ET, FOX)

Michigan State notched its annual big-boy win last week. No matter how the poor Spartan’s season looks, Mark Dantonio finds a way to keep his team in it against the Big 10’s best.

Was the Penn State win an aberration? Or can MSU play playoff spoiler two weeks in a row, this time against Michigan? I'm willing to bet on the former.

The Spartans got all the turnover luck a week ago, and I’d argue they won in spite of their offensive philosophy. Slamming your running back into the line at two yards a clip doesn't fool anyone. Quarterback Brian Lewerke was forced, as usual, to create magic all by himself a week ago. He's capable of doing that, and Lewerke executed well throughout the game.

Now, Dantonio needs to have some fun and let Lewerke off the leash against the nation’s top defense.

Michigan State has no chance to move the ball on the ground against Wolverine's defensive coordinator Don Brown’s front. That probably won’t stop the Spartans from trying, though.

Another player to monitor is Michigan quarterback Shea Patterson, especially in the designed run game. Patterson had a giant run against Wisconsin a week ago on a basic zone-read play, and a few other designed runs were called for him down in the red zone.

Patterson has typically been at his best when rolling out, condensing the field, and relying on his rare improvisational skills. Giving him designed runs - particularly with a gap element (pulling lineman) - is intriguing.

Patterson doesn’t carry out many fakes when handing the ball off to his running back. Typically, you see a quarterback jet away after a handoff, just to plant the seed that he might indeed pull the ball. Michigan does things a little differently, particularly when lined up in the pistol.

If Patterson uses his feet more, having him carry out more fakes makes sense.

3. No. 22 Mississippi State at No. 5 LSU (7 p.m. ET, ESPN)

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This is another battle of two almighty defenses - one, Mississippi State, is built front to back, while LSU is more reliant on its All-American laden secondary.

LSU relies more on scheme design, too. Mississippi State doesn't need to do much to get its front into advantageous spots, as Jeffery Simmons and Co. wreak havoc all by themselves. Adding in too many gap exchanges or zone blitzes would just complicate matters.

LSU defensive coordinator Dave Aranda’s unit is almost wholly dependent on the blitz at this point. Or more specifically, five-man pressure packages, which are the name of the modern college game.

Aranda is constantly finding wonky ways to bring a fifth defender to the party while dropping out one of his linemen or linebackers. Behind them, defenders play in matchup zones, converting to man coverage against anything that’s vertical, or squatting in zones if receivers break over the middle of the field.

It’s all a nightmare for opposing quarterbacks. First, they have to figure out who is coming, and from where. Then they have to figure out if it's indeed a zone coverage, man coverage, or a combination of the two. Any mistake often stings immediately.

That doesn’t bode great for Mississippi State quarterback Nick Fitzgerald, whose field vision has been lacking so far this season, to say the least.

Fitzgerald has always been much better on one-read-and-throw concepts. But he still offers the ability to bounce through multiple reads, particularly an easier high-to-low read, while dissecting a defense. Now, though, anything that isn’t a base look seems to frazzle him, and Aranda is probably licking his chops.

Bulldogs head coach Joe Moorhead will likely rely on Fitzgerald’s legs more than ever against LSU. Controlling the clock is usually a part of LSU’s game plan, but doing that might favor Mississippi State this week.

Regardless, how Fitzgerald handles Aranda’s cacophony of zone pressures will be the deciding factor.

2. No. 12 Oregon at No. 25 Washington State (7:30 p.m. ET, FOX)

The first thing that springs to mind when you see this game: It's a letdown spot.

The Ducks are coming off a big, emotional win over Washington at home. Now they travel to Pullman to face Mike Leach and all of his wackiness.

This Oregon team is different. It’s tougher, College Gameday is in town, and the Pac-12 North is truly up for grabs.

Now, the Ducks have to come through in a prove-it game.

Mario Cristobal has faced one big test so far as a head coach. He had to regroup his players after a devastating loss to Stanford earlier this season. He succeeded, and this game is his second challenge.

Washington State will be smelling the upset. Leach’s offense is scoring as much as ever behind transfer quarterback Gardner Minshew. On the other side of the ball, Defensive coordinator Tracy Claeys has built a respectable group (74th in defensive S&P+). The unit is 10th in the country in sack rate while creating a bunch of negative plays and turnovers.

Keeping that up against the elusive Justin Herbert is a tough task because nobody throws off platform better than Oregon’s quarterback (sorry, Will Grier).

1. No. 16 NC State at No. 3 Clemson (3:30 p.m. ET, ESPN)

This one offers all sorts of intrigue for both narrative and schematic nerds.

What NC State head coach Dave Doeren is doing offensively is equal parts funky and fun. Doeren and the Wolfpack are running a multi-faceted pistol offense built around a confuse-and-clobber mindset - run the ball, and use every kind of motion, shift, and jet motion imaginable to keep defenses off-balance.

They run the ball here. They run the ball there. You know it’s coming, you’re just not quite sure where.

And yet, the Wolfpack's rushing offense has largely been terrible. The key, however, is what all those pre-snap motions unlock: a devastating, efficient passing game.

Quarterback Ryan Finley is having a stellar year. He leads the country in passer rating vs. the blitz, according to Pro Football Focus, which contributes to the Wolfpack having the best third-down conversion percentage in the country. As a quarterback, you can't lead an offense any better than that.

How this fancy offense looks against Clemson’s fearsome front is another matter. Xs and Os are all well and good. But can the Wolfpack's Jimmies block the Tiger’s Joes?

This type of contest usually ends poorly for the scheme heads. Clemson has a decided advantage up front, but Doeren’s system gives NC State a chance.

Player to Watch

DL Larrell Murchison, NC State

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NC State has a pretty legit front of its own headlined by defensive lineman Larrell Murchison. If you haven’t heard his name before, get used to it. You’ll be hearing it all over the broadcast on Saturday night, and for many years to come.

Murchison has serious hops for an interior defender. The mid-line read-option, in which a quarterback reads an interior defender on an option run play, is popular in college football. But teams have found out pretty quickly that making Murchison the “read” man on option designs isn't wise. He’ll obliterate those suckers:

Murchison wins with his first-step speed on this play, and with raw power. He doesn't need to be a great technician. He just leaps off the ball, cracks a lineman, and runs into the backfield.

Opposing offenses are constantly double-teaming him on passing plays, but he still finds a way to make an impact:

Above, he gobbles up the center-guard double-team and contributes to the play without being directly involved. That’s why box scores can lie. The double-team alone freed up a fellow pass-rusher to drive towards the quarterback.

Murchison pushed his way through the blockers with power and will. The quarterback was forced to move off his spot and escape the edge pressure, but by then there was no alley to climb into. The QB moved right into a sack.

Murchison’s mere presence gives the Wolfpack an overload to one side of the formation, and his post-snap play often helps create a sack. You can't have more of an impact as a lineman than that.

Under-the-radar Matchup

Memphis at Missouri (4 p.m. ET, SEC Network)

I believe the technical term is "pointsy." Whatever it is, this should be the poster child.

If you’re looking for your points fix this week, tune into Memphis-Missouri. Both teams play spread-option, up-tempo football. Both run through a rotating cast of the same eight-to-nine run-pass options and score a lot of points. And neither side plays a lick of defense.

Other than UCF - a certified juggernaut - the Tigers have played nobody. Four of their opponents this season have ranked in the bottom 30 in S&P+, including UConn, the very worst team in the nation. Their second-stingiest opponent, Tulane, currently ranks 83rd.

Despite that, Memphis' defense ranks 56th at defending explosive plays, and the team is fourth on offense. I rest my case.

Coach who needs a win

David Beaty, Kansas

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Unfortunately for David Beaty, head coaches highlighted in this section are a whopping 0-5 over the last five weeks. He also happens to coach Kansas. Gulp.

Beaty’s fate at Kansas is all but sealed. Give him credit, as his team is still fighting, and the Jayhawks aren't dead last in any regular or advanced metric. Progress!

They also have a comprehensive win over an actual Power 5 team, beating Rutgers 55-14.

In won’t matter by the end of the season, unless Beaty can pull off some kind of unimaginable upset against a team slated to win more than two games. He'll be out and the cycle of ineptitude will start all over again at Kansas.

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