College football's Week 6 winners and losers

An offseason of trials and tribulations seemed to carry over into the regular season for Northwestern, which looked sloppy, sluggish and physically unprepared in out-of-the-gate losses to California and Northern Illinois.

The players were distracted. Opting to feature less hitting during fall camp was a crucial misstep by Pat Fitzgerald and his coaching. The sky was falling.

And then it wasn't. Northwestern notched in third win in a row Saturday by defeating No. 16 Wisconsin, 20-14, to move a game above .500 and into sole possession of first place in the Big Ten West Division.

If not the prettiest win — hardly, in fact — the Wildcats' defense stood fast. They had no answer for Wisconsin running back Melvin Gordon, who gained a career-best 259 yards on 27 carries. Northwestern took advantage of the Badgers' horrid quarterback situation, however, intercepting four passes from the combination of Joel Stave and Tanner McEvoy. Northwestern was -1 in turnover ratio during its 0-2 start. It is +7 since. Northwestern also remained unbeaten at home vs. Wisconsin since 1999, going 4-0 in that time.

For 2014 Northwestern, the clouds have cleared. Last weekend's win against Penn State could have been viewed as an anomaly, an aberration of a victory versus a conference foe still learning the ropes under a first-year staff. Topping Wisconsin serves to validate the Wildcats' in-season reversal while setting Fitzgerald's team up as a potential dark horse in the West.

Other winners this week:

Mississippi State. The No. 14 Bulldogs seem destined for the top 10 of Sunday's latest Amway Coaches Poll. Now 5-0, they consecutive wins against top 10 teams for the first time in their history. Already the top rushing defense in the SEC, Mississippi State suppressed the Aggies enough to help its offense build a big lead.

Texas A&M scored 14 points in the game's final three minutes, so the 48-31 final score is a bit deceiving. What's not deceiving: the Bulldogs' prospects of being an SEC title contender, even with Auburn, Alabama and Ole Miss remaining on the regular-season schedule.

TCU. The Horned Frogs were one of the most disappointing teams in college football last season. But coach Gary Patterson and his staff didn't stand pat or make excuses. Instead, he agreed to change his offense and join the ranks of the spread. That has made No. 25 TCU a complete team. Already with the No. 1 defense in the FBS, the Horned Frogs matched Oklahoma's always potent offense point-for-point.

TCU, 6-12 in its first two seasons as a Big 12 member, now visits unbeaten Baylor next week in a huge matchup.

Mississippi. The No. 11 Rebels could have sulked and simpered in the locker room at halftime after giving up two touchdowns in the final four minutes of the first half against Alabama. Instead, they scored the first TD of the second half, held Alabama to a field goal after the break, and notched their first win against a No. 1 team.

They will need a defensive effort similar to the one that beat Alabama 23-17 next week when they visit high-scoring Texas A&M, but Saturday's win was a milestone in every way. The last time Mississippi started 5-0, in 1962, it won the national championship.

Ohio State. The worst seems very much beyond Ohio State's offense as Urban Meyer and the Buckeyes enter the meat of the Big Ten schedule. It wasn't pretty early: OSU was sloppy against Navy and Virginia Tech, losing the latter. But the Buckeyes, led by redshirt freshman J.T. Barrett — the replacement for Braxton Miller — torched Maryland for 533 yards of offense in a 52-24 victory. Barrett completed 18-of-23 attempts for 264 yards and added 71 yards on the ground, scoring five times to fuel the No. 18 Buckeyes' rout.

Marshall. The Thundering Herd scored one, two, three, four times in the game's first 10 minutes, steamrolling out to a 28-0 lead against hapless Old Dominion in an eventual 56-14 win. The story isn't the opponent, since Marshall shouldn't be tested by most teams in Conference USA. The story is Marshall itself, which continues to dominate against a contender-free schedule. If this keeps up, the Herd should be undefeated come the postseason.

LOSERS

BYU. The No. 19 Cougars hardly could have lost more this weekend. BYU was a national factor for two reasons: An unbeaten record with some strong wins stoking it, and a legitimate top-five Heisman trophy contender in junior quarterback Taysom Hill. Now both are gone, the perfect record marred by a Utah State team that hadn't beaten BYU in Provo in 37 years, and Hill gone for the season with a broken leg.

The Cougars (4-1) were trailing by a touchdown when Hill was hurt late in the second quarter, and by halftime they had given up more points as they had in all but one entire game this season.

BYU had the potential to present a fascinating test case for the College Football Playoff selection committee; specifically, would the committee, which sets the pairings for the New Year's Six bowls, grant entry to an unbeaten independent team that has no contractual tie to them? Now we'll have to wait at least another year for that answer. Hill should be healthy by then.

Oregon. Leave it to Ducks offensive coordinator Scott Frost to explain why his team is on the wrong side of this list after its 31-24 loss Thursday against Arizona:

"In this league, you can't make mistakes and beat yourself," Frost said. "I think across the board we did that with dumb penalties, with dropped balls, with some missed protection schemes and some missed passes and some busted routes. You can't afford to waste drives in this league."

Oregon, long a second half team, was anything but against Arizona. The No. 4 Ducks gave up 28 points and an average of 6.6 yards per play after intermission — 9.6 in a 21-point third quarter.

Oregon's loss is slightly mitigated by losses by the No. 1, 3, 4, 7 and 9 teams this weekend, but the Ducks fell at home to a then-unranked team. Ultimately, if Oregon doesn't get some of its injured offensive linemen back, it's hard to imagine Arizona being the only team to beat the Ducks this season.

Stanford. The No. 13 Cardinal's 17-14 loss to No. 8 Notre Dame seemed to encompass all of the team's woes and ailments through the season's first six weeks: Even as the defense excelled — until a late touchdown put Notre Dame ahead for good — the offense scuffled through another ineffective showing against a major-conference opponent. In the big picture, Stanford's second loss of the season effectively eliminates it from the College Football Playoff race.

What might loom larger, however, is the play of an offense that shows no signs of improvement nearly across the board. For the first time in many years, the Cardinal has more questions than answers.

Oklahoma. Entering Saturday, the No. 3 Sooners were considered by many to be the best team in college football. But giving up 467 yards and two defensive touchdowns to TCU is a terrible circumstance in the first week of October. The toughest matchups on Oklahoma's schedule are still to come, and the Sooners enter that stretch already with a league loss.