Savant,

I think I remember them playing Kentucky recently? They exploded on them for about three quarters. Few other games as well, they're sneaky offensively, can be dogs one day and great the next.

Patrick,

That LSU offensive line is one of the shakiest lines on a top five team (that should stay in the top five) I've seen in the last few years.

They're not your classic 200 yards/game rushing team despite the talent and SEC run mentality. Weird. Hester's versatile but I don't think he's actually all that tough of a runner, can't really wear teams down consistently.

Defensively, those linebackers are fresh meat against any smart offense. They fly to the ball but are awful in coverage. You can still get away with that in the SEC, but that's slowly changing. You'd get killed in the Pac-10 with those linebackers but luckily the front four are good enough to cover for them (for now).

And, there's Les Miles. I'll simply be shocked if he ever wins a national title. There's already a pattern of one or two inexplicable losses each year.

I really like LSU's player development on offense so far (Doucet quietly went from a solid third guy to an NFL-ready receiver, LaFell was always just an athlete but he's clearly put it together some this year, etc.), Dorsey's amazing, Flynn is clearly a fine leader, etc. But there's flaws, just like any team.

The fact that they're flaws in coaching, offensive line and coverage ability of the linebackers is troubling and could fell them once or twice down the road assuming someone out there is ready to exploit them.

That's college football for ya.

Not sure how to best answer your question ... I'm more than willing to keep a team in here in spite of a loss if what I've seen from them merits them staying. I didn't move Tennessee much after the loss to Cal. I still think they're a team with a good but twice-shaken defense and one of CFB's better quarterbacks. That's a good team that faced two buzzsaws on the road and I'm a little nervous about bumping them too much.

If their schedule had been the usual SEC cupcake fest instead of @ Cal/@ Florida, they'd easily be here which makes me want to keep them here GIVEN that:

I like what I've seen from Ainge and a greatly improved Foster, several really good players on defense and I trust both coordinators to salvage this thing.

I guess I see it slightly different. Where you say:

"I figure if the team is really Top 10 material they will work their way back towards the top as the season progresses."

I will say:

A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose, until proven otherwise. Schedules are tremendously uneven in the game which is why I give some slack to teams with unusual circumstances, who have played some people or at least some differing styles that can throw them off, and demonstrate something (whether it's good line play, or good coaching, good scheme, good quarterbacks, team speed, run stopping ability, some combination of all that) instead of just flopping.

Tennessee was slaughtered by Cal and Florida, but I look at what they essentially are and think that's still a solid team who was unfortunate enough to play two incredibly hot offenses on the road, one of those was a revenge game, the other a statement game. Do I think Tennessee's top five material after all of that?

Heck no, but I'm comfortable saying they're better than 90% of the ACC, Big Ten, etc.

Power rankings are a good mix of "week to week" rankings as well as answering "who are you?". I'm trying to get at just how good a team is at that point in the season. When it's early like this and there's all kinds of variance, I lean a little more heavily on preseason thoughts about the team to balance out all the noise.

At the end of the season these should be solid as always, because I'll have matched preseason thoughts about the teams with their actual on-field performance and ABILITY and evaluated them relative to their peers.

It's hard to compare to peers right now because things are so haywire (which always happens early in the season). Other than some "I told you so" teams like Virginia Tech, who is to say a Wisconsin can't rebound from two shaky weeks? Who is to say much of anything about USC after their strange performance against Idaho. We know certain things about teams before the season and they tend to either confirm or deny those thoughts after 12+ games. These rankings bounce around but gradually come to reflect a lot of thought on what they are, what they're doing, what they can do and can't do and whether they can or can't do it against team X, Y and Z and where teams X, Y and Z themselves stand among their peers.

I guess I'm saying it's early and I'm just observing (A LOT) and trying to figure out what it is each team really is about. That's more important than the W's and L's right now. I respect just how haywire things can go in this game and try not to overpunish teams for having bad days or getting into a bad matchup. But I will cast a suspicious glance if I see inexcusable bad line play, or inconsistency that doesn't tame itself, or whatever other issues pop up.

It's a great exercise. It forces me to think just a little bit more than I already do about the teams, part of the reason I even do them.

Thank you for the kind words.