CFB Week Six Preview (National):
#24 UVa-Louisville, #16 Vanderbilt-#10 Alabama,
#3 Miami-#18 Florida State Celebrate Spotlight
(DG’s “This Week In CFB” YouTube Show = below)
By David Glenn
North Carolina Sports Network
(last updated Oct. 2, 2025)
The 2025 college football season continues Thursday through Saturday with a compelling Week Six schedule.
The most prominent games nationally this time (each previewed below) include conference clashes in the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Southeastern Conference, led by #24 Virginia at 4-0 Louisville, #16 Vanderbilt at #10 Alabama, and #3 Miami at #18 Florida State.
Meanwhile, in the Old North State, legendary coaches Dabo Swinney and Bill Belichick are going head-to-head with their Clemson and UNC teams in Chapel Hill, while Duke and Wake Forest are embarking on important out-of-state road trips as they attempt to take another step toward bowl eligibility or something bigger.
Here are more details on our “Three To See” selections from this week’s national schedule:
National “Three To See,” Game One
#24 Virginia (4-1) at Louisville (4-0), Sat., 3:30 p.m. (ESPN2)
One thing to remember about Virginia as this season continues, especially if the Cavaliers figure out a way to beat Louisville on Saturday, is that their loss at NC State was a non-conference game. That may sound strange, because State and UVa have played so many ACC contests against each other for decades, but this year the matchup was added by the schools, not assigned to them by the conference office.
So, the Wahoos are actually a perfect 2-0 in conference play, with a dominant win over lowly Stanford and then last week’s stunning upset of #8 Florida State in Charlottesville. Prior to that victory, UVa’s all-time record against Associated Press top-10 foes had been 6-56-1, so — yes — that win definitely qualifies as special. The Cavs don’t have either Miami or Georgia Tech on their schedule this season, so their most challenging game after they face Louisville may be their trip to Duke in mid-November. Seriously.
Virginia is a clear-cut underdog in this one, in part because Louisville is 4-0 and on the cusp of a top-25 national ranking, in part because the Cardinals will be at home, and in part because the Cavaliers just aren’t consistently reliable on defense.
The Cards obviously hope to exploit that UVa defense, and they have fantastic skill players in running back Isaac Brown and wide receiver Chris Bell, among others, but they’re not a sure thing right now offensively because their quarterback, Southern Cal transfer Miller Moss, has been just OK so far.
Louisville head coach Jeff Brohm is a former Cardinals quarterback himself, and since returning to his alma mater, he has done amazing things with his previous transfer QBs, Jack Plummer in 2023 and Tyler Shough in 2024. Shough was a middling seventh-year senior that Brohm helped turn into a second-round NFL draft pick, a guy who’s now one play away from being the starter for the New Orleans Saints. Maybe Moss will be able to finally find his groove against UVa.
Louisville (a six-point favorite) likely will need a very effective offense because, while the Cardinals have played very good defense this season, nobody has figured out how to stop UVa quarterback Chandler Morris.
A transfer from North Texas, Morris is a legitimate dual threat who throws better than Georgia Tech’s Haynes King or Florida State’s Tommy Castellanos and runs much better than Miami’s Carson Beck, NC State’s CJ Bailey or Duke’s Darian Mensah. All of those guys are very effective quarterbacks, with varied styles, but to this point Morris has been the best true dual threat, almost equally dangerous as a runner and thrower and an emotional leader, too.
Morris has plenty of help, as well, with NC Central transfer J’Mari Taylor at running back and guys like Trell Harris and Cam Ross at wide receiver.
Louisville may have an advantage in the trenches in this game, and the Cardinals may need to lean on that to deflate a Virginia squad that’s feeling much better about itself right now than at any other point in the four-year tenure of head coach Tony Elliott.
National “Three To See,” Game Two
#16 Vanderbilt (5-0) at #10 Alabama (3-1), Sat., 3:30 p.m. (ABC)
Why did we include this SEC game, even though “Alabama over Vanderbilt” has been one of the most predictable results in any major football conference over the past half-century?
Well, first, both teams are ranked in the national Top 25, and there are only a handful of “ranked on ranked” games on the entire Week Six schedule. Second, the Commodores are off to a 5-0 start for just the second time in the past 80 years, and this year’s track record includes a dominant 31-7 win at South Carolina. Third, Vandy’s star quarterback, Diego Pavia, is both one of the team’s best players as a seventh-year senior and a college sports trailblazer, a guy whose lawsuit against the NCAA enabled him and other junior college products to extend their major college eligibility. Fourth, ESPN’s popular “College GameDay” program will be on hand in Tuscaloosa, so that’s gotta count for something.
Fifth, Vandy has one of the top-ranked offenses in the entire country, which adds another layer of intrigue, because historically the Tide have dominated the Commodores with their defense, and that may not be so simple this time. Finally, just last year, when 4-0 and #1-ranked Alabama visited 2-2 Vanderbilt in Nashville in early October, Pavia and the Commodores posted one of the most shocking upsets in SEC football history.
The game is in Tuscaloosa this year, and the Crimson Tide are a double-digit favorite, as usual. For perspective, keep in mind that Vandy just went 40 years between wins over Alabama. The Commodores beat the Tide on the field in 1984, and they beat them on the field in 2024. In between, the only “victories” in Vandy’s column came when Alabama had to forfeit or vacate several wins over the Commodores because of whatever NCAA rules the Crimson Tide was caught violating at the time.
This has been a lopsided rivalry, to say the least, and this Alabama squad has bounced back impressively from its season-opening loss at Florida State, especially with last week’s 24-21 victory at #5 Georgia.
While Alabama once again appears to be one of the SEC’s top contenders, as usual, everyone agrees that Vanderbilt’s offense is very dangerous. Some metrics say Pavia is leading the #1 offense in college football, but everyone puts this Vandy attack somewhere in the top 10 nationally. The Commodores are fourth in the FBS ranks in scoring offense, at 49 points per game, although South Carolina is the only above-average team they’ve faced so far this season.
Could this be just another predictable, business-as-usual triumph for the Tide? Yes, it could. But all of these various details and variables, taken together, make this matchup much more compelling than most of the times these two schools get together on the gridiron.
National “Three To See,” Game Three
#3 Miami (4-0) at #18 Florida State (3-1), Sat., 7:30 p.m. (ABC)
Soon after Miami joined the ACC in 2004, just three years after the most recent of the Hurricanes’ five national championships, there was a popular school of thought that the Canes and Florida State — then a national superpower and already a two-time national champion under legendary coach Bobby Bowden — might end up playing each other every year in the ACC championship game, which was first played during the 2005 season.
Twenty years later, that matchup has still never happened in the ACC title game, and the Hurricanes have played in that postseason contest only once, in 2017, when they got absolutely annihilated by Clemson.
With both Miami and Florida State now back in the national rankings, there’s a decent chance that this will be the year for a Miami-FSU matchup in Charlotte, with the ACC title on the line, but first these teams will go head-to-head in Tallahassee on Saturday night.
The #18 Seminoles are coming off their disappointing 46-38, double-overtime defeat at Virginia, but they are still #1 nationally in scoring offense, at 53 points per game, and they certainly are infinitely more dangerous than they were last season, now that coach Mike Norvell has dual-threat quarterback Tommy Castellanos running the show and plenty of weapons around him. The Noles also have won three of the last four games in this rivalry, and they’ll be playing at Doak Campbell Stadium, where they’ve won five of their last seven against the Hurricanes.
Miami (a four-point favorite), meanwhile, has been playing the best football of the four-year Mario Cristobal era, especially on defense. The Canes lead the ACC and rank in the top 10 nationally in scoring defense, at only 11 points per game, so this will be a classic strength-vs.-strength collision whenever FSU has the ball.
On the flip side, there are some fair questions about both Miami’s offense (which has struggled to throw the ball downfield against better opponents) and Florida State’s defense (which was exposed at times in the loss at UVa).
The winner of this one probably will be whoever controls the trenches, where Miami has looked a bit better so far, but big plays and turnovers always matter, and Castellanos’ legs and his special connection with 6-foot-6, 223-pound wide receiver Duce Robinson (a Southern Cal transfer) probably will provide the UM defense with its biggest test of the season.
NOTE: For the in-state edition of our Week Six college football preview, including analysis on the highest-profile games, plus schedules and TV/streaming options for all 32 teams (FBS, FCS, Division Two, Division Three) in the Bold North State, please click HERE.
