What we learned in Week 6: Undefeated teams dwindling quickly

Week 6 set up as an obvious trouble spot for undefeated teams with so many facing quality matchups.

That turned out to be an understatement.

Sixty-five teams started the weekend without a loss. At least six were guaranteed to fall as they locked horns with another undefeated team.

In the end, 10 more teams joined those six, leaving just still chasing the dream of the undefeated season.

To put that into a deeper context, 28 teams finished the season without a loss last year. We’ve still got three weeks to go.

Of that list of 49 teams, 20 face at least one undefeated team over the final three weeks, so the maximum number of teams that could finish undefeated is 39. Considering the way things have been going, that level of undefeated achievement seems very unlikely.

Other interesting numbers that are unearthed after six weeks:

• 125 teams are now playoff eligible having reached five victories.

• 205 teams remain above the .500 mark. That’s about normal for this stage of the season. But before leaping to the conclusion that the 79 teams at 4-2 need just one win to get to the playoff eligible group, more than a handful of them don’t have the easiest road to getting that one win.

Pleasant surprises

There aren’t a lot of truly surprising names among the group of undefeated teams.

In fact, ten of them are trying to repeat the feat in Lincoln-Way East, Mount Carmel, Sycamore, York, Hersey, Lena-Winslow, Maroa-Forsyth, Johnston City, Camp Point Central and Seneca.

A few unexpected teams that have reached the 6-0 mark would be Stark County, Momence and Maine West.

However, when you dip into the group of teams that are now playoff eligible some really interesting stories of unexpected success start to emerge.

• Lincoln’s win over Jacksonville gave the Railsplitters their fifth victory. There’s still plenty of room to sweat it out for Lincoln, which faces a brutal back portion of its schedule (Rochester, Normal University, Glenwood) and might have difficulty getting to six wins. This stretch also accounts for a very large portion of Lincoln’s potential playoff points. Lincoln would be very much in danger of being left out of the field if five-win teams with low playoff points had to be eliminated. It could be Lincoln’s first playoff appearance since 1984.

• Joliet West’s presence among potential playoff teams isn’t all that shocking as the Tigers have made recent appearances in the postseason. What is surprising: the Tigers are in the group of playoff eligible teams so soon. Joliet West has earned two crossover wins in the Southwest Prairie Conference, which has been notoriously hard to do against East Division teams in recent years.

• Maybe everyone should just take a year off once in awhile. I’m being sarcastic, of course, but what Sandwich has achieved after removing itself from the varsity football ranks is nothing short of remarkable. There might be opportunities to tack on a few more wins the rest of the way as well.

• Dwight made a somewhat recent playoff appearance in 2018, but its 5-1 start in the first-year Chicagoland Prairie Conference can’t help but raise an eyebrow. Dwight has finished above the .500 mark just three times since the 1980s, when the program made a couple of third-round playoff runs.

Playoffs begin now

You’ll hear it often from coaches throughout the rest of the season when they’ve added a fourth loss.

That group of 80 teams includes some unfamiliar names such as Reed-Custer, Clifton Central, Ridgeview, Glenbrook South, Mascoutah, Moweaqua Central A&M, O’Fallon and Tuscola. All will almost certainly need to run the table to qualify for the playoffs as at-large teams.

The most prominent member of the 2-4 group is Nazareth, which picked off its second consecutive victory over Fenwick after starting the season 0-4.

Nazareth finishes the season with Brother RIce, Marian Catholic and Wheaton St. Francis, which is obviously an uphill climb where wins in all three games are a must.

But the Roadrunners have recently demonstrated that they know how to deal with extreme situations. They became the first team in state history to start the season 2-4 and win a state championship just last season.