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College football Week 5 storylines: Unbeatens square off in huge showdowns

We're a month into the 2021 college football season, and 26 FBS teams remain undefeated. Ten of them play each other in five huge Week 5 matchups -- Ole Miss at Alabama, Arkansas at Georgia, Cincinnati at Notre Dame, Iowa at Maryland, Baylor at Oklahoma State -- and four more face by far their biggest tests of the season to date (Boston College, Kentucky, Michigan and Wake Forest).

It's quite the weekend, in other words. Week 5 will separate quite a bit of wheat from chaff and give us a heck of a lot to keep track of. Let's talk about the biggest questions and storylines to follow.

All times listed below are Eastern, and all games are on Saturday unless otherwise noted.


What makes Ole Miss' offense so good?

No. 12 Ole Miss at No. 1 Alabama (3:30 p.m., CBS)

Scoring 40 on Alabama is generally a feat reserved for royalty. Of the 13 teams to do it in Nick Saban's 14-plus years in Tuscaloosa, five went on to either win or play for the national title, while others had either Johnny Manziel, Gus Malzahn's early-tenure Auburn magic or one of the most talented skill corps in recent college football history (2020 Florida).

Three others were Ole Miss. The Rebels went for 43 points in both 2015 and 2016, splitting a pair of nail-biters, and last fall, with former Saban offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin -- the co-author of Alabama's incredible mid-2010s identity shift -- in charge, they did the deed again. They were tied at 42-42 with maybe the greatest Crimson Tide team ever before finally succumbing, 63-48. Kiffin learned everything Saban hated to try to defend during his time in Alabama, then used it all against him last year.