A poll that punishes teams for nearly losing to opponents they should have steamrolled? That takes into consideration the loss of multiple players critical to why that team was ranked highly the week before? Astounding.
Maybe I've missed it but this is the first poll from a source of any repute this week that approached it this way, that I've seen. Somehow when other polls were asked "So Notre Dame was ranked 9th, they've lost their best offensive players including their star quarterback who was still only able to barely keep them in the game against Virginia before he was injured - where should they be ranked now?" with "Eh, about the same. Actually, scratch that - bump them up to 8th."
Notre Dame should have had their second string playing in the third quarter against Virginia, but they couldn't and now they don't have a choice but to put their second string on the field from the opening play against us.