ESPN’s Josh Pate Talks Ohio State-USC, Arch Manning, Oregon & More with Rich

Josh Pate's Tuesday visit to The Rich Eisen Show opened with a bit about gifting his parents Rich Shop gift cards for Christmas. It ended with a college football landscape that has no center of gravity, a coach in Los Angeles who has already told Pate everything he needs to know, and an Oregon season that Pate thinks will be studied for a long time.

The theme running through all of it: in 2026, nobody gets to think in definitives.

Oregon and the $40 Million Question

Rich started with Oregon, which he called "basically a shadow of what everyone expected this year." The offensive coordinator has been bounced, and Dan Lanning announced that Dante Moore will miss the rest of the year after the hit he took against USC.

Pate wasn't surprised by the Moore news and stressed that Lanning was quick to shut down any suggestion of opting out. "This is not him ducking the rest of the year," Pate relayed. "We can't put him back in right now."

The bigger story, for Pate, is what Oregon represents. Highly ranked teams have fallen off cliffs before. "What hasn't happened before, cuz we're in a new era, is teams spending 40 some odd million dollars on rosters and then falling off the cliff," he said. He sees versions of it at Texas A&M, possibly at Texas, and at Oregon.

Pate said he'd love to someday hear Lanning, under "truth serum," explain how quickly he knew the coordinator move "was a disaster." And it wasn't a hire, Pate noted, "it was an elevation." He has talked to Lanning about the thinking: Oregon felt close last year, and if you trust your building, you promote from within. "That makes perfect sense," Pate said. "It doesn't always work out that way, though."

He also defended Lanning's eye for talent. This is the same coach who identified Kenny Dillingham and then Will Stein, "and those two dudes are current head coaches." The problem, in Pate's view, was getting "really, really caught up," the same way he says Mike Elko did at Texas A&M, in the idea that a playoff team should keep its balance and promote from inside.

Arch, Texas, and the Love Triangle

Rich asked where things stand in the Texas and Arch Manning saga, unsure whether to call it a love triangle or a hate triangle. Pate didn't hesitate: "It's 1,000% a love triangle. Good old fashioned Saturday love triangle."

His read on last week's win cuts against the narrative. "Nothing changed with him," Pate said of Manning. Texas won because its running back went for over 150 yards on the ground. "Arch Manning, for all the talk about edginess and people doubting him and back against the wall, he was largely the same player he's been all year. The difference was they could run the ball."

If that holds, Pate called Texas "a very dangerous team," pointing to a defense he described as "lights out" even without Colin Simmons. The injuries are real: the left tackle is out for the year, and Cam Coleman, whom Pate called "a little bit of an underachievement" relative to what Texas is paying him, has been out, though he may be back.

Why Pate Won't Write Off the Longhorns

Pate's caution comes from memory. He recalled Miami last year at this point, fresh off a loss to SMU, its second of the season. "They had been left for dead. I didn't even think they'd make the playoff at that point." By January, Miami was "at midfield with a chance to win a national championship."

Texas, he said, has "all those ingredients to round into a much better form," even with the injuries baked in. The schedule offers a path: Mississippi State without Kamario Taylor this weekend, then a trip to LSU, which plays Alabama, Texas, and Tennessee in succession.

He was careful not to oversell it. "It's not because Arch Manning is just undergoing this rapid evolution, like once people started doubting him, he just went superhero mode," Pate said. Watching Texas all year has been "like trying to nail jello to the wall," and he expects more wobbliness. "But you cannot write them off, surely, because of the talent they have and therefore how combustible that potentially is if it all mixes together the right way."

A Playoff Field With No North Star

Rich shared a text from his 15-year-old son, Cooper, on Saturday: "I was going to play PS5, but all of a sudden BYU UCF turned into the game of the year." Pate said Cooper wasn't far off, and BYU's loss was one more flip of the chessboard.

Asked whether the playoff picture heading into November feels murkier than usual, Pate agreed and named the reason. "We don't have a North Star. We don't have a dominant team." Miami, he noted, went to overtime with FSU two weeks ago. If you pause time right now, the most recent Miami looks like that team, but nobody has held the role for "a consistent three-week period of time" all season. Miami goes to North Carolina this week and Notre Dame after that.

His warning: judging teams the old way will produce "complete anarchy come selection Sunday." That method meant picking apart the resume of whoever shouldn't be in, and now every resume can be picked apart. Last year's number nine team in the playoff played for a national title. "You just got to wipe the slate clean every week," Pate said.

He is watching Notre Dame closely. The Irish sit at five in the AP poll with a loss already, a ranking he thinks reflects projecting or eyeball testing. If the committee ranks Notre Dame fourth, fifth, or sixth next week, Pate asked, can the Irish not "lose close to the number one team in the country and still not drop out?"

USC, Ohio State, and Lincoln Riley

Rich framed Saturday's Ohio State at USC game as a possible fork in the road for USC's coach, with Ryan Day staying coy about his quarterback with Julian Sayin in a sling. Pate said the fork already came. "I think the fork in the road was the Oregon game."

Ohio State will start either Tavien St. Clair or another backup making a first career start on the road, and the Buckeyes are still favored by a touchdown. A USC win in an ugly game against a "nonfunctional" Ohio State offense, Pate said, "hasn't told me anything about Lincoln Riley."

What has told him something: "Lincoln Riley coming out of a bye week unable to hang more than seven points on Wisconsin. That tells me everything I need to know." Same with losing by double digits to what Pate called "frankly a bad Oregon team," even after knocking Oregon's starting quarterback out. "When you knock Oregon's starting quarterback out of the game and still can't do anything with the opportunity, that tells me all I need to know about Lincoln Riley."

He still called it the most entertaining game of the weekend for "the storyline crowd," between the Ohio State quarterback question and the USC coaching drama. Even people who couldn't care less about football, he said, could be drawn in.

Pate's Actual Game of the Week

For pure stakes, Pate went with Georgia and Florida, moved to Atlanta while Jacksonville's stadium is under construction. He took a shot at the decision to play in Atlanta and Tampa instead of on campus for two years, and at what the old "world's largest outdoor cocktail party" has become.

Georgia already has a loss, to Auburn, which Pate said "the world seems to have forgotten," and still has Florida, Ole Miss, and South Carolina ahead. "Georgia could go from prime position to back against the wall really quick," he said, while Florida could jump back into the mix. With so many SEC contenders playing each other, there are 10 more guaranteed losses that "have to go somewhere."

Pate's show, Josh Pate's CFB on YouTube, is closing in on 600,000 subscribers, and his crew heads to Winston-Salem on Friday for Virginia versus Wake Forest. Rich sent listeners there Friday at 2 Eastern on ESPN.