Week 4 in the Pac-12 was everything we hoped it would be. The top teams in the conference again looked powerful. Oregon State and Washington State proved themselves to be legitimate forces in the league. Major matchups in the Pacific Northwest more than lived up to their billing.

And, as a result, we have a new No. 1 in the Power Rankings!

Let’s get to it.

A note: this is not a prediction of where each team finishes the season, it is a snapshot of where each team is at right now. It’s meant to be reactive.

12. Colorado Buffaloes

Prev. rank: 12
Week 4: 45-17 loss to UCLA
Week 5: at Arizona

CU found its quarterback in true freshman Owen McCown. That’s good, at least.

11. Arizona State Sun Devils

Prev. rank: 11
Week 4: 34-13 loss to Utah
Week 5: at USC

Rock bottom is on the horizon, and it’s going to hurt. Arizona State is possibly looking at three straight top-15 opponents after firing parting ways with its head coach. That’s not what you want.

10. Stanford Cardinal

Prev. rank: 9
Week 4: 40-22 loss to Washington
Week 5: at Oregon

The Stanford defense does not look good. The Cardinal rank 109th nationally in yards per play allowed, and they’re getting shredded by the pass (8.4 per pass, 113th). Washington’s Michael Penix Jr. had his way with the Stanford defense on Saturday, throwing for 309 yards and two scores as Washington ran up 40 points. It was 30-7 going into the fourth quarter, which means Stanford has played two games so far this season against Power Five opponents and been completely out of both of them early in the second half.

9. Arizona Wildcats

Prev. rank: 7
Week 4: 49-31 loss to Cal
Week 5: vs. Colorado

California ran for 9.3 yards a carry against Arizona, an opponent record. The Golden Bears were one yard shy of putting 600 on the Arizona defense. There are disappointing performances, and then there’s what happened in Berkeley with the Wildcats. The defense is going the wrong way. After it yielded 4 yards a play in the opener, it has given up 5.8, 7.1, and now 9.1 in the three weeks since.

8. Cal Golden Bears 

Prev. rank: 10
Week 4: 49-31 win over Arizona
Week 5: at Washington State

Jaydn Ott! The Golden Bears unleashed their true freshman running back on the Wildcats and he produced one of the best single-game rushing performances by a Cal football player in a long time. Ott had 19 carries for 274 yards and three touchdowns. He had multiple 70-yard gains. A chorus of folks (myself included) has been begging for the offense to feature more of the talented youngster and we finally got that in Week 4. Dominance on the ground opened up the pass game in a major way for quarterback Jack Plummer, who was 2-for-5 for minus-2 yards after the first quarter and went 16-for-23 for 247 yards and three scores the rest of the way.

7. UCLA Bruins

Prev. rank: 8
Week 4: 45-17 win over Colorado
Week 5: vs. Washington

Finally a dominant performance from UCLA. The unbeaten Bruins had been playing with their food in recent weeks. Against Colorado — with some life on offense! — they put the hammer down a bit more. Dorian Thompson-Robinson finished 19-for-23 passing with 290 total yards and two scores. Zach Charbonnet topped 100 rushing yards on just nine carries. No turnovers. Five sacks. Seventeen third downs forced. This looked more like the UCLA team we expected to see. Not quite there, but getting closer.

6. Oregon State Beavers

Prev. rank: T-3
Week 4: 17-14 loss to USC
Week 5: at Utah

A golden opportunity for the Beavers to score a massive win at home and the Beavers turn it over four times, wasting a gift of an offensive performance from USC. Oregon State watched the Lincoln Riley offense turn from a buzzsaw to a dull butterknife and it mustered only 14 points. That is going to sting in Corvallis for quite some time. I’d contend that Oregon State is still a strong team, and not one to be overlooked the rest of the way, but Saturday felt like a major missed opportunity.

5. Washington State Cougars

Prev. rank: 6
Week 4: 44-41 loss to Oregon
Week 5: vs. Cal

Same goes for Washington State. The Cougars had a chance to pick up a second top-20 upset victory and for about 55 minutes it looked like they’d do exactly that against Oregon. Quarterback Cameron Ward was toying with Oregon’s defensive front all game. He made a critical mistake at the end, but displayed some legitimate wizardry throughout. The defense fell apart at the end of the game, but spent the first three quarters completely stonewalling Oregon any time it journeyed inside the red zone. Surprisingly, I feel better about my “Washington State wins eight games” prediction now than I did two weeks ago when the Cougars beat Wisconsin in Madison.

4. Utah Utes

Prev. rank: T-3
Week 4: 34-13 win over Arizona State
Week 5: vs. Oregon State

Utah won, but the Utes lost in a big way. It’s hard to overstate how important tight end Brant Kuithe is to the Utah offense. He is an athletic, line-him-up-anywhere, reliable pass-catcher and one of quarterback Cameron Rising’s favorite targets — if not his absolute favorite. Word out of Salt Lake City is that Kuithe might have suffered a significant knee injury in Saturday night’s win over Arizona State. Utah’s defense is rounding into form, playing more like the group these guys expected to be. They haven’t faced a challenge since Week 1, taking apart each of the last three opponents they’ve faced. All that being said, I am worried about the offense going forward.

3. Oregon Ducks

Prev. rank: T-3
Week 4: 44-41 win over Washington State
Week 5: vs. Stanford

Given the way Michigan State looked immediately after getting blasted by Washington, it’s fair to question if the Spartans’ No. 11 national ranking a week ago was actually warranted or just a product of Big Ten bias. To that end, I could make the argument Oregon has the two best wins in the conference so far — BYU and Washington State on the road — and that the Ducks have played the best team anyone in the league will face at any point this season. That this Oregon squad is 3-1 is no small feat. The Ducks lose Saturday with someone not named Dan Lanning roaming the sidelines, and I think that’s an important note. The Ducks’ offense is figuring it out. The defense has been poor, but it’s still early enough in the season that I think we can give the benefit of the doubt to Lanning.

2. USC Trojans

Prev. rank: 1
Week 4: 17-14 win over Oregon State
Week 5: vs. Arizona State

Leading up to this game, so many were saying the defense would cost USC sooner or later, to which I kept thinking the potency offense made all of that talk pretty overblown. Turns out we were both wrong. The Trojan offense sucked and the defense won a football game. USC just keeps taking the football away. It now has 14 takeaways in four games, all of which seem to come at the absolute perfect moment. Over the last two, we’ve seen signs that defenses are figuring out how to defend Caleb Williams. He opened the year with one of the best completion percentages in the country, constantly hitting the right man at the right time. In the last two weeks, he has completed 41 of his 73 pass attempts, or 56%. He’s getting caught holding onto the football. The connection between him and Jordan Addison was nonexistent until the final drive. Expect the rest of the conference to commit this Oregon State defensive gameplan to memory going forward.

1. Washington Huskies

Prev. rank: 2
Week 4: 40-22 win over Stanford
Week 5: at UCLA

Washington has scored 39 points or more in four straight games in the same season for the first time since 1944. The impact of Kalen DeBoer has been immediately evident. Washington’s offense just keeps bombing away, and the defense is coming up with splash play after splash play. As USC looked vulnerable, Washington looked lethal.