College football Week 3 roundup with the 5 things that matter, winners and losers, overrated and underrated parts of the weekend, and what it all means.
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College Football Week 3 Roundup
Recaps, Ranking the Games
ACC | Group of Five
CFN 1-90 Rankings | Bowl Projections
Rankings AP | Coaches
Week 4 Early Line Predictions
Hot Seat Coach Rankings
How’d We Do? Week 3 Predictions
5. Winners & Losers From Week 1
– The One Really Big Thing
– Most Overrated Thing
– Most Underrated Thing
– What It All Means, Week 2
Winner: D’Eriq King
Well this is working out just fine.
Miami needed a top-shelf talent at quarterback again, and in came King from Houston. After two games, the Hurricanes are 2-0, he has hit 63% of his passes for 469 yards and four scores, ran for 92 yards and a touchdown, and after rolling past Louisville 47-34, the offense is working.
If he’s great against Florida State in a win this week, the October 10th game at Clemson becomes massive.
Loser: Houston football
Houston just can’t get its football season going. It was supposed to start out its season against Rice, but that didn’t happen. It was supposed to play Memphis, and that didn’t happen. It was supposed to play Baylor, and then that had to be cancelled because the Bears weren’t able to go.
The Cougars will give it a try against North Texas this week.
Winner: Running quarterbacks
The nation’s leading rusher in yards per game is …
Liberty quarterback – and former Auburn transfer – Malik Willis, after he took off for 168 yards in the 30-24 win over WKU.
The nation’s second leading rusher in yards per game is …
Georgia Southern quarterback Shai Werts, who ran for 155 yards in the win over Campbell two weeks ago.
Granted, those two only played one game each, but those two will be yardage machines all season long.
Loser: Syracuse passing protection
Two games. 14 sacks allowed.
North Carolina came up with seven sacks in its season-opening win over Syracuse, so bad things were expected to happen when Pitt – who led the nation last season in sacks – got a turn.
The Panthers came up with seven sacks and 13 tackles for loss in the 21-10 win.
Georgia Tech is up next for Syracuse. It only has five sacks in two games.
Winner: RB Sincere McCormick, UTSA
The nation’s real leading rusher is McCormick, a 5-9, 200-pound sophomore who started the season off with 197 yards in the win over Texas State, and ran for 98 yards last week in the 24-10 victory over Stephen F. Austin.
Next up? Middle Tennessee, who currently has the nation’s third-worst run defense.
Loser: FCS teams
0-14. Including Stephen F. Austin and its loss to UTSA, FCS programs who were able to give it a go so far this season are 0-14 against the FBS teams.
UTEP won two games over the previous two seasons. It’s now 2-1 after beating SFA and Abilene Christian so far.
The Citadel got whacked around by USF and Clemson, Austin Peay has made the rounds, and Houston Baptist made things fun against North Texas and Texas Tech in losses.
All losses.
Winner: Navy (in the second half against Tulane)
Navy outscored Tulane 27-0 in the second half of its thrilling win on Saturday, closing out with a walk-off field goal. The team looked different coming out of halftime, and it needed to because …
Loser: Navy (for the first six quarters of the season)
Navy looked like it had never played football before in the brutal 55-3 loss to BYU in front of a national audience in a prime Labor Day Night spot. Head coach Ken Niumatalolo vowed the team would be different and better against Tulane after more physical practices, but it was outscored 79-3 before finally turning things around.
– The One Really Big Thing
– Most Overrated Thing
– Most Underrated Thing
– What It All Means, Week 3
NEXT: The really big thing was …
4. The Really Big Thing Was …
For some reason the Big Ten decided to release its eight-game conference-only football schedule on Saturday morning just as the games were kicking off, but okay.
At least there’s a schedule now.
The Big Ten was the hardest screw to turn as college football keeps trying to make a 2020 season happen, and that appears to be giving everyone else the green light to find a way to get going, too.
The Pac-12 is trying to figure it out after saying it has improved testing, and now with the Big Ten back, the Mountain West and MAC are looking into making their own seasons happen.
Recaps, Ranking the Games
ACC | Group of Five
CFN 1-90 Rankings | Bowl Projections
Rankings AP | Coaches
Week 4 Early Line Predictions
Hot Seat Coach Rankings
This all but ends any idea of a spring football season for the FBS – the Pac-12 isn’t going to play in the spring on its own if none of the other Power Five conferences are doing it, and it still leaves open the possibility of the FCS having the spotlight to itself if it chooses to play in early 2021.
No Big Ten school chose to sit out and not play, several key players who opted out are looking to get back in, and for all the whining and moaning – hey, Nebraska, how you doin’? – there is a plan for the league to give it a go.
There’s no wiggle room in case a game needs to be pushed to later, and several Big Ten schools are having issues just keeping classes going, but eight games, eight weeks, one championship week.
We really are getting Big Ten football back.
Maybe.
– Most Overrated Thing
– Most Underrated Thing
– What It All Means, Week 3
NEXT: The most overrated thing was …
3. The Most Overrated Thing Was …
Technically, Oklahoma State, since it was rated and ranked 11th in the AP poll going into last week.
It’s no fun making the Big 12 a punching bag after going 0-3 vs. the Sun Belt, and with the 35-33 Texas Tech win over Houston Baptist being the closest any FCS team came to beating an FBS team, but the his just keep onnnnnnn coming.
It starts with Baylor having to bail on Houston this Saturday. More on that in the What It All Means section, but with this cancellation. that means the Big 12’s second-best non-conference win this year will be Texas whacking around UTEP.
The best victory? What’s the top game the conference will have on the resumé that shows the world that its champion belongs in the hunt for the College Football Playoff National Championship?
Oklahoma State 16, Tulsa 7.
The Golden Hurricane of Tulsa took a hit when star RB Shamari Brooks was knocked out for the year in practice with a knee injury, and the team still had a 7-3 lead on the supposedly big, bad team from the Big 12 into the 4th quarter.
Oklahoma State rallied with 13 unanswered points for the win, but even in victory it was yet another black eye for the conference.
This is supposed to be an OSU team worth of challenging for the conference title – and it still might – but it managed 279 yards of total offense, couldn’t get RB Chuba Hubbard going – he finished with 93 yards – and lost Spencer Sanders early on to an apparent ankle injury.
The Cowboys start the Big 12 schedule this week against West Virginia.
NEXT: The most underrated thing was …
2. The Most Underrated Thing Was …
The American Athletic Conference pushed back.
USF might have been blasted by Notre Dame 52-0, but Tulsa have Oklahoma State in deep, deep trouble late in the 16-7 loss, and Cincinnati roared with 55 points in the win over Austin Peay.
SMU had a rocky first game against Texas State – only slipping by 31-24 – but QB Shane Buechele came back roaring in the 65-35 win over North Texas. It wasn’t a perfect performance – the D gave up over 500 yards – but the Mustangs ripped off 710 yards of total O.
It might have been AAC-on-AAC action, but Navy’s comeback to beat Tulane was among the most interesting things of the weekend, and the star of stars came through in an uggo.
UCF and Georgia Tech played a fun-bad game.
It was entertaining, but Georgia Tech turned it over five times, and UCF gave it up twice. The two teams combined for 15 penalties, were way too off for long stretches, and …
UCF rolled up 660 yards for the game and scored 21 fourth quarter points for a 49-21 win over a team that went to Tallahassee the week before and beat Florida State.
Beating Georgia Tech isn’t like taking down Miami, Virginia Tech, or North Carolina this year in the ACC – much less Notre Dame or Clemson – but it was still a restaurant-quality road win with a big overall offensive game.
More than that, though, was how UCF wasn’t good, it didn’t play its best, it was missing a slew of players who opted out, and it still beat a Power Five program by 28.
It’s okay to be ragged in the first game of the season, especially because …
NEXT: What It All Means: Week 3
1. What It All Means: Week 3
The 2020 college football season can’t get going.
Let’s stop playing all nice-nice and call out this season so far for what it is.
Weird. Awful. Bad.
Te quality of play has been awful, just about everything about the season has been weird, and the matchups have been just plain bad.
Of course it’s been great having any football back, but compared to an NFL season that’s been an insane thrill ride over the first two weeks, the college game isn’t working …
Yet.
Of course it’s about the virus.
To be fair, the system is sort of working like it’s supposed to.
For example, Baylor didn’t think it was safe to play after going through its contact tracing protocols. Houston already had to cancel its game against Memphis, scrambled to get the date with Baylor together, and was then told it wasn’t happening.
The better to be safe than sorry cliché is more than fine here – really, if Baylor didn’t think it was totally okay, then there was no reason to mess around with it for some silly game – but the cancellations and the real-world issues with the virus are dragging down college football more than pro sports.
It’s possible to get lost in Cam Newton trying to drive the Patriots for a possible game-winning score, and Anthony Davis hitting last second three for the win, and Bryson DeChambeau beating the holy bejeebers out of a golf ball, but it’s tough when the college games don’t have anywhere near the importance needed to matter.
Again, yet.
We had a grand total of 15 FBS vs. FBS games this week on a September 19th Saturday after cancelation after cancellation.
15.
And out of that, we had just four Power Five vs. Power Five games, and those were all in the ACC.
But here’s the bright side.
The ACC season has been rolling for most teams for a few weeks, and the play should get stronger and better. Miami vs. Louisville was an okay start to that.
After a disastrous few weeks, the Big 12 now gets to take everything out on itself in conference play, the Big Ten is starting up October 24th, the Pac-12 might not be that far behind, and we’re getting SEC football this coming week.
The games are still going to be ragged. They’re still going to seem off, and this isn’t going to be anything close to a normal season.
But the matchups are going to start being a big deal, and the stakes will be raised.
It might take a bit to get there, but soon, college football will start playing games you really do care about.
And it’s about to start this weekend.
Recaps, Ranking the Games
ACC | Group of Five
CFN 1-90 Rankings | Bowl Projections
Rankings AP | Coaches
Week 4 Early Line Predictions
Hot Seat Coach Rankings
