The Week 2 college football roundup. The 5 things that matter, winners and losers, overrated and underrated, and what it all means.
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College Football Week 2 Roundup
CFN 1-130 Rankings | Bowl Projections
Coach Hot Seat Rankings | Heisman Trophy Race
Early Week 3 Line Lookahead & Projection
Rankings: AP | USA Today Coaches | FWAA
3 Thoughts On Every Game ACC | Big Ten | SEC
5. Winners & Losers From Week 2
Winner: Clemson
And that’s that. Barring a horrendous injury or a total meltdown, the 24-10 win over Texas A&M was the only thing standing in the way of the Tigers and a 12-0 run before the ACC Championship. No team left on the schedule is currently ranked.
Loser: The Heisman chances of the Clemson stars
There just aren’t any big games left for Trevor Lawrence and Travis Etienne to play. They might be in the hunt because they’re two of the nation’s best players, but A&M was the spotlight game, and neither one made enough of a Heisman statement.
Winner: North Carolina
The team that seemed to invent ways to lose close games last season has now won two straight tight battles to start the year 2-0 under head man Mack Brown. Now – with Wake Forest and Appalachian State up next – going 4-0 seems possible before hosting Clemson in Chapel Hill.
Loser: Miami
Oh go ahead and throw in the Dolphins’ 59-10 performance against Baltimore, too. On the plus side, the Canes have a QB in Jarren Williams. However, after the loss to UNC they’re the ACC’s only 0-2 team. Also a loser? Bethune-Cookman and Central Michigan – they’re up next for The U.
Winner: Army’s reputation
Remember, maybe – MAYBE – two or three Army starters would crack the Michigan two-deep, and yet the Knights pushed around the Wolverines into meltdown panic mode in the 24-21 overtime thriller.
Loser: Michigan offense
It ran for 108 yards, averaged 2.4 yards per carry, lost three fumbles and avoid disaster several other times. As a team, the nine penalties were painful, and the inability to stuff the Army offense almost led to the upset. And now it has to deal with a Wisconsin team in two weeks that won its first two games by a combined score of 110-0.
Speaking of high-powered offenses …
Winner: Maryland
Remember, Syracuse was favored when the lines first game out, but the public had other ideas as it swung the odds the other way. With 42 points at halftime, 650 yards of total O, and 142 points in the first two games, this Terp thing is working under Mike Locksley.
Loser: The Big 12
Seven Big 12 teams are still unbeaten, and Texas can still get into the College Football Playoff by running the table, but barring a minor miracle, it’s Oklahoma or bust now for the CFP. West Virginia is bad, Kansas is worse, and there hasn’t ben one decent win so far from the entire league.
Winner: All things Georgia
Georgia 63, Murray State 10. Georgia State is 2-0 after beating Furman, Georgia Southern got by Maine, and Georgia Tech got by USF 14-10 for head coach Geoff Collins’ first win with the program.
Loser: All things Nevada
Nevada came up with two field goals against Oregon, and UNLV scored one touchdown at home against Arkansas State. The two Silver State programs lost their games by a combined score of 120-23.
The Really Big Thing | Most Overrated Thing
Most Underrated Thing | What It All Means
NEXT: The really big thing was …
4. The Really Big Thing Was …
LSU 45, Texas 38
The Tigers have a four-best-team theory buffer.
As in, “yeah, Oregon went 12-1 and took the Pac-12 title, but it doesn’t have that win.”
Going by the rankings, it’s going to take something miraculous for someone else to come up with a better, more impressive non-conference road win than hanging 45 points up on the nation’s No. 9 Longhorn team.
It’s the type of win that sticks in everyone’s mind and gets referred to over and over again as the long season rolls on. And now, the schedule opens up wide.
CFN 1-130 Rankings | Bowl Projections
Coach Hot Seat Rankings | Heisman Trophy Race
Early Week 3 Line Lookahead & Projection
Rankings: AP | USA Today Coaches | FWAA
3 Thoughts On Every Game ACC | Big Ten | SEC
Taking little for granted, Florida, Auburn, and Texas A&M all have to come to Baton Rouge. All three are nasty showdowns, but it’s the SEC – you can’t ask for more than getting those at home.
The road games? Vanderbilt, Mississippi State, and Ole Miss are three of them. Any team good enough to even watch the College Football Playoff National Championship needs to take down those three.
So if LSU wins the remaining games it’s supposed to, it can lose at Alabama and still be considering one of the four best teams in college football.
You’re an SEC West team that went 11-1 with a win over Florida, road win over Texas, and your one loss is at Alabama? No shame there.
Or, the Tigers might just be good enough to beat the Tide.
Joe Burrow is now a real, live Heisman candidate and interesting pro prospect, and the team certainly has the grown-ass pro-talented men on both sides of the bal – the piece are there to pull off the win in Tuscaloosa. Do that, and there’s really a buffer if there’s a loss along the way.
Now LSU really is a player for the national championship – more on that in a moment.
NEXT: The most overrated thing was …
3. The Most Overrated Thing Was …
The Pac-12 Quarterback Concerns …
Particularly at USC.
It’s not like JT Daniels was the no-doubter No. 1 guy coming out of Trojan spring and fall camps. Jack Sears and Matt Fink were neck-and-neck-and-neck for the starting job, but they bolted once it became Daniels’ starting gig.
Fink returned from the transfer portal, but after Daniels was lost for the year with a knee injury, former fourth-string freshman Kedon Slovis was the next-best option against a Stanford defense that did awful things to the Northwestern quarterbacks the week before.
So that was it for the USC season, the Clay Helton era, and …
Slovis hit 28-of-33 passes for 377 yards and three scores with no picks in a stunning 45-20 win over the Cardinal.
On the other side, KJ Costello was out after getting hit in the head against the Wildcats, and Davis Mills came in and was just fine, hitting 22-of-36 passes for 237 yards and a score with a pick.
Slovis would’ve been the talk of the Pac-12 this week, but …
NEXT: The most underrated thing was …
2. The Most Underrated Thing Was …
Cal 20, Washington 19 …
And you didn’t see it.
You know who also didn’t watch? The pollsters who made 1-1 Washington 21st in the Coaches Poll and 23rd in the AP, and didn’t rank 2-0 Cal.
And why?
The game started almost three hours late because of weather problems, meaning the game ended after 4 am on the east coast.
The Bears finished with close to 200 rushing yards, got an effective day from QB Chase Garbers, and was a +2 in turnover margin as they took down the defending Pac-12 champs in the conference opener.
It was the second straight year Cal beat the Huskies, getting it done this time with two Marcel Dancy touchdown runs in the second quarter, and closing out with a game-winning 17-yard field goal from Greg Thomas with eight seconds to play.
With that, the already CFP-wounded Pac-12 – thanks to the Oregon loss to Auburn – has all but lost one of its other stars. Washington is fantastic, but it still has to play Oregon, go to Stanford, and deal with USC, Utah and Washington State.
Can Cal be in the mix? Nah. It’s good, but at Oregon, at Utah, at Stanford – start there, and it’s not getting through this season without at least a few losses.
NEXT: What Is All Means: Week 2
1. What It All Means: Week 2
For the second straight week we learned on thing above all else.
There are six teams capable of winning the College Football Playoff national championship, and everyone else playing for the delightful enjoyment of sport.
Again from earlier, Texas is very good, and it could absolutely end up winning the Big 12 title. But is this team good enough to get by the other monsters at the top of the rankings to win the national title? Is it good enough to beat Oklahoma twice? Nah.
What, exactly, about the overtime win over Army made you think Michigan is about to do something truly special?
How about Utah struggling against Northern Illinois – did that do it for you? Auburn had a hard time against Tulane, Florida looked lousy against Miami, and on and on. Meanwhile …
No. 1 Clemson just came up with a bag full of meh against Texas A&M, and it slowed the nation’s 12th-ranked team to a dead stop.
It was only New Mexico State that got blown out, but Alabama is doing performance art at this point.
Georgia is playing like it hasn’t rolled out of bed yet, and it couldn’t have had an easier time getting to 2-0.
Oklahoma’s offense continues to mock the rest of the college football world, and Ohio State has so much talent that it took out a supposedly dangerous Cincinnati team 42-0, only because it didn’t seem all that interested in winning 49-0.
Which leads back to LSU. Texas pushed around the Tiger defense a little bit, and Sam Ehlinger was fantastic against an NFL-caliber secondary, but Mr. Burrow and company always had an answer. LSU put up 573 yards on the road against what should be the Big 12’s best defense.
Auburn is fine. Florida is fine. Utah is fine. Notre Dame is harmless at the No. 7 spot – it’s fine, too. They all have the potential to be one of the bigger boys – they’ll all get their cuts – but for now, there appear to be six teams for four spots.
CFN 1-130 Rankings | Bowl Projections
Coach Hot Seat Rankings | Heisman Trophy Race
Early Week 3 Line Lookahead & Projection
Rankings: AP | USA Today Coaches | FWAA
3 Thoughts On Every Game ACC | Big Ten | SEC
