Somehow, we’re already a full third of the way into the college football season and with league play starting for the Pac-12 and Big 12, opportunities for notable non-conference results have dwindled to a precious few (mostly the rivalry games held between the ACC and SEC East). From now on, we’ll be covering the world of college football on a league-by-league basis.
Pac-12
Even though there were quite a few byes across the conference, the Pac-12 still had the most important games of the weekend. College football’s Week Four was headlined by a trio of intriguing Pac-12 contests; unfortunately, they were mostly a disappointment for the unpartisan viewer – by halftime of those three games, the road teams (UCLA, Utah, and USC) were routing their hosts (Arizona, Oregon, and Arizona State, respectively) in impressive fashion. The three winners on the evening are now the favorites in the potentially excellent Pac-12 South – interestingly, a league with supposedly unparalleled parity (especially in the South) has more definition in its title race than many other conferences.
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OREGON SOMEHOW LOSES AT HOME BY SIX TOUCHDOWNS
Utah 62, Oregon 20.
It’s a sure sign that Oregon is established as an elite program when a single loss – even an admittedly disastrous one – provokes the famous “Is Program ‘X’ Beginning Its Slow Inevitable Decline” question from different corners of the college football world. In fairness, takes like this from Grantland’s Matt Hinton feel appropriate:
But the totality of Saturday’s collapse saw talk of “rebuilding” turn to something much darker. We will once again hear about the nagging suspicion that Oregon, the embodiment of college football’s 21st-century nouveau riche, remains less likely to sustain a perennial contender in anincreasingly competitive league— much less rebuild one — than to regress to its old, middle-class status. More so than any other national program, the Ducks’ meteoric rise was defined by a transformative coach (Kelly) and a transcendent player (Mariota), and the team having looked so lethargic this season without either of them is about as troubling an omen as the young season could have supplied.
Losing to Michigan State on the road after overthrowing a receiver on what would have likely been the game-winning touchdown was understandable, even respectable, especially when taken in the context of the “rebuilding year” Oregon was destined for. Like Hinton notes elsewhere in the article, this loss to Utah was both unexpected and revelatory: specific questions about Oregon’s quarterback recruiting have come to light after the Vernon Adams transplant hasn’t taken, but even more so, the Duck defense was completely gashed after looking competent at worst against Michigan State (but much less so after Adams’s former team, Eastern Washington, put up 42 points on opening weekend). Longtime Oregon DC Nick Allioti retired and was replaced by a position coach, and the UO defense looks incapable of holding up its end of the bargain in the long-term, even if Adams gets healthy and the offense begins to gel.
For now, it’s impossible to tell if Oregon’s decline is upon us or not, but it’s certainly time to ask the question. Utah exposed some serious cracks in the foundation: at the very least, indicating that the Ducks will be in a three-team race for the North with Stanford and Cal – at the worst, it could be a clear demarcation point for the decline of the program that’s ruled the west for the better part of a decade.
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Because of Oregon’s status in the general hierarchy of college football, their loss is a bigger story than Utah’s win – probably because that win was so shocking. Still, it likely tells us as much about Utah as it does Oregon: it appears that the Utes are best poised to challenge UCLA in the Pac-12 South and potentially make it all the way to the playoffs. Travis Wilson is one of the better quarterbacks in the country because of his unparalleled combination of size, speed, and accuracy throwing the football; running back Devontae Booker supplements a relatively inexperienced receiving corps in the passing game and forms a lethal one-two punch on the ground with Wilson. Between those two – and a dominant offensive line – Utah’s offense put together a historic performance in Eugene.
Despite how great the Utes looked against Oregon, it’s appropriate to wonder if they’re a truly a national title-caliber team – after all, they beat Utah State at home by just ten and didn’t look all that impressive in a win over hapless Fresno State. Still, because they have the two best wins of any team in the country (based on what we know thus far), and because their schedule isn’t especially challenging – particularly because UCLA comes to Salt Lake City in November and the Arizona schools look much weaker than they did before the season – Utah should be penciled in as one of the playoff teams thus far. Just make sure that you’re using a pencil.
THE LOS ANGELES AREA >>> ARIZONA
UCLA 56, Arizona 30. USC 42, Arizona State 14.
After a rickety first half against BYU, Josh Rosen and the UCLA offense were nearly perfect in the game’s opening 30 minutes in Tuscon, scoring touchdowns on six of their first seven drives and carrying a commanding 42-14 lead into halftime. That the second half was largely a dull scrimmage featuring the legs of Arizona’s backup quarterback speaks to the body of work that the Bruins – who have suffered three huge injuries on defense – did in that sterling first half. Arizona hadn’t played anyone of note yet, so it’s perhaps too early to dismiss the warning signs from the BYU game, but Rosen looked like a completely different player than he did the week before. Such is life with a freshman quarterback, a life that UCLA will quickly become accustomed to.
As the first half in Tuscon was winding down, USC and Arizona State kicked off in Tempe. The Trojans’ last trip to the desert – a shellacking that preceded Lane Kiffin’s in-season firing – and ASU’s Hail Mary win in Los Angeles last season were avenged decisively: USC led 21-0 late in the first half before a very long scoop-and-score after Arizona State’s first sustained drive and a fumble on the ensuing kickoff took what would have been a reasonably close game to a 35-0 laugher right before the break. Cody Kessler threw for five touchdowns total in the game, including two to sophomore star JuJu Smith-Schuster and one to track phenom (and starting corner) Adoree’ Jackson.
Before the season, the Pac-12 South looked like a five-team race between the Arizona schools, Utah, USC, and UCLA. While it’s certainly too early to write off Arizona – the reigning division champs – and Arizona State, open questions remain for both teams: for U of A, injuries to QB Anu Solomon and All-American LB Scooby Wright essentially doom the Wildcats from reaching their loftier goals; for ASU, a Week One loss to Texas A&M in Houston suggested just how lethargic the Sun Devils might be this season and the loss to USC was another data point in that direction. Utah could be this year’s out-of-nowhere elite team, UCLA has been bitten by the injury bug but still boasts an enviable combination of talent and experience around the inherently combustible freshman QB, and USC is predictably loaded with talent. Though the Trojans are one game back because of a loss to Stanford, it should still be a very intriguing race.
ELSEWHERE
- It’s a rebuilding year in Washington, especially on the offensive end of the ball. Cal took a commanding 20-3 lead into halftime, but a long fumble return for a touchdown in the third quarter cut the deficit to just six points. The Huskies fumbled on their next drive in Cal territory, answered a Bears FG with their own, and then threw a pick to end the game.
- Stanford didn’t win any style points in its uneventful win over Oregon State, but winning any weeknight conference game on the road after a huge win is an accomplishment in and of itself. Quality of competition caveats apply, but Stanford’s offense continues to look like the complete opposite of the unit that was held to 6 points by Northwestern.
- Because they played a road game against Hawaii, Colorado is gifted a 13th regular season game by the NCAA rulebook. They used that extra game to pummel Nicholls State 48-0.
Big 12
Like the Pac-12, the Big 12 started conference play this past week, but only had two league games on the slate – TCU @ Texas Tech and Oklahoma State @ Texas.
THE MIRACLE IN LUBBOCK
TCU 55, Texas Tech 52.
If you haven’t yet seen the highlights from the most exciting game of the young college football season, they’re right here.
Fittingly, it was two Texas schools that provided us with the fireworks – TCU’s Trevone Boykin threw for 9.0 yards per attempt on 54 passes (485 total yards) and four touchdowns, while Red Raider QB Patrick Mahomes totaled 8.7 yards per attempt on 45 passes (392 total yards) and two touchdowns; Texas Tech’s Air Raid attack was in full force, but running back DeAndre Washington put up 188 yards and four touchdowns on the ground; the best stat line of the day goes to TCU wideout Josh Doctson, who somehow caught 18 passes for 267 yards and three touchdowns.
Doctson also deserves an assist for the game-winning play: on fourth-and-goal with less than a minute left, Boykin dropped back to pass, targeted Doctson, overthrew him by a significant margin, and Doctson somehow got a hand on the ball to tip it up so that Frogs RB Aaron Green could snag the deflection in the back of the end zone. That play – near the end of the highlight video linked above – will be one of the most memorable highlights of the college football season, and it could have been surpassed if a last-ditch rugby-style sequence of pitches had worked out for Texas Tech on the game’s last play.
TCU – who’d been ranked #3 in the AP poll – look too vulnerable to be a true playoff contender; conceding 52 points and winning is fortunate and probably not repeatable. Texas Tech might be one of the more surprising teams in the Big 12 and road games in Lubbock have felled many great teams over the years, but with an injury-depleted defensive unit, head coach Gary Patterson must quickly come up with some solutions, or any off day by Boykin and the high-powered TCU offense will likely lead to a loss. In hindsight, TCU’s lackluster opening night win over Minnesota may say more about the Frogs than it does the Gophers, after Minnesota’s struggled with Colorado State, Kent State, and Ohio.
ELSEWHERE
- A week after a heartbreaking special teams error (missed XP) cost Texas a shot at OT against Cal, another special teams gaffe (shanked punt) cost them a shot at OT against Oklahoma State. With Jerrod Heard at the helm, Texas is a completely different team than the one that was destroyed by Notre Dame, but they still don’t have the wins to show for it. Unfortunately, the Longhorns received the wrong end of some terrible Big 12 officiating, which makes This Week in Schadenfreude an absolute delight.
- The Big 12 split its two games against the Big Ten: Kansas lost to Rutgers and their interim coach on the road and West Virginia ran wild over Maryland in a 45-6 laugher.
- Baylor whooped Rice.
SEC
There weren’t any marquee games on the SEC slate. Of the teams that can be most accurately be lumped into the pool of theoretical playoff contenders – Georgia from the East, Ole Miss, LSU, and Alabama from the West – none were in games that were ultimately close at the end. Fortunately, there was still some drama in two intradivisional games.
THIS GUY MIGHT ACTUALLY BE WORSE THAN DEREK DOOLEY
Florida 28, Tennessee 27
Earlier this season, Tennessee lost a game to Oklahoma. It was at home. They were up 17-3 in the fourth quarter. I wrote this after that loss:
Tennessee should have won this football game. Hiring a previously long-retired offensive coordinator (and having him coach quarterbacks, which he last did a full decade before his current quarterback was born) is in and of itself a questionable move; that the OC wasn’t particularly well-regarded at his previous spot makes it alarming for Vol fans. Mike DeBord likely can’t develop Joshua Dobbs into the quarterback everyone hopes he can be and Jalen Hurd will be tasked with logging a lot of inefficient miles on the ground. Butch Jones evidently wants to replicate the Lloyd Carr strategy: recruit well (but not that well) and lean on your talent advantage to beat most teams. Too bad Alabama’s on the schedule every year.
Jones is now in his third season at Tennessee, and after an Offseason of Good Feelings following a beatdown of Iowa in a bowl game, the Vols are now sitting at 2-2 with two very painful losses, a schedule that isn’t exactly forgiving, and a fan base that’s quickly getting tired of an ineffective offensive coordinator. UT has wandered in the wilderness after the ungraceful departure of Phillip Fulmer, and even though Butch Jones has recruited well enough to create a stable program, he needs to get some results on the field to prove his worth as the long-term solution to whatever’s ailed Tennessee football over the last decade.
This loss followed the rough blueprint of the Oklahoma game earlier in the season. Tennessee controlled the game throughout much of the first three quarters, but were unable to build on their lead due to tepid playcalling – the type of “sit on the ball” formula that often results in a run-run-incomplete-punt sequence. In the fourth quarter, Tennessee scored a touchdown to push the lead to 26-14 and, instead of going for two to make it a two touchdown margin, they kicked an extra point and eventually lost after Florida scored two touchdowns. Late in the game, Tennessee’s prevent defense bled yards to a backup quarterback and eventually ceded the game-winning touchdown on a 4th-and-14 play on which the Vols dropped eight men into coverage and gave up a long touchdown pass.
It’s been 11 straight losses in the series for Tennessee, who most had as the tentative #2 in the East behind Georgia before the season. Now, the Vols are facing a desperate Arkansas team before a brutal back-to-back against Georgia and Alabama; with a coaching staff as inept at managing leads as Tennessee is, it’s unlikely that the leap that many predicted will happen this season, and unless Jones sees his new offensive coordinator as a sunk cost, the type of hyper-conservative football ideology permeating the program might be his eventual undoing at UT.
ELSEWHERE
- The other competitive game in the SEC was an old Southwest Conference showdown between Texas A&M and Arkansas. The Aggies prevailed in overtime by the score of 28-21 after a long touchdown drive near the end of regulation to force overtime (though Arkansas fumbled afterwards and A&M missed a field goal at the end of regulation). A&M’s freshman superstar Christian Kirk caught eight passes for 173 yards and two touchdowns in the win. Unfortunately, this game doesn’t tell us much about either team: A&M will have to prove itself against the rough slate of upcoming SEC West opponents; Arkansas is pretty much a lost cause for this year.
- Leonard Fournette ran for 244 yards and two touchdowns as LSU won the weirdest road game ever in the Carrier Dome against a maybe-pretty-decent Syracuse team. Brandon Harris wasn’t effective throwing the football, but you don’t really need to be when you have Fournette behind you.
- Vanderbilt was surprisingly feisty in a road loss to Ole Miss. As with many defensive coordinators-turned-head coaches, Derek Mason has built a stout defense at VU with a proportionally bad offense on the other side of the ball. Still, this game – a 27-16 final – was closer than it should’ve been for Ole Miss, though there’s merit to the “we just beat Bama” excuse.
- Missouri hasn’t looked good this season, and that they lost on the road to Kentucky is somehow not a surprise. Don’t look now, but the youngest Stoops brother is 2-1 in the SEC and probably leading the Wildcats to a bowl game.
- Piling on Auburn seems sort of unfair at this point, but a week after losing to LSU largely because of its defense’s inability to stop the run, its offense put up a tremendous stinker in a 17-9 loss to Mississippi State.
- Georgia beat up on Southern and Alabama beat up on Louisiana Monroe, which wasn’t very sporting of them. South Carolina took down UCF, but hey, the Gamecocks will take any win they can get, thank you very much.
ACC
Even though we’re now a few weeks into conference play for the ACC, there was only one league game this past weekend:
DEFENSE, SPECIAL TEAMS LEAD DUKE PAST GEORGIA TECH
As part of Duke’s evolution into a pretty darn good football program, the Blue Devils handed Georgia Tech – considered by some to be the favorite in the ACC Coastal – its second loss of the year in September. The Blue Devils had some big special teams plays: Ryan Smith returned a punt 69 yards to the one-yard line late in the first quarter (which put Duke up 19-3), and DeVon Edwards returned a kickoff for a touchdown in the second half. Georgia Tech’s vaunted triple option offense was held in check for the second time this season, and it was a surprise that Duke’s defense looked as good in shutting down the Yellow Jackets as Notre Dame did the week before – QB Justin Thomas just notched 2.4 yards per carry and Duke, which schemed to force the ball to the dive back, Patrick Skov, held Skov to under 100 yards rushing on the day.
It’s still early in the season, but it’s evident that Georgia Tech – now sitting at 2-2 overall and 0-1 in the ACC – is unlikely to match last season’s highs, a year in which the Yellow Jackets won the Orange Bowl and got to double-digit wins. They still have three very difficult games left (at Clemson, vs. Florida State and Georgia at home) and it will be tough to avoid a disappointing season after the amount of preseaon hype that GT received. As for Duke, the Blue Devils are now in the driver’s seat in the Coastal – mostly due to Georgia Tech’s faltering and the general mediocrity – Miami, North Carolina, Virginia Tech, etc. – around the division.
ELSEWHERE
- In what now seems to be a somewhat regular occurrence, East Carolina won against Virginia Tech. The Pirates were led by backup quarterback James Summers, who scored three touchdowns in the win over the Hokies, who now seem to be mired in a state of mediocrity under Frank Beamer – VT has gone a combined 24-19 in the three-plus seasons after its Sugar Bowl loss to Michigan. Before that slide, the Hokies had been to four BCS bowls in five seasons.
- Plenty of wins against overmatched opponents – congrats to North Carolina, Louisville, and North Carolina State for their adventures in baby seal torture this past weekend. Boston College defeated its MACrifice, Northern Illinois, who’s far better than the opponents the other three teams faced.
- National powerhouse Indiana managed to fight off a vicious upset bid from Wake Forest to remain 4-0 on the season.
- Boise State ended the Mike London era in Charlottesville with a 42-point win over host Virginia. It’s just a matter of time now.
Big Ten
It was a weekend largely free from national relevance – Michigan’s win over BYU (which I’m sure I don’t have to go into much detail about) was the most important game of the weekend in the Big Ten. It’s hard to take much away from that game outside of “hey, maybe Michigan’s actually really good” which… we’ll see. The defense is nasty enough to get to double-digit wins, and they really showed out against a previously decent BYU offense.
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THE TEN BIGGEST WEEK FIVE GAMES
In Chronological Order
- West Virginia @ Oklahoma, noon, FS1
- Texas @ TCU, noon, ABC
- Minnesota @ Northwestern, noon, BTN
- Iowa @ Wisconsin, noon, ESPN
- Alabama @ Georgia, 3:30, CBS
- Texas Tech @ Baylor, 3:30, ABC/ESPN2
- Ole Miss @ Florida, 7:00, ESPN
- Mississippi State @ Texas A&M, 7:30, SECN
- Notre Dame @ Clemson, 8:00, ABC
- Arizona @ Stanford, 10:30, PAC12