In a weekend largely bereft of top tier matchups, all eyes turned to Iowa City near the end of the eight o’clock window to see Penn State barely avert upset bid from Iowa. For Michigan fans, there was an inevitable, creeping feeling of déjà vu – sometime in the early aughts, Kirk Ferentz made a pact with a thousand-year-old warlock: in exchange for the surety of a 7-5 existence, Kinnick field would be turned into a roiling pit of dark magick for any national title aspirant unfortunate enough to play a night game there. In 2016, it was Michigan who took a Top 5 ranking into November and lost a heartbreaker, due in part to some absurd circumstances (shout-out to Ron Coluzzi); in 2017, Penn State made the trip earlier in the season and barely survived.
What had been a sluggish, stereotypical Big ten rock fight eventually morphed into an instant classic. Iowa had only picked up two first downs in the entire first half (and was held below fifty yards of total offense), but a Trace McSorley interception returned by Josey Jewell into scoring range in the last minute of the half – followed by a Nathan Stanley-to-Nick Easley touchdown on the next play – gave Iowa a 7-5 lead headed into the break despite being thoroughly outplayed by the Nittany Lions. Several PSU drives stalled out in Iowa territory (a missed field goal, a failed fourth down conversion, etc.) as the Iowa defense held up heroically in face of terrible field position.
The beginning of the second half was more of the same: Iowa meekly went three-and-out and, despite getting the ball inside the five-yard line on first and goal, Penn State had to settle for another field goal to grab an 8-7 lead. Akrum Wadley fumbled on the next drive after Iowa was able to string together some positive plays for the first time all game; PSU scored a touchdown on their next possession – that drive was almost completely engineered by Saquon Barkley, who turned in a ridiculously impressive performance as a whole. His stat line (211 rushing yards and a touchdown on 28 carries and team-leading marks in receptions (12) and receiving yards (94)) was remarkable enough on its own, but doesn’t accurately capture just how special he was on Saturday night in Iowa City.
Various members of the college football intelligentsia proclaimed him the Heisman frontrunner in the aftermath, and rightfully so. He spent the game juking, jump-cutting, and hurdling the Iowa defense, frequently leaving potential All-American linebacker Jewell grasping for air as he jetted towards the secondary. Saquon – and he’s earned the first-name-only designation by now – turns us all into Fred Jackson. He’s LeVeon Bell, but patient; he’s Ezekiel Elliott, but explosive; he’s Barry Sanders, but elusive; he’s Usain Bolt, but fast. He was able to conjure decent chunks of yardage from virtually nothing all night, and even on the last play of the game (when Joe Moorhead took the ball out of his hands), he had a perfect blitz pickup to enable the winning touchdown.
Still, Saquon’s heroics were almost for naught due to a bizarre fourth quarter – one that had Kinnick’s evil goblins working double time. Jewell recovered a McSorley fumble near midfield at the end of the third, and Iowa got the ball into the redzone, only to have a field goal blocked. Penn State went three-and-out, but flipped the field; a few plays later, Wadley caught a short angle route and outran the entire Penn State defense for a 70-yard touchdown. A two-point conversion attempt was blown up, and the Hawkeyes trailed 15-13. The Nittany Lions chewed up over seven minutes of game time on the next drive (which lasted sixteen plays); Saquon leapt over a defender to convert the first third-down of the series; PSU was again rebuffed in the red zone and had a field goal of their own blocked.
Iowa’s offense – which, as a reminder, had been atrocious through three quarters – had another lightning-fast touchdown after a pass interference penalty, a few completions, and a Wadley scamper up the left sideline got them into the end zone. They left too much time on the clock for McSorley and Barkley though: Penn State had to survive a a fourth-down early in the drive, but marched the ball down the field after that; a pass to Saquon got them to first-and-goal at the Iowa ten-yard line, and after a short completion to Mike Gesicki and two incompletions, the game came down to a fourth-and-goal from the seven with four seconds left. McSorley passed the ball over the middle to Juwan Johnson on a slant route – and the ball just barely got over the fingertips of a Hawkeye defender to give Penn State the 21-19 win in Kinnick.
Due to the nature of the game (the inherent weirdness of a favored team going to Iowa at night cannot be overstated), it’s hard to draw any grand conclusions from the outcome. Penn State outgained Iowa more than two-to-one, had 29 first downs to Iowa’s 11, and controlled the ball for almost two thirds of the game. They were largely unable to convert scoring opportunities until the very end. They stifled Iowa’s offense until a few big busts in the fourth quarter. Saquon was amazing. McSorley wasn’t, until the two-minute drill to win the game. Penn State thoroughly outplayed Iowa, but wound up winning by the slimmest of margins. The Nittany Lions’ hopes of a repeat Big Ten title (and a breakthrough to the playoff) are still on schedule; Iowa just narrowly missed on upsetting a top five opponent for the second season in a row.
[More on the week that was after the JUMP]
TCU 44, Oklahoma State 31
Entering the season, it seemed as if the Big 12 would be a two-team race between the Oklahoma schools – and that perception held to form as Oklahoma upset Ohio State to become a playoff frontrunner and Oklahoma State obliterated lesser opponents with its explosive offense (they ran up 49 points in a half at Pitt the week before). TCU, on the other hand, looked to be in rebuilding mode after a seven-loss campaign the year before. Although they turned in an impressive road win over Arkansas in the second week of the season and moved up to the Top 20, they were underdogs on the road in Stillwater for the conference opener for those two teams.
TCU was in control for most of the game, and now the Frogs are compelling candidates for a darkhorse playoff bid (and the shine has come off Oklahoma State, even though the Cowboys could theoretically play themselves into contention if they run the table from here on out). Big 12 games are graded on a curve in terms of offensive and defensive performances; even though TCU conceded 31 points, it was an impressive outing against what may be the best offense in the country. Aside from a long touchdown bomb from Mason Rudolph to James Washington (against double coverage), they were held to just three points in the first half, and TCU went into halftime with a 20-10 lead. Running back Darius Anderson (who totaled over 200 yards of total offense and ran for three touchdowns) was instrumental in keeping the chains moving throughout the game, limiting the number of total possessions.
Oklahoma State’s offense was more productive in the second half, but turned the ball over thrice – Rudolph threw two interceptions near the line of scrimmage, and a gadget play went wrong when a receiver caught a lateral and threw the ball into coverage for a third pick. TCU scored a combined 17 points on their first three drives of the half, opening a comfortable lead; Oklahoma State was able to cut the deficit to just six with three minutes remaining in the game. Electric return man KaVontae Turpin returned the ensuing kickoff past midfield and then, on a pivotal third-and-four, Anderson burst through the line, found the second level of the defense to be completely empty, and sealed the win with the touchdown run.
Despite giving up almost 500 yards of offense, the TCU defense should be given credit: they forced four turnovers and, aside from Washington’s long touchdown early in the game, prevented big plays. Kenny Hill completed two thirds of his passes for the Frogs (and outside of an early pick, played mostly mistake-free football), Anderson was almost impossible for the Oklahoma State defense to contain, and the offense scored on all but four of its non-end-of-half possessions. They won decisively on the road against what was thought to be a potentially playoff-caliber team – one of the best results any team has claimed so far. Gary Patterson’s still got it, and TCU could challenge for the Big 12 crown and a playoff spot if they maintain their form from this past weekend.
Georgia 31, Mississippi State 3
It was quite a surprise to see Mississippi State so thoroughly dominate LSU in the trenches on both sides of the ball in a blowout win in Week 3 – and they were throttled by Georgia in similar fashion the very next week. Data points are scarce in September, so it’s hard to get a read on most teams, and expectations can be radically adjusted on a game-to-game basis. For MSU, any bump in perception from the LSU game was almost completely erased by this one; the SEC West seems unlikely to offer up any team that will be a credible challenger to Bama in 2017. On the other side, Georgia is stacking up as the clear favorite to win the SEC East and set up a showdown between Kirby Smart and his former boss, Nick Saban.
The Battle of the Bulldogs was decided almost immediately: on the first series of the game, the Georgia defense forced a quick three-and-out; on their first play from scrimmage, UGA dialed up a flea-flicker and Jake Fromm hit Terry Godwin down the middle of the field for a 59-yard touchdown. Fromm, who replaced starting quarterback Jacob Eason after an injury a few weeks ago (and kept the job, even after Eason reportedly became available), only had to throw the ball twelve times, but he still went for over 200 yards passing. His other touchdown came when he faked a pitch to Nick Chubb and found another wide open target up the seam – tight end Isaac Nauta – for a 41-yard score. A trio of backs (Nick Chubb, Sony Michel, and highly-touted freshman D’Andre Swift) kept Georgia on schedule and drew the Mississippi State defense towards the line of scrimmage so Fromm could get some chunk plays in the passing game.
Most impressive, though, was the Georgia defense. Smart has plenty of talent and experience to work with, and his 3-4 scheme is working out extremely well. Mississippi State is a very run-heavy offense, but they were unable to string together many sustained drives and often were forced to rely on Nick Fitzgerald’s arm to try to move the ball – Fitzgerald finished with a miserable 2.9 yards per attempt and threw two interceptions on consecutive drives in the third quarter. After two touchdowns on their first two possessions, Georgia’s offense was quiet for the rest of the first half, but the defense was so excellent that it didn’t matter: aside from a MSU possession that fizzled out inside the ten-yard line and ended with a field goal for their only points of the game, they only ran one play in UGA territory – and it was a punt.
That Georgia defense should feast against the rest of their conference schedule. There aren’t any remotely threatening offenses in the East: Tennessee just put up 17 points against a winless UMass squad, Florida’s offense is on its third quarterback (and even worse, it’s run by Doug Nussmeier), Kentucky’s average at best, South Carolina’s best player broke his leg, Missouri is a disaster, and Vanderbilt just got absolutely waxed by Alabama. Even Auburn – Georgia’s cross-division rival – might have a mediocre offense; they were held to six points and gave up double-digit sacks against Clemson. In hiring Kirby Smart, Georgia attempted to replicate Alabama’s model: recruit at an elite level, lean on an amazing defense, and run the ball on offense. That might not work once they face the Tide in a possible conference title matchup, but should be enough to get them to double-digit wins.
NC State 27, Florida State 21
The season has started about as badly as possible for Florida State: the Noles lost their starting quarterback in the opening defeat against Alabama, were unable to play two consecutive games due to the hurricane, and were upset by NC State at home once they were able to return to the field. True freshman James Blackman was the replacement for Deondre Francois, and the skinny gunslinger had an uneven day in his debut against a quality defense; he was relied upon heavily as Florida State was unable to gain much traction in the running game against a stout Wolfpack front seven. NC State – who returned a ton of important starters on both sides of the ball – lost to South Carolina in their season opener despite outgaining the Gamecocks by a sizable margin; they announced that they’d be a factor in the ACC Atlantic race with the win over Florida State.
Starting with a field goal on their first possession of the game, NC State led from beginning to end. Florida State had back-to-back three-and-out possessions to start, and NC State followed up that field goal drive with a touchdown on their next possession: Ryan Finley was hit low following a pass attempt to draw a personal foul that extended the drive, and fullback / H-Back Jaylen Samuels eventually punched in a short touchdown run a few plays later. Blackman responded by engineering a nice march down the field to get FSU on the board with a pass to Auden Tate (who’s evidently Blackman’s favorite target after nine receptions for 138 yards on the game), but promising drives on their next two possessions were ended by miscues – first, a Blackman fumble forced by star NCSU end Bradley Chubb after a nice scramble for what would have been a first down, then a missed field goal. Shortly before halftime, Finley hit Jakobi Meyers for a long touchdown – but he front-flipped into the end zone (and stuck the landing), giving FSU good field position for a quick field goal drive to make it 17-10.
The third quarter was mostly uneventful, as the teams traded punts and a field goal each – both were able to get the ball inside the opponent’s five-yard line, but neither were able to get it into the end zone; a failed trick play with Meyers attempting a pass almost ended in disaster, but NCSU was able to salvage the possession. At the end of the quarter, Blackman found George Campbell on a 60-yard fade up the sideline to get into the red zone, but the Wolfpack defense stepped up to force consecutive sacks and forced another field goal to make it 20-16. Nyheim Hines – who managed to grind out four yards per carry on the game against a nasty FSU defense – was successful on the next possession, and NC State scored on a shovel pass to Samuels with just over nine minutes remaining to go up two scores.
FSU pinned the Wolfpack deep on their next possession – and a mishandled snap resulted in a safety to make it 27-18 (had Finley not batted the ball out of the end zone, a touchdown could have made the difference). Blackman was unable to get a first down on the subsequent drive, and while FSU got the ball back with two minutes left in great field position, they had to settle for yet another field goal. After forgoing an onside kick attempt, they never got the ball back – Hines had a 15-yard run over the right side of the line on third-and-seven and the Wolfpack were able to kneel out the rest of the clock. It was the first signature win of the Dave Doeren era and NCSU will host Louisville in two weeks – if they’re able to beat the Cardinal, they’ll set themselves up as Clemson’s primary competition in the Atlantic. They face the Tigers at home in November.
Other Notable Results
- Notre Dame 38, Michigan State 18. Turnovers were the story of this one, as a couple of critical first half MSU mistakes let ND run away with what turned out to be a blowout win on the road. On their first drive of the game, Spartan quarterback Brian Lewerke misread the coverage and threw a pick-six; a few possessions later, he lost control of the ball on a scramble and Notre Dame had a short field to go up two touchdowns; on the following drive, State marched the ball down the field and LJ Scott broke through the defense – only to fumble the ball into the end zone and fail to recover it after pouncing on top of the ball. Notre Dame scored on their next drive to go up 28-7 near the end of the first half, and the rest of the game was garbage time. State outgained the Irish by almost 150 yards, but the turnovers were too brutal to overcome. It was an impressive performance for Notre Dame, whose narrow home loss to Georgia earlier in the season looks better now than it did at the time.
- Washington 37, Colorado 10. This week’s Pac-12 After Dark game didn’t turn out to be very compelling, as Washington went on the road and destroyed Colorado. Star quarterback Jake Browning had a middling-at-best performance, but Myles Gaskin was unstoppable on the ground (running for over 200 yards and 2 touchdowns on 7.5 yards per carry) and the Husky defense forced Colorado quarterback Steven Montez into three interceptions. Washington gave up a touchdown on the first drive of the game, but was dominant defensively afterwards – one of their picks was returned for a touchdown in the third quarter to open up a two-score lead over the Buffaloes. Their season-opening win over Rutgers was uninspiring at best, but they looked like the playoff contender they were supposed to be on Saturday night (or Sunday morning for most of us).
- USC 30, Cal 20. First-year Cal head coach Justin Wilcox has turned around the program; after a couple years of “all offense, no defense” under Sonny Dykes, Wilcox (a former defensive coordinator) established a tough, physical defense in just his first year, and while their upset bid at home against USC ultimately came up short, the Bears are trending up as a program. The game was tied at 13 headed into halftime and Cal opened the second half with a 15-play drive that came up empty after a missed field goal. USC took the lead with a field goal of their own to start the fourth, and Cal turned the ball over on their next four drives before adding a late touchdown at the end of the game to make the score look closer. Freshman phenom Stephen Carr found it tough to run against the Cal defense, but eventually USC was able to string together some touchdown drives in the fourth to pull away.
- Oklahoma 49, Baylor 41. In what would have surely qualified as one of the biggest upsets of the season, 0-3 Baylor gave Oklahoma everything they could handle before falling late. It was a stereotypical Big 12 shootout: both teams easily hit over 500 yards of total offense, the two quarterbacks combined for seven touchdowns, and Baylor recovered from an early three-score deficit to take a brief lead near the end of the third quarter. The Sooners’ running game was nearly unstoppable: Abdul Adams and Trey Sermon went for over 300 yards combined on the ground and each had well over ten yards per carry. Baylor went down by three scores again in the fourth quarter, but pulled the deficit to eight and recovered an onside kick with less than two minutes left – a rare defensive play (a sack and forced fumble by Ogbonnia Okoronkwo) sealed the win for Oklahoma after a couple of Baylor incompletions. The Bears had been dreadful entering this game, so this may be a bit of a warning sign for OU.
- Texas A&M 50, Arkansas 43. Since this old Southwest Conference rivalry moved to Jerryworld a couple of seasons ago, there has been a decided sense of insanity that’s gripped the series: three of the four games have gone to overtime (including this one) – and the 2017 matchup was the craziest of them all, a ping pong match between two dudes who were each several beers deep. While there were big plays aplenty throughout the game, things really picked up in the fourth quarter: A&M took a 33-28 lead with a long Keith Ford touchdown run; Arkansas responded with a big play-action shot from Austin Allen to Jonathan Nance on the following drive to take the lead back; Christian Kirk scored a kick return touchdown immediately afterwards; another long pass to Nance set up a short Arkansas touchdown; A&M – down three – got the ball into the red zone but managed the clock poorly and had to settle for a short field goal to force overtime as time expired. In OT, Kellen Mond found Christian Kirk on the first possession to give the Aggies the lead – and A&M intercepted Allen on Arkansas’s rebuttal. It was a huge win for Kevin Sumlin, who has still never lost to Bret Bielema since the two arrived at their current schools.
- Florida 28, Kentucky 27. The Wildcats came as close as possible to breaking their three-decade-long losing streak to Florida, but the Gator offense came to life late in the fourth quarter to steal in the win in Lexington in front of a raucous Kentucky crowd. UK opened up a 27-14 lead in the fourth quarter, but Florida was able to put together two touchdown drives on its last two possessions with Luke Del Rio as the quarterback – he hit a long pass to Tyrie Cleveland to spark the first drive and finished the second by finding a completely uncovered Freddie Swain for a short fade with less than a minute left to take a one-point lead. Kentucky was able to get a couple of first downs, but a holding penalty forced them to take a 57-yard field goal in the game’s waning moments, and it came up short. It was the second narrow victory in a largely hideous game in as many weeks for Florida.