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College football Week 2: Making sense of upsets, Heisman rankings, favorite games
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Bill ConnellyESPN Staff Writer
In a word, Week 2 of the college football season was ruthless. If you had a weakness to uncover, an insecurity to exploit, Week 2 exploited it.
If you have an offense you haven't modernized in years, and you haven't developed a particularly good quarterback in a decade (Texas A&M's Jimbo Fisher, Iowa's Kirk Ferentz) ...
If you have a defense that quietly fell apart in the offseason while you were spending all your time fixing your special teams and close-game woes (Nebraska's Scott Frost) ...
If you're a young head coach taking on a big job with an even younger offensive coordinator and a redshirt freshman at quarterback (Notre Dame's Marcus Freeman) ...
... then Week 2 didn't work out too well for you. If you're named Wisconsin, West Virginia, Virginia, Missouri or Northwestern, it didn't either.
Week 2 was so packed with madcap games and confusing results that we should step back and make sense of what we saw. Which particularly disappointing/resounding performances were signs of impending doom/glory, and which were just funky? What's real and what's fake two weeks into a wacky 2022?
(Note: While I referenced Ferentz and Iowa above, there's nothing about the Hawkeyes below because there's very little about their ongoing offensive disaster that is surprising at this point.)
Alabama is probably fine
No. 1 Alabama 20, Texas 19
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Bryce Young's clutch run leads to Alabama's winning field goal
Bryce Young escapes the blitz for a big first down, leading to Alabama's game-winning field goal.
It has felt for a while that we're in a particularly predictable time for college football. Ohio State, Clemson and Oklahoma all put together long runs of dominance in their respective conferences rather recently, and Georgia seems to have become a second Alabama. But the first Alabama is still the primary reason for said predictability. In an era with scholarship limits and massive spending, it's not supposed to be possible to finish in the AP top 10 for 14 straight years, spend at least part of 15 straight years at No. 1 and win five national titles. Nick Saban taught the college football world how to build a proper, uncertainty-killing juggernaut, and he still steers his better than pretty much anybody.
And yet ... in three of their past four games against power-conference opponents, Saban's Crimson Tide nearly lost to Auburn, lost to Georgia and, on Saturday, nearly lost to Texas. As with the Auburn game, Bama looked completely lost for most of three quarters and needed late-game magic from quarterback
Bryce Young to survive. And of course, there was the what-if of
Quinn Ewers' clavicle injury -- Texas' starting quarterback began the game 9-for-12 for 134 yards before he was knocked out of the game. Maybe Bama's defense would have adjusted and shut him down if he stayed in, but maybe not. Maybe Texas wins comfortably with Ewers at the helm.
The vultures are circling at the moment ... but I can't join them, at least not yet. The Iron Bowl similarities certainly rang some alarm bells, but the Tide blew out Georgia the week after that near loss. We could very much look back on the Texas game as a "You should have gotten them while you had the chance" situation, and for three reasons.
1. The disastrous penalty situation probably won't happen again. After committing an average number of penalties against Utah State in Week 1, the Tide committed a Saban-era record 15 for 100 yards in Austin. False starts, offsides, a strange number of face masks ... it was jarring, but it's also early in the season. Last year, Bama averaged 8.8 penalties through its first four games, then 6.5 from there. In 2020, it was 6.8 in the first four, then 5.7.
2. We knew the receiving corps would be an issue at first. There were quite a few drops and instances of miscommunication between Young and his receivers Saturday, but that's not surprising considering Young lost five of last year's top six targets. His leading receivers thus far are junior
Traeshon Holden and freshman
Kobe Prentice -- Holden was last year's No. 8 target, and Prentice was playing for the Calera (Alabama) High Eagles this time last year. Improvement is required, but considering the potential of the players involved, it's also likely.
3. We knew the cornerback corps could be an issue too. With both of last year's starters gone, this was the biggest question mark for the Bama defense coming into the game. Sophomore
Kool-Aid McKinstry committed multiple pass interference penalties, and Ewers had completed passes of 46, 22, 17 and 14 yards (and nearly completed another bomb to
Xavier Worthy) in the first quarter alone. With ULM and Vanderbilt up next on the Tide's schedule, the secondary will get some time to jell. Maybe it will be an issue all year, but I can't say that with confidence.
Wisconsin is ... probably fine? Mostly?
Washington State 17, No. 19 Wisconsin 14
Wisconsin was a 17-point favorite welcoming Washington State to town, but the Badgers and Cougars ended up playing one of the strangest games of a strange day. Wisconsin drove into Wazzu territory eight times but scored just twice, missing two field goals, turning the ball over on downs, punting from the Cougs' 37 and finishing the game with a pair of lost fumbles. Wazzu gained just 253 yards but came away with a stirring 17-14 upset.
Since the start of 2017, Wisconsin is now 33-3 when gaining at least 400 yards. Before Saturday the only other two losses were to a brilliant Ohio State team in the 2019 Big Ten championship game and to Illinois in that same season.
The Illinois loss was extremely similar to Saturday's affair: Wisconsin outgained the Illini by triple digits and made nine trips into Illinois territory but missed a field goal, settled for three more and turned the ball over multiple times in scoring position. The Badgers still went on to win the Big Ten West that season.
This isn't to say they have no issues to worry about. Their run game is strangely all-or-nothing --
Braelon Allen ripped off a spectacular 96-yard touchdown against Illinois State, but he and
Chez Mellusi have otherwise averaged just 4.0 yards per carry -- and quarterback
Graham Mertz is still Graham Mertz, endlessly capable of alternating between short stretches of brilliance and long stretches of mediocre play. (Also of concern to Wisconsin is the matter of Minnesota looking like a genuine West contender.) But if nothing else, the recipe for Wazzu's upset is not one that future underdogs in Madison will be able to replicate very easily.
Texas A&M's old problems are its new problems (but Saturday was weird)
Appalachian State 17, No. 6 Texas A&M 14
Haynes King's struggles mirrored those of the Aggies in Saturday's loss to Appalachian State. AP Photo/Sam Craft
In
my SEC West preview, I noted that when Texas A&M loses, the quarterback is usually why. In the 14 losses Jimbo Fisher suffered as the Aggies' head coach heading into 2022, his quarterback had played reasonably well in two of them. The other 12 losses produced an atrocious 106.6 passer rating.
Haynes King in Saturday's loss to App State: 105.7 passer rating. He completed 13 of 20 passes (65%) but at only 7.5 yards per completion, and including two sacks, he averaged just 4.2 yards per attempt.
It still took some oddities for A&M to lose on Saturday, however. Against a Mountaineers attack that had lit up North Carolina in Week 1, the Aggies' defense allowed only 3.8 yards per play. But while ASU's
Chase Brice was just 8-for-20 passing on first and second down, he was 7-for-9 on third down. App went 9-for-20 on third-down conversions and 3-for-5 on fourth down; A&M: 2-for-8 and, of course, 0-for-0. (Fisher doesn't do "fourth-down attempts.")
Throw in an otherworldly kick return touchdown for A&M's
Devon Achane, and you've got a unique recipe: App State snapped the ball 80 times to A&M's 38. The Aggies began the second half with a six-play drive, then got only 12 snaps the rest of the way. App State won nearly every single one of the game's key plays and was able to play keep-away because of it.
It was a brilliant performance for the guys from Boone, North Carolina, but as with Wazzu's win, it wasn't particularly sustainable. Defense and Achane alone could result in A&M playing top-10 or top-15 ball the rest of the way. Of course, the Aggies' remaining schedule features six games against teams in the SP+ top 25, including each of their next four opponents. Avoiding yet another four-loss (or worse) season will require high-level quarterback play that we don't tend to see from Texas A&M (and certainly didn't on Saturday).
Notre Dame needs an offensive spark, and fast
Marshall 26, No. 8 Notre Dame 21
With losses in his first three games as Notre Dame's head coach, Marcus Freeman has work to do. Matt Cashore/USA TODAY Sports
Marshall finished 51st in SP+ last season, and the Thundering Herd are in the top 60 again at the moment. Because they're good but, in theory, not too good, I figured they were a perfect opponent for finding out if Notre Dame's offensive issues last week were due to an awesome Ohio State defense or actual in-house issues.
On Saturday, Notre Dame averaged 4.7 yards per play, Fighting Irish backs averaged 2.9 yards per carry and two quarterbacks combined to throw three interceptions, including the upset-clinching pick-six.
The verdict is pretty clear.
Notre Dame did move the chains 22 times, thanks primarily to the work of tight end
Michael Mayer and receiver
Lorenzo Styles -- they combined to catch 15 of 23 balls for 172 yards and a touchdown, plus Styles had a 22-yard rush -- but the 51 plays that didn't involve them gained just 157 yards (3.1 per play).
Sound the alarm bells. Since succeeding Brian Kelly last winter, head coach Marcus Freeman has lost his first three games, dating to last season's Fiesta Bowl. The defense hasn't been perfect by any means -- the Irish have been extremely bend-don't-break and haven't created nearly as much havoc as expected up front -- but for a team averaging only 15.5 points per game, it's clear where the issues lie.
Offensive coordinator Tommy Rees has been remarkably conservative through two games, but since completing a 54-yard pass to Styles on the first play of the season,
Tyler Buchner is averaging just 6.5 yards per dropback. He's 85th in Total QBR, hardly the stuff an aggressive playcaller desires, and seven
Drew Pyne pass attempts netted just 14 yards including a sack. Buchner left the game with a shoulder injury, which took away Notre Dame's best rushing option. The offense is a mess and might get even worsen if Buchner has to miss time. Oh, and the next opponent on the schedule, Cal, ranks 24th in defensive SP+, 33 spots ahead of Marshall.
Kansas' offense is legit
Kansas 55, West Virginia 42
It's obviously too early to get too much value out of a player stat like Total QBR; TCU's
Max Duggan, after all, currently leads the nation, and with all due respect to his game, it would be quite a shock if he ended the season first.
Still, there are plenty of big names near the top of the leaderboard at the moment, from USC's
Caleb Williams (second) to Ohio State's
C.J. Stroud (sixth) to Georgia's
Stetson Bennett (eighth) to Alabama's Bryce Young (10th). And smack in the middle of those names, in third place at the moment, is Kansas'
Jalon Daniels.
Daniels and the Jayhawks moved to 2-0 on Saturday with a 55-42 overtime road win over West Virginia. (How did they win by double digits in OT? By scoring first, then ending the game with a pick-six.) Down 21-7 early, Kansas ripped off a 35-10 run and led by double digits in the game's final minutes before WVU scored 11 late points to send the game to OT. But Daniels connected with sophomore
Quentin Skinner for a touchdown in OT, and
Cobee Bryant's pick-six ended it. Daniels' final stat line: 219 passing yards, three passing touchdowns, 85 rushing yards and no sacks or turnovers.
Daniels took over as the starter last November, with the Jayhawks already 1-7 and ranking 118th in offensive SP+. After a blowout loss to Kansas State, KU upset Texas and lost to TCU and West Virginia by only a combined nine points. In 2022, Daniels is completing 70% of his passes and averaging 7.6 yards per carry, and KU is up to 67th in offensive SP+ and rising quickly. They're still a long shot to reach a bowl because the Big 12 is so deep -- only one of KU's final 10 opponents ranks outside the SP+ top 50 -- but
Lance Leipold's culture building has taken hold, and he's got the quarterback he needs to do some damage.
Missouri's offense is legitimately problematic
Kansas State 40, Missouri 12
Eliah Drinkwitz's offense loves to nibble. Short passes to the left, handoffs, short passes to the right, rinse, repeat.
In his first two years as the Tigers' head coach, Missouri passers -- mostly
Connor Bazelak, who is now starting for Indiana -- completed 67% of their passes (12th in FBS over that span) but averaged just 7.2 air yards per attempt (eighth lowest) and 10.4 yards per completion (11th lowest).
Brady Cook saw time behind center late in the season and added rushing capabilities, but he averaged just 7.5 yards per completion.
