Hello Chaos, My Dear Friend

Even though September football is typically little more than an amuse bouche for most teams – save for the Gigantic Huge Critical Games between well-regarded opponents from different conferences – we were given a memorable night of football last Saturday, a stark departure from the mostly inconsequential games of the season’s first two weeks.

Week Three gave us a little clarity. The most important result was Ole Miss’s improbable road upset of mighty Alabama – after two weeks of feasting on cupcakes, the Rebels rode that sugar high to a big win, and threw Bama’s national title hopes into early peril. That the Tide somehow gave away five turnovers, conceded one of the most ludicrous touchdown passes you’ll ever see, and still had the ball with a chance to win probably speaks well to how good the Tide are – but they still lost and Ole Miss is now the presumed favorite in the SEC West.

Along with Alabama, who was projected by many to make the playoff, USC suffered a home loss early in conference play to disabuse the notion that everything is going fine under Steve Sarkisian. Stanford put up 41 points on the Trojans after looking completely inept on offense in Week One against Northwestern. Is USC just terrible? Did Stanford tell us that they’re secretly good? Is Northwestern a burgeoning powerhouse? We still don’t know much of anything other than that USC likely didn’t deserve their lofty preseason ranking and that Stanford could make the Pac-12 North very interesting.

Elsewhere: Iowa hit a 57-yard field goal to beat Pitt, Texas missed a PAT that would have capped a 21-point fourth quarter comeback (and lost to Cal by one), Texas Tech took the fight to Arkansas and talked some shit afterwards, Toledo beat another Power Five team (Iowa State), Colorado beat Colorado State in overtime because of a blocked field goal attempt, and BYU’s magic ran out as they lost to UCLA by one point. All of those games happened in one TV window. College football is ridiculous.

[After the jump, more on the CFB world]

I’ll cover non-conference contests before moving on to league games.

Apparently all those injuries didn’t kill Notre Dame after all

Notre Dame 30, Georgia Tech 22

Notre Dame is the early leader in the clubhouse for the most snakebitten season nationally in terms of injuries. A shockingly competent game-winning drive last week by the unknown DeShone Kizer saved Notre Dame’s undefeated season for the moment – Georgia Tech was next on the schedule after tuning up its vaunted triple option attack against two overmatched opponents.

Zombie Notre Dame did much better than pretty much everyone would have thought against GT: C.J. Prosise deservedly gets the headlines after rushing for 3 touchdowns (including a 91-yarder) and almost 200 yards total; Kizer was relegated to a complement for ND’s rushing attack (and as a reminder, they lost their starting RB to a season-ending injury in their first game). Notre Dame’s defense was the real story though – Brian Van Gorder had a solid plan against the Yellow Jacket offense and it was impressive to see how well ND’s front seven stayed disciplined and read their keys against the option. There’s not much projective value in this performance – besides that the Irish should be able handle Navy in a few weeks.

In the last few minutes of the game, GT added two touchdowns to bring the score close, but ultimately, the final margin of eight points wasn’t indicative of how dominant Notre Dame was for a large part of this game. Yellow Jacket QB Justin Thomas has all sorts of athletic ability, matching that with a savvy that can only be gained through experience, but he was bottled up and found it hard to get the ball to the pitch man for a big play because ND’s linebackers and safeties rarely lost their responsibility on the edge. Georgia Tech wasn’t able to figure out Notre Dame’s defense until it was too late; any tweaks, counters, switching the read man, etc. – none of it worked for about 3.5 quarters.

Both of these teams are probably pretty good. Georgia Tech typically benefits from not having Clemson or Florida State in its division, but this year they’re unfortunate to draw both in inter-divisional play and will find it hard to make it to the ACC Championship game again. As for ND, it’s evident that the floor is much higher than we’d expected after Malik Zaire went down with an injury – and it’s going to be interesting to see if the Irish can contend for a New Year’s Six bowl even after all the attrition since the beginning of the year.

Paul Perkins is nice insurance for when Josh Rosen struggles

UCLA 24, BYU 23

For UCLA, playoff hopes hinge on whether the highly-touted and immensely talented Josh Rosen can provide stability at the quarterback spot – if he can avoid being a liability in most of UCLA’s games, the Bruins have a very good chance to win the Pac-12 South, especially with how underwhelming their projected competition – USC and Arizona State, mainly – has looked. Rosen inherited a stacked supporting cast, including a veteran offense, but really struggled for the first time on Saturday, throwing three interceptions in the first half and only totaling 4.6 yards per attempt on the game.

Fortunately for the UCLA offense, the ground game was operating at peak efficiency and, behind 219 and 81 rushing yards from Paul Perkins and Nate Starks respectively, the Bruins were able to stave off the upset bid from BYU. Perkins – often overshadowed by the two-way marvel Myles Jack (who now is unfortunately out for the season with an injury) and the intrigue of a true freshman quarterback on a possible playoff contender – quietly tallied over 1,500 yards a year ago as a sophomore and proved against BYU that UCLA would be able to lean on him against quality opponents for an extended period of time. Of course, UCLA’s veteran offensive line played a huge part, enabling Rosen to play extremely conservative ball in the second half – but the dominance on the ground bodes well for the future.

This was the third of BYU’s brutal four-game stretch, and it’s a wonder that they’re standing at 2-1 without Taysom Hill. Tanner Mangum predictably wasn’t able to extend his run of late-game heroics, but overall, it’s about as well as BYU could have hoped to play on the road against a top ten opponent. Mangum actually outplayed Rosen, his fellow freshman QB, though he and the Cougar offense as a whole weren’t able to capitalize on Rosen’s turnovers well enough. After this weekend’s contest against Michigan, BYU’s schedule gets much easier – if BYU manages to pull the upset in Ann Arbor, they’re a darkhorse New Year’s Six bowl candidate and should manage to climb steadily in the rankings later in the season as they (presumably) take care of their lesser opponents.

In the words of Cal QB Jared Goff: Oh F***, Oh F***, Oh F***

Cal 45, Texas 44

Some thoughts from this game:

• Sonny Dykes, formerly of Louisiana Tech, has installed his Air Raid at Cal and in his third year in Berkley. He’s had Jared Goff for his entire tenure and now the junior leads what looks to be one of the better offenses in the Pac-12. It could be really good, but it could also be held down by what projects to be a defense that’s stayed bad under Dykes.
• Texas looked comprehensively terrible in Week One against Notre Dame and shook up their offensive stat: freshman Jerrod Heard was the starting quarterback against Cal, replacing Tyrone Swoopes, who’s been ineffective.
• With Steve Patterson’s firing, Texas is one of the most secretly fascinating programs across the college football world right now. Charlie Strong should be afforded more time, but stumbling powerhouse programs are rarely patient.
• Cal lit up the Texas defense. Nobody’s really surprised by that.
• What was a surprise was how well Heard played in his first start at quarterback. Remember that Cal’s defense is supposed to be pretty awful, but maybe it’s not? Regardless, Heard threw for 364 yards on 31 attempts, ran for over 163 yards on 24 carries, and scored three touchdowns, including a long scamper on a draw to pull Texas from a 45-24 deficit to 45-44. Heard was phenomenal, and the Longhorns were rolling.
• Their kicker missed the extra point and they lost, instead of going to overtime.
• Because of an unfathomable stroke of bad luck (the play that Jared Goff was reacting to in the vine linked in the header of the section), Texas falls to 1-2 and Cal improves to 3-0: UT is mired in the clean-up after the deterioration of the Mack Brown era, but a win under a new quarterback against what could be a pretty solid Pac-12 team – if a quintessentially all-offense, no-defense squad – would have been pretty encouraging for the Texas fanbase.
• I mean, regardless, Heard is a significant upgrade over Swoopes so that’s something to build on, but man, what a deflating loss this past weekend (and now Texas is 1-2 entering Big XII play).
• As for Cal, we’ll see if they’re capable of challenging the lock that Stanford and Oregon have had on their division later in the season – the Golden Bears unluckily draw USC, UCLA, and Utah from the South this year.

Bret Bielema would be a cartoon villain if he were more competent

Texas Tech 35, Arkansas 24

In fairness to the Razorbacks, this was a much less embarrassing and disappointing loss than their classic 16-12 stinker last week against Toledo – Texas Tech is a Power 5 program, Arkansas moved the ball better but stalled near the end zone, and they actually tied Texas Tech heading into halftime, but ultimately this is another hilarious Bret Bielema demerit – Kliff Kingsbury said that “he just got his butt kicked two weeks in a row and probably next week by Texas A&M as well” and it’s true: presented with an opportunity to bounce back from the Toledo loss, Arkansas folded and was outscored 14-3 after halftime as Bielema’s offense – one that he claims will wear down spread teams – sputtered late in the game.

It was a good win for Texas Tech – who plays TCU this weekend (which will further clarify how good the Red Raiders are) – but the Bielema angle is too hard to ignore. It will be a while before we can ultimately dig through the wreckage and find out exactly where things went awry for a formerly very successful head coach – was it hiring Dan Enos this offseason and kneecapping a promising offense? Was Johnathan Williams’s injury that devastating to the team’s overall chances of success? Was Bielema just too far behind to ever crawl out of John L. Smith’s mess? How much of this start has been just plain bad luck? Who knows, but assuming that Arkansas doesn’t start playing significantly better, this team could win just 4 or 5 games (considering that they’ve already lost two of their easier games already), which would look terrible in year three for an abrasive coach. This weekend’s contest against Texas A&M in Jerryworld (in front of the Hogs alum himself) could provide more schadenfreude soon.

OTHER NOTABLE OUT-OF CONFERENCE OR GROUP OF FIVE GAMES

• Miami 36, Nebraska 33 (OT). Somehow, this win may reflect more poorly on Al Golden than the loss does on Mike Riley – the Huskers fought back admirably from a 23-point deficit to send the game to overtime, only to have Tommy Armstrong (who made some huge throws down the stretch) throw a terrible interception on the first play of overtime. Golden, who’s facing the proverbial hot seat at Miami, couldn’t have had a less encouraging win as his team fell apart completely – but still won to put the Canes at 3-0. They head to Tallahassee in two weeks.
• Missouri 9, UConn 6. The most noon game of all the noon games we’ll see all year: Missouri finally put this one away with a late interception, but it featured a punt blocked for a safety, a blocked extra point, and terrible offensive play galore. It’s not often that a game finishes 9 – 6 without any field goals. There were 162 rushing yards on 77 attempts combined between the two teams. Noon games are prone to being boring and / or awful and this one definitely fit the bill.
• Ohio State 20, Northern Illinois 13. I’m still not really sure what to make of this one. Northern Illinois couldn’t get out of their own way and never really posed a serious threat to win this game, but Ohio State’s offense looked seriously dysfunctional in a way that would be a shock even against an elite defense, let alone a random MAC D. Ohio State’s decision to stick with Cardale Jones as starter after going 4-9 for 36 yards and 2 interceptions is interesting, but it was a comprehensive failure on offense for OSU. They have some time to figure things out.
• Iowa 27, Pitt 24. As always, refer to BHGP for your Iowa-related content. Two things: a win over Pitt isn’t a whole lot, but it’s a hell of a lot better than losing to Pitt; NARDUZZI Y U LET IOWA GET PRACTICE KICK?
• Memphis beat Bowling Green in what may be the best interconference game between Group of Five opponents – fittingly, the game was a 44-41 barnburner; Temple eked by Massachusetts on the road, which shouldn’t comfort Penn State fans even a little bit; A bad FCS team, Furman, took down UCF by the wonderful football score of 15-14 as the rotting foundation of the George O’Leary era finally collapsed; Colorado beat Colorado State which should provide a little more goodwill towards CU coach Mike MacIntyre; Minnesota followed up an iffy game against CSU by only beating Kent State by 3 at home.

Conference Wars

The Pac-12 had its final week of non-conference play – USC and Stanford each play Notre Dame later this year, so they started a week early and were the conference’s only game. Like the Pac-12, the Big Ten only had one conference game, in which Penn State took care of Rutgers at home (both play Army later this year). The Big XII finished its final week of non-conference play before their nine-game conference season.

The SEC and ACC have already started conference play in earnest. Here the two critical Week Three results in conference games:

Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi!

Ole Miss 43, Alabama 37

Every time Alabama loses a game, there’s open wondering if Alabama’s dynasty is crumbling, if we just witnessed the first blow to the Saban machine and if we’re about to watch the slow decay of Tide football. Bama lost this game and will probably lose another; they need to stay perfect and have Ole Miss lose twice to finish ahead of the Rebels in the race for the SEC West crown. That Ole Miss beat Alabama doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re better, though it was a huge, program-defining win. Ole Miss has beaten Alabama twice in a row now, but the king isn’t dead just yet.

September losses are generally forgotten by the time the end of the season rolls around. Even though there are open questions about Alabama’s quarterback play (and the juggling of Jacob Coker and Cooper Bateman probably isn’t helping that) and the surprising amount of recent defensive collapses by the Tide, they’re still likely a Top 5 type team in terms of overall quality. Coming back late to make the score close against Ole Miss probably gives Alabama more credit than they deserve, but this game’s turnover margin – Ole Miss +5 – probably lets us know that this was too much an anomaly to draw sweeping conclusions for Alabama. They aren’t going to fumble two kickoff returns and throw three interceptions in a game again this year.

Ole Miss though! In the SEC West this year, Auburn and Arkansas have certainly disappointed and Mississippi State hasn’t looked great. LSU is now 2-0 overall and 2-0 in conference, though their wins (over Auburn and MSU) pale in comparison to a road win over Alabama. Chad Kelly feels like a clone of Bo Wallace and he played extremely well against the Tide, throwing for three touchdowns, running for another, and utilizing his receivers – LaQuon Treadwell is the star, but seven other Rebels caught passes against Alabama – well enough to cover for an anemic running game. It wasn’t a great game for the Rebels defense, but the general talent level on that side of the ball should be fine in the long run.

Anyways: the take from this game is that Ole Miss is the frontrunner for the SEC West for now. Long live the king.

Something tells me USC didn’t deserve that #6 next to their name

Stanford 41, USC 31

After Stanford dropped a 16-6 stinker to open the season against Northwestern, I described the Cardinal offense as “a hideous dystopian version of the offense that Harbaugh built the program with.” It turns out that the Northwestern game may have been an aberration for Stanford – one of those classic “West coast team plays a 12 EST game and looks like a deflated balloon” games – after they ran over USC en route to perhaps the biggest upset (of a supposedly good team) of the young college football season thus far. Oddly, Stanford didn’t run the ball that well (49 carries for 4.0 yards per carry) but Kevin Hogan played his best game in years and played as well as USC’s star quarterback, Cody Kessler, who’d been receiving some Heisman hype.

In all fairness to USC, their lofty preseason ranking wasn’t any of their doing. The Trojans are still behind the rest of their competition because of the Reggie Bush sanctions – USC has signed the equivalent of one less recruiting class than their conference foes, and that should mitigate criticisms of Steve Sarkisian somewhat. The biggest area where the relative lack of scholarship players hurts SC is on defense – players get worn down more quickly and have fewer adequate replacements. In that way, Stanford is a nightmare matchup for the Trojans – the physical front five (or six or seven) for the Cardinal didn’t open up huge running lanes, by and large, but Hogan only threw five incompletions on the day after looking terrible two weeks ago against Northwestern.

With Oregon looking as vulnerable as it’s looked in the past few years, Stanford could make some noise in the Pac-12 North, and they started off conference play with a win in what could eventually wind up being their toughest game of the year. Still, without more data points on USC (who has beaten two cupcakes convincingly and lost this game), the Trojans are still an unknown, though one that likely won’t be challenging for a playoff spot come November.

OTHER NOTABLE POWER FIVE CONFERENCE GAMES

• LSU 45, Auburn 21. tl;dr Auburn is bad and Leonard Fournette is amazing. His incredible stat line – 19 carries, 228 yards and 3 touchdowns – somehow undersells his performance against Auburn.
• Georgia 52, South Carolina 20. The Dawgs are still fully in tune-up mode until they face Alabama in a week, but the ease with which they destroyed Spurrier’s South Carolina team suggests to me that the Ol’ Ball Coach might not make it to see another year in Columbia. It’s not good when the other quarterback goes 24-25 on pass attempts.
• Florida 14, Kentucky 9. GROSS.
• Florida State 14, Boston College 0. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE FLORIDA TEAMS?