College Football Week 1 in Review
A short Summary of the Weekend in College Football
It was week 1. Week 1 is about overreaction to some teams looking like unmitigated garbage, getting excited about some teams even though they were playing The Little Sisters of the Poor and generally watching football again after a long break. As long as there are a few games between top teams and a couple of them deliver, everyone except the losers goes home happy (unless you, reader, were dumb enough to watch Alabama in the opening week as it did its usual boa constrictor suffocation of a likely overrated major conference opponent).
The Best Thing I Saw This Week
Congrats to Maryland. First the best thing was clearly opening the game with a missing man in the formation for deceased offensive lineman Jordan McNair. No matter your thoughts on the incident itself, kudos to the Maryland team for honoring their teammate and kudos further to Maryland for playing inspired football in honor of their teammate and in the midst of a chaotic situation under an interim head coach.
3 Best Games of the Weekend
- Auburn 21, Washington 16 — This was a war the likes of which we usually don’t see in week 1. Hard hitting and intense from the start. It feels, much like Washington’s Fiesta Bowl loss against Penn St. last season, that the better team didn’t win because it took a quarter for Washington to figure out its talent level was equal or greater than its opponent. Of course that feeling is because Washington should have won the game, despite basically not getting off the bus until the beginning of the 2nd quarter. On the Auburn side, a running game is needed, quickly as pass to setup the run gets Gus Malzahn in trouble regularly, even when he has a next level quarterback.
- Northwestern 31, Purdue 27 — Northwestern played the best 1st half of any team that was in a competitive game, striking out to a big lead and then holding. But the real reason this was the best game was all the big plays from Purdue freshman receiver Rondale Moore who had 313 All-Purpose yards.
- Penn St. 45, Appalachian St. 38 — Big favorite goes overtime in week 1? Yes, we will take that. As for what happened, I don’t think anyone really knows, even those who watched the entire game (which many didn’t as it was at the same time as the Auburn-Washington game) as it appeared Penn St. never really looked right, even when jumping out to 24–10 and 31–17 leads. Then wouldn’t you know it App St. took the lead and Trace McSorely became Trace McSorely again to get Penn St. a quick TD drive and an overtime touchdown to win.
Best Performance of the Weekend
LSU 33, Miami 17– 27–3 lead at halftime? Check. Dominate defensively and on special teams finding lots of hidden yardage? Check. Big plays in the running game? Check. Zero turnovers? Check. Looks a lot like good LSU to me. Of course there are worrying signs below the surface, but that has been the case with LSU for the better part of the last 6 years. Enjoy the win and get ready for the road trip to Auburn in two weeks.
Worst Game of the Weekend
Oklahoma 63, Florida Atlantic 14 — A lot of people thought Florida Atlantic had a chance in this game. Enough for this game to get a National TV broadcast on FOX with the top crew of Gus Johnson and Joel Klatt. About that. Either Florida Atlantic is overrated (entirely possible as the big winning streak last season was against the dregs of Conference USA along with a bowl game win over Akron on its home field) or Oklahoma is headed to the playoff. Or something else. It’s week 1 (see that bit about overreaction in the first paragraph here). Either way, this was a bad game, especially if you watched the early part of this game and watched Oklahoma sprint out to a 48–0 lead.
Worst Performance of the Weekend
Virginia Tech 24, Florida St. 3 — Willie Taggert has a long way to go to fix this. Especially on the offensive line. Poor DeAndre Francois. A full year away after injury and a new coach with the same miserable offensive line unintentionally trying to get him killed. Clearly, the biggest problem Jimbo Fisher left was that he and his coaching staff might as well have recruited a bunch of 2-stars with no development on the offensive line and it showed here against a team with no returning secondary members to speak of. That lack of Virginia Tech secondary didn’t matter since Francois was running for his life, just like the Alabama game last season and the all of the year in 2016.
Projected New Year’s Six
Cotton Bowl (Playoff Semifinal) — #1 Alabama (SEC Champ) vs #4 Notre Dame
Orange Bowl (Playoff Semifinal) — #2 Clemson (ACC Champ) vs #3 Wisconsin (Big 10 Champ)
Rose Bowl — Washington (Pac-12 Champ) vs Ohio St.
Fiesta Bowl — USC vs Boise St. (Mountain West Champ / G5 Representative)
Sugar Bowl — Georgia vs Oklahoma (Big 12 Champ)
Peach Bowl — Auburn vs Penn St.
3 Most Important Week 2 Games
- Stanford vs USC — Loser probably has no margin for error in Pac-12 play. Winner will have a mulligan to use (except for Stanford’s game against Washington of course). Add that Stanford looked very good against San Diego St. while USC’s talent showed through in the end after an early struggle with UNLV and you have a good looking game.
- Texas A&M vs Clemson — Poor Jimbo Fisher. He leaves Florida St. for Texas A&M and has to deal Clemson and recent tormentor Dabo Swinney in non-conference play. As for the game itself, we have no idea what Texas A&M has, but it seems unlikely to be enough to overcome the Clemson defense, even if the A&M defense can hold Clemson down to some degree.
- South Carolina vs Georgia — If there is a challenger to Georgia in the SEC East, we’ll know by halftime of this game, either in South Carolina being a real contender or both playing badly proving Florida is a contender along with Georgia. No matter, expect Georgia to win the game, even if it takes a half to put the Gamecocks away.
3 Most Entertaining Week 2 Games
- Nebraska vs Colorado — Colorado looked good against Colorado St. while nobody knows anything about Nebraska after it had its game cancelled in week 1. Expect a shootout as Colorado seems to have fixed its offense in the offseason ans Scott Frost is going to have a decent offense but will be unlikely to have gotten the defense fixed in one offseason.
- Arizona St. vs Michigan St. — The Herm Edwards experiment gets its first test against a Michigan St. team that struggled unexpectedly against Utah St. But that struggle, especially on defense combined with a more entertaining than expected offense in week one makes for a more entertaining lead up to this game.
- BYU vs Cal — No way anyone could have expected BYU to show up in this spot, but he we are. BYU looks competent on offense after last year in the wilderness. As for Cal, it played three quarterbacks and nearly blew a 17–0 lead against a North Carolina team playing without much of its depth because of suspension.
Early Week 2 Thoughts
This schedule stinks. Only one game between ranked teams (USC/Stanford) and it only exists this early as punishment from the Pac-12 league office for playing Notre Dame later in the season. While this week was good last season (with Notre Dame/Georgia, Oklahoma/Ohio St. and Auburn/Clemson along with USC/Stanford), it has often been bad at first glance over the last five seasons as many teams play their biggest non-conference game in week one (Auburn/Washington and Notre Dame/Michigan) and others play in week three (TCU/Ohio St. and USC/Texas). That leaves a load of FCS and low G5 games (14 of the teams ranked in week 1 are in that spot). I hate to say a week this early is skip-able, but if there happened to be a wedding in football season that had to be attended, this would be a good weekend for that occurrence.
