Week 2 Rundown

It was a pretty typical early season week for college football.  Lots of blowouts against FCS teams and uneven non-conference games.  Texas A&M-Clemson was one of the big games going into the weekend.  But Clemson controlled that game from start to finish.  A&M saw how the Tigers dominated with the running game the week before, so they stacked the box and held Travis Etienne in check.  So that's fine because Clemson has a pretty good quarterback in Trevor Lawrence who carved up the defense.  It looks like Clemson is going to be undefeated in the regular season.  There is always the chance of an odd game that comes out of nowhere, but it looks like smooth sailing for the Tigers the rest of the way.

The other big game of the weekend, LSU-Texas, lived up to the hype, but not in the way LSU games have gone in the past.  The game was an offensive fireworks display.  The teams went back and forth, up and down the field.  Towards the end of the game you just assumed that whenever a team had the ball they were going to score.  Maybe LSU really has "modernized" their offense.  The only difference in the game was LSU made some stops early in the game when Texas was at the LSU goal line, and the Longhorns couldn't make up the difference in time.  LSU looks like a real national title contender this year.  Of course, they still need to get by Alabama.  And Texas looks like they will do fine in Big XII play against defenses that aren't nearly as good as LSU's.

In other action across the nation, Nebraska and Colorado played a very entertaining game.  Nebraska led 17-0 at halftime and 17-7 entering the 4th quarter and looked like they were going to cruise to a victory.  But then the crazy 4th quarter happened.  The teams combined for 38 points in the 4th, 24 of which came from Colorado.  Colorado scored on a 96 yard pass play.  Then the next offensive play Nebraska had was a 75 yard pass for a touchdown.  Ultimately Colorado won in overtime when their kicker connected on a field goal and Nebraska's could not.

Washington suffered another loss to Cal.  This year's game was a little strange.  It started very late west coast time.  The game had a lightning delay of almost 3 hours.  At that point most of the crowd was gone and the game didn't wrap up until after 1 AM local time.  The game ended with Cal winning 20-19.  This is two years in a row Cal has won and held the Husky's offense in check.  It will be interesting to see if this was just a weird game or if Washington will have another year of under-performing expectations.

In another unexpected PAC 12 result, USC absolutely blew the doors off of Stanford.  Many people were down after USC lost their starting quarterback to the year.  But another freshman, Kedon Slovis, came in and led the Trojans to a resounding 45-20 victory over rival Stanford.  Maybe the Air Raid will work at USC.  Maybe it's not all doom and gloom for them.  USC still has a very tough schedule ahead of them, so we will see if the freshman QB can maintain a consistent level of play throughout the season.

Tennessee suffered another brutal loss at home.  At least this time it was to an opponent that traditionally is a very solid team.  But the way Tennessee loss was tough.  BYU was at their own 8-yard line with 1 minute to go and they marched all the way down to the Tennessee 16 with help of a 64 yard pass to set up the tying field goal and send the game to overtime.  BYU ended up winning in double overtime.  How do you allow a 64 yard pass with less than a minute to go?  The biggest rule in that situation is to not let anyone get behind you.  It's going to be a rough year in Knoxville.

Other than that, most everyone dominated that was supposed to dominate.  Not too much to shake up the national picture at this point.  Scores across the Jacknife leagues were a little higher this week with all the big-margin victories.  Quite a bit of movement in the standings too.  That is expected this time of year.  The power rankings look a little goofy at this point too with the small sample sizes.  But who can deny that Maryland is the 2 week national champion after the dominating performances they have put on so far?  Oh.  It can be denied by strength of schedule?  Fair enough.  I guess we will have to let all the games play out through the beginning of December before we decide who is worthy for playing for the national title.