By: Noah Gould
College Football’s week two slate didn’t look that enticing going in, but Saturday proved to be another of College Football crazy days. It all got started off with a bang as FCS Jacksonville State was to leading sixth ranked Auburn for almost the entire game before falling in OT. In the end, despite the loss, Jacksonville state had still put up more total yards of offense. Jacksonville State truly just played better than Auburn for most of the game. The Auburn offense was just unable to do anything. Their offensive line played horribly. Over the past two season Auburn has been a big time national championship contender mostly because of their offense. Their coach Gus Malzahn has been praised around the country as an offensive genius, but his team was only able to put up 20 points in regulation against Jacksonville State which suggests it might be a tough season out on the plains. The tigers were able to score a late touchdown and win the game in the first overtime avoiding one of the biggest upsets in the history of the sport. Based on how they played on Saturday Auburn is going to struggle mightily in the, as per usual, stacked SEC west. While Auburn’s week 1 win over Louisville seemed impressive at the time Louisville’s loss at home to Houston on Saturday probably proves that neither participate in that week 1 showcase is going that far in 2015.
The theme of upsets in the SEC west continued later in the day when 18th ranked Arkansas fell at home to Toledo. Again, in this game Toledo led Arkansas almost the whole time. This year is head coach Bret Bielema’s third with the Razorbacks, and was supposed to be a breakout year for the team. Unfortunately for Arkansas they, like Auburn, currently play in the SEC West so they will have a tough schedule again this year. It looks like it could be another building year for Bielema who better start experiencing some success soon if he wants to keep his job.
Continuing with the upset theme, 9th ranked Notre Dame was on the road at Virginia after their headline week 1 38-3 win over Texas. Notre Dame jumped out to a 12-0 first quarter lead but stalled in the red zone 3 times. Shades of last year’s late season collapse showed as the Notre Dame defense struggled to stop Virginia. To be fair it looks like Virginia might be on the rise this year in a six to eight wins sort of way. Their QB, Matt Johns, was 26-38 with 289 yards and 2 TDs and looked very good especially on his clutch drive to take the lead with less than 2 minutes left. Virginia Canaan Severin was able to use his size and physicality to torture the Irish secondary all day. He finished with 11 catches and 153 yards including a few clutch plays on the final drive. Virginia certainly looks like their stock is rising especially since this season the ACC doesn’t have that many great teams. They could be headed for a 7 or 8 win season and a rare bowl appearance for the school.
Notre Dame seems to be going in the opposite direction. Their redshirt Sophomore QB, who many anointed as the savior after last week, went out for the season in the third quarter with a broken ankle. Redshirt Freshman highly recruited QB Deshone Kizer replaces Zaire as the starter. Kizer didn’t play very well at all when he first came into the game. He missed a lot of open throws despite running a fairly simply offense. Fortunately for Notre Dame, he played very well during his clutch 80 yard 37 second game winning TD drive. He capped it off with a beautiful 39 yard TD pass to Will Fuller with 12 seconds left to win the game followed by a 2-point conversion pass to a wide open Torii Hunter Jr. Kizer may prove to be a very good QB in time. Maybe in a few years or maybe by the end of the season. The problem for Notre Dame is they host Georgia Tech next week in a huge game after this week it seems unlikely that the offense or the defense will be ready to handle it. In the offseason Notre Dame was a trendy sleeper playoff pick and they were getting even more buzz after their blowout week 1 win. It seems like those playoff dreams were destroyed along with their QB’s ankle on saturday, but it seems Notre Dame still has a chance to be ok this year and come back strong in 2017.
