Arch Manning winning Heisman leads college football Week 2 overreactions - USA Today
Sometimes, the main event really does deliver. But for three agonizing quarters, it looked like it wouldn’t.
The first top-five blockbuster of the young college football season was well on its way to being more bust than buster. Then in the span of just a few minutes, Texas completely altered the tone of the weekend discourse. The Longhorns’ stunning 21-point comeback against Ohio State forced a changing of the guard in the polls and some reexamination of the season’s trajectory.
The teams on both sides of that dramatic finish will be the subjects of the first two items in this week’s edition of our top five overreactions.
Undeniably, Arch leading the rally at DKR has been the signature moment of the young season. It was a clutch performance in an electric atmosphere in front of a national audience that will naturally resonate with voters.
But there are a whole lot of spotlight games still to come. The Longhorns themselves haven’t even played an SEC game yet. It’s also easy to forget that for those afore-mentioned first three quarters, Manning wasn’t getting a whole lot of help from his teammates.
In short, we have to let the next three months play out before we make such a pronouncement. The trophy is never won in Week 2, but Arch is front and center in the discussion for the moment.
Taken on its own, a one-point loss on the road against a top-five opponent doesn’t severely damage the outlook for the Buckeyes, especially with their entire Big Ten slate still ahead of them. The nature of the result, however, brought to light some matters that must be addressed.
It wasn’t a single thing, but shortcomings in all three phases of the game contributed to Ohio State’s demise. It’s easy to point to the missed field goal by Connor Hawkins, which was hardly a chip shot anyway, but one more first down to burn more clock and make the attempt easier would likely have changed the outcome. Then there were issues in pass coverage that left Texas receivers open all night, even though they failed to make a lot of those plays count until the fateful final period.
The Buckeyes also need to learn to win away from home. Their Big Ten road slate includes three currently ranked opponents – Indiana, Iowa and Southern California. A 2-1 record would still likely produce a playoff resume, but two losses or an unexpected stumble in the Horseshoe would mean a lot of anxiety on Selection Sunday.
There are times when results in Week 2 force us to revisit what occurred in Week 1. We’ll deal with a couple such events in these next few items.
LSU’s leap into the top 10 was one of the most significant storylines from the previous cycle. The voters elevated the Tigers on their ballots based upon their dominant outing against Clemson. But was that – wait for it – an overreaction?
Clemson did get into the win column against Georgia Southern, though its offense remains anything but fixed. LSU for its part eventually pulled away from overmatched Louisiana Tech but led by just three after a mistake-filled first half.
LSU has the small matter of a visit to No. 9 Mississippi this week, and not peeking ahead is always easier said than done. In any case, we’ll learn a lot more about the Tigers very soon.
As we’re fond of saying, the transitive property doesn’t apply to football. But when there aren’t many datapoints yet available, one can’t help but examine what we’ve seen thus far. What we saw this week was the Oklahoma offense looking completely out of its element at Michigan, while Oklahoma State produced the weekend’s other big shocker by toppling Oregon. But that’s the same Oklahoma State squad that managed just 10 points a week ago in a loss to Tulsa.
The Sooner State belongs to the Golden Hurricane then, and they’ll run roughshod over the American now, right? Well, don’t get carried away with that.
It should be pointed out that Tulsa was in a dogfight itself in Week 2, needing a red-zone stop to escape Sam Houston State, a member of Conference USA but still fairly new to the Bowl Subdivision. Nevertheless, Tulsa is definitely worth keeping an eye on. The Golden Hurricane have a chance for another Power Four win in a couple of weeks when they visit Arkansas, and there are other strong teams in the American as well.
The reborn Conference of Champions is off to a bit of a shaky start, throwing into doubt the notion that it will claim a spot in the playoff at season’s end. Had Boise State not dug out of an early hole to get by American contender Memphis, the prognosis for the new league would be even bleaker.
As it is, Pac-12 members have put up some good efforts but overall the league is winless against the Power Four and has only limited success against the rest of the group of six. The lone conference member to get off to a 2-0 start will have the last shot at a ranked win when Colorado State visits Brigham Young next week.
