1. How do you beat Alabama? Turns out there are more and more blueprints printed with each passing season, but the one Hugh Freeze, who joined Steve Spurrier and Les Miles as the only coaches to beat Nick Saban in back-to-back years since he joined the SEC in 2000, laid out Saturday night feels as good as any.
a. Strike quickly. The Rebels were outgained and Ole Miss' five touchdown drives lasted an average of 3.6 plays.
b. Win the turnover battle handily. The Rebels forced five turnovers and committed none, the biggest spread in the Saban era at Alabama.
c. Eliminate busts. Alabama ran 101 plays Saturday night, but none longer than 31 yards.
d. Get lucky.
The most unlikely TD in college football this year scored by Ole Miss pic.twitter.com/UDiJOEJWYj
— CJ Fogler (@cjzero) September 20, 2015
e. When necessary, bend the rules.
f. They have more depth than you, so as a failsafe make certain you build a massive lead. Ole Miss grabbed a 30-10 lead in the third quarter, becoming just the third team to own a 20-point advantage over a Saban-coached tied team (2008 Utah and 2012 Texas A&M were the others). Needless to say, Alabama is 0-3 in such games.
2. If Alabama has to be miserable, at least Auburn is, too. Auburn is now 1-5 in its last six games against Power Five opponents. The Tigers have allowed nearly 42 points per game in their five losses.
3. Some teams' identity is an ever-evolving prospect, sometimes not forming until the midpoint of the season, sometimes not at all. LSU is not one of those teams. The Tigers knew their identity from day one, and it is this:
4. Brian VanGorder gets the last laugh. Paul Johnson was Georgia Southern's head coach from 1997-01, going 62-10 and staying firmly within the option-heavy lane the Eagles occupied in the football world. Brian VanGorder got the job in 2006 and tried to evolve Georgia Southern, a more extreme version of what Bill Callahan tried at Nebraska. He lasted one season. Still, VanGorder's efforts bothered Johnson. From Dan Wolken's story last December:
Paul Johnson had already been at Navy for four years when he placed a call to Roger Inman, his old do-everything man from Georgia Southern. They had known each other since their early 20s when Johnson was starting his long climb up the coaching ladder and Inman was doing whatever the program needed from driving buses to selling tickets, from looking after the equipment to even patching up injured players.
So when Johnson called in 2006 — by then, more successful and wealthier than ever — ranting and raving about how Georgia Southern's first-year coach Brian VanGorder was trying to undo the triple option offense that had lifted the program to prominence, Inman knew it had wounded Johnson's football soul.
"VanGorder had made some comments that he didn't think too highly of the offense, and Paul called me up and said, 'I need to talk to (athletics director) Sam (Baker) and get Georgia Southern on the schedule,'" Inman said. "I said, 'Why do you want to play us?' And he said, 'Because I want to beat the hell out of Brian VanGorder.' "
On Saturday, VanGorder flummoxed Johnson and Georgia Tech, limiting the Yellow Jackets to seven points until a pair of cosmetic scores created a 30-22 Notre Dame win. "I thought our defensive plan was outstanding," Brian Kelly said after the win. The kicker? Georgia Tech didn't complete a single pass in the first half.
5. New rule: If you fly a banner campaigning to fire a coach and the coach wins that game, you must donate three times the amount you paid for the stunt to the athletics department.
Golden's Hurricanes beat Nebraska on Saturday. Granted, they did it in the least satisfying way possible, blowing a 27-3 third quarter lead and a 33-18 lead with nine minutes to go only to hold on for a 36-33 overtime win. Miami (3-0) is the last undefeated team remaining in the ACC Coastal.
6.Someone give Mike Riley a hug. Riley's debut season is Nebraska's first 1-2 start in half a century, and it's come on a Hail Mary to BYU and a come-from-way-back-only-to-lose-in-OT setback at Miami.
7. Stanford returns the favor. After upsetting Stanford teams ranked fourth and 13th the last two seasons, No. 6 USC was upset by Stanford 41-31. Stanford has now won six of the last nine meetings between the California private schools, including a perfect 4-0 mark against ranked Trojans teams in the Coliseum. For some context, consider that Stanford beat USC a total of six times from 1952 to 1990. It all started poorly for USC when Will Ferrell was nearly run over in the tunnel.
Will Ferrell leads #USC out of the tunnel before the Trojans open Pac-12 play against #Stanford. pic.twitter.com/OJnbhVs91l — McKenna Keil (@mckenna_keil) September 20, 2015
8. Of the four major teams in Alabama and Los Angeles, who had UCLA as the only undefeated team left standing on Sept. 19? UCLA held off a late rally from Tanner Mangum and BYU, which is just as miraculous and supernatural as stopping a hurricane in its tracks, surviving a three-interception night from Josh Rosen to win 24-23.
9.The Nuggets will never criticize playing to win, especially when on the road as a heavy underdog. Connecticut wasn't beating Missouri in overtime. The law of averages would've had its say at some point. Knowing that, Bob Diaco passed on an opportunity to send Missouri to overtime with a 42-yard field goal, instead opting for a fake. Maybe you want to put your offense on the field instead of running play action to the kicker, though.
"I didn't feel great about the 42-yarder [field goal attempt by Bobby Puyol or Michael Tarbutt]. I didn't feel great about the battery [snapper-holder]. I didn't feel great about the guts of the protection. I didn't want to put it on Michael at that point," Diaco said afterward. "We felt good about the look, and Alec would have a good opportunity on a small defender. And we did. What I'm interested in his how the pressure is in [Boyle's] face so fast. As soon as he came off the play-action, there was a guy right there so he never got to throw that top-shelf ball that we would have needed. We knew that even if they had defended it properly, it was going to be little guy and a big guy. And if it was a top-shelf ball, it would have felt great."
10. Football is an emotional sport. You want your players to celebrate their successes, because they are so hardly earned and too rarely experienced. Then this happens and you want to turn them into autobots. Notre Dame defensive back Drue Tranquill, sadly, will spend the rest of his life sharing space on a lowlight reel with Bill Gramatica and Gus Frerotte. Tranquill's injury is cruel under any circumstances, but especially so considering Brian Kelly is already down his starting quarterback and starting running back.
11.Just asking, but is Ohio State the No. 1 team in the country right now? No. 1 teams, especially defending champions, rarely ever drop from the top perch after wins, but Ohio State looked to be suffering from an unforgiving case of 2014 Florida State Hangover Virus on Saturday. The Buckeyes' three-headed quarterback monster combined to complete 16-of-29 passes for 136 yards with a touchdown and three interceptions in a spectacularly underwhelming 20-13 defeat of Northern Illinois. Asked who his starting quarterback was next week, Urban Meyer said, "I don't know."
12. Kliff Kingsbury's quote afterwards will (deservedly) draw most of the attention, but let's look at how he got in position to drop that truth bomb. Last year in Lubbock: 228 rushing yards on 5.3 ypc allowed, 23 first downs allowed in a 35-24 win. This year in Fayetteville: 438 rushing yards on 6.4 ypc allowed, 32 first downs allowed in a 49-28 loss. Hiring David Gibbs wasn't about making all the plays, but making the right plays at the right time. Three games in, Texas Tech looks like a different team from last year.
13. And so does Arkansas. Remember when Bret Bielema bragged about his Razorbacks' SEC schedule like it was a good thing? The Hogs' remaining schedule, with a gimme against UT-Martin removed: vs. Texas A&M in Arlington, at Tennessee, at Alabama, vs. Auburn, at Ole Miss, at LSU, vs. Mississippi State, vs. Missouri. Are there four wins there?
14. In the final year of a two-year contract, it's possible Shawn Watson will never answer another question from the Austin media. And that's a shame. Making his second start, Jerrod Heard shattered a single-game total offense record set by Vince Young in the 2006 Rose Bowl, throwing for 364 yards and rushing for 163 and three touchdowns.
15. Keeping Track of the Power Five standings: ACC: 2-8 (0-2 vs. SEC, 2-3 vs. Big Ten, 0-1 vs. Pac-12, 0-2 vs. Notre Dame) Big Ten: 7-6 (3-2 vs. Pac-12, 3-2 vs. ACC, 1-1 vs. Big 12, 0-1 vs. SEC) Big 12: 3-3 (1-1 vs. Big Ten, 2-0 vs. SEC, 0-1 vs. Pac-12, 0-1 vs. Notre Dame) Pac-12: 4-4 (2-3 vs. Big Ten, 1-0 vs. ACC, 0-1 vs. SEC, 1-0 vs. Big 12) SEC: 4-2 (2-0 vs. ACC, 1-0 vs. Big Ten, 0-2 vs. Big 12, 1-0 vs. Pac-12)
16. Odds and Ends: a. Last week we highlighted seven teams under the heading, "It's early, but these teams are off to a good start!" Two of them won spectacularly (Texas Tech and Ole Miss). Two were off (Baylor and West Virginia). The other three? Oof. Boston College, 100-3 winners over Maine and Howard, was shut out by Florida State. Illinois, 96-3 winners over Western Illinois and Kent State, lost to North Carolina 48-14. And Georgia Tech mostly flatlined in its 30-22 loss at Notre Dame. b. Memphis won this week's Group of Five Game of the Week, fighting back from a 27-17 halftime hole and 41-34 fourth quarter deficit to beat Bowling Green 44-41. This helped.
c. Winning is a week-to-week proposition in college football. Exhibit A: Temple. Fresh off a blowout of Penn State and an impressive win over Cincinnati, Temple had to come from behind to edge Massachusetts, 25-23, on a 32-yard field goal with 12 seconds left.
d. You'd love to win, sure, but mid-majors want to come out of payday games at Power Five programs with something to build on. Tulsa found that at Oklahoma. Trailing 31-10 just before the half, Tulsa stripped Sooners running back Joe Mixon, notched a nine-play, 80-yard touchdown drive, then recovered an onside kick and connected on a Hail Mary to record its second touchdown in the final 13 seconds of the half. Instead of a 38-10 halftime hole, Tulsa hit the locker room with a 31-24 deficit. All three phases gave Philip Montgomery something to brag about on a day when his defense allowed 773 yards of total offense.
e. Florida beat Kentucky. Again. The Gators survived the Wildcats, 14-9, earning an FBS-best 29 straight wins over the same opponent.
f. Central Florida lost. Again. Two years removed from a Fiesta Bowl win, UCF is 0-3 with losses to Florida International and, Saturday, a 16-15 loss to Furman.
g. Trivia question: Who are the only teams with non-conference wins over Power Five opponents at home and on the road? Answer: Notre Dame, Northwestern, Iowa and Toledo.
h. From the I'm Just Sayin' Department: A list of teams that allowed Georgia State less than the 28 points Oregon surrendered over the past two seasons - Charlotte, Washington, Arkansas State, South Alabama, Appalachian State, Troy, and Clemson.
i. Playing its third straight road game to open the season, UTEP earned its first win of the year, a 50-47 overtime win over New Mexico State.
j. If you had to bet on one team to win its division after Saturday, wouldn't it be Georgia to win the SEC East? The Bulldogs blew out South Carolina 52-20, and seemingly only Tennessee stands between them and Atlanta. And even if Tennessee takes down Georgia, I'm not sure the Vols are consistent enough to hold off the Bulldogs for an entire season.
j. Arizona set school records with 77 points and 792 yards of total offense in a 77-13 win over Northern Arizona.
k. The Mountain West has now lost an unfathomable 21 straight games against the rest of FBS, lowlighted by San Diego State blowing leads of 17-3, 20-17 and 27-24 in a 34-27 home loss to South Alabama.
k. And, finally, I enjoyed this tweet immensely. Colorado beat Colorado State, 27-24.
