The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - Hitting a stride with Week 2 plus a look back to Week 1!

Episode Date: September 9, 2019

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I'm Joel Clatt. This is Breaking the Huddle and we are brought to you by Dr. Pepper, the official drink of Fansville. We always appreciate what Dr. Pepper does. They are college football and the official drink of Fansville. In the college football playoff era, there's no bigger discussion or debate in our sport than conference strength. Everything depends on how strong your conference is. That's how we measure whether you're going to get into the playoff as your conference champion or if you're going to get left out. or if your conference deserves a second participant in the college football playoff. And there's a game this week, week two of the college football season, that I think is going to have heavy implications, not just for the teams that are playing in the game,

but heavy implications for the conferences associated. And that's clearly LSU on the road at Texas. The SEC and the Big 12. They have long been combatants, right? Bob Stoops take shots at the SEC, the SEC yells scoreboard to the excessive. extent that they can against the Big 12. And I'm here to tell you that this game is massive, not just for these teams and these fan bases, but for the conferences as well. Now, before we talk

about the game and the strength of these two teams or the playoff participants, I want to first clarify what we should and shouldn't be talking about when we're talking about conference strength. I sent out a tweet earlier this week, and it was very clear, and it basically said, let's state the facts. I'm paraphrasing. Every single conference at the bottom of the conference is pretty weak and they're susceptible to upsets, group of five losses every single week. But the strength of the conference and the perception of the strength of the conference is going to rest on the shoulders of the top two or three teams in that conference. That's why the SEC has long been thought of, or at least the narrative has been, that the SEC is the strongest conference in the country. Why is that? Because Alabama is arguably the

strongest brand and program in the country. And now along with Georgia and what LSU and Florida were able to do in the post-Texas Vince Young era, that elevated that conference. Why? Because that was the cream of the crop, not just of the SEC, but in college football. They won national championships. That's how you get a perception as the strongest conference in the land. The Big 12 has always bristled against this. They've always pointed at things like, oh, Sam Bradford and Oklahoma should have beat Florida, but they didn't. Well, if Colt McCoy didn't get injured against Alabama, they would have won a national championship, but they didn't. Then you've had Texas that has been in basically the desert for the last 10 years, and they're starting to come out of it. They're finally now at

that point where they can almost touch it. They beat Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, right? All of these things. So let's talk about the strength, not the bottom. Everyone's going to want to harp on the SEC for what happened last week when Ole Miss lost two, who was in Memphis, you had 7th. You had Carolina, lose to North Carolina and Mack Brown's first game at North Carolina. Remember, North Carolina was two in ten a year ago. You had Tennessee lose to Georgia State. Georgia State was two and ten a year ago. You had Missouri lose at Wyoming.

You had Arkansas in a battle against Portland State. They only won by seven. And I'm here to tell you, as much as I'd like it to matter, it doesn't. It just doesn't. Nobody cares about your trash. They only care about what's at the top end of your conference. So now let's spin that into this week. What does that mean for Texas, LSU, and the conferences moving forward? The SEC has a chance this week to do something that is, I would say, unprecedented.

And that is you start knocking off everybody else's top of the conference. Maybe not the actual favorite, but the team just under them. Let me explain. In week zero, we saw Florida take on Miami. Florida won that game. It was sloppy. Yes, Felipe Franks didn't look good. Miami had a true freshman quarterback, all of that. And it can be explained away, so on and so forth. Guess what? The reality is there's a good chance Miami winds up in the ACC championship game. And that's a Florida team that probably won't wind up in their championship game because they're not better than Georgia. So that's a win for the SEC for one of their non-division champions against a potential division champion

of another Power 5 league. fast forward into week one of the season. What else do you have? You have Auburn and Oregon. Now you can say, hey, Oregon was the better team for the majority of that game. And I agree with you. If they played it again, I think Oregon would probably win it six or seven out of ten times, but they didn't win last week. Now you've got a team in Auburn with a true freshman that's probably not going to win their division, beating Oregon, a team in the PAC 12 that likely wins theirs. So that's two conference champion participants in Miami and Oregon, arguably, that have been taken down by the SEC, by two teams that won't be in the SEC championship game.

This is all hypothetical, obviously. Now you move forward to this week. LSU and Texas, you're starting to see the theme. Even though Oklahoma's the favorite in the Big 12 right now, everyone sees a scenario and the likely scenario that Texas is either the number one seed playing that championship game in Dallas, or they're the two-seed and still get to the championship game. You also see a scenario where LSU does not get to their championship game. So for the third time in two weeks of football, you could see an SEC team that is not going to win their division, beat a team that plays for their conference championship if LSU beats Texas. If that happens, the drumbeat for the second SEC team to make the playoffs is going to be deafening.

We're going to hear it all season long. And I'm here to tell you they probably aren't wrong at that point. Because remember, it's about the cream versus the cream, not your trash. So you can tell me all you want about, well, Tennessee is not great and Missouri is not great, and I agree with you. All that means is that the narrative of the tough schedule through the SEC is false. but that doesn't mean that the top end of their conference is going to get hurt by it. There's a big distinction with that.

Now let's spin this and say, what happens if Texas wins? Well, now you can see a scenario where Texas, who would clearly be riding some serious momentum after beating Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, walking into this season, and then potentially winning over LSU at home, now you start seeing a scenario where Texas has bona fide playoff chances. Well, guess who else has bona fide playoff chances in that league? Oklahoma. Jalen Hertz seems to be on a mission for the Sooners as a transfer quarterback. So now, hypothetically, all of these are hypothetical, hypothetically, let's say Texas and OU both go 12 and 1, and their only losses are to each other. And they have a win over LSU. The drumbeat for two teams out of the big 12 to make.

the playoff will start to be deafening. That's why this game in Austin, Texas, week two of the college football season, might be the most important game of the year. All right, week one of the college football season is in the books, which means reaction, which means clapback time. Gotta love it. Let's go. Okay, I'm going to go to at Jason Williams 08. At Jason Williams 08's writes in, wait, dot, dot, dot. Fisigan is ranked higher than Ohio state. Come on, man. And listen, I appreciate your gift game. You did an excellent job there.

So here's where I'm going to rest with this. First of all, I've got Ohio State at 8, Michigan at 5 in my rankings. Here's why I'm higher on Michigan than most. And I'm just going to talk about this from Michigan standpoint first and then Ohio State's standpoint. All right, buddy, Jason Williams, the only reason you're not getting the heat is because of the gift. The gift was strong.

Michigan for me played as bad as they're going to play this year in week. one. Sloppy from a penalty standpoint, putting the ball on the ground. So for me, there was so many things that you can actually just clean up moving forward. I saw some things also from Shea Patterson and that wide receiver core that made me very excited for what their offense can be moving forward. I haven't even talked about yet, Zach Charbonnet, their true freshman running back. He only had eight carries almost 90 yards. So he's explosive. I really like that. They didn't have their two starting tackles, backups at left tackle and right tackle. And They did a good job. They're going to iron out what Dylan McCaffrey is in that offense.

I think that the defense will get better as time goes on. A guy that I'm really excited for is a young defensive end named Aidan Hutchinson. He was a five-star player a year ago. He was a true freshman. Now he's a second-year player. I think he can have a really strong season. So everything for me for Michigan is, boy, I can see the trajectory. I can see them getting way better. Not that I can't see Ohio State getting better, but it was a weird game for me. I was in Columbus and they came out of the gate. First of all, full disclosure, in the lead up to the game, I started getting really bullish on Ohio State,

watching them practice. I had been there in the spring, and then I was there for Thursday practice before the game, talking with Coach Day, talking with their new coordinators, Greg Mattis, Madison, and Jeff Halfley, really impressed. Their talent is evident. Their speed is evident.

There's only a few teams in the country that look like Ohio State when they practice. They're an excellent football team. And then the game started, and they jump out to that big lead. The defense is dominant. And I'm like, whoa, here we go. Ohio State's going to compete for a national championship in their first year under Ryan Day. And that was a bit of a jump to a conclusion that I shouldn't have gotten to.

And the reason is, is they showed some things that give me more concerned than what Michigan showed. Namely, I didn't think they threw the ball great from the pocket, nor did they run the ball all that effectively. It looked a lot like the run game from last year, which was not great. I know J.K. Dobbins had 1,000 yards, but he averaged four yards per carry versus seven yards per carry his freshman season. So their explosiveness went way down. And that run game reminded me a lot of what I saw the year previous. And here's the thing, Dwayne Haskins ain't in that backfield.

So as explosive as Justin Fields is, there's some things that I think he needs to get way better at, namely throwing the ball from the pocket. They did not do that well. Their best passing game was when he was on the outside. You can't do that because at times, and Ohio State proved this against Michigan last year, at times you've got to stand in there and you've got to win with your secondary pitch. Okay, so last year, Michigan's trying to play manned defense on defense, and Ohio State's killing them with their speed across the middle, and they couldn't adjust.

So now I'm looking at this from the Ohio State perspective. Where can they adjust to? We know they're really good and they're talented and fields is explosive, but what happens if they take away the run game? Can Ohio State just drop back and throw the ball? I've got my questions about that. I think the defense would be better, but this offense, at least early, to me,

seems like it could lean on being one-dimensional. So that is why I've got Michigan, not fishing, ahead of Ohio State. Jason Williams-0-8. I know it doesn't look like you do a lot of stretching in that picture you have on Twitter, but make sure to stretch. a lot.