The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - Re-Evaluating the Top 10 QB’s, Arch Manning’s Struggles & Michigan leans into Bryce Underwood

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

FOX Sports’ lead College Football analyst Joel Klatt re-evaluates his Top 10 QB’s list that he made in the Spring and makes a new Top 10 based off the performances we’ve see on the field so far this season. He breaks down what problems he sees in some of the most disappointing QB’s like Arch Manning and Cade Klubnik and details which issues are fixable going forward and which are not. He then gives his thoughts on some developments around the country like Michigan unleashing Bryce Underwood’s legs, Ohio State finding a new Running Back, Alabama looking like Alabama again and Oregon’s one fix they need to make to make a run at a National Title. 0:00-2:24 Intro2:25-16:57 Joel Klatt enters the mailbag16:58-31:30 Joel’s new top QBs of the season31:31-35:46 Bryce Underwood shows athleticism vs. Central Michigan35:47-38:15 True freshman Bo Jackson goes for second straight 100-yd game at Ohio State38:16-41:10 Is Alabama back on track?41:11-44:36 Does Oregon look like a national championship contender this season? Use my code for 10% off your next SeatGeek order*: https://seatgeek.onelink.me/RrnK/KLATT10Sponsored by SeatGeek. *Restrictions apply. Max $20 discount. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If Arch can get himself in a better rhythm, I think the completions will come. They were ranked 11th in the country. They should not have been ranked 11th in the country. I think this guy is going to wind up in New York as a Heisman finalist. He goes out there and elevates the play of everyone around him. Bama's becoming Bama. Watch out. What's up, everybody?

Welcome into the Joel Clatt Show. I am Joel Clad. This show is brought to you by graduate by Hilton. We thank them for their support, as always. We've got a loaded show for you here midweek as we are barreling through the college football season. So we're going to open up the mailbag, answer a little question about quarterbacks. And then I'm going to get to a couple of things that I just didn't have time for on Monday's show. Monday show was packed, by the way.

If you did not listen to that, go back on the YouTube channel, wherever you get your podcast. You can take a listen to that from Monday show. A big breakdown of all those amazing games that we saw on Saturday, the two classics, obviously, Georgia and Tennessee and A&M and Notre A lot of time on those, so go back and check those out on the YouTube channel. And if you're not a subscriber, please go ahead and subscribe to the YouTube channel. That would help us out quite a bit. You can hit that notification button.

You'll know when all of our content drops. And then wherever you like to social media, we're there, the entirety of the college football season. You can find our content in shorter versions. So boom, there you have it. If you don't have a lot of time that week, follow us on social media, wherever you like to social media at Joel Clat Show. A lot to get into today.

there's a lot of really just like great topics. And I think I would just take a quick pause and just say, this is what we get with the expanded playoff with NIL, with the dispersion of talent around the country. I do think that we have more good teams, less great teams in college football, which is actually better for the health of the sport. So more teams are relevant, more players are relevant, more teams are obviously in it, which gives all of us a much bigger picture to talk about, think about and root for. as college football fans. So I'm obviously a huge fan of it, as you know. All right. So we're all college football fans here. You got questions. We've got answers. We're going to open up my mailbag presented by graduate by Hilton, the smartest place to stay in your favorite college towns. Now, truth be told, we got this email Sunday and knew that we wanted to touch on this. I knew I

wouldn't have time on Monday. So I teased this segment that we're about to do on Monday's program, and we're going to talk about quarterbacks. But we did get this. email from Kenneth on Sunday and wanted to touch on it. So Kenneth H writes and he says, Hi, Joel, I'm a big fan of the show. Thank you. Love for, love listening to you and Gus on Saturdays. Much love, my friend. I'm writing because I have a segment idea for the show. Great. I love it. After Clemsons 1 and 2 start, I'm assuming you don't think Kate Klubnick is the top quarterback in college football anymore. It's time for you to update your list from the spring and run through those on the show. Can't wait to see who makes the list. And we

immediately thought to ourselves, yep, that list is going to look awfully different. So here's what I want to do. I'll revisit the list that I gave you in the spring, my top 10 quarterbacks going into the college football season. And then I want to kind of rotate towards who do I think have been the best performance, excuse me, performers so far at the quarterback position through three weeks. So we've got a new list, top 10 of performing quarterbacks so far this year. Let's go back right now to the spring.

Let's take a look at that top 10. list. And listen, at the time, I felt pretty confident about this list. And as we know, things change. And college football is fluid, in particular now with more parity in the sport and talent dispersing, dispersing across the country. So it doesn't look like this anymore. Here's what it looks like if you're not watching. If you're on YouTube, you can check this out. And again, go subscribe. Go over to YouTube. You can check this out. My list looks like this. At number 10, I had Carson Beck of Miami. At number nine, Luke Altmire from Illinois. Eight was Lenora Sellers from South Carolina.

Seven was DJ Lagway from Florida. Wolf. Six was Garrett Nussmeyer at LSU. Five was Drew Aller at Penn State. Four was Sam Levitt at Arizona State. Obviously, the returning quarterback there after they won the Big 12 championship. At number three, a lot of belief from me in the offseason about John Mateer at Oklahoma. And then my top two quarterbacks going into the year were number two

Archmanning and number one, Cade Clubnik, clubnick, of course, from Clemson. This is obviously going to look a lot different. Now, you heard a lot of what I had to say about Garrett Nussmeyer and DJ Lagway and Monday's show. So please, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on those guys right now. They're not going to be on this list of best performers so far through three weeks this year. If you want to hear what I had to say and specifically about DJ Lagway, go check out that show from Monday. Now, a couple of other of these guys have played really well, but whether it's been the lack of strength of schedule

and or just better play from others around the country, my list is going to look dramatically different. Now, I do want to give you a bit of a caveat here is this next list is not going to be my top 10 draft or my top 10 quarterbacks. It's just best performers from the three weeks. But before we get there, I did want to just give you a bit of a thought

on some of these guys that were high profile coming into the year that have certainly struggled. teams have certainly struggled during the short beginning of this season here in September. Let me start with Lenora Sellers at South Carolina. That fell off a cliff awfully fast, didn't it? South Carolina's offense has been abysmal the entire year. It doesn't matter who they have played. You know, small school, what was the South Carolina State, a bigger school, Virginia

Tech who ends up 0 and 3 in firing their coach. They haven't played quality offense against anybody. So what happened last week against Vanderbilt, wasn't actually that much of a surprise. And in fact, the bigger surprise is that they weren't moved down to the AP poll. They were ranked 11th in the country. They should not have been ranked 11th in the country. That was all preseason bias for South Carolina because they had played awful on offense,

including Lenora Sellers. It looked great the very first drive of the season. They go down the field, Sellers runs for a touchdown. You think to yourself, okay, preseason height justified. Sellers is going to be a really good player, and then since then, it's fallen off the face of the map. In fact, in fact, even with weaker opponents, they've played three football games,

and after that first drive, they've only scored four offensive touchdowns the rest of the season. That's crazy. So none of it's been good. Sellers has not been good. The rest of the offense have not been good. The only reason that they were able to beat Virginia Tech, really, in week one, and even a bit in week two, score points,

is they had three punt returns for touchdowns, which covers up a lot of those woes on the offensive side. So they've been struggling since day one, maybe since Drive 1, I guess I should say, and it has not gotten any better. And so it wasn't a huge shock that Diego Pavia and Vanderbilt went in there and won that football game and won it handily. It wasn't even particularly close.

South Carolina 11 in name only from a ranked position because Vanderbilt was clearly the better team. But what has happened to sellers? Everything. Everything around them has been bad offensively. Not much he can do of that. And hopefully he's healthy moving forward. What about Cade Clubnick at Clemson? Very similar story to sellers.

Everything's bad for that offense. You looked at the number of returning starters for Clemson. In this day and age when we've seen the last two national champions, Michigan, two years ago, in Ohio State last year, have several returning starters. You can look at that blueprint and then you looked at Clemson in the offseason and you thought to yourself, man, that experience is going to pay huge dividends. This is going to be an incredible team. They've got experience at quarterback. They've got four offensive linemen back.

A bunch of stuff to like. They've got elite players on the defensive side and they have not played well at all. To me, the Clemson problems on offense are a more holistic problem than specific to Clubnik. He's been under duress. They have not been able to run the football. Antonio Williams' best wide receiver has not been on the field. So I don't want to pin this directly on Clubnik, even though he has not played well. I'm not trying to give him a pass by any stretch of the imagination, but I am telling you it's more than Clubnik and it's a holistic problem, which leads me to believe I don't know where the fix is for Clemson. I don't know if it's going to get a lot better for Clemson during the course of the year.

There's nowhere where I can be like, hey, if they just have this small tweak, if he just plays a little bit better, if they get that guy back and healthy, they're saying it's Antonio Williams, but I'm just telling you right now. I think it's a bigger deal than one player. It's a bigger deal than their quarterback specifically, and it's a bigger deal than just Antonio Williams not being on the field. So Clemson's issues are an offensive issue. It's holistic. Don't know where the fix is coming from. That team's going to have to get better in a hurry, even though their league is obviously not great. Then we get to Archmanning. And this is a much different discussion because Archmanning has played.

really poor so far this year, really poor. Nothing has looked solid. It's very different from the club Nick and Sellers conversation because I don't think it's holistic. I do think that there is real pieces on that offense. They've got quality wide receivers. They've got quality backs. They're good up front. Now, have they played their best around him? Probably not. But this is, to me, a more specific arch issue with their offense. So what's going wrong? Well, one, 10 straight in completions against Uteb. He's completing 55% of his passes overall. That's the second worst in the SEC.

But then when you look at throws that actually cross the line of scrimmage and go downfield at all, not five yards, not 10 yards, just cross the line of scrimmage. He's completing 46% of his passes. Something is wrong right now with the game of Arch Manning. Something is wrong. He's clearly not comfortable. So let's go into this. And I went back and I watched all of his attempts from that U-TEP game.

And let me preface this by saying, like, when you're going to watch a quarterback that's still young in his career, which Arch is still young in his career, here's typically what I look for, just so that you guys know when I'm watching it, maybe when you're watching as well. For young quarterbacks that don't have a ton of experience, the first thing you have to look for is the speed of the game affecting their play.

Okay? And it looks like that's the case with Arch. It looks like that's the case with Arch. Even with his games that he was able to start and play in early last year, it didn't really translate to him being comfortable. I do think facing a defense as difficult to face as Ohio State in week one did not do him a lot of good. But he's clearly not comfortable.

So here's what I see. When young quarterbacks, when the speed of the game around him, you can tell is almost too faster, they're not comfortable. They do one of two things. They either speed themselves up so fast where they're ahead of the timing of the offense, or they're so slow that they're behind the timing of the offense. You see, there's an old equation that Bill Walsh used to talk about. Timing plus spacing equals completions.

And then timing plus ball placement equals yards after the catch. They lived by that. Those San Francisco 49ers teams back with Joe Montana and then later with Steve Walsh. all those West Coast teams as that system kind of filtrated throughout the National Football League, all of those teams, the timing of the offense is held in the quarterback's feet. Well, Steve Sarkeesian is an offshoot of that offense. This offense, and its timing more specifically, is held in the feet of the quarterback. Okay.

So if the quarterback is rushing, that's no good. If he's behind, that's no good. It has to marry up. It's like a puzzle. Again, timing plus spacing. So there's the timing of the quarterback plus the spacing of the route concept from the wide receivers,

the picture that they provide the quarterback. Those two add up to completions. And if one of them is off, if the wide receivers are not providing the picture or the quarterback is not on the right timing, you don't get completions. So how in the world do you throw 10 straight incompletions against UTEP?

Something's going wrong in the equation. Something is. I personally believe after watching Arch, he is too fast right now. He is pressing and he is ahead of the offense. That's the way it looks. Maybe not on every single play, but certainly on several plays. So here's what I see is I see that Arch gets back there and he has time to throw. And then before the picture can develop, you can tell his eyes are already shifting from the first place he's looking to the second place he's looking.

So he's going from one to two before the picture. ever materializes. He's ahead of the timing of the offense. Well, when that happens, typically you lose your balance, you lose your pocket presence, your eyes go down because you're anticipating that the clock is moving too fast. So your eyes go down. Your pocket awareness crumbles. You miss open wide receivers. And when you do let go of the football, you're moving so fast in your own mind, you typically throw those balls short. Why? Because you jump at them. Your front foot gets out just a little bit too high. You jump at the throw and the ball tends to nose down and be short. If you're looking at the bulk of the incompletions for Arch

Manning so far, they are underthrown. A couple of them woefully going back to that game against Ohio State and then several more in the last couple of games, even when he's just trying to throw a quick hitter on the outside. It's too far low in a way. Everything is trending down and away from the wide receivers. Very few passes from Arch so far this year have been in rhythm, in balance, and in the frame of the wide receiver. That's what's going on right now.

He's got to clean up that timing. So what's going on? Can it be fixed? Yes, I do think it can be fixed. He's got to play much better. If it doesn't get fixed, then I'm going to start to wonder, is he 100% healthy

because the arm angle at times is way too short. but again, your arm can get short if your feet are moving too fast. So I don't want to jump to this conclusion or speculate about his health when I actually think it's more of a timing issue. If you really watch what's going on with their offense, he's ahead of the picture. And because of that, he's jumping at throws. Some of them have been overthrown.

Majority of them have been underthrown. At some point, I just have the sense that the timing will click, which is why I think Texas is, his offense and Arch's struggles more specifically are actually more fixable than what I see at South Carolina, or what I see at Florida with DJ Lagway again, go listen to Monday's podcast, or what I see with Clemson and Cade Clubnick, those are harder to fix than just a piece of the equation like the timing. If Arch can get himself in a better rhythm, I think the completions will come because you see it. There are a couple of times each game.

and typically off of play action, when you can see his feet jump up and they hop up and they are under him in the pocket and he can deliver a strike and it's on the frame. So it's there. It's just not typically there when he's just in dropback or trying to throw the RPO game, which has been so effective for Sark and Texas

in particular under Quinn Ewers. I know a long dissertation to tell you, like at some point I do think it's going to click. The timing is going to click and I think he's going to play a lot better and he'll throw the football a hell of a lot more accurately than what he's doing right now. If he doesn't, and he starts to be in rhythm and still missing, then I think that we can speculate about what's going on with the health of maybe his shoulder or something like that. But until then, I think it's a timing issue and not a health issue for Archmanning.

Can it be fixed? Yeah. I do think it can be fixed. And sometimes with young guys, all it takes is like a series where you're like, I get it. Okay, now I get the rhythm. Now I understand that my drop and the rhythm of my drop and the rhythm of my feet are paramount to the quality of my play. And once he understands that, I think that they'll take off. So Texas, fixable. Okay. So that's what's going wrong with some of the guys that were on the list that are no longer going to be on the new list.

So let's get to the new list. Who have been the 10 best, best performing quarterbacks so far through week three in the college football season? This is fun here because there's some new names that we haven't really talked about and guys that have really played well. I'm going to go 10 to 1, try to hold some suspense. right here. At number 10, and there were a lot of guys that I debated here at 9 and 10, just a few names that aren't going to make the list that, well, before I, let me just go through the list and keep some level of drama. There you go. Number 10 is going to be Julian

saying at Ohio State. I see it. It's there. He leads college football and completion percentage at 79%. He does play in rhythm. He had a couple of poor decisions last week against Ohio. that led to interceptions. They largely protected him against Texas, and they did not ask him to do much in the passing game. I think that it was there, and it could have been a lot better, but they protected him. The things that he did execute against Texas, again,

and you can go back to the shows that I talked about this game a couple of weeks ago. I thought he played very well against Texas. He protected the football. His feet are in rhythm. He plays in balance. The ball leaves his hand on time. Generally, it's on target. He's a very accurate passer.

you don't throw for 79% unless you're an accurate passer. And these are a lot of them big completions. He's not just throwing screen passes for 79%. He's throwing the football down the field, happens to be to really good wide receivers. And yeah, he's got a lot of help around him. But saying has been very good so far this year. So he's number 10. At number nine, nobody's talking about this team or this player.

But Jaden Maiava at USC has played spectacular football so far in these first three weeks. I know that their level of competition has not been great. but when you look at the statistical categories for quarterbacks around the country, Maya is right up there, one, two, and three in a lot of categories. 330 yards per game, an FBS best 14 yards per attempt, which is wild. And he looks very comfortable as able to watch a lot of their game against Purdue. You know, I don't think that they played their best against Purdue, but this is a scary team moving forward.

Maiava is playing really well, and he certainly earned a spot on this list. He's been one of the 10 best performers at the quarterback position. At number eight is going to be Joey Aguilar from Tennessee. He's been terrific. Even with a loss to Georgia, he played an insane game against the Georgia Bulldogs. I've been incredibly impressed with what he's done in that offense so far. I think he's a good fit for that offense. They won the trade.

He's a better fit. The offense is explosive. All things that Tennessee fans are. are like, wait, am I hearing these things come out of Joel Clatsmouth? Yes, I'm going to call balls and strikes when I see it. And so in particular, we got one Tennessee fan, Miss Becky. Miss Becky has been texting some people on our staff. And Miss Becky was like, Kat got this. So Kat's a Tennessee fan. Our producer in the chair, Catherine, is a Tennessee alum. I'm sure you're all shocked to hear that. Cat gets a text from Miss Becky. It's like, hey, girl, you tell your guy that he better watch what he says. our message boards are filled with his name.

I'm aware, Miss Becky. I get it. I get it. And listen, I'm going to call a spade a spade, and I'm going to compliment when compliments are deserved. And right now they are deserved because Joey Aguilar has been terrific. The offense has been explosive, in particular with some of those wide receivers on the outside. So Aguilar is number eight. Even in a loss, I think he's been one of the 10 best performers so far at quarterback. At number seven, how about Rocco Beck that Iowa State?

Did not make my top 10 in the spring. he was right there. I mean, right there. His dad, Anthony actually gave me the business a little bit. I was doing a UFL game the next week and he was like, really? Rocco's not one of the 10 best players. Here he is, Anthony. Rocko is certainly one of the 10 best performers so far of the season.

I don't think his numbers are going to do it justice. Again, this is not just the leading passers. This is guys that have gone out and performed in big moments. The game that he played against Iowa, I thought was tremendous, you know? And if you really boil it down during that game, Gus and I, and more specifically me, I kept talking about the fact that this team believes that all they need to do is be close because if they're close in the fourth quarter, they've got that guy. They've got Rocco. And we're fine because Rocco is in the building. And we set that up all game. And then the situation came about. Tie ball game and he walks onto the field and what does he do, deliver? I love it when guys deliver like that. And Rocco is clutch. He's a great leader.

And he's been one of the 10 best performers. At number six, I'm going to go to Florida State. Tommy Casalanos, his numbers are not going to blow you out of the water. And more specifically because they've only actually played two games, they beat Alabama, they played kind of a nobody. But man, that performance against Alabama, and it's not what he did on the stat sheet, just everything else that he did,

providing the energy, the short area quickness, his ability to be a threat in the running game, his ability to throw the football down the field. It clearly changed them. And what we've seen from Alabama now, how much more highly do we think of Florida State? Because Alabama has turned it around in a lot of ways. And by the way, a long, well, I'll give you some thoughts on Alabama a little bit later in the show. But Casalanos has clearly earned his way onto this list.

Okay, now we get into the top five. Who are the top five performers at quarterback so far this year? At number five, let's go tough, gritty, experienced. Give that man the rock, Haynes King. How about Haynes King? Taking down Clemson, they beat Colorado in the opener, did not play in the second game. And again, his numbers are not going to just like jump off of the stat sheet. But it's what he does for his team, the belief that his team has in him and the warrior that he is running the football, man. This guy almost beat Georgia at Georgia last year. That's the longest winning streak, by the way, in

college football is Georgia at home. Haines King almost took him down a year ago, took him to overtime. That was an incredible game. What does he do on Saturday against Clemson, which is clearly the tough opponents that Georgia Tech has played so far. 25 carries, warrior, give him the rock, lead them to victory. That's what gets you on this list, man, performance, big stage performance. And Haines King gets in my top five. He's number five. And number four, I've got Gunner Stockton for Georgia. The throws he made against Tennessee and crucial moments were spectacular. Spectacular. And man, when you do that, you earn your way onto lists like this. That is a remarkable performance. He led his team back after being down 21-7 in one of the great

environments in all of college football. That's really tough to do. Stockton was excellent. The fourth-down-throw. Wow. Like just, you bet. 300 yards in the game, huge comeback, fourth down throw. It's the calm that you provide your team in order for them to execute when panic certainly could enter into the equation. When you're down a couple of scores in that environment, the tendency is and the human nature is to panic, to go too far, to do too much.

You've got to have somebody, typically the quarterback, pull the range. trains back and say, hey, we're all right. We're just going to go out there and execute the next play as best we can, and then we'll snap it again and execute the best we can. And eventually, we're going to look up at that scoreboard and we're going to win the game. And that's what happened. Thanks to a miss kick, but that's what happened. So Gunner Stockton in the top four. Now my top three. Number three, I'm really impressed with this guy. This is a little bit of a bet on a future here. I think this guy is going to wind up in New York as a Heisman finalist. He can do it all.

Dante Moore, the quarterback at Oregon. Dante Moore is a sensational player, sensational player. Oregon has scored 17 touchdowns and kicked two field goals in the 22 drives he's been on the field this year. He is accurate. He plays on the right timing and in the right rhythm and with the proper balance to throw the ball really well down the field. They got weapons everywhere. He's very smart, gets them into the right play constantly. Their offense has already moved to a point where it was with Bo Nix in his second

year rather than where it was with Dylan Gabriel last year in terms of the intricacies, what the quarterback is going to handle at the line of scrimmage, whether that's in protection or killing to a different concept, whether it's run or pass. He's handling all of that. So he's got that preparation side and then the skill jumps off the tape to me. I think that he is excellent. And just again, I think that this guy is going to New York. top two quarterbacks so far performing this year.

Number two, Carson Beck, looks great at Miami, man. I tell you what, I had a lot of questions about what was going to go on with the health of his arm because of that elbow surgery. But he has been terrific. He has been terrific. And he has changed in a lot of ways, Miami. Now, they had an absolute dog at quarterback last year. Cam Ward was awesome.

They did not have the defense to go along with it. Now they have a defense, and they seem to have replaced Ward at quarterback. And so Carson Beck and that team, to me, clear favorite in the ACC, maybe with Castellanos and Florida State, but clearly those two teams light years ahead of Clemson. And we thought Clemson was going to be an ACC champ and a national champ. But no, no, no, no. Carson Beck on the prow, playing really, really well.

And number one, he was my number three in the spring. I thought he was going to be good. He has been good and maybe even better than advertised. John Matier at Oklahoma. John Mateer has played excellent. Has he made a couple of mistakes, turn the football over? Yes. Are his numbers as good as some of the other guys on this list? No. But he goes out there and elevates the play of everyone around him. We saw that against Michigan. He can go to a different level and give his team a chance to win the football game.

Be the reason that they win a football game. Matira has been excellent. He put OU on his back in so many ways against the Wolverines. He goes out there. He's averaging 35 passes and 11 runs for 368 total yards per game. He's accurate when he throws the football. I think they need to get the run game going from the running backs around him so that he doesn't have to quite share the run load that he has had to early in this season. But man, this guy right now, if I had a hand in a Heisman ballot right now, it would be John Mateer. I think he's been the most impressive player, the best player, the most impactful player in college football. through three weeks. He's been terrific. So there's my 10. The 10 best performers so far this season. Number 10, Julian Sayan. Number nine, Jaden Maiava, USC. Number eight, Joey Aguilar. Seven is Rocco Beck at Iowa State.

Six, Tommy Castellanos from Florida State. Great win over Bama, obviously. The Warrior Haines King at number five. Gunner Stockton at four. Remarkable comeback last week. Dante Moore with all of his skill in preparation at three. Carson Beck looks like he is healthy again and has wide receivers that will catch the ball on the outside, which he didn't have a year ago. He's at number two. And John Mateer has been the best performer so far in college football, putting that team on his back going out and winning the game. Here's my honorable mention. I did want to throw out there were a lot of guys that I felt like I could have included on this list. And so I'm sure, and please leave a comment down below because I know that there's going to be a lot of people that disagree with this list because there are some omissions. I will be the first one to give you that. There's no doubt.

Marcel Reed at Texas A&M didn't get him on there. Probably could have or should have. Diego Pavia. He's played well for Vanderbilt. Baron Morton. He's played really well at Texas Tech. Devin Dampier at Utah. Going to see both of those guys for Big Noon Saturday this week in Utah.

Luke Altmeier on my list in the spring has played great. Didn't find a way to get him on this list. And he's been terrific. Bryce Underwood last week for Michigan. Ty Simpson after the loss of four. Florida State has been unreal the last couple of weeks. Fernando Mendoza, the Cal Kid. What is it? A song of Polo, too, I think is, correct me if I'm wrong, but the freshman at Cal has been great. They beat Minnesota last week. So a lot of great performance. I didn't even get

to like Drew Aller or some of these other guys. There's been a lot of good performances. There's no doubt. So I love it. I appreciate the question. Remember, that was a long answer to Kenneth H's question from the mailbag. Keep them coming. continue to do mailbags as the year goes on. And Ms. Becky, thank you for the test. text. We appreciate it. And hey, girl, message received. Message received. Hey, you know what? It's time to get out and do something fun, whether it's catching a game or surprising someone with tickets. Live events are back in a huge way, which is why I want to give the sponsor of today's episode, Seatgeek, a huge shout out with over 28 million

downloads. Seat Geek is the number one rated ticketing app with more than 70,000 events listed. That's incredible. College football is here. The NFL is here right on the horizon. Major League Baseball is in full swing. And our team here at the Joel Clat show, we use Seatgeek, and we grab our tickets right there for all of it. It's quick, it's easy, and you know you're getting a good deal. That's what I love about it most. Every ticket is rated on a scale of 1 to 10, so you can see the value at a glance. Green dots mean great deals. Red dots, maybe you should keep looking.

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A couple of new developments for some programs that I wanted to touch on. If you didn't watch Michigan against Central Michigan, I understand. I totally understand. But they certainly learned from their loss against Michigan and then put the ball in the hands of their best player to go out and make place. And I, listen, I totally understand. And I get it that the opponent is totally different. and OU's defense was terrific. I get that. But in the first two games, Bryce Underwood as a true freshman,

only had two rushes that were non-sacs. So they were clearly trying to handle this guy with kick gloves. It's like, nah, we don't want, you know, we don't want to expose him in the run game. Let's have him play this, this Michigan style of game. Saturday, that went out the window against Central Michigan. He ran it nine times on Saturday. Six of the nine were on scramble, so it's not just about them dialing up quarterback runs, but it is, I think, part and parcel to the way that they coach him during the course of the week.

Because as a quarterback, if you're just being told, hey, man, you're in the pocket, just play from the pocket, play control, throw the ball away, that's what you're going to do. And then if you're told, like, hey, if it's not there, go make something happen. then you're going to go make something happen. And Michigan clearly took the bubble wrap off of Bryce Underwood and let him go out there. Six of the nine were scrambles, not necessarily design runs, but giving him the freedom to take off, I thought was huge.

He picked up two touchdowns, six first downs with his legs. He was the best player on the field for them offensively against Oklahoma in a game in which they had a bad plan. I think self-admittedly, they know that they had a bad plan against Oklahoma. and it was very different against Central Michigan. I thought it was very fascinating. Remember now, Sharon Moore, he began his suspension, I think midnight, one of the nights here. I think it was maybe even Friday night.

And he was the one that was like, hey, man, we're going to go. We're going to take the reins off. And then Biff Pogi, who is now, Pogi, the interim head coach, he went on to say, we thought at Oklahoma, we would take the air out of the ball because they're an air raid offense. He said, we're not taking the air out of the ball ever again, not with this guy taking snaps. I thought that was great.

And later he was asked another question about Bryce Underwood and the way that he coached him. And I thought this answer was just like incredible about who could coach Bryce Underwood. Biff, was it by design for Bryce to use his legs more today? Or is that just him seeing an opening and making things? Sharon really wanted to open things up with him a little bit when he felt it was the right time to do so.

And, you know, he's young and you want to kind of scale into it. And Chip Lindsay really took that mandate and I think did a great job. Bryce is just, you know, so it was a plan to get him using his legs a little more. But I mean, I have a Labrador retriever that could coach that guy. I mean, he's unbelievable. Man, only an old salty coach would give you that, that answer. Like, I'm a big fan of Ben. I'm a big fan of I know he didn't really work out. He was the head coach at Charlotte the last couple of years. I've been a huge fan of him since I read the book that he was kind of a central part of called A Season of Life. I would recommend the book to all of you out there. Again, it's called A Season of Life.

And it's surrounding this high school football team from the Baltimore area that Bif, Pogi was actually, Pogi was a head coach of along with a former Indianapolis Colt named Joe Irman. and it's a terrific book about how coaches loving the players was more important than what they were coaching them. And he was a big reason why Jim Harbaugh shifted post-COVID and was kind of a key player in the entire culture at Michigan going forward through their run. And he's now back at Michigan and now the interim coach. But I love listening to him talk. How about their rival? A new development at Ohio State.

So Ohio State, they didn't play great offensively from a scoreboard perspective against Ohio. If you actually looked at the stat sheet, they out gained them by almost 400 yards. So it's there. They made a couple of mistakes on scoring drives and didn't put points on the board. But it's not that I want to talk about. It's the fact that during the course of the preseason and an off season, I was hearing a lot out of their program about this young running back named Bo Jackson. By the way, no relation.

but they were very high on him and said, we think that this guy is going to earn his way into the rotation. Now, the reason that's important is because what they learned a year ago was very vital to them, which is a rotation at running back is paramount to keep those guys fresh and healthy for a stretch run. Ryan Day talks to me constantly about how long the season is. That played out last year. They were able to have two different times where they were able to regroup.

group, shift focus, change some things within the program schematically, and then move forward, ultimately ending in a national championship. So they will continue to get better and better. And part of that was the fact that they had two running backs last year, Trayvion Henderson and Quinchon Judkins, that they didn't have to lean on for 20 carries a game. Both of those guys got around like 10 to 13 carries a game right around there. So they were fresh in the stretch run. And they were in a lot of ways with Jeremiah Smith, the two best players, most electric

players on the field in the playoffs. Very difficult to defend. So Ohio State knew that they wanted to develop depth at running back. They had James Peoples. They have C.J. Donaldson. And they wanted to bring along some of these young guys. And boom, they've got it with Bo Jackson back to back 100-yard games. Didn't get over 10 carries in either of those games. Didn't play against Texas largely because as a true freshman, they didn't feel like exposing him to that with a young quarterback was going to be beneficial for anybody. But man, you can see it. This guy is dynamic. and now they've got three really good options at running back, and that's going to give them a lot of depth in order to stay fresh for potentially

a long season. You give them a third healthy back and watch out. They could run the football really effectively, and when that passing game has the ability to be dynamic also running the football, then watch out. Then watch out. That's in a lot of ways what turned them into the team that ultimately win and won the national championship.

I told you I'd talk about Alabama. to talk about Alabama. They look so much better, so much better the last couple of weeks. Last week got a win against a Wisconsin team. Let's be fair, I don't think Wisconsin's very, very good. But, but Alabama looked great. And more specifically, it was a change in the way that the quarterback played and more specifically the way Ryan Williams was used. So you heard me, and if you haven't heard kind of my reaction to the Florida State loss when Ryan Williams got banged up. I was critical of the way that they used Ryan Williams, where they targeted him on the field. A lot of it was in the middle of the field. He lined up in the slot, a ton. And now you

go to, he's back on the field against Wisconsin. They're protecting the quarterback better. And all of a sudden, he looked like Ryan Williams again. He looked like one of the best players in college football again. He was dynamic. And largely because he wasn't getting the ball in what I would call congested middle of the field areas. He was getting the ball in open spaces outside of the numbers. If you actually look at where he lined up, he lined up more often outside than he did in the slot. But it's not just that. When he did line up in the slot, they still targeted him.

They just threw him outbreaking routes. So if you look at all of his catches, they were all made outside of the numbers. The screen pass for a touchdown outside of the numbers. the pass along the right side. He's in the slot and he gets and he catches the out route. Ty Simpson's playing incredible football, by the way. Williams should have had another touchdown. His one drop happened to be the only target that he got over the middle of the field

right at the goal line. It was right in his chest and he dropped it. I wonder just the way that he got beat up against Florida State, I wonder if that crept into his head in the middle of the field. It looked like defenders were closed. It didn't look like someone was going to hit him, but it's just something to pay attention to because again, when Ryan Williams gets the ball in space, he becomes Ryan Williams.

So maybe it's not just about alignment, but the target. When he gets the ball out there in space, man, watch out. And then here's the other part about Alabama that I'm very impressed with, and it's their quarterback play. Ty Simpson, if they wouldn't have looked so bad against Florida State, Ty Simpson would have been on that quarterback list that I just gave you. When he's got a clean pocket this year, he's thrown for 79% 10.5 yards per pass,

nine touchdowns, no interceptions. They played so bad in front of him against Florida State. They couldn't protect anything, anything. Meanwhile, the defense, they've only allowed seven points of the last two games. One of Wisconsin's TDs was a kick return. So like, Bama's becoming Bama. Watch out. Everybody, it's, that's not the same team that we saw go play against Florida State,

not even close. Lastly, I do want to touch on because I saw them in person and got to cover them. So I did want to touch on Oregon. You probably heard my take from last week. They look like a team that can go and compete for a national championship. It does seem to be true. I still feel that way. They're big in the right areas.

They're fast in the right areas. And they've got excellent quarterback play. They've got a great coach. The game plans are sound. So all of that leads me to believe that Oregon is going to again be in the mix for the national championship. Listen, all intensive purposes, you can make an argument they were the second best team in college football last year, even though they didn't play in the national championship game. The seeding and the way that all came out, them losing in the Rose Bowl, they look better than last year.

They were the one seed and undefeated and Big Ten champion. This is a better team than last year. However, I would just tell you this, I do have one area that has to get fixed if they're going to go win a national championship. and it was a problem last week against Northwestern. And that's the fact that they did not play quality run defense. They gave up 178 yards on the ground to Northwestern, and it should have been more. Because we have this stupid rule in college football that sacks count against rushing yards. And then there was another funky play that actually was ruled a fumble.

And it got a huge backwards play, a huge tackle for loss. But there were some holes there for Northwestern. that's a problem. I thought that that defensive interior was going to be better, and it was not. 4.8 yards per carry, a big one late, granted against some of the backups, but they were not great against the run. And typically teams that win the national championship are great against the run, great on the interior, number one defense and college football type of deal. And this is not that. If you actually add back the sacks and that weird fumble that turns into a huge tackle for loss, Northwestern would have run for over 200 yards in that game.

I bring that up because the next test for Oregon is going to be in a couple of weeks when they play Penn State. They've got to go and face Penn State in a whiteout against a team that features two of the better running backs in college football. Nick Singleton and K.Tron Allen are guys that don't mess around and that running game won't mess around with Andy Kold and Nikki, their offensive coordinator. They're averaging over 150 yards on six per carry this year. those two guys for Penn State. So if that doesn't get fixed for Oregon, they could be in for a long night against Penn State. So having seen them in person,

I still believe in them, but they've got to fix that area. Tosh Lepoy knows that. Their defensive coordinator, Dan Langing knows that. So one of the reasons why he was so upset with Jenny in that postgame interview after the game. I think they can get it fixed, but it better get fixed in a hurry.

Or like I said, they're going to be in for a long night against Penn State. that'll do it for this show. We have got a great pick and preview episode coming up. Some big games coming up. So Thursday's edition are going to have my picks and previews. We're going to be on a comeback. Don't worry.

Don't worry. We were hot last year. It's been a slow start this year. But we're going to get back at it. So don't you worry about that. I hope you have a wonderful week with the ones that you love. And again, go follow us and subscribe on the YouTube channel. Follow us on social media at Joel Clatshow.

And we will be right back here on Thursday for Pick. some previous.