The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - Week 1 Reaction: Teams that stood out and teams that should be concerned

Episode Date: September 2, 2024

FOX Sports’ lead College Football analyst Joel Klatt reacts to a wild first week of the season. He discusses the teams that impressed him the most including Notre Dame after their huge road win at Texas A&M. He also breaks down the impact of USC’s come-from-behind win over LSU on the Big Ten and Playoff Picture. Miami and Georgia made early-season statements while Clemson continues to fall further from the top teams in the sport, but Klatt reveals why the lack of transfers isn’t the biggest reason for their downturn. Klatt considers whether Penn State is ready to take the next step following an impressive win at West Virginia. Michigan’s win over Fresno State was more difficult than their fans had hoped but Klatt thinks expectations for this team need to be reset while drawing comparisons to previous teams in the Harbaugh era. Colorado and Coach Prime also won their opener with star performances from Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter but were there warning signs of issues that could hurt them down the road? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I've got alarm bells going off right now for Colorado. Elite talent, same problems. College football has never been better. Interest has never been higher. Believe that we are at the dawn of the golden age of college football. It was an epic day of college football. It was one of those days where you fall in love with the sport all over again. Hey, what's up, everybody?

Welcome into the Joel Clat Show. Our show is presented by Hampton, by Hilton, and we have a week of college football in the books. Man, that was awesome. Was it not? Listen, I know we still have, what is it, BC, Florida State tonight, but that was just sweet to be back in it and traveling around and in college football and feeling the atmosphere.

Being at West Virginia was fantastic. Penn State, West Virginia, even with the delay that we had on Big News Saturday, it was still awesome to just be out there. I love this sport. And Saturday just reminded me why I love this sport. Some great performances and we'll get into all of that. Just remember, though, wherever you're listening to this podcast, go ahead and subscribe to it, follow us, rate, review the show, please.

If you could, that always helps us out. And then make sure to always go over to YouTube, subscribe to the YouTube channel, almost up to $150,000. We're going to have a lot of exclusives there during the course of the year. Excited about that. We're going to have kind of a film series on the YouTube channel. So get over there, even if you're just listening right now on your commute, go to YouTube, subscribe, and you're going to get that content.

Leave a comment below. I'll try to jump in there and chat with you guys. Here's what I wanted to do. There's a lot to get to. I had a list of like 15 subjects that I wanted to get to. There's just not going to be enough time. So that will have to come for Wednesday's show. So we're going to have a lot of great stuff on Wednesday's show.

But for tonight, I want to touch on kind of the most impressive things that I saw out of week one of the college football season, mostly these teams and some of these players. And then some of the concerning things that we saw out of week one. And we'll touch on those, including my Colorado Buffalo. So some honesty here about the Colorado Buffalo's that's coming up later in the program. Let's start with what I thought was not only probably one of the best environments of the week, but really, to me, I thought was the performance of the week.

And that's Notre Dame and what they did at Texas A&M. So Notre Dame goes into Texas A&M and as an underdog, they get a win against the top 20 Texas A&M team, and they did it in one of the most hostile environments that I've seen in a long time. That was an incredible environment. know a few of the people that went down, by the way, have some Irish fans here on the podcast, part of our staff, and they said that it was the loudest environment that they've ever been in,

could hardly think. And so the way that Notre Dame executed in that game is even more impressive. Riley Leonard transfers in, and Marcus Freeman knew, and you can tell by the way that this team played, he knew all he needed was an experienced quarterback, a guy that could have a slow heartbeat in crunch time, and he was going to have something. And they did. I tell you, that was an incredible win for them.

And I think it sets them up even more so for something that could be a really special season. We'll get to that schedule in just a moment. But if you look at what this team was, and I told you this in the preview for this game, I said A&M was going to have a really hard time scoring because this defense is one of the premier defenses in college football. And they proved that on Saturday night in college station at Kyle Field. What do they allow 100 pass yards? They didn't let anything go away. Wigman had no chance in that game.

A&M looked totally disheveled on offense. And this is a guy in Colin Klein that's going to catch a lot of heat as new offensive coordinator. And I believe in. I still think what I saw from A&M, I was like, okay, like they've got something. What was more impressive, that's kind of what I knew. I felt like that was going to play out. What I didn't know was how the new OC Mike Denbrock was going to pay off for Notre

name, how their new quarterback Riley Leonard was going to pay off for Notre Dame, and then how this young offensive line was going to play against a really talented, I would even say, upper tier in the SEC defensive line for Texas A&M. There's a lot of talent, some NFL talent on that Texas A&M defensive line. That was the biggest surprise of everything that went on for Notre Dame is the way that they ran the ball. They ran the ball incredibly well when they had to on the road late in the game, loud, loud environment. Defense knows they're going to run. It's a premier defensive line.

And what did they do? They ran for 198 yards, 5.8 per carry. That O line was better in the second half than they were in the first. They got better and better and better and they wore out the Aggies. That's what was impressive. I am a big believer in Notre Dame and I told you before this game. And I'm going to stand by it. If Notre Dame beats Texas A&M on the road with what their schedule is, they're probably going to be an undefeated team, certainly going to be undefeated when they play USC. Now, could they have an injury here or there and slip up? Yes, but I just do not see this team being anything less than 11 and 1 during the course of this season, which puts them dead in the

middle of the playoff. If there's anything that happened that really allows us to formulate what the playoff is going to look like in this first year of the 12 team format, it's that Notre Dame with their schedule and this win is almost certainly going to be a part of this 12-team playoff. It would have to go completely off the rails for the Irish. Riley Leonard, that says 22nd career start, and you can tell. You could tell with the experience, you could tell with the toughness. I just really loved that. And now I keep harping on it, but man, college football, even more so than in the past,

is really all about schedules because of the imbalance in schedules that we're seeing not only within conferences, and I know that doesn't apply here to Notre Dame, but across college football. So now Notre Dame is sitting there, and their toughest games are going to be Louisville at home, Georgia Tech and Atlanta, Florida State at home, and at USC. Like, they don't really go on the road anymore. They've got some neutrals.

They've got to go to USC. Notre Dame is set right now for a primed run at the college football playoff. Marcus Freeman, doing a heck of a job. There was some questions about Marcus Freeman. that lost last year at home to Ohio State was, I know, a tough pill to swallow for a lot of the Irish fans, because you felt like you were going to beat Ohio State. And in particular, you know, they thought that, I feel like they thought like they had arrived last year.

And so that was difficult last year. But now this year, all of a sudden, Notre Dame so in the driver's seat as it relates to a college football playoff berth. Again, and I've, by the way, I've been saying, this since the beginning of the preview episodes. Notre Dame is damn good and they're going to have a home game in the playoff. They could go 12 and 0. And by the way, just remember, just so that we're all clear, even if they're 12 and 0 and ranked number one in the country, they will not get a first round buy because those buys are reserved for one of the five conference champions. The top four champions get the top four seeds.

So the highest seed Notre Dame can get, and I know I'm probably preaching to the choir, is the fifth seed in the playoff. Even if they're ranked higher than that, the highest seed that they can get in this playoff is the fifth seed. And then they would, of course, host a game and it would probably be against the group of five champion. And maybe that's, I don't know, Boise, Liberty, someone like that.

There was so much, so much greatness over the weekend. How about last night? How about Sunday night? I mean, how about USC? I mean, geez. I mean, listen, I know what I said about Notre Dame. I know, you know, everything that this USC win is going to reverberate around college football because there's a few things going on here. In and of itself, the game was incredible. It was a great game. You know, Kyron Hudson, those catches that he made right at the end of the game with the targeting, the one-handed game catch earlier.

That was ridiculous. So the game in and of itself was really good. I thought Nussmeyer was good for LSU, Miller was obviously good. There's a lot to build on. And rather than going through all that, I think the narrative of what just happened on Sunday night is actually a bigger point in that game and its result. So USC gets the win.

And now all of a sudden the big tennis sitting there and you're like, oh, crap. Lincoln Riley, who's been to a bunch of playoffs, who wins conferences constantly, plays big games constantly. Basically, there's one year in his coaching career that it didn't go well, which is last year. And now all of a sudden, he's got a better defense. And what have we always asked? What is Lincoln Riley going to do with a defense? And now he's got one. Holy cow. So if you're the Big Ten, if you're Oregon and you struggled against Idaho, if you're Michigan and you were sloppy against Fresno, or at least sluggish, if you're Ohio State and you were sluggish a little

bit during the course of that game against Akron, I mean, folks, USC now is all the sudden right in the echelon and it's a five-team league at the top. Penn State looked really good and now USC can clearly say, yeah, we're in this race as well. Coming into this season, I don't think people gave USC that type of due. I mean, what were they ranked? 23rd in the country? And now here they are. And guess what? Everybody is going to have to deal with USC and Lincoln Riley. So that in and of itself is a big deal. Then you start to get to just this narrative question about the two conferences, the Big Ten and the SEC. Anytime they face off,

there's going to be narratives that emerge from it that are going to impact the way that we view not only the teams that play in those games, but the conferences at large. Now, see, going in, what did we say in all of these preview episodes is that this game was going to be huge. Number one, if USC wins it, it announces that they're a playoff contender, and that's absolutely the case.

Number two, it takes two teams that are pitted very, similarly in their conference, at least in terms of what we think in the preseason, right around that four or five rank, if you were to rank teams, and you pit them against each other. And now all of a sudden, these leagues are going to go off and they're going to play. And then at the end of the year, you're going to get together and you're like, okay, who's getting these at large spots? And these head-to-head wins, conference over conference, are going to be massive. That's why this Texas Michigan game is going to be so big. So, you know, I don't think that we can, I don't think we can just view this as like, wow, what a great win for USC and LSU is going to be fine.

This win for the Big Ten over the SEC will kind of linger pending what happens with Texas and Michigan. We'll obviously talk about that more next week. But this is a huge deal. And how about Dan and Lynn paying off for Lincoln Riley? I went to bat in these preview episodes for Lincoln Riley and for USC and for Miller Moss saying Lincoln Riley is who he always is. And if he can get any semblance of a quality defense, then watch out. And that's exactly what happened. I picked him in this game. They win this game.

And I told you if they do beat LSU, then guess what? They're a legitimate playoff contender. And that's exactly what's going to happen. They're going to be right up there close to the top 10. I'm not going to put them in the top 10, but close to the top 10. there are some really good college football teams. LSU is one of them. That was a really good team, a really good team.

But watching USC kind of bow up when it got tough, and LSU started to run the ball. And they all of a sudden get tougher at the line of scrimmage, run the ball in at the end, not even have to go to overtime or kick it. That was pretty impressive, pretty impressive. Like I said, that win clearly one of the most impressive wins of the week. All right.

in the most impressive. Hey, the U is looking like it's back. How about Miami going into the swamp and handling Florida, handling Florida. Now, some could say like, hey, wasn't that more impressive than what Notre Dame did to Texas A&M? The only reason that I'm not going to put it in the same stratosphere is that I just don't think Florida is anywhere nearly as good as what Texas A&M is. I might be wrong about that, but I think that we're going to look up at the end of the season and we're going to say, did we overestimate this win from Miami? Because there's a good chance Florida's a three-win team at the end of the year. And we might be thinking to ourselves like, man, because there's always these games in college football, based on what we think of a team or a conference and what their history is, so many factors,

we can see games early in the year, and we can attach narratives to who won and lost those games. And then what ends up happening is at the end of the year, those narratives can be completely different. And yet that narrative was able to shape the year for weeks and weeks and weeks. Now, I don't think that's going to be the case on the Miami side, but we could be looking up at Florida at the end of the year as a three-win team. So let's just keep that in the back of our mind as we heap praise. on Miami here in week one. And I'm not trying to downplay what I saw because what I saw was a team that was, I think, easily the best team of the ACC. And that was made abundantly clear with what happened with all the results over the first, you know, start of college football. I keep wanting to save

week one, but Florida State played that stupid week zero game. I hate week zero. There is no such thing as week zero. We should just all start the regular team, but whatever. I digress. I know that becomes the thing. Florida at home gets blown out. Miami looks like they're the real deal. Miami was owned up and down the line of scrimmage, or excuse me, Florida was owned. Miami was really good at the line of scrimmage, and you know that they've been recruiting well there. Remember, their talent composite keeps better and better and better. I think it would be interesting to note, though, that Florida actually has a higher talent composite of their entire roster than Miami does. So then what's the difference?

coaching, maybe. Or is it quarterback? And that's really where it lies. Cam Ward's the best quarterback in the ACC. And Cam Ward is why I believe in Miami. I've also been high on Miami in this preseason. And now you can see why. It's a talented team. I think there's a lot of pressure on Mario Cristobal because that, I would say, fan base and administration has really supported the team. They have allowed them to go out and have the resources to build a roster that is in the top 15 in college football and go get a guy like Cam Ward, which became a bidding war in his process of, am I going to the NFL? Am I not going to the NFL? So he finds his way to Miami and guess what? That guy can play. And I think what's evident

is that a lot of people did not watch Washington State football, unfortunately, which is a big reason why the Pac-12 ended up folding. You're kind of seeing that play out right now. This guy can play, ladies and gentlemen, and he is absolutely the best quarterback in the A.C. And this is why Miami should feel so good about their position coming out of week one. It's not just about the win against Florida, although that helps, in particular when you're talking about recruiting in that state and all those in-state recruits that were inevitably there in the swamp on visits. In fact, I saw some of that social media stuff where the Miami guys were walking by the Florida recruits, the official visit guys, and they were like, hey, man, we run this state,

come to the U. That is a flex right there. And that's why that game was so important. But then you look at this from just an ACC standpoint. This was not an ACC game, but you can start to see the ACC taking shape. Why? Florida State lost to Georgia Tech. Clemson gets blown out by Georgia. Virginia Tech loses to Vanderbilt. NC State didn't look great. And yet Miami goes out there. They have a clear number one quarterback, a guy that can easily be considered

one of the better players in college football, certainly in the ACC. And now you're starting to think to yourself, yep, there's the favorite. in that league. That's why it was such a big game and a big result on the Miami side. Now for Florida, I don't know what's going on. Now we're in total hot seat mode for Billy Napier because that was awful. I talked about the composite. Think about this. Miami's the 14th ranked team and the talent composite in 24-7. FSU is the 13th ranked team in the talent composite. Florida is the 12th ranked team in the talent composite. What's the difference between those three? Because they went one and two in the opening of college football.

Florida State losing, Florida losing, Miami winning. What's the difference? Cam Ward. Cam Ward is the difference. And if you have a quarterback, then you can play quality football, in particular at the top end of the sport. And that's going to be a theme as we continue during the course of this program here today. Miami, really impressive.

Hey, Georgia's still Georgia. Speaking of impressive, hello, dogs are just ruthless, especially in these openers. A few years ago, they played Clemson and remember it was just a knockdown dragout and you could kind of think to yourself, boy, those programs and those teams are similar. While Georgia might have had the upper hand

and did in that game a few years ago, you could say they were similar. Now they opened the season and you cannot say they are similar. Those are two different programs. And obviously in the last two years, they have headed in very opposite directions. Now we're sitting here and you're looking at, looking at a team in Georgia that is what?

They've won 46 straight games against teams that were not coached by Nick Saban. So yeah, they're pretty good because guess who's not involved in college football, at least on the sideline, Nick Saban. So the question is now going to be who is beating Georgia? Who? Based on the way that they played, experienced quarterback and Carson Beck, talent everywhere, physical at the point of attack, defense, incredible. best defense in the SEC over the last three years.

I know that they've got a tough schedule, maybe they won't go undefeated, but man, that was a serious announcement to everyone that, hey, we are not going anywhere. There is no dip in our expectation. We don't care if we, we don't care if more people think that they can have a national championship or a playoff berth.

They feel like they still run this sport, even if they didn't win it last year. 46 straight wins against teams not coached by Nick Saban, Georgia. Impressive as anybody in week one of the college football season. Now, what's concerning is Clemson. So if you're going to talk about that game, then you've got to bring up what happened to Clemson. 34 to 3? 34 to 3.

And listen, I can hear it as it's going on and I can see the tweets and then Dabo has got to even address it with some of his post game comments. everybody talking about the transfer portal. Well, they don't have a transfer starter. They haven't had a transfer starter. They can't do this. It's all the transfers, transfers, transfers. In fact, he even said, Davos-Sweeney on the transfer portal criticism, he says, we're going to do what's best for Clemson. People are going to write and say whatever, and he says that's warranted after a loss like this, but it doesn't annoy him. And guess what? He's right. He's right. I don't think it's about the transfer port.

I've thought a lot about this. I don't think it's about the transfer portal. And the reason is, is I'm thinking to myself and I'm like, hold on. Michigan didn't change their roster with the transfer portal. Did they add some depth? Yeah, they added some depth. And could you argue that Clemson could add some depth in the transfer portal? Sure. And could you argue that they lost steam and needed that depth late in that game? Yes. Okay, I understand that. Now, what's more plausible? What's more plausible is that they're taking the exact same trajectory as many teams before them. I touched on this in the preseason when I said that Clemson was coming off a seven-year stretch that is as good as any seven-year stretch in college football history. They reached number one in the AP poll in seven straight college football seasons. That's only been matched by Alabama. And so it happened to this seven years quietly because of what was going on. and coinciding with that seven years at Alabama in their 15-year run.

So we were seeing what we've never seen in the sports history with the greatest coach we've ever seen in the sports history at Alabama and Nick Saven and what they were doing. And they were number one in the country for 15 straight years at some point in every single season. It was just ridiculous from winning six national championships. But then here's Clemson. Clemson was putting together a great era of college football, great era, one of the greatest or at least equal to the greatest that we've seen.

we've seen pockets from teams like Nebraska and Miami and USC and Texas and Oklahoma. And guess what? That's exactly what Clemson did. Clemson did what was the norm in college football. They put together about a five, six, seven year dynasty. And then what inevitably happens is it starts to tear off. And this dynasty actually reminds me a lot. I mean a lot of a dynasty that started to taper off in 2009, 10, and 11. isn't it more plausible that Clemson is going through exactly what Texas went through?

Hear me out. Mack Brown built something so special at Texas. He really did. And they were winning 10 ball games and they played for national championships. They won a national championship. And then they played for another national championship. Had another year where they feel like they were robbed out of playing for a national. I mean, they were right there.

They were a preeminent team for about six, seven, eight years. they were. The sport ran through Texas. And in a lot of ways, the sport ran through Alabama and Clemson. And that six, seven, eight years, what was it about Texas that was just so elite? Well, at the beginning, they built this roster that was incredible, right? Linebackers like Derek Johnson, they had Thorpe Award winners in the back end with guys like Michael Huff. And, I mean, they were so good. And guess what? They got this guy named Vince Young, and he was incredible. And he took a really good roster. a national championship. And then after that, they had another really good quarterback. And boy, he was generational in a lot of respects in terms of college quarterbacks. And Colt McCoy took him

and really should have played for two national championships, played for one, and he got injured. But what happened at the tail end of Colt McCoy's career? He was carrying that organization and that program. And when he walked out the door, they thought they had an answer because Garrett Gilbert played pretty well in the national championship game against Alabama. And guess what happened? Garrett Gilbert wasn't the answer. And they didn't. And they didn't have the answer on the roster. And they couldn't find the answer for years. And so what happened at Texas is that they missed on quarterbacks. They had two elite quarterbacks take them on this wild ride that was at the top of college football. And because they got complacent, their roster

slipped, the quarterback masked it. And then when that quarterback walked out the door, bam, reality hit. And that's exactly what's happening to Clemson. And it was so apparent to me as that game is playing out against Georgia. And I'm thinking to myself, what happened? What is? Is it? Is it transfer portal? Kind of, maybe. That's what everyone wants to say about it, but it's not really transfer portal. What's happened at Clemson? They missed on quarterbacks. When you get five-star quarterbacks and they don't pan out, that sets you back. And it sets you back in a big way. We saw it at Texas in 2009, 10, 11, 12, and so on until now Sark has brought them back to the playoff era. And what's going on at Clemson? They missed. We thought DJU was going to be that

guy because of the way he played for an injured or, yeah, injured Trevor Lawrence against Notre Dame that one night in prime time. And then he became the quarterback and we're like, ooh, actually it's not really that. Well, I think it's probably more like, you know, Cade Clubneck. And Cade Clubnick is the guy and he's the star and guess what? It's not panning out. And maybe it will. And I hope it does because Cade, I think is still a really good player. And maybe that's a team that can still develop and go on and have a really good year and what is unquestionably a soft league. And I hope that's the case. But right now, This looks exactly like what happened at the University of Texas.

The roster is not what it was under Deshawn Watson and Trevor Lawrence. Deshawn Watson wins a championship. Trevor Lawrence wins a championship. But then he was masking issues when those older players graduated. So by the time Trevor walked out the door, Clemson was not Clemson. Just like by the time Colt McCoy walked out the door, Texas was not Texas. This to me is the parallel. And this is what Davo is fighting.

The roster is not where it needs to be. When you miss on quarterbacks, this is what happens. This is what happens. And I feel like we've seen this play out before. I feel like history is repeating itself right before our eyes. Okay, let's move on. The game I was at, I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the impressive nature of Penn States win because they went into a team in West Virginia that was right around kind of receiving votes in that 30, 31, 32, 32, 33.

area in terms of ranking in the country. They had won nine games a year ago. They were returning the most production almost of anybody in the country, in particular in the run game with Garrett Green, their quarterback, Jeheme White, their running back, C.J. Donaldson, their other running back, all three of those guys had run for 700 yards. I was preparing for this game. I was like, man, this is going to be a really tough game for Penn State.

All the newness at Penn State, the questions surrounding the offense, the questions surrounding their offensive coordinator, Andy Coddlenicki. what's he going to do? What's it going to look like? Is Drew Allen going to respond? Is he going to take this next step forward? There's all these questions around Penn State. And then this very confident bunch at West Virginia who's playing at home in a raucous environment. I'm like, this is going to be a very tough game. And what did Penn State do? They looked really impressive. 3412 win on the road against West Virginia. I touched on some of those questions and let me work through it quickly. Penn State over the last two regular seasons is 20, and O against everybody not named Michigan and Ohio State. Okay, so they had to go out and get better. What did they need to get better at?

Well, on offense, namely, they needed two things. They needed more explosive place, and they needed a drowler to be able to push the ball down the field. Both of those two things happened, and I think that was a huge, I mean, a huge development early in this season. You've got Nick Singleton with a 40-yard touchdown run. He did not have a run over 40 yards or 40 or more yards last year at all. He had seven of them as a true freshman that led college football.

And now all of a sudden, he's got a 40-yard touchdown run in the very first game, the creativity in the run game, helping out. Drew Aller was 124th last year in terms of air yards per attempt, meaning how far do you throw the ball down the field per attempt? And guess what he did yesterday? He threw the ball down the field. Was it always perfect? No, but they created explosive plays. And that is a great development for a team that feels like they're not only a top 10 team, but just scratching the surface in terms of getting over the hump of playing and beating

some of the better teams in the sport, namely Michigan and Ohio State. Now, I talked about it on the broadcast. Penn State has a very favorable Big Ten schedule. They miss Oregon and Michigan. So that means that they've got to play USC and they've got to play Ohio State. It's not easy, but it's favorable. I mean, of the contenders, I think you can make an argument that they've got as good of a path to 12 wins as anybody except for Ohio State who would be favored in all their games. They're only going to be underdogs in one game, and that's to Ohio State.

So this is a team that's absolutely going to be in this playoff race until the end. And the signs that we saw and the questions that they answered, I thought were a huge development for them. The reason that I'm not going to get carried away with the performance and say, hey, everything is fixed is because this is essentially the exact same result and play that we saw in the first week of last season against this exact team, West Virginia. Now, I do think West Virginia was a better team this year than they were last year at this moment. I do think that this offense has more staying power for Penn State because of the creativity of Andy Codalnicki. I really enjoyed meeting with him.

and sitting with him in our production meetings. I really did. He was an excellent guy. Really smart, good energy, all those things. The other quiet development is that they changed coordinators again because Manny Diaz had to get an, well, he had to. He got a new job as the Duke head coach. And so now all of a sudden they've got their third defensive coordinator in four seasons,

and their defense was excellent. Excellent. They held West Virginia in check. They did not let them run the ball. defense is fast. They're aggressive. They tackle well. There's some stars on that defense. Abdul Carter is going to get a lot of the credit, and rightly so, because I think he's probably the most talented player on their defense, number 11. But there's a lot of great players on that defense. I tell you, their safeties can fly. Their linebackers can tackle, and they made it

difficult on West Virginia. Schedule sets up nicely. Four straight home games before that trip to USC. So Penn State, quietly optimistic. But the questions remain. Remember, you can't just jump up and down for joy because the questions remain. The questions are, can you go beat Ohio State? Because we've seen them beat everybody else up to this point. So that kind of does it. I know there were some individuals that were really impressive.

But I want to move on to a couple of the big, let's just call them concerns, or I think points of consternation around college football and with some fan bases. And I'm going to point to two, and we'll get to others on Wednesday. I wanted to touch on this Michigan Fresno State game. So Michigan wins 30 to 10. If you just look at the box score, you think to yourself like, okay, you know, that's probably fine. 30 to 10, not in question. Not necessarily the case. That's a six point game with six minutes left in the game. So if you watch the game, and I know millions of you did, it was a more concerning performance than 30 to 10 would indicate.

All of us agree on that. All of us agree on that. So the question for me is like, what is this version of Michigan going to be? I think a lot of people were surprised that Sharon Moore started Davis Warren and not Alex Orgy. For this entire offseason, there was this idea that Alex Orgy was going to be the quarterback. He's certainly the more gifted athlete. There's no question about that. But Davis Warren is a more serviceable passer of the ball.

You see, there's a difference here. And I think you'll understand what I'm talking about. There are guys that can throw the ball well and beautiful and strong, and they have strong and powerful arms, and they're great throwers. There are other guys that are great passers, and the two are not the same thing. Okay. I think Davis Warren is a much better passer than Alex Orgy. And with some of the throws that Orgy made during the course of the game,

you could see why he was not the main starter, or certainly the main quarterback for the bulk of the game. There was a little half roll to the right side, and he's got a wide open, wide receiver over on the right side line, and he throws it literally seven yards short at the feet of the receiver. And I'm thinking to myself, that's why he didn't start right there. When you see that throw in practice, which inevitably happened, then you sit to yourself and you're like, we can't do that.

That's a layup. We can't have a guy in the starting five that cannot make a layup. You see, Alex Orgy makes the difficult things look really easy, and he makes the easy things at quarterback look really difficult. And that's not a good combination. So they were trying to mitigate that by starting Davis Warren. Now, I'm not suggesting that Orgy is not going to play a major part in this game plan and maybe won't become the quarterback.

Maybe that's the case. Maybe he can continue to develop and develop that passing ability rather than just the pure throwing ability. But for right now, I could see why Davis Warren was the quarterback because he was much more serviceable in terms of throwing the ball from the pocket, reading and post-snap and trying to get the ball to his wide receivers on the outside. They've got some wide receivers. I don't know if they're as good as they were a year ago. They're certainly trying to find their footing and develop that offensive line. That was obvious. People are saying to themselves like, Michigan's offense looked terrible.

Let's just stop for a moment and think to ourselves like, what was this Michigan team? What are they? What is this version? Well, we know the defense is going to be really good. And we know the defense is going to play complimentary football. Will Johnson with that great pick six at the end. Like he's one of if not the best corner in college football. They're going to be fine on defense, which allows you to at least extrapolate that they may not get blown out.

We'll see this week against Texas. Cannot wait to get to Ann Arbor to watch that game. We'll see how good their defense is against a really good offense and potent offense and explosive offense this week. But you know they're going to play good defense. And then now it becomes how well can you develop on offense? How complimentary can you play in all three phases? Can you go out there and just win the game?

Because it's never really been about the showmanship of can you blow somebody out? Really until last year. here, Michigan was always a methodical team that would pull away late. The score was always, I think, over the course of the Harbaugh era, the score would always get to a point that was not indicative of kind of the game that was played. There was a lot of one possession games late in the third quarter, early in the fourth quarter, and then Michigan would wear people down. They would get that two possession lead and sometimes a third.

That would happen. That happened a lot, which I started thinking to myself, well, man, this is, what's so familiar about this? this. When I'm watching the Fresno State game, I'm thinking to myself, there's some familiarity with what I'm seeing. And I started thinking to myself, this was early Harbaugh, Michigan. This was early Harbaugh, Michigan. This reminded me of watching the 2015, Jake Rudok quarterback Wolverines, really good on defense and like trying to find their way offensively. What are we going to be? Can we develop a power run game? Can these five linemen become dominant?

We had seen the power run game at San Francisco and at Stanford, and then Harbaugh went to Michigan, and it was like, we know that it's going to get there, but it's going to have to develop. And so through the course of the Harbaugh era, what was Michigan self-admittedly, a development program? I think that we have gotten skewed by last year's national championship. We automatically think that Michigan just has to reload like we want Georgia to and we want Texas to and we want Alabama to and we want Ohio State to.

But that's not what Michigan is and they are self-admitted about that. They have never recruited like those teams, by the way. Now, they recruit well, I'm not saying they recruit bad, but they recruit like a upper-tier development program and that's what they want to be. They want to develop a veteran, tough-minded football team. And that's what they're going to have. So to me, I said this in the preseason and now it's becoming more clear to me,

you're going to have peaks and valleys at Michigan. I don't think that you're just going to have a sustained best in the country program year in and year out because that's not what they do. They recruit and develop and recruit and develop and recruit and develop. So now all of a sudden you've had these guys leave and you're going to have a little bit of a dip so that you can dip down and start the development process. I thought Saturday night was the starting of a development process.

I think that this team can still win nine games, maybe 10 games, depending how they develop, depending how the offensive line plays, how the quarterbacks continue to play. Again, the Jake Rudok, Michigan team of 2015 shocked everybody in 110 games. I remember vividly doing their first game. My first game with Gus was the Michigan, Utah game Harbaugh's first game. True story. And Colin Coward had just been signed by Fox or somewhat in the recent past right around that time.

And so he came out to do the pregame show. And I'm sitting on the desk with Colin Coward. we're doing the night game. It was like a Thursday night game at Utah in Salt Lake. And we're doing the game and, or excuse me, we're doing the pregame. And the question was, how quick can Jim Harbaugh get this program back to the top 10? And Colin was like, no, it'll take three years. And I said, no, I think that they're going to be in the top 10 at some point this season. And I was, he almost laughed me off the desk and guess what happened?

They got into the top 10 that season. And why? It was because of this complimentary development style. that Harbaal was going to bring to the table. And I think that's what's going on. Might be giving too much credit to Michigan. It might be giving too much credit to Sharon Moore, but that's what I see.

I see the 15 version. They won 10 games with Jake Ruddock and they finished 12th in the country. If they finish right around that area, guess what they'll be sniffing, a college football playoff berth. By the way, you could also say, like, that might be their floor

and their ceiling might be the 2016 version of the Michigan Wolverines. That was a quarterback team by Wilton Spate. By the way, that team was, well, let's say it. It was a bad spot in Ohio Stadium. I know Ohio State fans are just going to be livid about that. A questionable spot from Ohio State away from going to the playoff. That team won 10 games and went to the Orange Bowl.

So, like, I think Michigan will be okay. I think that we just need to change the framing and expectations by which we watch them. Okay? We can't expect them to be the 20. 23 national champions and reload and then go right back up there to the upper echelons of the sport. That's not how they've recruited. Self-admittedly, they develop. So what are we going to need to see? The little bit of a dip. I think it's going to be a 2015-2016 version Michigan team. Top end, they're the Wilton Spate Wolverines.

I won't be shocked if Davis-Waron remains the quarterback for the rest of the year. And they work in Alex Orgy as one of the 10, 12, 13 best offensive players in packages in order to help them attack the defense. That won't shock me at all. It wouldn't shock me if Orgy becomes the quarterback. They will develop into something, into something. So was it a concerning game? Yes, kind of. I think if we just change our framing, it maybe was more expected. By the way, Fresno State was picked to finish third in their league. That was not a bad offense, so that defensive performance was pretty good. All right, last one that I wanted to talk about is Colorado. I save it for the last because I thought about

saving this for Wednesday and I just thought to myself, you know what? What I'm about to say is is truthful and I just, you've got to say it. Colorado beat North Dakota State 3126. Now, in and of itself, that's about what I thought was going to happen. If you actually go back to last week's episode, I said Colorado wins but does not cover. That's exactly what happened in this game. I knew it was going to be a tough game against North Dakota State because I really like North Dakota State's program.

You saw, they were tough. man, you know, like they're going to be right there for an FCS National Championship. Now, you could say like, okay, well, if that's what you expected, then you must be riding high because, man, that performance from Chatur and Travis Hunter was incredible. And yes, that's true about the performance. And no, I'm not riding high with Colorado. I was convinced in this offseason that we were going to see a Colorado team that that had gotten better.

A Colorado team that had gotten better, better at the line of scrimmage, better on defense, better in situations, better in the game plan. And what I watched last Thursday night was two elite stars, and really maybe more with a guy like Jimmy Horn,

Shador Sanders and Travis Hunter are elite players. Jimmy Horn is an elite wide receiver. And everything else is, really questionable for Colorado. Nothing got better from last year. So they have these elite players that carried them over North Dakota State, carried them. And yet, all the same stuff that happened last year

happened again. They didn't get better. Now, to be fair, it's the first game. They had another huge roster turn. and maybe they're going to continue to get better and get better from week one to week two, which is the week in which you generally see the most amount of growth because you can actually go back from a game against an opponent and you can teach and you can put that on tape and you can put that on the practice field and try to fix some of those mistakes.

But here's the problem with that is that we saw the exact same things happen that happened last year. And so to me, that's alarming. I've got alarm bells going off right now for Colorado. Elite talent, same problems. Here's some of the issues from last year. They ran it for less than three yards per carry. They had no creativity in the run game. They have got to. The game plan running the football has to get more creative

because it's not about being dominant in the run game. It's not about establishing the run game. It's about creating easier opportunities for Shadur to throw the football. That's what it's about. It's about throwing the football you want to, not when you have to. Because if you continue to do what you did against North Dakota State, guess what you did? Throw the ball because you have to, which exposes Shador Sanders.

That's unsustainable. There's so many things that happen on Thursday night that are totally unsustainable for Colorado. Not running the football is one of those. At some point, those guys up front are going to have to take pride in the fact that, listen, you're either going to sit there and you're going to watch the stars around you, carry you to potentially be in games, or you can actually be a teammate and you can actually contribute to what's going on. Because right now, it's not happening. They did not run the ball well enough. Shudor was unbelievable under pressure, 7 of 9 for 165 and a touchdown, 18 yards

per attempt, and he was only sacked one time. Why? Because he was phenomenal. The offensive line was not very good. Again, and that's unsustainable. The pressure rate was 30, 30% of his dropbacks. Very similar to last year. Last year was right up there around 35%, 36, 37%. This was an FCS team and it was 30%. That's an alarming statistic. So the same things popping up again. That has to get better at some point, whether it's the game plan and the creativity of the run game or whether it's the pride in those guys up front take, that has to get better for Colorado to take the next step. Travis Hunter playing both ways. I know we all love to see it. We love to see it. And I'm not suggesting that They don't play him both ways.

But the plan for Travis Hunter has to change. It has to change. He played basically every snap on defense and missed only two snaps on offense. So he played and he played seven on special teams. So guess how many snaps he? He, but 136. 136. And if he plays 136 out of 180, I'm like, okay, it's 136.

That's what it is. But when it's 136 out of 140, that's too much. because that suggests that he was wasting effort. Because listen, a game is kind of like a bell curve. All right. There are snaps that become meaningless. And then there are the bulk of the snaps are kind of like in the middle. And then there's these snaps on the other side and there's just a few that mean everything.

And what you have to do is that you have to shove his snap total in the into the back half of the bell curve. You've got to get him off the field for this 10, 12% of the snaps that don't matter. That has to be part of the game plan. First downs, base defense on, you know, your opponent's side of the territory, all these different things that you can do. By the way, here's another little one. Build an offensive game plan so that he's always the wide receiver nearest your bench. Build a defensive game plan that he's always the corner nearest your bench. Maybe not always, but maybe there is a certain call or in certain parts of the field where you can put him there so that he can slide in and out and take five or six snaps

off and it doesn't hurt you. Okay, based on field position, time of game, game situation, all these different things. I make the contention that you need to take 10 to 15% of Travis Hunter's snaps away from him. And you can do that so that in those moments that you need him to be the elite player that he is, he can play at his peak potential. Because right now, when you redline like that, the entire year, it will break down. And if he breaks down after what I saw on Thursday night, they don't have anything else. So it's incumbent on the coaching staff to build a game plan that allows him to be sustainable. So again, this word of sustainable.

What happened Thursday night was not sustainable at all. You can't expect Shador and Travis to do that every single week and bail everybody else out. The game plan has to be better from the coaching staff, and the play from those teammates have got to get better. We see this same undisciplined play from the same undisciplined players time and time again. Those penalties have to stop. That's a big one.

And then the clock mismanagement. The clock mismanagement at the end of the game was egregious. Now, I do believe that that was Shador's call at the end of the game. I haven't talked to anybody within the organization or the program, and I don't know this to be absolutely the fact. But what happened at the end of the game with the clock management, if you didn't see it with a minute 41, Colorado had the lead and they had first down. All right,

or excuse me, North Dakota State had some timeouts. And all you need to know is that if you just play it out correctly, North Dakota State receives the ball at worst with about five seconds left or four seconds left in the game. and yet what happened? They threw the ball on first down with a minute 41. This cannot happen. Now, if it was a check on the field by the quarterback,

then that's going to be evaluated by the next level. That can't happen. It cannot happen. I don't care what the defense is. It doesn't matter if nobody's covering. It has to be a run play. There is no way that you as an offense can stop the clock for the defense in that moment.

They must burn their timeouts. The sequence goes like this. Anybody knows this. This was almost a Mario Cristobal moment. And it almost burned them because North Dakota State got the ball and drive back and they catch a hail Mary. We'll get to that in a moment. First down 141 left.

What do you do? Run the ball. I don't care if there's 11 guys stuffed in the run box. You run the ball. Whether you want to hand it off or run it with the quarterback, you run the football. Takes about five seconds. North Dakota State, what do they do? They take a time out. And five seconds is generous, by the way.

Some of them take six or seven seconds. So this is just in a very conservative clock management style. So now at second down, there's a minute 35 left. What do you do? Run the ball. You have to run the ball in that situation. There is no other option. I do not care what the defense does or what they're in. You run the football. The clock must run. At that point, it takes about five seconds, and at third down, you're snapping the ball with conservatively 50 seconds left. What do you do at that point?

Snap the ball again, and you run the ball again, and you punt the ball, and North Dakota State gets the ball with about five seconds left, conservatively. At that point, you might not even need to punt the ball. You can snap it and run backwards and bleed it and go down. There is a scenario where you never have to punt.

The fact that North Dakota State touched the football with a chance to win is an egregious mistake. Egregious mistake. It's unsustainable to play this way if you're Colorado. They have elite talent and you cannot waste it with these same mistakes that they continue to waste it with. everything that I'm talking about is factual. None of it is personal. And if it continues, they will lose a fair share amount of their games. Why do I know that?

Because in that conference, they will play eight to nine one possession games from here on out. They just played one against North Dakota State. They're going to play eight or nine more in that league because everybody's bunched up. Everybody is good. Everybody is tough in that league. So if you don't fix these things that were clear mistakes, they will come back to haunt you. It's the exact same type of mistakes that we saw last year. It bit them in the butt, and that's why they only won four games and they didn't go to a bowl game.

I said they could win eight or nine games, not if they play like this. Not if they play like this. So I've been very bullish on Colorado. They win at 3126. They played Nebraska this weekend, and they've got to fix all these mistakes that I just laid out right there. All right. When we come back on Wednesday, I do have to give a take about some young guys. that played incredible out there. Rayola, by the way, I'll talk about Nebraska, Ohio State, and what we saw from that great roster. Oregon almost gets upset,

and that would have been the biggest upset, maybe in the history of college football when you really look at it. We'll talk about all those things and more when we come back on Wednesday. Remember to subscribe to the show on YouTube. Leave a comment below. And if you're listening, wherever you like to listen,

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