The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - Week 2 Reaction: Texas’ statement at Michigan, Nebraska gets revenge on Colorado & Notre Dame upset

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

FOX Sports’ lead College Football analyst Joel Klatt reacts to a wild 2nd week of the college football season that saw a major upset and several top teams narrowly escape the same fate. He gives his takeaways after calling Texas’ blowout win over Michigan in the Big House and why he believes the Longhorns are a Tier 1 team in the sport now along with Georgia and Ohio State. He also details why he is very concerned about what he saw from the Wolverines on Saturday. Klatt discusses Nebraska’s win over Coach Prime and Colorado and what the result means for both programs. He praises the Lincoln faithful and Matt Rhule’s team before expressing his concern for Colorado this season. He then looks at the impact of Notre Dame’s upset loss on their Playoff chances and why this loss unraveled everything they gained with the Week 1 win over Texas A&M. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I think there's some deep concern for Michigan. 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. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the Joel Clatt show.

I am Joel Clatt, and we are presented by Hampton by Hilton. How about that for a wild Saturday? I mean, my goodness. I love college football. I love it so much. It's so unpredictable, and we're reminded of so many truths when we have a weekend of college football like we just experienced this last weekend. Thank you for joining us here. Remember wherever you're listening to this podcast, go ahead and rate and review us. That would help us out quite a bit. And thank you for those that have done that. Just a slow clap for you right there. If you have not done so, please go over to YouTube and subscribe to the YouTube channel. We're going to have and continue to have exclusive content over there. So get over to the YouTube channel and subscribe there. And those of you that have already done that, you get a

slow clap as well and invite a friend because college football is better when you invite a friend. Folks, that was awesome. I thought it was an incredible environment that I was at. And then what looked like to be kind of a dull slate of games, let's face it, as compared to the opening weekend of college football, turned into an incredible Saturday. Number five, Notre Dame loses at home to Northern Illinois as a 28-point favorite. Texas goes into the Big House and hammers the defending national champion. Oregon survives against Boise State, slow clap for their first win in program history over the Broncos. Well done, ducks. They survive as 18.5 point favorites. That didn't help our picks on Thursday. Now did it?

Alabama led by one, one, a point, which would necessitate a gun rack. In the fourth quarter versus South Florida before pulling away, Penn State was down at the half to Bowling Green after what they did against West Virginia. Oklahoma beats Houston 1612, a team that lost to UNLV by 20 last week. Iowa blows a 13-0-0 halftime lead to their rival Iowa State. And Clemson, of course they do, scores 56 on App State in the first half. What are we doing? That was incredible. I love college football so much. It's so unpredictable. And guess, What? We're reminded about so many different truths. The first being, this happens every year, which is why we love it. I think every year we start to, we start the season and we become so

definitive in terms of what we think about teams. And so that we think, we think, and by the way, when I say we, I'm saying I, I, we, the royal we college football, we think in definitive terms about teams even in the preseason. Okay, so we've slapped rankings on them, and we have all these projections, and then games happen week one. And based on that game, we start to say like, oh, well, I was definitely right or I was definitely wrong. And we try to do what?

Draw definitive conclusions again. And yet, week two always, always does this to us. You know how I know? I have a Google machine. And Steve does too. Steve, who is my right-hand editorial. He's more like my brain. I appreciate Steve more than any of you actually know.

Steve is with me every single day, most of the year, and he helps me with the games. He helps me with this podcast. And we have Google. Last year, Miami hammered a ranked A&M. And we thought that was like, hey, Miami's going to be for real. Not the case. Oregon last year, needed the last minute field goal to beat Texas Tech.

that was even with Bo Nixon, that team that wound up playing for a playoff spot against Washington and the Pac-12 championship game. Utah needed a last minute touchdown and a comeback to beat Baylor. Baylor went three and nine. That's last year. Then we go back to 2022. By the way, this is all just like, this happened week two last year, not in the college football season, this specific week of the college football season in 2023. Now in 2022, number one Alabama rolled into Texas. Gus and I and Jenny called this game and Bryce Young had to go full Superman. in order to win that game. I think it was 20 to 19 by a point. App State beat number 6, Texas A&M, Marshall beat number 8, Notre Dame. That was in Notre Dame Stadium. And Washington State beat number 19, Wisconsin, in Madison. It happens.

Hey, guess what? Wasn't that year either. Excuse me, it wasn't that year only either. 2021. Stanford beat number 14 USC. By the way, that Stanford team, 3 and 9. Arkansas routed number 15, Texas, ran all over them. Number 12, Oregon won at the shoe against number three, Ohio State.

Number five, Texas A&M beat a four-win Colorado team by three points, 10-7 in Colorado. Number five, Texas A&M beat a four-win Colorado team by three. By three. By the way, guess what's the commonality in all of these? Like, A&M shows up constantly as the overrated, like, fly in the ointment in college football. we overrate them all the time. We overreact to the games that involve them, whether they lose or whether they win, and most of them is lose or play worse. And then we over-inflate that opponent,

and then that opponent ends up being not as good as we think they are. I mean, it happened to Miami last year. It happened to, well, they lost to App State in 2022, Colorado in 2021. By the way, in 2021, number 8, Notre Dame escaped Toledo. So Notre Dame has a history of doing this in week two. So should we be? be surprised, no. And why should we not be surprised? One, it happens all the time. Why does it happen

all the time? Because we forget every year that these are 18 to 22 year old kids. They're kids. And I think it was easier for us to remember that in previous years when they weren't making money and when they weren't transferring and when they didn't have agents, when they weren't on national ads. I think it was easier for us to be like, you know what, I forget, but like I'm reminded their kids. Because now the expectation is that they're not. It's not that we have to realize it now. It's that we expect them to be something that they're not. They're 18 to 22 year old kids. We expect them to be professionals because of the money, because of everything that's going on. And guess what? It is more difficult than ever for these 18 to 22 year old kids to actually

concentrate and focus and be detail oriented in their play on the field. More difficult than ever. Think about everything that they've got going on right now. They're thinking about their own NIL deals. So you you throw money into this and that's a huge distraction. You've got social media. This is the anxious generation. Please read IGen. You've got the rat poison that comes around with all of that. You've got agents telling you you should move schools. It's harder to build team chemistry because there's so much newness based on the transfer portal on almost every single roster. in America. So it not only has happened throughout the history of college football, we should expect weeks like this to happen more often moving forward because the 18 to 22 year old kids

that make up college football are more distracted than ever before. And we also forget that like teams have to develop teams because of all the distractions that I was talking about prior, I think that they have a lower floor than maybe they did in previous years. Maybe they have a higher ceiling as well. But if you start to take the rat poison that is all of these things off the field and you start getting distracted, guess what? That's the quickest way to be defeated. And that's one of the things that really good coaches will always tell their teams is that the quickest way to be defeated is to be distracted. What good coaches will also know is that every single week you have to get better.

As soon as complacency enters into the equation, your team's going to get beat. And what happens after week one is we draw definitive conclusions, teams then full of 18 to 22-year-old kids get distracted and they get complacent based on the definitive conclusions that people like me say into a microphone like this. And guess what happens? That complacency gets them beat. Constructions, complacency, bang. Northern Illinois beats you. I've been telling everyone,

hey, Notre Dame's going to be in the playoff and then guess what? Boom, you lose. Good teams, really good teams, they kick complacency out of the locker room, they put their nose to the grindstone, and they get better every single week. And we should expect even these teams that have struggled at points in the first couple of weeks for them to get better.

I think Notre Dame will get better because they lost. I think Oregon will get better because they have struggled in the first couple of weeks in this season. Maybe we shouldn't be so definitive, but you know what? This is kind of the world that we live in in college football right now. And I think that week two of this season was just a huge reminder of all of those truths that we should be dealing with in a weekend and week out basis. Let's get to some of the games because some of the games were incredible.

I want to talk about the game I was at. Texas Hammers, Michigan, 31 to 12. Now, I think Texas, and I reflected this in my rankings, when I put them out on my Twitter, you can follow me at Joel Clad on Twitter. I always put out kind of my top 10 really late. I fly back home. I'm watching the games in the plane the entire time. I get back home.

I watch the late games. And then right before I go to bed, which is right around midnight, maybe a little bit later. I'm on the West Coast. I mean, 1230, maybe 1 o'clock, I'll always tweet out of top 10. And so like if you're not following me, go ahead and go over and follow me at Joel Clatt. And in my top 10, I did something that sometimes I'll do, but this is just the way I was feeling. Because of what I saw with Texas and because of what I believe about Georgia and Ohio State, I really think that we have a three-team top tier in college football.

So I put them all as 1A, 1B, and 1C in my top 10. All right? These three teams are the elite teams in college football. Could others join them? Possibly. Could they have bad days? possibly. But right now, based on their rosters and some of the action that I've seen, certainly on film and then certainly live last week in the big house,

these are the three teams that are, I think, I think head and shoulders above everybody else. Now, whether that remains to be the same next week, I'm not sure. They're 18 to 22 year old kids, but it felt like that game, 31 to 12, was even more lopsided than that score indicated. 31 to 12 to me, I'm sitting in the booth, that felt a lot more like a 42-6 game. To me, it wasn't really close. At one point, I looked up, I can't remember exactly the point that I looked at the stat monitor in the booth. It had to be sometime in the second quarter. And I looked down and it was like 42 snaps of total offense, you know, just total plays for Texas. And it was like,

15 for Michigan. And I was like, yeah, the game's over. It's over. The game was over in the second quarter. Now, Michigan fans might be upset about that, but it's true. And then that's right when that sequence of events happened when they turned it over a couple of times, Texas scores a couple of times. And I'm like, okay, now it's really over.

I just never got the sense that Michigan has an offense that yesterday or even maybe moving forward was going to be able to play from behind and go and win a football game. the offense, and we'll get to Michigan in a moment, you know, was less than dynamic for the second straight week. So what did I learn about the game? Let's start with Texas. Three things that I was impressed with from the Texas Longhorns. Number one, Quinn Ewers is excellent. The guy can play, man. He is such a good player. He makes really quick decisions in the pocket. I was most impressed with his feet, with his footwork, his elusiveness in the pocket, because there was a couple of times in particular in that first quarter. and more specifically on third down, that he was able to get himself loose

and that's what was creating the bigger plays, the explosive plays for Texas down the field. He did a great job of that. Quinn Ewers is right now my favorite for the Heisman trophy. Based on what I saw on Saturday, the way that he's playing and the offense that he has around him, I don't see any reason why he can't go to New York and maybe win that trophy.

He was 24 or 36 for 246 yards and three touchdowns, and it could have been more. I felt like they got a bit conservative, not that they took their foot off the gas, per se, but they got a little bit conservative because it was very clear that their defense was dominating Michigan. So there was no reason to put the ball at risk and go all gas, no breaks, if you will, to steal their term, and create momentum for Michigan through a turnover. There was no reason to do that. their offensive line was playing great, and that's going to be my number second impression. So number one is yours was excellent.

Number two, that O line is a problem for everyone that they're going to face. They are really tough. They're big, they're physical, and they're experienced. They did not bat an eye at some of the exotic looks that Wink Martindale, the defensive coordinator for Michigan, was throwing out of them on third down. They did a great job in protection and maybe even better job in the run game. the game plan was so elite for hewers and that offensive line. So I think the two best players that Michigan have are their defensive tackles,

Mason Graham and Kenneth Grant. And what Texas did in the game plan, to me, was brilliant. I started to, early in the second quarter, it just dawned on me. I was like, everything is quick into the perimeter when those two players are on the field, Grant and Graham. And then as soon as they would leave the field because they were tired, because they were on the field for at that point, like 40 plus snaps. They leave the field because they're tired.

And Texas immediately got big and went right downhill at the backups for Michigan. It was a great plan because then it was like, oh, boy, those guys better go back in there or Texas is just going to run the football right down Michigan's throat. So Sark did a masterful job. And I don't think he was avoiding those guys as much as his plan was to fatigue them. So some people would be like, well, no, they could have blocked them. They were doing just fine. Yeah, they were running the ball just fine.

But it was too fatigue those guys. It was to get to the depth of Michigan. It's like in baseball, a really good hitter and good hitting teams will be selective with the starting pitcher because they want to get to the bullpen in the sixth inning and not the seventh inning. They want to see the middle relievers, not the setup guy in the closer. So how do you do that? You see pitches. You extend his pitch count.

Well, that's what Sark was doing. He was fatiguing the defensive tackles in the interior in order for them to run off the field and then he would hammer them inside. It was just a really great game plan. And then the third thing I was impressed with was that the secondary was really improved from a year ago. I don't know if it's a great secondary

because I don't think Michigan was really a threat in the passing game and we'll get to that in a little bit. But they were certainly better. I love Andrew McCuba, the transfer from Clemson, he was athletic. He was all over the field. They were creating turnovers. I think Jada Barron is a terrific player on one side and Muhammad on the other as their corners. So they're improved in terms of a defense. Their rotation of defensive linemen, I felt like did a really solid job against the run.

Now, are they Tevondre Sweat and Byron Murphy? No, probably not. But those guys, they were both top two round picks. in last year's draft. So are you going to replace them? Probably not, but they're good enough up front based on that rotation that they have. So Texas is for real. These are the ingredients for a national championship. Texas is not a team that's, I think, going to just fade away. Now, is Michigan great? I'm not sure. Could we be reading too much into this game? Maybe, but I don't think so, because I've seen it. I've seen the teams that can go and win the national championship. I've seen their culture. I've seen their roster. I've seen their experience. And I've, more

importantly, seen how they treat each other and how they go about their work. And Texas has that feel. That's a special group. I hope that they can maintain that special nature about their culture and the way that they care for one another within that building, because to me, they've got something special. I'm highly impressed with Sark, what he's built and what this team has. They've got the experience and talent to go and win it. Now let's talk a little bit about mission. Okay, so there's two ways to look at Michigan. And I think people are going to fall into one of two categories. And after I give you the categories, I'm going to tell you where I fall.

The first category would be, hey, they're replacing 18 starters. And Texas might be the best team in the country. So bad day at the office. We'll be fine. Bad day at the office. Michigan always starts slow, but they never have to play in opponent to this level early in the season. So we never see this early in the season. You can make an argument that even last year's team, while they were starting a bit slow,

remember the Harbaugh suspension at the beginning of the year, they played a couple of clunkers, but got through them because they were so talented. And you can make an argument that like, hey, if they would have had to play this Texas team, maybe they would have lost and not gone 15 and okay, like, that's fine. So you've got a team that's trying to replace 18 starters. Michigan always has to develop and they've got to get better week in weekend and week out, and they can feel like we'll be better in November than we are right now. And that might be true. That might be true.

But the problem is that 0% of the Michigan blueprint was followed. Zero. Now, maybe they'll take solace in that. They did not control the line of scrimmage. They did not control the clock in terms of the time of possession. They did not control the snap count. They did not control the field position game. They did not control the turnover battle.

They lost all of that. And because of that, they're going to lose. By the way, if they do that against some of their opponents coming up, they will lose again multiple times because their blueprint has to be followed. So for them, they can just think to themselves in this first category, we'll be okay. We had that bad sequence in the second quarter. We did nothing that we were supposed to do.

We're replacing 18 starters. We're going to develop and we're going to be fine in November. That's category number one. category number two, deep concern. Deep concern with the following things. That they are not in any position to go out and dominate like they have in the last three years on the offensive line, that nobody on the outside is winning and it doesn't look like they have a wide receiver that can emerge as a number one threat. Now, they have that in Colston Loveland.

So I don't want everyone to say like, oh, you, Colston Loveland. But in the first two weeks, Colston Loveland has had two or three. drops and drop that ball that you're seeing if you're watching on YouTube, please go subscribe to the Joel Clout YouTube channel. Colston Loveland caught and then dropped that ball right over the middle on a third down, which led to a Texas touchdown. It was a catch and then a fumble. That's a concern.

Davis Warren looked rattled on third down, and it was not a team that was even close to presenting what I would consider like a threat on third down because they were constantly in third and long. It wasn't a team that looked like they could throw the ball when they wanted to versus when they had to. They had to throw the football because they couldn't run it very well. It was a team that lacked depth defensively, and it was very clear that when Mason Graham and Kenneth Grant weren't in the game, that the defense's level of play took a drastic downward trajectory. That wasn't the case last year.

So all of those things would lead you into this deep concern category. because all of those things are true. The lack of experience from Davis-Waron and all of the plays and passes that they were not on the same page on the outside, whether it was wide receivers or even Colston Loveland. Okay, so which one do I fall into? I fall into the second.

I think there's some deep concern for Michigan. There's elements of truth of the first category. I do think that it's a development team and that they will be better over time during the course of the season. The problem is all of the things that I talked about in the second category are facts, and they are facts that are going to have to be overcome, developed through, if they're going to have a season that they feel like they can have.

At the beginning of the year, I thought to myself, you know what, Michigan, even with all this newness, it's their culture, it's their ability to develop. I still love their defense. I think their floor is nine and three. That's kind of what I thought. And to be fair, it's like this Texas game was always going to be a difficult win for them because Texas comes in with all the experience. They are at the top of college football.

Michigan is in a rebuilding year. So it would have been a massive upset if they were to beat Michigan. But the way that it happened, that's the deep concern. It's the deep concern. And so this floor of nine and three to me all the sudden went to seven and five. because it doesn't even take a great opponent to beat that Michigan team that doesn't play by their blueprint. If they're going to play games that are not by their blueprint

and they've got to win by other means, I don't know. I don't know because then all of a sudden they're going to be in a lot of one-score games and it's a bounce of the football there, it's a penalty here or there, and now all of a sudden you're a five-loss team. So now their floor for me has moved down from 9 and 3 to 6. 7 and 5. That doesn't mean they can't still go win 10 games. Again, if they want to go develop and get better in November, then good for them. There's elements of truth in that first category,

but I'm concerned about them. Now you're staring at a USC team that looks like they are for real. I think USC and I put them in my top 10 and they deserve to be in the top 10. The AP voters are terrible. They just move them up and down. I'm sorry, if you have an AP vote and you're listening to this, I love you. I love your passion for the sport. Give me a break with what you gave us in the people. That was terrible. Like Tennessee and USC are clearly two of the best top 10 teams in the country. And so that's where they should be and you don't have them there. And I think that that's garbage. Miami as well.

Miami as well. So you've got USC. They're staring at. That's just in a couple of weeks. You still have Oregon. Maybe that game looks easier now the way that Oregon has played. You still have Ohio State down the road. So those are three games.

So now all of a sudden you're like, oh man, eight and four is certainly in the question. And what happens if you don't play by the blueprint in any one of the other games? Illinois, just beat Kansas. So that's why I say kind of a floor for me is more of seven and five. Michigan's got to get better. They have to get better. And they've got to go back to the drawing board and they have to understand the way that they win games. because following 0% of the blueprint is not going to do it.

It's not going to do it. Let's go to that Nebraska-Colorado game. Nebraska beats Colorado 28 to 10. Maybe it wasn't even that close. Maybe it wasn't even that close. Let's start with Colorado first. This looks like the exact same team from last year. This is a team that is maddeningly,

boring on offense and an offensive line that really struggles in protection. In fact, it's the elephant in the room that even their head coach has to at least address. Just simply, why was it so difficult for the offense to respond to Nebraska's defense? I have no idea. We would have known that answer. I think we would have responded quicker. Yeah, we, uh, like we just never, got it going until it was too late. It seemed like we just never got it going. Protections were a problem. You know, I'm trying to be polite and say it.

Because, you know, I can say the same thing you're thinking, but if I said, you say, I'm throwing my guys up on the bus. I'm not doing that whatsoever. Protection were a problem. We got to figure out a way to prevent that and do a better job with that. Yes, they've got to figure out a better way to protect the quarterback. The O line is not any better. I thought that they were going to be better.

and they're not any better. They're virtually the exact same offensive line. Not in terms of names, but in terms of play, this is a carbon copy of what we saw a year ago. Shudor has like not even a second to read the defense. There are times that he holds the ball, but it's not often. He's just constantly under duress. Seven sacks allowed.

Last year they allowed eight. I will say this. Overall is the team exactly the same? No, the defense plays harder and plays better than they did a year ago. For the second straight game, they didn't give up any points in the second half and at least gave themselves a chance. But the offense, man, the offensive plan is just so uninspired and totally unsustainable. Totally unsustainable. Let's say it this way. Like when you see and watch and feel the best offenses in college football,

generally what you see is teams that put the defense in conflict, and they do it both before the snap and after the snap. And this is what the great play callers do. So let's just kind of like take a couple of examples out there. Lincoln Riley, I think that he's one of the better offensive coaches. I think Kaelin DeBore is a great offensive coach. I think Steve Sarkeesian is a great offense coach. Elaine Kiffin, Ryan Day, who now has Chip Kelly.

So those guys. So like what are those things, those offenses have? common that I just mentioned right there. Movement. Okay, so pre-snap, you've got to make the defense work. You've got to change your structure. You've got to change what they're looking at. You've got to present movement. You've got to present shifts and motions, not only for your benefit to gain an advantage, but in terms of leverage, recognition of coverage and structure on the other side, but it's also just difficult for them. It's difficult for them to really zero in on how they want to pressure, when they want a pressure, from which side they want to pressure. You've got

to get them to declare their strength. Do they want to be a passing strength team or do they want to be a run strength team? You've got to have the ability to do all of these things because pre-snapped conflict is difficult on the defense. It just is. And in fact, every defense in college football does this. Very few times do great offenses just stand static in one formation and call plays. It's a two by two formation or it's a three by one formation. So if you're not moving and creating conflict pre-snap, I don't think that the players are in position to succeed. Okay. In particular, if you're not going to have the best players on the field. It also helps in protection too because you can change a lot of things up.

Then post-snap, the conflict has to arrive in things like, is it a run, is it a pass? Is it an RPO? How are we putting a defender in brackets? Are we bracketing in the passing game? Are we running progression reads? Like there's so many different things that an offense can do in order to put the defense in conflict or single defenders in conflict. And I just don't feel like Colorado does that. It's very static. It's very uninspired. There's very little creativity in the run game. And all of that winds up putting your quarterback on a T. It's too difficult. Everyone knows what protections are coming. It's either a five-man or a six-man protection with the back either inserting in the A-gap, taking the Mike linebacker, or off the edge. So like these

these protections aren't fooling anybody. There's no run action pass. There's no play action pass. There's no half rolls in the pocket. There's no full rolls. There's no getting the quarterback totally outside of the pocket. There's no easy throws. Colorado's offense has to change,

and it's got to become more inspired, or else this, what's happening, a static offense that puts a quarterback on a T is totally unsustainable. And I think that they know that. Pat Shermer is the offensive coordinator. I think that he knows that. Pat's an NFL guy and an old school guy.

And the guys that I mentioned in college football are more new school. I think he needs to get more into the movement, in particular before the snap and to help that offense out. Nebraska, I thought that was an incredibly cool thing to see that environment. That fan base has been begging for something that's real, for the better part, of, let's face it, what do you think, Husker fans, like two decades? And guess what? You've been coming every single Saturday in those two decades. This was the 398th straight sellout at Memorial Stadium.

I played there twice, incredible environment. You got one of the best fan bases in college football. Obviously, I played at Colorado, and I was raised to not like Nebraska. That was our rival. That was our red letter game. but the thing about it is some rivals are your rival because of an immense amount of respect, because that they held the standard. And that was certainly my childhood through the 80s and 90s.

Nebraska was the standard in college football. And their fan bases just have been desperate, hungry for anything that resembles that. And at this point, they're like, just give us something competitive. Just give us something that is not in the middle of our conference. We are a proud program. And they are. And they are. And now they've got something that they can be proud of. I'm here to tell you that what I was saying in the preseason is coming to fruition

during the regular season. Nebraska is going to be an issue for people. Now, is Colorado a great team? Not sure. Might be a five-win team, might be a six-win team, maybe a four-win team. But Dylan Ryola is very talented. That's a quarterback that does not look like a true freshman. the way that he moves, his arm talent from every angle, his accuracy, his ability to go down the field, he did not look rattled at any point. And it wasn't just because of the lack of pressure in his face. That's just his nature. So Riola is doing exactly what he needs to do. I've been arguing that all

he needs to do is be a net positive for Nebraska. He's more than the net positive for Nebraska. He's becoming a factor. Now, he got away with that ball that you're watching on YouTube over the middle, but he doesn't get away a lot. He knows where to go with the ball, and I like his game. And the defense, I thought, is real, and I knew that they were going to be real coming into this. This team, now all they need to do is continue to win the games that they should win. All right, what we've seen from Nebraska in the past is that they play these games, and it's like, why are they in a three-point game? And then they would fail in terms of game situation, latent games, and they would lose.

and they would lose games that they shouldn't lose constantly, one-score games. In fact, they did it last year. Remember, and I keep telling you about this, they played five, one-score games, turned the ball over 17 times in those games, 14 of them by the quarterback. I believe those numbers are right. And if they're not, they're off by like maybe one. They lost those games because of turnovers. If they just turned the turnovers into ball security, then they're going to be dangerous.

They just need to show up every single week and look like the team that played against Colorado. You could tell they were highly motivated. They played like it. And I'm here to say that like, I'm excited for it. I'm very excited that Nebraska is back because that fan base deserves it. Notre Dame loses to Northern Illinois as 28 point favorites and this is how it sounded. Snap, hold, Jeter's kick. It's blocked. It's blocked. It's blocked. Pick up by N IU. The Huskies have done it. The Huskies with the biggest upset. It's blocked. It's blocked. It's blocked. It's blocked. It's blocked. It's black up by NIU. It's in N IU history. They come to South Bend, Indiana, and they knock off the number five team in the country.

Wow. What, I mean, how cool was that? And then you got Coach Hammock crying after the game. Just an incredible interview. Congratulations to Coach Hammock, your entire staff, all of those players. You will never forget the day that you walked into Notre Dame Stadium and you took down a top five opponent. That was awesome. That was awesome. Okay. That's what I love about college football is that even a team like Northern Illinois can be the center of the college football

universe for a Saturday. That was very cool. Now for Notre Dame. Maybe A&M just wasn't very good. We've seen that happen time and time again throughout the years. Miami, they beat A&M last year. App State beat A&M, 2022. Colorado almost beat A&M 2021. Go back to 2019. It always happens. It always happens. A&M is always the fly in the ointment.

We overrated Notre Dame or they drank the rat poison, ate the rat poison, whatever it is. I just always think of that scene from dumb and dumber. Pills are good. That's a movie line. Do not quote me on that. They eat the rat poison. They believe that they're better than maybe they are because maybe A&M was overrated.

Everyone puts them in the playoff, including yours truly. They read it, they digest it. They think they can roll the old golden domes out there and beat Northern Illinois. And bang, they get beat. And now this team that we thought had a foot in the playoff after a week one win because of their schedule, now has both feet firmly outside of the playoff because of that same schedule. Bear with me for a moment. Now Notre Dame has nothing left to impress the committee with

except for a game against USC at the end of the year. Now, maybe Florida State develops into something that they're not right now, but there's nothing that's going to impress the committee, at least as of now. Maybe one of these teams is going to turn. turn into something that's on that schedule. But Notre Dame, in my estimation, went from being penciled in the playoff to a firm eraser out.

I don't know if they have enough. And if they're going to play like that, they're certainly going to get beat again. A 10 and 2 Notre Dame team with a lost in Northern Illinois loses an argument against a 10 and 2 SEC, a 10 and 2 Big 10. Maybe a 9 and 3 SEC, maybe a 9 and 3 Big 10. They lose the argument. So now all of a sudden, Notre Dame went from Definitely in to maybe definitely out.

I don't know if they can recover from this. They probably have to win every single one of their games from here on out. And here everybody thought that the 12-team playoff was going to ruin the regular season. And now I'm telling you, and you know what? I'm probably right that the Irish probably have to go undefeated from here on out. They are going to have to beat USC, the way that USC looks. There's no doubt. Riley Leonard did not play well.

Defense allowed 190 rushing yards. They read their press clippings. They got beat at home, and now they're behind the eight ball. They are behind the eight ball at this point. There's a ton of stuff that I did not get into, and we will get into it on Wednesday's show. So make sure to come back on Wednesday. I'm going to have a big episode.

I've still got to talk about Tennessee and Miami and USC. Are those three the next three after Georgia, Texas, and Ohio State? Possibly. I'm going to get into that on Wednesday, among some other things, and then we'll have picks on Thursday. I'm in Wisconsin this week. Remember, we've got our live show on Thursday night. We've also got Big Noon kickoff live from,

Madison. That's starting at 10 a.m. Eastern. So a huge week. We've got the live show. We've got big noon kickoff. We've got big noon Saturday as Alabama goes up to Wisconsin to take on the Badgers. Listen, folks, I love college football. I know you love college football. Share our show with one of your friends. And let's grow this show. Let's grow college football because we love it. Enjoy your Monday or Tuesday whenever you're listening to this. And I'll see you on Wednesday.