Life Comes at You Fast: Week 2 Recap

Good morning and welcome to 4th & Forever, Rand & Tate’s College Football Newsletter. Think of college football as a wedding. Week 1 is the reception where everyone gathers and celebrates the future, hope, and eternal happiness unless you’re a Florida State fan. Week 2 is the morning after when you have a crippling headache, housekeeping banging on your door, and the happy couple you toasted to last night is now halfway across the world already posting pics of the sandy beaches and frozen daiquiris. Life comes at ya fast the morning after a wedding and in college football. Week 2 gave us beatdowns, upsets, near upsets, and a soul-crushing loss for one-half of the 4th & Forever contingent so let’s just rip off the bandaid, pop some Advil, and get to it. 

Week 2 Recap

Big Game Bangers and Blowouts 

All eyes were on Michigan on Saturday as Texas rolled into town and well, demolished the Wolverines from start to finish. The weekend’s most anticipated matchup became a little bit less anticipated after Week 1 as it became pretty clear to us that Michigan had zero shot of scoring on Texas. Vegas clearly felt the same way as the line shot from UT -3.5 all the way up to -7.5 after Week 1 (we were still all over that), and this still didn’t come close to being competitive. Texas looked great, moving the ball down the field consistently as soon as the game started, with Quinn Ewers looking better than he had ever looked in a Texas uniform. He made a few incredible off-schedule plays early in this game, essentially eliminating Michigan’s only hope of hanging around which was their defensive line blowing things up and not allowing Ewers time to make plays. If that’s who Quinn Ewers finally is, that’s a top-10 pick and one of the best offenses in the country. Really good stuff from Texas.

On the Michigan end, yikes. They looked like hot garbage yet again offensively and as we have seen with FSU over their first two games, no matter how good your defense is, it’s too much to ask of them to just keep going out there and get stops over and over and over again when your offense is giving you nothing to work with. Sherrone Moore and the offensive staff again tried to run Alex Orji out there at QB to provide different looks for Texas in relief of Davis Warren (who was bad yet again), but it didn’t work at all just like it didn’t work against Fresno last week. Whether it’s Warren or Orji, or even Jack Tuttle who is returning from injury, Michigan needs to decide who their quarterback is and roll with that guy. The constant changing between Warren and Orji keeps ruining any of the small hopes that Michigan has to get into a rhythm offensively. Overall, this is not a playoff-contending team because they are so god-awful on offense. This was over at halftime which you hate to see in a Top 10 matchup, but Michigan had no shot at making this one interesting.

If you were smart and had two (or three…or four) TVs going during the noon slate, you probably had eyes on the banger that was Kansas State @ Tulane. Kansas State escaped NOLA with a victory after a ghost offensive PI call waved back a game-tying touchdown by Tulane with 17 seconds left. Tulane’s freshman QB Darian Mensah went 19/29 for 342 yards and 2 TDs and is a name to remember as Tulane enters conference play after their trip to Norman next week.

The day continued on with Iowa State walking into Iowa City and pulling out a massive, last-second victory over rival Iowa. Iowa went into halftime with a 13-0 lead and although we can’t prove it, we’re pretty sure Kirk Ferentz sat in the corner and tore leaves while Iowa State’s Matt Campbell made adjustments. Iowa State scored on 3 of their first 5 possessions in the second half while Iowa went interception, touchdown, punt, punt, punt, punt, punt, interception. The Cyclones went 42 yards in the final 33 seconds of the game to set up a game-winning 54-yard field goal to claim the Cy-Hawk trophy in Iowa City. As we mentioned last week, Iowa’s offensive outburst from last week was nothing more than an irregular heartbeat on a pulse reader. The Hawkeye offense is still braindead.

Kansas went over to Champaign to take on Illinois in what ended up being one of the day’s weirder games. Kansas looked like it had the chance to take control of this game at multiple different points during the contest, but every single time the offense had the ball to extend a lead, QB Jalon Daniels threw an interception (including this game-changing pick 6 before halftime). Even still, Kansas was in control of this game deep into the 4th quarter, but then even more weirdness happened. Up 17-13,  Kansas punted the ball to Illinois who muffed the punt, the ball rolled back into Illinois endzone where the Illini fell on it, and the result of the play was a… touchback? Is that the rule? Why the hell is that not a safety? It was a bizarre turn of events that rather than giving Kansas the ball back up 19-13, gave Illinois the ball at the 20-yard line still down 17-13. Apparently you can just screw around and fumble the ball into your own endzone, fall on it, and get the ball at the 20-yard line. Illinois proceeded to drive down the field and score a touchdown to take the lead, and they never gave that lead up, winning 23-17. Weird game, but great win for an Illinois team that looks like it might be a pesky squad for the top teams in the Big Ten to deal with.

Colorado and the Shambolic Sanders’ flew out to Lincoln to take on Nebraska, and this was a blowout basically as soon as it started. Nebraska is a complete team this year in all phases of the game and as we’ve discussed in recent editions, Dylan Raiola’s ability to deliver the ball downfield - despite his striking resemblance to Maui from Moana - gives the Huskers’ offense an element that keeps defenses honest for the first time in forever. That is…not the case for Colorado. The book is out on them, folks. They cannot run the ball to save their lives because Shedeur is not a running threat, the offensive line remains terrible, and they don’t have a playable tight end to get them into 11 personnel to run more power running plays. That means defenses can sit in two-high to also take away the deep-passing game, so all that’s left is Shedeur trying to dink and dunk to Travis Hunter and Jimmy Horn. Those two are great players, but if that’s all you have, you’re incredibly easy to gameplan for (see: Nebraska corner Tommi Hill sitting on this curl route for a Pick 6) because you’re not a threat to hit explosive plays. Their defense is better than it was last year but is still pretty bad, and this coaching staff consistently makes dumbfounding decisions that put their team in worse positions. This is just an objectively bad football team no matter what anyone tells you. Still - great win for Nebraska who now looks like it could make some real noise in the Big Ten.

Tennessee closed out the primetime slate with a dominant victory over NC State, which looks like it might be the most NC State team of all time. We thought coming into this one that Tennessee’s offensive pace and general bizarre philosophy might get the Wolfpack out of their usual looks, and damn is that exactly what happened. It wasn’t a blowout from the jump, with NC State finding some success offensively early and Nico throwing a bad pick in the early part of the game - but once Tennessee took the pick 6 back right before halftime, it was clear what was about to happen from there on out. Nico and the UT offense took over while their very, very good defensive front settled in and wore down the Wolfpack’s OL for the rest of the evening. We here at 4&F have never been believers in Grayson McCall outside of a Jamey Chadwell-led offense (because both of us can throw a football with more velocity than he can), and he’s looked pretty exposed in Raleigh so far. For a team that wants to be an ACC contender, looking like that isn’t going to get it done. For Tennessee, this was an extremely impressive showing that has me (Tate) thinking this is a playoff team and quite possibly the second-best team in the SEC at the moment. We need to see how they fare against a legitimate passing offense because the Vols’ secondary is the weakness of the team, but this team is humming right now, is talented at the right spots, and playing with a ton of confidence. Tennessee is back folks.

Scares and Upsets

We wouldn’t be a real college football newsletter if we didn’t talk about what happened at Notre Dame, would we? As all of the games that we talked about above were happening, Notre Dame found itself in a battle with Northern Illinois. We admittedly did not tune into this one until the second half, because despite the score we figured it was just a sleepy first half showing by the Irish and they’d take over. I (Tate) turned it on a bit into the third quarter and quickly realized that what I was watching was not just a slow start from ND, it was potentially the upset of the year. 

All credit goes to NIU - we are the last ones that want to overlook that. We love everything about Thomas Hammock’s story as an NIU alum who has such tremendous passion for his program. His interview after the game made my (Tate’s) fiance bawl her eyes out, which damn near made me shed a tear. Absolutely awesome for him and NIU. There is nothing like college football.

But we have to talk about Notre Dame. This was an inexcusable loss in every single way, and we are firm in our belief that this loss will get Marcus Freeman fired. It won’t happen tomorrow, it probably won’t happen this year, or maybe even until deep into next year. But when it happens, people will point at this game. The staff managed this game like Notre Dame would win no matter what - it refused to get QB Riley Leonard involved in the run game, seemingly to protect him from hits against a lowly G5 team, and asked him to be a pocket passer over and over and over. He is not a pocket passer. The defense that performed so well in College Station last week gave up 388 yards, something an ND defense hasn’t done in I don’t even know how long. This was an abject failure in coaching in every single way and while we love that the new 12-team playoff gives teams second chances, this team does not deserve one. Their schedule is ass, their one “big” win might be against something like the 9th best team in the SEC, and these types of horrible losses have to still mean something. Horrible, horrible stuff ND. Great job.

The Big Ten’s darling of Week 1 Penn State looked shellshocked for much of their game against Bowling Green, a game that Penn State should be winning by 40 if we’re expecting them to be the serious national title contenders people were hyping them up to be all week. The Nittany Lions were down 24-20 at halftime after it’s allegedly-incredible defense got lit up for the entirety of the first half, and while that defense did start dominating in the second half as PSU pulled away to a 34-27 win, this was a concerning performance from James Franklin’s squad. If you want to be on the same level as the big boys, you can’t be messing around with Bowling Green. They have one more week to clean things up against Kent State before conference play starts, so we’re interested to see if this was just a sleepy noon game performance or a cautionary sign of things to come for Penn State.

Tate’s most anticipated matchup of the night came between his beloved USF Bulls traveling to T-Town to take on the Tide. Alabama came in as 30+ point favorites but USF gave them hell from start to (almost) finish, despite star QB Byrum Brown missing multiple open passes that would’ve put the Bulls on top early and often. The final score doesn’t tell anywhere near the story of this game - with under 7:00 left in the game, USF had the ball at the Alabama 11-yard line with a chance to tie the game up at 21. USF coach Alex Golesh made the worst mistake I saw all day and decided to kick the 22-yard field goal to go down by 5, USF immediately gave up a TD, and then Bama took advantage of a team that had quit in the last few minutes of the game. Regardless, what an effort by the Bulls who are looking to contend for the G5 spot in the new playoff. Alabama did not look like one of the five best teams in the country even on the inauguration of Saban Field at Bryant-Denny Stadium by turning the ball over, committing several penalties, and generally being scared of the power that is USF. Incredibly proud of my Bulls.

Down in Norman, things were rough for Oklahoma. Houston came into town as a 28.5-point underdog but boy oh boy did it not turn out that way. Oklahoma won 16-12, but that beloved offense did not look like what we here at 4&F hyped it up to be all offseason. Jackson Arnold looked timid and scared for much of the night, with multiple receivers getting hurt and his offensive line not helping out at all. The OU defense seems to be ahead of schedule and looks very good, but we’ve got our eye on this Sooner team over the next few weeks because being a 28.5-point favorite should warrant you scoring more than 16 points and almost losing. OU head coach Brent Venables said after the game, “we did enough things wrong to deserve to lose.” Not good.

The night ended with Oregon struggling mightily once again, this time against a very feisty Boise State team. Dillon Gabriel hit tons of throws but also missed way more than we became accustomed to seeing from Bo Nix in this offense, while Oregon’s offensive line struggled for the second straight weekend. Boise hung around in large part thanks to RB Ashton Jeanty (once again as we have been saying all offseason, the best running back in college football), who now arguably leads the Heisman race having rushed for 459 yards (10.2 YPC) and 9 TD’s through two games. Much like USF, this was a good showing for Boise State’s G5 playoff spot hopes despite the late loss. On the Oregon side, it’s hard to tell exactly what this team is right now - a top 5 team? A top 10 team? An 8-4 team? Time will tell, but this has been an unexpected development early in the season and we need to see this team play a good sixty minutes of football before we expect anything significant from them at this point.

Around the Country

If you were the Arkansas AD and needed justification as to why Sam Pittman needs to be fired and name OC Bobby Petrino as the interim coach, just show the board of whatever the box score from the Oklahoma State loss. If you need context as to why Bobby Petrino being the Arkansas head coach (again) would be so funny, controversial, and damning we rehashed his history with the school last year. Arkansas out-everythinged Oklahoma State, especially on offense, but turnovers and penalties doomed the Razorbacks as they fell 31-39 in double overtime. The Pokes’ preseason Heisman contender running back Ollie Gordon III had 49 rushing yards and they didn’t score an offensive touchdown until the 4th quarter. We’d advise the Pokes to figure out how to run the ball with Gordon before they play Kansas State and Utah later in the month or the Big 12 race might lose a contender. 

Auburn 14 - Antifa, er Cal - 21. From the Week 2 Preview, “Auburn is about as trustworthy as that girl from high school selling Arbonne on her Instagram.” Auburn went full Auburn as Payton Thorne threw 4 INTs and allowed Cal QB Fernando Mendoza to shred their defense on the Plains in yet another favored, home, non conference, hilarious, and futile effort loss for the Tigers. Auburn’s been below the Mendoza line for the last decade and you can tune them out until 2025. 

Kentucky hosted South Carolina in Lexington, and outside of Notre Dame, there may have not been a more pathetic Week 2 performance than what the Wildcats put on the field. The UK offensive line got shoved around all day, so bad that it was abundantly clear from kickoff the Cats just had no chance of scoring - and therefore competing - in this game. QB Brock Vandagriff was erratic in the pocket, largely due to the fact that he was pressured on nearly 66% of his dropbacks. That is not where you want to be as an offense the week before UGA comes to town. Good win for South Carolina who now has reason to be excited in September with College GameDay coming to town next week for their matchup against LSU.

One quick note on UAB - it is time we call out the disaster of a coaching search that landed Trent Dilfer as head coach. Dilfer had never been a head coach anywhere other than at a high school in Tennessee, but personal connections managed to make him the replacement for the Blazers legend Bill Clark. UAB decided to hire Dilfer over Clark’s interim Bryant Vincent, who ended up taking the job at UL Monroe this offseason. On Saturday, UAB lost to Vincent’s UL Monroe squad 32-6, dropping Dilfer’s record against FBS opponents down to 3-9 in his first two years. If there is one thing 4th & Forever will do, it’s call out lazy, uninspired, and borderline corrupt hires, and it’s been clear from the jump that this is what the hiring of Dilfer was. UL Monroe is historically one of the worst programs in all of FBS football - this is pathetic stuff from a formerly proud program that Bill Clark took to unforeseen heights before his retirement. Fire Dilfer.

The rest of the major players - #1 Georgia, #2 Ohio State, #6 Ole Miss, and #9 Missouri - all took care of business against lowly opponents. To Week 3 we go.

Holding Ourselves Accountable

OnlyRans: Last week: 2-7 - Season Record: 8-13

L/L - App State +17.5 and Game Total Under 53.5: Clemson won 66-20

L/L - Iowa -2.5 and Game Total Under 35.5: Iowa State won 20-19

L - Texas Tech +2.5: Washington State won 37-16

L - Colorado +7.5: Nebraska won 28-10

L/W - Oregon -19.5 and Game Total Over 61.5: Oregon won 37-34

W - Tennessee -8: Tennessee won 51-12

When it rains it pours (see Wake section below) and holy hell what an atrocious performance.  Clemson turning in an Ole Miss-esque offensive firework display on App State was jarring. It’s not often the O/U line is off by 33 points. Iowa State field-goaling their way to a victory and the over barely hitting is why there are castles in the Nevada desert. Texas Tech proved that their Week 1 scare against Abilene Christian was not a fluke and some serious conversations might need to be had about head coach Joey McGuire’s job at the end of the season if performances like that continue to happen. Colorado rushing for 16 yards on 22 attempts won’t get any job done much less covering a 7.5-point spread while Oregon…woof. The season is young as we enter Week 3 but we now have more data points on all 134 FBS teams. OnlyRans will be better because it has to be better. “There's an old saying in Tennessee, I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee, that says, ‘Fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me you can't get fooled again.’” -George Dubyah

Tate’s Great Picks: Last Week: 4-4 - Season Record: 9-10

W - Texas -7.5: Texas won 31-12

W - Tennessee -8: Tennessee won 51-12

L - Auburn -13: Cal won 21-14

L - Iowa State @ Iowa U 35.5: Iowa State won 20-19

W/L - Ole Miss -41.5, O 63.5: Ole Miss won 52-3

L - Kansas -5.5: Illinois won 23-17

W - Nebraska -7.5: Nebraska won 28-10

Still hovering around .500 on the year which isn’t too bad, but I’m ready for conference games to start taking place across the country so I can stop taking losses on things like an Ole Miss vs Middle Tennessee State over. We started hot with the Texas blowout which I saw coming from a mile away, but I thought I might be in trouble in the afternoon after Auburn absolutely sucked and the Iowa/Iowa State game went over for only the third time in twenty years, but the Rebs covered at the same time which was nice. I made my true money by hammering both Nebraska and Tennessee (along with Texas) to a much stronger degree than I hit my other picks because I did not see a world where any of Michigan, Colorado, or Nebraska were covering those spreads. It was a profitable weekend for me, but the overall record remains one game below .500 on the season. I’ll change that next week!

Wake Forest & Georgia

(2-0) Georgia 48 - (1-1) Tennessee Tech 3: I am so unbelievably pissed. The first team defense was absolutely flying around the field in the first half, and the young games came in for the second half and largely dominated as well. The shutout I called for was all but in hand until with under two minutes left, Tennessee Tech hit a couple of plays against our third stringers to get into field goal range. The very sad and battered decided to ruin our shutout with a field goal as time expired to leave Athens with something to hang their hats on. Cowards.

Other than that, not much to write home about from this glorified scrimmage. Carson Beck didn’t have his sharpest day and he would tell you the same, but he still threw for 240+ yards and 5 touchdowns. Trevor Etienne returned, albeit in limited action, and looked pretty good. One guy I did want to point out is Dominic Lovett - he has looked really spectacular so far this year, and while he was a good receiver for us in 2023, I felt all year last year that he just seemed a half-step slower than he did when he dominated at Missouri in 2022. I’m not sure if it was a lingering injury issue we didn’t know much about, or if there was some strain on his body as Kirby wanted him to bulk up when he first got here but whatever it was, he looks completely back to form. He has unbelievable feet when running routes and has an unreal ability to cut on a dime. His agility makes him a nightmare to deal with in open space, and it looks like we’re trying to get him the ball consistently. I’m excited about that.

You can’t really take much away from this game as a whole, but this defense just looks freaky on the field. Tennessee Tech head coach Bobby Wilder said after the game: “Seeing the size in person, that’s the most impressive football team I’ve seen in person.” The inside linebacking corps of Smael Mondon, Raylen Wilson, CJ Allen and at times Jalon Walker look like actual cyborgs out there. Wilson particularly looks like a surefire future first-rounder. The DL looks better than last year even in Mykel Williams’ absence on Saturday, and the secondary is looking great led by Malaki, and with the incoming emergence of young guys like KJ Bolden and Joenel Aguero. Best defense in the country and I’m not sure it’s close right now.

The main thing I wanted to see was us come out with no injuries, and we look good on that front, so I’m happy. Oscar Delp (light ankle sprain) and Nate Frazier (shoulder) got banged up and did not return, but it sounds like neither is a long-term situation, with only Delp possibly missing next week’s game in Lexington. I’m not sure we’ll need him against Kentucky anyway, as we touched on above.

Good stuff from the Dawgs. Onward.

(1-1) Wake Forest 30 - (2-0) Virginia 31: As an experienced Wake fan I will be the first to tell you all losses like that never get any easier even when you can see them coming from a mile away. See the 2011 & 2022 Clemson games and the 2020 & 2021 UNC games for reference and disbelief if you aren’t of the initiated. Wake has a pretty annoying knack for outplaying teams for 85% of the game and letting it slip away in backbreaking fashion and that’s putting it mildly. Wake had more passing yards than UVA, more rushing yards, fewer penalties, fewer turnovers, more time of possession, and a better 3rd down conversion percentage. What did Virginia have that Wake didn’t? A 3-3 4th down conversion rate compared to Wake going 2-4. Wake was aggressive but Virginia was circumstantially advantageous. Don’t know if I just made that phrase up but I don’t care. Per ESPN, when Wake was down 30-31 with the ball at our own 25 with just over 2 minutes to go, we still had a 61% chance of winning. 8 minutes earlier it was at 90%. The game boiled down to not being able to close it out in winning time which was a staple of the Wolford/Newman/Hartman teams from a few years ago. Per Wake beat writer Cam Lemons Debro, Wake was 18-10 in games decided by less than 8 points from 2016-2021 and 3-7 in the previous three years. If there was a silver bullet to answer why, I’d be employed by whichever P4 team wanted to pay me the most. 

I’m not going to overreact and declare that a season-ending loss or call for Clawson’s head but damn that might come back to bite us in November. Next week is #5 Ole Miss and Wake hasn’t beaten a top 10 team since 1946 if history is any indication of how that game is likely to go. A bye week follows Hotty Toddy then we go Louisiana, at N.C. State, Clemson, at UConn, and at Stanford to close out October. Bowl eligibility was and remains the attainable goal for this team but the November slate consists of Cal and Duke at home with visits to Miami and Chapel Hill. The margin for error is that much slimmer with this loss.

Because misery enjoys company I’ve got to sympathy shout out my old roommate Joe who might be down worse than I am. He’s from Des Moines, grew up an Iowa fan, went to Wake undergrad, and is currently at Notre Dame for grad school. 3 losses by a combined 4 points. Brutal Saturday for the kid.

Silver linings? Excuses? Reasons for hope? There are very few I can muster as of writing on Sunday night but keep in mind we were without DE Jasheen Davis due to injury and he was sorely missed. Hank Bachemeier looks like he won the QB job so we don’t have to do this Michigan QB carousel thing. RB Demond Claiborne and WR Donavon Greene can keep us in just about any game on the schedule. Lastly, it’s Week 2. There are 3 more months of football to be played and no matter how many times Wake does this to me, I’ll move on and be equally as excited/stressed/antsy for the next game whether it’s Ole Miss, UConn, or UNC. After all, it’s the hope that’ll kill me. 

Texts of the Week

“One more incompletion to secure Grayson Lambert’s legacy.” - Logan C hoping for a Carson Beck incompletion because we want this statline to be in the UGA history book forever.

“Tennessee Tech sounds like one of those fictional schools they would make up in Friday Night Lights to avoid trademark violations.” - Adam D

“This sport is f*cking incredible.” - Robbie E. Indeed.

Texts of the Week - Rand’s Phone After the Wake Game Edition

“I also didn’t want to text but I am very sorry about that game.”

“How did we let that happen? Are you doing ok?”

“Every time there might be happiness”

“Rand can we be honest that was as bad as it gets”

“Pain”

“Rand, how do you sleep at night?”

“Bad luck Fisher”

“So classic it hurts”

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Rand Fisher & Tate Smillie met a few years ago through their good buddy Dave Peljovich who went to college with Rand and high school with Tate. Tate went to Georgia and has spent the last two years collecting championship rings while traveling to watch the Dawgs. Rand went to known CFB powerhouse Wake Forest and currently pays rent in Atlanta but is rarely found there with all the work & CFB travel he does.