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SEC Sports
College football top 25 overreactions, Week 1: SEC is overrated, Willie Taggart's time is running out
Let's look at the biggest overreactions from Week 1 and determine if there's any merit to them
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It's OK to admit it: We are creatures of the moment. And Twitter certainly does not help. It's literally a social media app unfolding a story in real-time. There is no look-ahead, and one second ago is the past. This affects every aspect of our lives, but in the college football bubble, it is particularly glaring.
And so, overreactions are as just as much a part of the game as touchdowns. After an entire offseason of fodder, no week in college football encapsulates those overreactions more than Week 1. And boy, there are going to be a lot of them coming from every direction.
So with Saturday's action in the books and only a couple games left on the Week 1 slate over the coming days, let's look at the biggest overreactions from the action and how absurd -- or completely warranted -- they might be.
1. The SEC ... is severely overrated: Well, it's certainly had better days than Saturday. Tennessee had a historically bad loss to Georgia State. Ole Miss' offense was M.I.A. in a weird 15-10 loss to Memphis. South Carolina out-dumbed North Carolina in a 24-20 defeat. Missouri dropped a road game at Wyoming, 37-31. Sources confirm that none were flukes and all deserved to lose.
So is the SEC actually terrible? Clemson coach Dabo Swinney backhandedly stoked this fire earlier in the month when he said it wasn't as deep as it had been before. Personally, I thought he had a point. The SEC does get a certain benefit of the doubt that most, if not all, other Power Five conferences don't enjoy. Just because a team plays in the SEC doesn't automatically make them better (or their schedule inherently more difficult). But for all of the cruddy losses on Saturday, there's Auburn's shocking come-from-behind win over Oregon, Alabama dominating Duke and Florida taking down Miami in Week 0 despite four turnovers and multiple attempts to give the game away late.
Making sweeping narratives based on nonconference (or bowl season) performances can be a fool's errand. The Pac-12 routinely gets ritualistically slaughtered (fair or not) for poor nonconference showings. How would that view have changed if Oregon hung on against Auburn? Ultimately, I take something different away from the SEC's underwhelming Week 1 -- and it's not even about the SEC. It's more about the Group of Five. Sure, Tennessee's loss is bad no matter how you look at it. But in this day and age of scholarship limits and transfer portals, there are plenty of excellent football teams out there with great coaches. The results, at least in one-off situations, speak for themselves:
2. Overrated, you say? So is Nebraska: OK, this one has merit, but it's also easily explainable. The Cornhuskers were offseason darlings for ... reasons? They were mostly of the Scott Frost variety, which are at least understandable. If you follow his brief coaching history, you know that Frost took UCF to new heights in 2017 -- his second year -- by going undefeated. Well, this is Year 2 at Nebraska and Adrian Martinez is one of college football's most promising young quarterbacks. Add in the belief that the Cornhuskers are perpetually on the fringe of being good again with what most guess is a wide open Big Ten West race and -- voila! -- I present to you No. 24 Nebraska. But if a 35-21 win over South Alabama proved anything, it's that this team still has work to do. Martinez did not have his sharpest game, and Nebraska is lucky the Jaguars didn't get more points off of three turnovers. The Huskers' defense looked ahead of the offense. Make no mistake: Nebraska is likely a bowl-bound team in 2019, which is another step forward for a group that went 4-8 a year ago. But after Jonathan Taylor's huge Friday night in Wisconsin's blowout win over South Florida, they look like the team to beat in the West.
3. Bo Nix is going to be an Auburn legend: To be sure, Nix's come-from-behind performance against the Ducks was thrilling ... and rare. He's only the third true freshman quarterback to complete a double-digit comeback ever. He made some clutch throws on Auburn's game-winning drive. However, there were stretches during Saturday's game when he very much looked like a true freshman. His first interception inside the red zone in the second quarter? Total frosh mistake. That absolutely affected coach Gus Malzahn's play-calling at times. It's a great win for Auburn, and Nix has tons of potential, but don't let recency bias affect the overall grading in his game.
4. Justin Fields is the Heisman Trophy front-runner! Look, every player with multiple first-half touchdowns in Week 1 is a Heisman candidate ... until they're not. Yes, Fields has as good a case as any of them. That's the benefit of being the most visible player on playoff-caliber team. And no player on Saturday produced touchdowns at such a fast clip as the Georgia transfer. Fields' first score against FAU came in the first 2 minutes in the form of a 51-yard keeper through a massive hole.
And indeed, every one of his first four touchdowns in the initial 8 minutes of a 45-21 win was wide open. It was all exciting and fun, but ultimately predictable. Moreover, we can make too much of young players before they ever take the field. The marriage between Fields and Ohio State coach Ryan Day looks like it'll work, let's just not forget who Ohio State played and what lies ahead in this young season before we crown Fields. Enjoy the journey.
5. Willie Taggart won't last the season at Florida State: The day may come when Florida State realizes it must, um, #dosomething about Taggart, but that day isn't today or even anytime soon. Yes, the 36-31 loss to Boise State is crushing. It marks the second time in the past 15 years in which the Seminoles have blown an 18-point lead. Both have come under Taggart. However, it's also worth noting the things that made such a collapse come to fruition.
For one, the Broncos ran a whopping 108 plays. Texas Tech thinks that's a lot. And Boise also controlled the ball for 40:03. Former Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson is impressed by that stat! That's tough on any defense, especially one whose linebackers are still, shall we say, "developing." Plus, a freshman quarterback (Hank Bachmeier) went on the road in a relocated, true road game for his first start ever and tossed for 400 big ones. That says more about him than Florida State. And look, the Noles' offense is clearly better with Kendal Briles calling the plays. But there's only so much RPO he can run if the offensive line isn't capable of protecting quarterback James Blackman consistently. And that takes more than 13 games to develop. There were encouraging signs -- signs that weren't in Tally a year ago. Is Taggart the guy? Maybe, maybe not, but he needs the rest of the season to figure it out.
6. Chip Kelly has lost his touch: This is a complicated take that in some ways is akin to the career arc of current Ole Miss offensive coordinator Rich Rodriguez. Both were up-and-coming OCs who were considered innovators and wildly successful at their first FBS head coaching jobs. Then, things went south. For Kelly, it was in the NFLwhile RichRod got fired at Michigan and eventually Arizona (though the latter was for non-football reasons). Kelly reemerged at UCLA, and through one game in Year 2, there is a concerning lack of offense for the Bruins. Tallying a pitiful 2.5 yards per play against Cincinnati is unbecoming of Kelly even if the Bearcats have a legit defense.
So what happened? Again, it's layered. Quarterback play always plays a big role and Dorian Thompson-Robinson had some critical unforced turnovers. As a whole, if UCLA is in bad shape, that takes more than 13 games to rectify; usually drastic offensive transformations begin to take shape around the 18-game mark, give or take. I don't believe Kelly suddenly forgot how to calls plays or manage a successful team. I do think the adjustment period has been harder than most would have anticipated. Ultimately, Kelly is still a coach who took an explosive Oregon team to the brink of a national championship. But as with any coach, the further back that moment is, the less relevant it becomes in today's game.
