Week 3 College Football Overreactions: SEC Awakens, Clemson Collapses

Upsets were aplenty during the first two weeks of the college football season, as offenses were trailing behind defenses and points seemed harder to come by. That trend ended this week as we saw an offensive explosion across the country, especially down south in the SEC. We still saw a few upsets, but we’re starting to see who is real and who is not in college football this year.

The SEC Woke Up

After two “down” years from the historic best conference in football, and a slow start to the year where they watched Texas open the season with an ugly loss at Ohio State, doubts began to creep in on the quality of this conference. Things changed this week as we started to see who’s real or not in this conference.

There were lots of big winners this week, but none larger than Vanderbilt, going over to South Carolina and thoroughly dominating them. Diego Pavia outdueling Lannoris Sellers was surprising but not shocking; however, the way Vandy was able to outmuscle the Gamecocks was astonishing. This wasn’t a fluke — Vandy is a legit contender in the SEC.

Georgia had many doubters to start the season (myself included), but they impressed against Tennessee. Joey Aguliar came out of the gate firing for the Vols, and it looked like it was going to be ugly, but Georgia took the early onslaught, and Gunnar Stockton led them back in an impressive way.

Stockton doesn’t have the normal elite talent to throw to like most Georgia QBs, but he made every single big throw in this one. He earned a lot of respect from me today, never quitting in this one. Well… Tennessee’s kicker helped them out a little bit in this one, too.

Then, over in South Bend, Texas A&M pulled off a gritty come-from-behind win. Is there something different about this Aggies team? Because a normal A&M team loses this game 10 out of 10 times. Yes, the refs might’ve helped them out on the game-winning touchdown, but that doesn’t take away from the day Marcel Reed had. He’s looking like the best Aggie quarterback since… Johnny Football?

Alabama, Oklahoma, and Missouri took impressive wins as well this weekend over less remarkable competition. When the season is all said and done, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw two out of three of these teams in the playoffs.

Lastly, LSU and Texas looked less than impressive. The Arch Manning experience seems very rough to say the least. Then, for the Tigers, they turned DJ Lagway over five times and only came away with one offensive touchdown. These teams have two of the best defenses in the country, but they both need to take massive strides forward on offense before we get any further into conference play.

Clemson Isn’t Clemson

Georgia Tech pulled off the most enjoyable upset of the weekend, and it wasn’t just because of a lucky late field goal. Clemson is broken.

The offense looked completely lost and utterly outmatched against a Georgia Tech team with way less talent. And on the other side, the Yellow Jackets’ offense was just determined to pull off the upset. Haynes King is an absolute pitbull of a human, and I love it. That man is the definition of grit.

The Top of the Big Ten Looked Sluggish

None of Ohio State, Penn State, or Oregon covered in their heavily favored Week 3 battles. Each one of them put out unimpressive first halves, and then took over late in the game to make the scores seem more lopsided than they actually were. I’m not worried about any of these three yet, but it was still quite shocking to see.

Miami Is the Favorite in the ACC

Every year, we have to hear about how Miami is back, and then the very flawed Hurricanes team falls apart and finishes at the bottom of the top 25. Well, that is not the case this year.

This is the most complete roster we’ve seen from Miami since the early 2000s. My biggest concern heading into this week was whether they would be able to establish a run game, and they answered that with a Mark Fletcher Jr. 16-carry, 120-yard, two-touchdown performance.

Their defense also completely locked up USF’s Byrum Brown all day as well. We might look back on this game later in the year and realize USF was never really a top 20 team, but either way, this was still a wildly impressive performance from Miami. They are in a great position to win the ACC and take home a bye in the playoffs.