Alabama-Clemson V might not be a slam-dunk after all

There was good reason to spend the entire college football offseason talking about how the hierarchy was Alabama and Clemson well ahead of everyone else. But now that we’re 25% of the way through the regular season, does that still seem like the case?

Maybe this will be a fleeting feeling and we’ll end up right back where we were last January, when Alabama and Clemson met in the College Football Playoff for a fourth straight year. But for now, some other teams are deserving of a second look.

At the front of that group is Ohio State, which has outscored its three opponents 138-31 so far while uber-talented transfer quarterback Justin Fields looks more comfortable each week.

Then there’s Georgia, which we’ll learn more about next Saturday against Notre Dame, that has a defense that appears to hold true dominance potential. Even Oklahoma, with Jalen Hurts off to a smoking start and a defense that looks a bit better than the last few years, looks kind of intriguing. And LSU, with a big win at Texas in the bank and a legitimately good quarterback in Joe Burrow, looks more legitimate than in recent years.

Based on performance, in fact, you could easily put Ohio State or Georgia at No. 1 or No. 2 right now. And on résumé, LSU certainly would figure in the mix at this point. It’s early, but this may not be just a two-horse race after all. Here are other Week 3 observations:

Alabama worries: The dirty little secret for Alabama last season was that Tua Tagovailoa’s crazy offensive production was partly out of necessity. As we found out against Clemson, Nick Saban loosened the reins of the offense because he knew his defense wasn’t great and that Alabama needed to get more possessions and score a bunch of points to win.

Alabama gave off that same kind of vibe Saturday in a 47-23 win over South Carolina, which had 459 yards of offense but failed to convert in some key situations and eventually got buried by Tagovailoa’s ability to open things up.

But if the Crimson Tide’s defense is going to be as ordinary-looking as it was against South Carolina, Tagovailoa is going to have to shoulder a huge amount of the burden again. That won’t matter against most of the teams Alabama plays, but it certainly could against the Clemsons, Ohio States and LSUs.

Trevor troubles: Clemson has had the opposite problem, even though it ultimately cruised to a 41-6 win at Syracuse. Its defense, which was supposed to be a question mark after losing a ton to the NFL draft, has been more than solid. Generating offense, on the other hand, has been a bit more laborious than people expected. For now, let’s just chalk that up as a Clemson thing – over the last few years, it’s usually been past the halfway mark when they start to really crank things up on offense. But it is notable that sophomore quarterback Trevor Lawrence has thrown five interceptions already when he threw just four last year Poore Wildcats: The day’s most improbable win was authored by Florida, which was trailing Kentucky 21-10 late in the third quarter and doing practically nothing on offense when quarterback Feleipe Franks suffered an ankle injury so gruesome that ESPN refused to show the replay. With Franks out, the Gators had to turn to Kyle Trask, who proceeded to play so well in the fourth quarter that you kind of have to wonder if Dan Mullen was playing the right quarterback all along. That’s a question for a different day; Franks is seemingly out for the season – the QB dislocated his ankle, per Mullen – so it’ll be Trask with the ball no matter what now. In the end, Kentucky still had a chance to win with 54 seconds remaining only to watch kicker Chance Poore miss a 35-yarder that would have given Kentucky the lead.

The Wildcats have had plenty of heartbreak in this series, losing 31 in a row before finally topping Florida last year, but this one will be right up there on the list of missed opportunities. He’s not named Math Narduzzi:

If there were a weekly award for a coach who makes the worst time and score decision, Pitt’s Pat Narduzzi would have wrapped it up by happy hour. Trailing 17-10 to Penn State, the Panthers mounted a 10-play drive that got them all the way down to the 1-yard line with 4:59 remaining. On fourth down in that situation given the entire set of circumstances, there is no choice – you go for it, every time. You go for it, that is, unless you’re Narduzzi, who decided to kick a 19-yard field goal, watched it clank off the upright and lost the game.

Sorry, but there’s no justification for kicking there. If you’re trying to win the game, you trust your team to get a yard, tie it up and go from there. Cutting it to 17-13 that late in the clock does very little for your chances of winning. Narduzzi, however, still wouldn’t admit that it was a bad decision.

“We could have gone for it there and not gotten it,” Narduzzi told reporters. “I thought if we kicked a field goal it’s a two-possession game. We need two scores. A field goal is a good play, then come back and score again… you need two scores anyway to win a football game.”

Beyond being factually inaccurate – you could, in fact, score a touchdown and go for two to take the lead – it’s bad strategy when your absolute bestcase scenario with a field goal is getting the ball back with three minutes or so left and still needing a touchdown.

Narduzzi is just wrong and got what he deserved.

It’s time to admit something. A lot of us – myself, particularly – were dead wrong about Arizona State hiring Herm Edwards. On the surface, it didn’t make a lot of sense to bring the then-63-year-old Edwards out of the ESPN booth having not worked on a college campus since 1989. It also smacked of cronyism, as he was hired by athletics director Ray Anderson, his former agent.

But Edwards has been an effective coach, and the work he’s done to turn the entire identity of the program around 180 degrees in just two seasons is pretty remarkable. Edwards has totally changed the character and the physicality of the team, and the one thing you can say about Arizona State now is it doesn’t look real fun to play against.

Though the Sun Devils’ 10-7 win at Michigan State wasn’t pretty – and they were the recipients of some pretty good luck and egregious late-game coaching mistakes by Mark Dantonio’s staff – it’s a great win. And it’s great because Arizona State got out-gained in yards 404-216 and did a whole bunch of stuff wrong on offense but was able to find a way. That wouldn’t have happened before Edwards arrived.

(USA Today/TNS)

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