Notre Dame/Ohio State was the biggest game of the week, but we learned more from Georgia. So we’re going to start there.
Georgia Has an Offense
Georgia’s offense wasn’t bad last year. But. It was surprising when Stetson Bennett did enough to win January’s national championship game, rather than enough not to lose it. It wasn’t a bad offense, but it wasn’t a good one, and a legitimate question entering this year was whether the Bulldogs would have the firepower necessary on the scoring side to turn a hypothetical repeat title from a threat into a promise.
It might not be a promise yet, but it’s a serious threat.
We wrote on Friday that Oregon wasn’t much. Oregon isn’t much. Placed into the SEC and tasked with playing a nonconference schedule with legitimate meat, rather than Kentucky’s Beyond Schedule™, it’s possible this year’s Oregon would not qualify to play in a bowl. It’s Dan Lanning’s first year in charge of the program, last year’s team suffered from outsized expectations hoisted upon them by one odd game (more on that next), there’s apparently a sizable chunk of nostalgia gripping those who vote in the AP Poll, it was unreasonable for anyone to even consider the possibility of Oregon being one of the ten best teams in the country. But Oregon also isn’t bad. And scoring touchdowns on each of your first-string drives against a not-bad team is impressive. This was not Western Michigan. This was Oregon. A solid football team. And Georgia turned them into soup.
There are knowns and there are unknowns after one week of college football. Alabama has earned their status as a known, and with no struggles against Utah State, that status is unchanged. Georgia’s defense was a known. Its talent was a known. Its offense is now a known as well. And in an SEC still full of unknowns, Georgia and Alabama are known enough to push the unknowns towards irrelevance. Is Mississippi good? I’m not sure I care. And Mississippi gets the Tide in Oxford this year.
Notre Dame Still Isn’t There
Behind Georgia and Alabama, our best guess is that there’s a step and then there’s Ohio State, a program with the same talent as the Dawgs and Tide but none of the recent results. In the last year and a week, now, the Buckeyes have lost at home to a fine-but-not-great Oregon team, lost decisively to a physical-but-not-great Michigan team, and now struggled in four other games against foes ranging from Nebraska to Notre Dame. That’s almost half our data set on them over this sample. Much like Clemson, whose attempt at an offense we’ll see on Monday night against Georgia Tech’s attempt at a football team, Ohio State has glaring weaknesses.
Or so we thought.
The game was not what we expected it to be. We thought Ohio State would score at will and that Notre Dame would try to keep up. Instead, Notre Dame put Ohio State on its heels, silenced the crowd for three quarters, and then found itself drawing from an empty deck. Ohio State was the better team, but not how we envisioned.
The good explanation if you’re Ohio State is that your defense has figured itself out and that your offense wore down one of the best defenses in the country, a guileful, experienced group. Your offense was always capable. Now your defense is too. You won by two scores against a top-ten (reasonably, not just polling-wise) team.
The bad explanation if you’re Ohio State is that your offense spun its wheels for quarter after quarter until Notre Dame, a team without any talent at offensive skill positions aside from its raw, not trusted sophomore quarterback, finally ran out of gas against your better athletes. Your defense was saved by a Notre Dame team that wasn’t willing to risk the long term for the sake of a short-term lottery ticket. You are still a step behind Georgia and Alabama, and realistically, it’s more than one step. (Explanation on short-term vs. long-term re: ND to follow.)
Overall, the truth is somewhere in between. Ohio State’s offense wasn’t its peak self, but it wasn’t always its peak self last year and it more or less got on just fine. Ohio State’s defense is probably better than it was, but it’s still hard to believe that this team could legitimately compete with Georgia and Alabama, even if it has the talent. The ingredients are there, but the recipe isn’t perfect. Down south, there are two perfect recipes.
For Notre Dame, the playoff route is still clear, and it’s possible they knew this when they decided how to approach things on the offensive side of the ball. They could have made more of an effort to win this game, dialing up deeper routes and telling Tyler Buchner to sling it, dammit. Instead, once they were in a competitive position, they decided to keep it there. The truth is, a substantial playoff résumé bonus accompanies the achievement of this sort of result in place of the blowout Gunslinging Buchner could have suffered. The committee likes teams challenging themselves. It does not like blowouts. And this is without getting into all the confidence and narrative pieces. Come November, nobody on the committee will care about how potent Notre Dame’s offense looked in Columbus. They’ll care how it’s looked in South Bend, and maybe in Las Vegas, but the offensive question can be answered elsewhere. What Notre Dame answered, for the committee, was whether they can hang with one of the three most talented teams in the country. They can.
The problems for the Irish are threefold. The first is that they have a loss. The second is that eleven wins and one loss might not get them in the field, as so much is left to other teams. The third is that their offense looked pretty darn bad. In Bill Connelly’s SP+, Ohio State’s defense was expected to find itself midway between Boise State’s and Arkansas’s. Notre Dame scored ten points against that?
There’s time to figure it out on the offensive side, and there’s an argument to be made that a younger crew—Notre Dame’s offense, in this case—can improve more over a season than an older crew—Notre Dame’s defense, in this case, and Notre Dame’s defense did look good. But the Irish are a fringe character, and not a fringe character in the way Ohio State’s a fringe character. Ohio State isn’t one of the two best teams in the country, but it might be able to show itself to be among the top four. Notre Dame isn’t one of the four best teams in the country unless everyone behind these other three we’ve discussed really stinks.
While we’re here, since Notre Dame and Ohio State are, alongside Oklahoma, Clemson’s closest peers: We don’t know what to expect from Clemson. And since we mentioned the Sooners, that goes for them as well. Each is an unknown, and will remain that way barring a surprise result sometime until…oh jeez, it might be November for the Tigers. Maybe New Year’s Eve, honestly. The ACC is not a good league.
Utah Missed Its Chance
Utah had things on their side in Gainesville. They had a road win against a respected foe in their grasp. They were looking down the barrel at 1-0 and at a very clear path to a 12-1 playoff appearance (if 13-0 wasn’t in the cards). Now, they’re 0-1, and a Pac-12 champion that runs the table aside from losing to a middle-of-the-SEC team needs a lot of help around them.
The Group of Five Situation
Well, no Cincinnati this year, and no magical run by Appalachian State. Houston and BYU could each conceivably take the Cincinnati route, though the odds are stacked more highly—neither will get a chance to beat a top-ten team on its home field, in all likelihood. In some sense, Arkansas did the SEC’s dirty work, taking the Bearcats out right away and keeping the door that much more open for a two-bid SEC, a scenario whose biggest challenge is not having two of the best four teams in the country but avoiding having the other half-dozen top-fifteen teams cannibalize them.
Knowns, Unknowns
Summing it up:
We know Alabama and Georgia are great.
We know Ohio State is talented and flawed, and with Notre Dame out of the way, its path is clear.
We’re guessing Clemson is good but flawed, but it has a manageable path.
We don’t know much about Oklahoma, but its path is likewise rather clear.
We think Notre Dame is rebuilding, but their defense is good and the path is tough but highly believable.
We don’t know much about Michigan, and we don’t have a great sense for their path.
We don’t know much about Texas A&M or anyone in that pack behind them, which is mostly just their SEC opponents.
The Pac-12 could really use someone rising and dominating it, and the most convenient team to do that would be USC, but they’re trying something previously not even possible to try, which is making up for having virtually no recruits by bringing in a ton of talented transfers and a proven head coach. We have no idea how this will go, but we are loud skeptics.
We’ll have more on Tuesday. Possibly with some intel about Clemson (probably not—Georgia Tech’s probably worse than South Dakota State, and possibly by a lot). Enjoy your Sunday.
