The 10 Biggest Surprises from the Start of the 2015 College Football Season
After seven months dissecting, predicting and analyzing the 2015 college football season, the first two weeks of September have reminded us how little we know.
There hasn’t been a signature, mind-bending, landscape-altering upset such as Appalachian State over Michigan, but countless smaller surprises have started the year with a jolt.
Preseason Heisman contenders have looked like nobodies. Preseason nobodies have looked like Heisman contenders. MAC teams are beating SEC teams, and BYU is redefining "miracle finish."
Here are 10 developments we did not see coming two weeks ago. Sound off below, and let us know what we missed.
The SEC's Awful Week 2
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After dominating the first week of the college football season with 12 wins in 13 games and then landing a record 10 teams in the Associated Press Top 25, the SEC regressed to the mean in Week 2.
No. 18 Arkansas lost at home to Toledo of the MAC. No. 21 Missouri won by seven over Arkansas State of the Sun Belt. And No. 6 Auburn needed a late score and overtime to beat Jacksonville State of the Ohio Valley—a conference you haven't even heard of because it's not in the FBS.
Even with those results and Tennessee's choke job against Oklahoma, the SEC might be the best league in college football. Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Ole Miss and Texas A&M are College Football Playoff contenders and have looked varying degrees of awesome the first two weeks.
There is still a ton to fear about the big, bad SEC; it's just less big and bad than advertised.
"The rest of the country, and perhaps the College Football Playoff selection committee, don't figure to have a short memory when it comes to the results," wrote Mark Schlabach of ESPN.com. "Beating Arkansas and Auburn doesn't figure to mean as much as we thought it would."
How quickly the narrative turns.
BYU Magic Is Back
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BYU has opened the season with a pair of miracle wins over quality opponents: Nebraska and Boise State.
Eat your heart out, "Miracle Bowl."
The first win was a Hail Mary proper and came when the Cougars most desperately needed a lift. After losing senior quarterback Taysom Hill, a Heisman contender who also missed most of last year with an injury, backup Tanner Mangum found receiver Mitch Mathews with a desperation bomb as time expired for a 33-28 win in Lincoln.
Mangum might have topped those heroics in Week 2, completing a pair of 3rd-and-19 deep balls on broken plays to keep BYU around until the end. Then, with less than a minute remaining and Boise State up 24-21, he scrambled and launched another bomb to the end zone on a must-have 4th-and-7, and receiver Mitchell Juergens somehow came down with it.
"I like situations like that," Mangum told reporters after the win, per BYU sports information director McKay Perry. "They’re fun. At some point last week, I just decided to smile and say that this is fun."
Every college football fan (outside of Lincoln and Boise) agrees.
Penn State's Offense Has Somehow Gotten Worse...
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Two constant refrains from the offseason with regard to Penn State's offense: "It can't get any worse than last year" and "There's nowhere to go but up."
False and incorrect.
Penn State's offense has somehow, unthinkably, been even worse to start 2015. The Nittany Lions finished No. 114 in the country in yards per game (335.3) last season, but after opening 1-1 against Temple and Buffalo, they're averaging roughly 80 yards fewer.
Quarterback Christian Hackenberg and the Penn State offensive line have looked as bad as they did at any point last season, showing no desire to make plays downfield. The running game has been better, but the passing offense has been a nightmare.
Pro Football Focus graded Hackenberg lower than every college quarterback last season, which made news during fall camp. Something about those numbers felt misleading—how could Hack rank so low when NFL scouts view him as a first-rounder?—but after two games, they're starting to feel prophetic.
Hackenberg is not Penn State's biggest problem (the offensive line is), but right now he is still a problem. This doesn't look like a team that can win eight games.
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
...Although Temple Might Just Be Awesome
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No mid-major team has impressed more than Temple, which suffocated Penn State in Week 1 before upsetting Cincinnati on Saturday.
The Owls had lost their previous 39 games against the Nittany Lions and five against the Bearcats, so it's fair to say the wins signal a historic season brewing in Philadelphia.
"They do a good job with their coverage," Cincinnati head coach Tommy Tuberville said after the loss, per quotes released by the school. "They do a good job of playing zone. They bait you into throwing some things. They drop off eight. They rush three. They do a lot of stuff that some teams don’t do."
Temple returned 11 starters from the No. 16 defense in the country last season, per Football Outsiders' S&P+ ratings, so it's not as if this start has come from nowhere. With Tyler Matakevich in the middle, this team has all the makings of a defensive power.
But the offense, led by quarterback P.J. Walker and running back Jahad Thomas, has been better than expected early, and the team as a whole is playing loose and with confidence. The Owls rank just outside of the AP Top 25, checking in at No. 26, and should move up if they beat UMass in Week 3.
Who among us could have predicted that?
Still Your Father's Baylor Defense
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SMU gained 369 yards and averaged 4.73 yards per play against Baylor in Week 1, which was discouraging but fine because the Mustangs are coached by former Clemson offensive coordinator Chad Morris; defensive end Shawn Oakman and safety Orion Stewart missed the game with a suspension; and Baylor, to be frank, just probably didn't get up for an opponent that went 1-11 last season.
All of those are reasonable excuses.
It's harder to make excuses for Week 2's performance against Lamar, an FCS team that doesn't have a head coach like Morris but still gained 340 yards, averaged 4.66 yards per play and hung 31 points on a Baylor defense that had Oakman and Stewart in the lineup and probably should have gotten up after underperforming in Week 1.
Slide that finger closer to the panic button.
"We just have to dominate up front and take care of stuff in the back," cornerback Xavien Howard told reporters after the game, per Baylor Athletics. "We have to start and finish strong. We have to play four quarters, not just one half."
That Texas Tech game on October 3 suddenly looks interesting...
Chad "Swag" Kelly Looks Like the Truth
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Even if it has come against Tennessee-Martin and Fresno State, Chad Kelly's Ole Miss debut has felt important.
The nephew of NFL great Jim Kelly was dismissed last spring from Clemson and struggled with off-field incidents soon afterward, but he's been all business since winning the job in Oxford. After two games, he's completed 29 of 40 passes for 557 yards, six touchdowns, one interception and the highest QB rating (233.97) in America.
"Chad likes to stay on schedule," head coach Hugh Freeze said after beating Fresno State 73-21, per Ole Miss Football. "That is what I always meant for us to do last year, but we did not do that. You could argue that the tempo was really good for most of the year. We enjoy moving the ball fast. Chad does it well."
Ole Miss draws a revenge-minded Alabama team in Tuscaloosa next weekend. Beating the Tide on their home field will be exponentially harder than beating UT-Martin and Fresno State. But Wisconsin quarterback Joel Stave found mild success against Alabama, whose front seven once again looks stronger than its secondary.
Chad "Swag" Kelly has a chance to keep this rolling through SEC play.
Northwestern Cracks the AP Top 25
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After stumbling to a 5-7 record last season, and then finding out in August that its players were denied their attempt to unionize, Northwestern has started 2-0 and finds itself in the AP Top 25 for the first time since 2013.
The Wildcats beat Notre Dame, Wisconsin and Penn State last season, so this shouldn't surprise us as much as it probably does, but it's still unexpected after the Big Ten media poll conducted by Cleveland.com predicted they would finish No. 5 in the Big Ten West.
After holding Stanford to six points and shutting out Eastern Illinois (one of the better FCS programs), Pat Fitzgerald's team ranks No. 4 in the country in scoring defense and No. 3 with 189 yards allowed per game. The offense is a work in progress but should improve as freshman quarterback Clayton Thorson gains more confidence and experience.
Wisconsin and Nebraska are still the teams to beat in the division, but Northwestern, Minnesota and Iowa are not far behind. Any of those teams could realistically make the Big Ten Championship Game.
Something Is Wrong with Louisville
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Louisville opened the year on the fringe of the AP Top 25 and stayed close in a Week 1 loss to Auburn.
However, Week 2 exposed that performance as less impressive than it seemed at the time. Auburn needed overtime to beat Jacksonville State, and Louisville lost at home as a double-digit favorite to Houston.
Time might vindicate both of those performances. Auburn can still right the ship and compete in the SEC West, and it's possible that Houston, which is led by former Ohio State offensive coordinator and reigning Broyles Award winner Tom Herman, is the class of the AAC. Both of those teams could realistically make "New Year's Six" bowl games, which would shine a more positive light on Louisville's slow start.
Still, allowing 30-plus points in consecutive games is a bad look for a team predicated on defense. The supposedly strong pass rush, which last year ranked No. 6 in the country in sack yardage, recorded no sacks against Auburn and just two against Houston. This does not look like the unit that linebacker Keith Kelsey predicted would rank No. 1 in the country, per Rick Bozich of WDRB.com.
Honestly, it's not even close.
Cal Leads the Pac-12 North?
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Part of this has to do with scheduling, but Cal leads the Pac-12 North.
Sonny Dykes' team is 2-0 with impressive wins over Grambling (73-14) and San Diego State (35-7). The offense led by future NFL quarterback Jared Goff is rolling, and the much-maligned defense, fresh off of holding a sound SDSU team to 4.33 yards per play, looks light years better than last year and gives this team an interesting ceiling.
How interesting? A lot of that depends on Cal's rivals. Stanford looked lost at Northwestern, Oregon looked out of sync at Michigan State, Washington looked lifeless at Boise State, Oregon State looked mundane at Michigan, and Washington State looked sub-FBS against Portland State.
Calling Cal a Pac-12 North dark horse, then, is less crazy than it sounds. Dykes is in his third year, Goff might be the best offensive player in college football, and the division appears to be down.
The middle part of the schedule is brutal—one four-game stretch includes road games at Utah, UCLA and Oregon and a home game with USC—but at the very least, this team can spring some upsets. No one should look forward to playing it.
Texas might learn that the hard way in Week 3.
Auburn Might Not Have a Quarterback
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Count me among the many who preordained—and confidently defended—Auburn quarterback Jeremy Johnson.
He'd never been a full-time starter, but he flashed behind Nick Marshall the past two seasons, most notably shredding Arkansas in the first half of last year's opener. He looked better than Marshall with his arm and showed a strong rapport with receiver D'haquille Williams, who returned to the Plains as his No. 1 target.
But two games into his junior season, Johnson has been a mess. He threw three interceptions against Louisville and two more against Jacksonville State, and most (if not all) were his fault. He's been reckless and inaccurate despite starting the year 2-0.
"I think Jeremy did some good things," head coach Gus Malzahn said after Week 2, per quotes released by the school. "I need to help Jeremy, too. I need to help put him in some better situations, it all works together. At the end of the game, when we needed him, he made the plays for us.
"He's our quarterback, and he’s going to be fine."
The plain text of that statement looks assuring, but the subtext is worrisome. Johnson was supposed to be a dark-horse Heisman contender; now his coach needs to confirm "he's our quarterback."
This just isn't how his season was billed.
.jpg?w=480 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
