Hello everyone! Welcome to my first article here at Gridiron Sports Heroics. I will be bringing you guys a couple articles a week mostly covering college football and the NFL draft (maybe an occasional Green Bay Packers article as well). I will review each week and give some of the biggest storylines from the weekend’s games. For this first article I will be combining week zero and one just because there aren’t a lot of games played in week zero. It was a crazy first two weeks of college football, so let’s get to it!
Surprises From The Week
In a surprising start to the College Football season, #10 Florida State Seminoles faced unranked Georgia Tech, expected to dominate but ultimately lost in a nail-biter as Georgia Tech kicked a 44-yard field goal to win at the last second. Florida State’s struggles continued with a subsequent loss to Boston College, leaving them at an unexpected 0-2 record, with DJ Uiagalelei particularly underperforming.
Montana State beat New Mexico 35-31. While New Mexico is my no means a power team or even in a power four conference, they still should be able to beat a FCS school like Montana State. They won on the ground rushing for over 360 yards as a team.
Colorado barely beat North Dakota State 31-26. NDSU even had the lead at one point. The issue with Colorado again is their defense. The big story of course will be Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter. Sanders threw for 445 yards and four touchdowns and Hunter had seven catches for 132 yards and three touchdowns. Jimmy Horn’s speed was too much and he had 7 catches for 198 yards and one TD.
Wisconsin really struggled the first three quarters against Western Michigan, a team they should have beat pretty handedly. At the half they were only up 10-7. Tyler Van Dyke struggled the whole game throwing for just 192 yards on 36 attempts. Their defense wasn’t impressive either. This team might really struggle going against some of the better teams on their schedule.
The story from the Notre Dame versus Texas A&M game was how bad Conner Weigman looked. While he doesn’t have a lot of starts under his belt due to injury he has played well in all of them, especially in 2023. This game though he threw for just 100 yards and two interceptions. Riley Leonard looked okay in his first game for Notre Dame.
A big surprise of week 1 was Iowa putting up 40 points. Yes, it was Illinois State, but they are a decent MAC team and with how bad Iowa’s offense has been the last few years this was a surprise. Cade McNamara threw for 251 yards and three TDs.
Vanderbilt was a big winner over Virginia Tech who is expected to compete for the ACC title. Diego Pavia a transfer from New Mexico State has a good game overall. He rushed for over 100 yards and threw for almost 200 and had three total touchdowns. Virginia Tech’s passing game didn’t do much outside of Ali Jennings 2 catches for 91 yards.
Houston struggled in their match up with UNLV and lost 27-7 due to Donovan Smith not playing well. The running just wasn’t there either with Houston just putting up 26 yards rushing as a team. UNLV also sacked him five times.
Texas Tech struggled week one with Abilene Christian, barely winning 52-51. Their new QB Behren Morton threw for 378 yards and five TDs and ever dependable Tahj Brooks rushed for 153 yards and a TD. Their defense though was another story. They gave up 506 passing yards and three TDs.
The 14th ranked Clemson Tigers also got trounced by the #1 ranked Geogia Bulldogs 34-3. This game encapsulates Dabo Sweeney’s refusal to change to the modern game of college football. He refuses to use the transfer portal among other things.
For the final game of the week a big match-up was in place between #13 LSU and #23 USC. While USC obviously has talent LSU is on another level overall. It a back and forth game in the first half ending in a 10-10 tie. The second half came and LSU couldn’t get their offense going and only scored 10 points where USC scored 17. First year starters Miller Moss and Garrett Nussmeier both had good games. This loss seems to fall on Brian Kelly and some questionable calls.
Highlights From The Week
We saw the return of Cam Rising and Brant Kuithe for Utah. Both are in their 7th years of college football. Both of them also missed the 2023 season and even more Brant Kuithe missed all of 2022 but the first four games. Kuithe had a big game with just four catches, but three touchdowns. Rising is unlikely to get drafted, but despite turning 25 in December Kuithe should get drafted. Utah destroyed Southern Utah 49-0
Oklahoma boat raced Temple 51-3 and while Oklahoma was expected to win and by a decent margin to win by 47 points is crazy. Transfer Deion Burks had a big game with three touchdowns on just six catches.
Another big win for Ohio State, beating Akron 52-6. The score was not the story. True freshman Jeremiah Smith was the story. He led the way with 6 catches for 92 yards and two touchdowns. The vaunted Ohio State defense also had five sacks and 10 tackles for a loss.
There were questions about how Texas’ passing game was going to look this season after losing their top their receivers to the NFL. They attacked the transfer portal and brought in a true freshman to fill out the receiving corp. The two big transfers Isaiah Bond from Alabama and Matthew Golden from Houston combined for eight catches and 111 yards which isn’t much, but they also combined for three of the four passing touchdowns Texas quarterbacks threw.
Duke beat Elon 26-3 which you would think would have won by more, but they were breaking in some new players. The story though is Maalik Murphy the Texas transfer. While he wasn’t amazing, he still showed talent and flashes of what he could be with some time. He was 26/40 for 291, two TDs and an interception. Jordan Moore chipped in with 7 catches for 112 yards
Another game where the score wasn’t the story was Alabama’s trouncing of Western Kentucky 63-0. While it was expected that they were going to win big the fact that Western Kentucky didn’t put up any points is a surprise. They do have some talent and TJ Finley is a transfer quarterback from Texas State where he had a good season last year. The big story though is true freshman Ryan Williams had just two catches in the game, but for 139 yards and scored on both. This is a kid we all will have to keep an eye on.
Ole Miss beat Furman 76-0 with the Ole Miss passing game being the big story here. Daxson Dart threw for 418 yards and five touchdowns. Tre Harris their #1 receiver collected 8 catches for 179 yards and two touchdowns. Transfer receiver Antwaine “Juice” Wells had just two catches, but for 70 yards and one TD. This passing game could be tough to beat.
Tennessee also beat up on Chattanooga, but of course the story is Nico Iamaleava in his first start as being “The Guy” put up 314 yards passing and three TDs. He looked solid. Another freshman quarterback getting his first start was Dylan Raiola for Nebraska who was the #1 quarterback prospect from this class. He had a solid game against UTEP with two TDs. Transfer receivers Isaiah Neyor and Jahmal Banks were the stories as well combining for 10 catches 182 yards and two TDs.
Another interesting game was Miami vs. Florida. Miami was expected to win with all the talent on their roster, some home grown, and some from the portal. Florida pretty much got trounced 41-17 and while Cam Ward looked really good the big story is Graham Mertz was really bad 11/20 for 91 yards and 1 INT. After a solid come back season in 2023, he seems to be back to his 2022 play. Where he goes from here will be something to watch.
Arizona versus New Mexico was a close game at the half with Arizona up by just 3. The second half was all Arizona though and the game ended 61-39. The big story from this game though is Tetairoa McMillan who had 10 catches for 304 yards and four TDs. That’s an average of 30.4 yards a catch.
Syracuse beat Ohio 38-22 which isn’t a big win, but the Syracuse coaches are thanking Ohio State for giving up on Kyle McCord who went out and threw for 354 yards, four TDs and one INT. Oronde Gadsden II (the son of the former Miami Dolphins wide receiver) had 7 catches for 108 yards and 1 TD. Their defense played well with 10 tackles for a loss and four sacks.
A huge story in Boise States 56-45 win over Georgia Southern was Ashton Jeanty’s 20 carries, 267 yards and six touchdowns. Another small story from this was that Maddux Madsen beat out former five-star Malachi Nelson for the starting QB job.
Brock Vandagriff the Georgia quarterback that transferred to Kentucky struggled in his first game out against South Mississippi. He threw for under 170 yards, but did throw three TD, but also threw an INT. With the receiving corp they have at Kentucky he should be routinely throwing for close to 300 yards.
Random Interesting Stories From The Week
An interesting story to keep an eye on is Chandler Morris a QB that transferred from TCU after starting a number of games to North Texas where in his first game threw for 415 yards and three TDs in their 52-38 win over South Alabama. Damon Ward Jr was on the receiving end of 12 of his passes for a total of 230 yards and two TDs. South Alabama’s QB Gio Lopez threw for 432 yards himself.
Another game where there was a big win, but the win wasn’t the story. UCF beat New Hampshire 57-3. The story though is their running game. They rushed for 454 yards as a team! Their top three backs all looked good. Even the backup Peny Boone rushed for 7 carries 81 yards and he had over 1,400 yards at Toledo last season.
TCU surprisingly had some struggles with a Stanford team lacking much talent. The passing game was humming along with Josh Hoover throwing for 353 yards, but the running game had its struggles.
Although it was against Indiana State, Purdue looked solid winning 49-0. Hudson Card threw for four touchdowns on 24/25 and 273 yards.
The new look Indiana Hoosiers with a new head coach and a bunch of new transfer players beat up FIU to a tune of 31-7. Kurtis Rourke the transfer QB from Ohio was solid, as were the running backs rushing for 234 yards total. A lot of players transferred over from James Madison where they got their new head coach Kurt Cignetti.
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