7 Grueling Truths from Week 3 of the College Football Season

1) This is not your typical Alabama team

Alabama does not look like they have their typical dominating defense and you can tell by the way Nick Saban has turned the offense loose. Sure they dominated South Carolina on Saturday, but it was the offense that did the most damage and the Gamecocks were able to put up points. Now with Alabama having quarterback Tua Tagovailoa at the helm, the Tide could still end up in the National Championship game. After watching Saturday’s contest, LSU and Georgia have to like the chances of beating Alabama more than ever.

2) Play to win

Pitt’s Pat Narduzzi did not play to win in Pitt’s rivalry game on Saturday. 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. By the way, Pitt deserved to lose the game because of that decision.

3) Kentucky is a basketball school

The Wildcats had a win on Saturday night over Florida seemingly locked up a couple of times and instead of putting the game away when they had a chance they instead left it to a freshman kicker to lose them a game from 40 yards away. Chance Poore misses the kick and today people in the Bluegrass state are back to talking about basketball recruits when they could have been celebrating a big win over Florida.

4) Dantonio vs. Edwards

Herm Edwards has done a nice job with the Sun Devils and got a nice win at Michigan State. Mark Dantonio, on the other hand, well let’s just say he screwed this one up. Dantonio is one of the most overrated coaches in all of college football and Saturday was another example why.

5) Maryland is not a Big Ten contender

All the hype coming out of the first two weeks of the season had everybody singing the praises of Maryland’s high powered offense. What happened? They played an underrated team in Temple who has great speed at the skill positions on defense and are also hard-nosed on the defensive line and the Terps got shutdown. We see this time and time again where a team starts out the season surprisingly like this and it all comes crashing down quickly when they meet a team that is physically tough.

6) Oklahoma could get another Heisman

First, it was Baker Mayfield, then Kyler Murray, and don’t look now or you might be able to add Jalen Hurts to that list. Hurts has been on fire through the first three weeks of the season and I have no reason to believe it won’t continue.

7) Ohio State is still real good, maybe better than last year

Florida Atlantic and Cincinnati were the first two Buckeye victims and yesterday Indiana was victim number three. Those three victories were all dominant beat-downs of solid football teams. With Justin Fields at quarterback the Buckeyes look to be a contender for a playoff berth. When you throw in a great athletic defense to go with that offense, you have a team that could be playing in the National Championship game when it’s all said and done.