September is the official month of College Football Fool’s Gold.
You see a team play once or twice, and are tempted to start drawing big conclusions about them.
Maryland opened the 2019 season with a 79-0 win over Howard and a 63-20 win over a ranked Syracuse team. It was a totally unexpected start to the Mike Locksley era for the Terps. And Saturday, it was revealed to be a total mirage. Maryland’s explosive offense, (averaging 71 points per game!!!) lost 20-15.
Was it mighty Clemson or Alabama who locked the Terps down? Try Temple.
Penn State also hung 79 points during week one against Idaho, and then overcame a sluggish start to roll to a 45-13 win over Buffalo. Saturday, they barely outlasted Pitt, thanks to the Panthers displaying some of the most inept decision-making in college football history.
After a close win over Fresno State and a blowout over Stanford, USC was back! Clay Helton’s job was secure! And then they lost at home to BYU.
A week or two is usually not enough time to know for sure whether a college football team is really as good as it looks, or the product of weaker competition than you might realize at the time.
In 2016, Texas was seemingly bound for glory after beating Notre Dame, 50-47 in double-overtime and blowing out UTEP. They lost their next three games and finished 5-7.
Ohio State teams have pulled the same vanishing act in the past. John Cooper’s final team started the 2000 season at 5-0, including an impressive road win at a ranked Wisconsin team. They went 3-4 the rest of the way.
The 2016 team hung 62 points on conference opponents in back-to-back weeks before scoring 17, 17, and 0 points in regulation in its last three games.
More recent squads have looked strong before inexplicably imploding in Iowa City or West Lafayette.
But the opposite has also been true. By this point in the 2014 season, many people had written off not only the Buckeyes, but the entire Big Ten. Four months later, Ohio State was the national champion.
It’s still early, but with each passing week this fall you’ll learn more.
A little over a week ago, Michigan looked putrid against Army. But the Wolverines are still undefeated.
Wisconsin has looked incredible in shutting out both teams it has faced, but both came against shaky competition.
This weekend, the Wolverines and Badgers will face off in a game that may start to provide some real insight into both teams.
The answers on Ohio State may take a little longer to come. A primetime game in two weeks at Nebraska will be a nice test, as will October games with Michigan State, Northwestern, and Wisconsin.
If you’re looking for reasons to believe in this Buckeyes team, you can start in the trenches, where OSU has controlled the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball.
They’re probably not going to run for 7.7 yards per carry if they face Clemson or Alabama somewhere down the road, but they did against Indiana. So they should be able to run the ball at least somewhat against top-level competition.
Things have looked similarly impressive on the defense.
They’re probably not going to hold a team to negative yardage in a half in the College Football Playoff, but they did against Florida Atlantic. So they should be able to control the ground game to a certain degree.
Going by SP+, an advanced analytic system which adjusts for tempo and opponent quality, the Buckeyes rank 5th in the country right now. They’re No. 6 on offense and No. 13 on defense. The Bucks are just ahead of Clemson on offense, and just a handful of spots below Alabama and Georgia on defense. That’s not bad company to be keeping on either side of the ball.
They’ve beaten the 48th and 50th-ranked teams in SP+ by a combined total of 93-10 in the last two weeks. That’s what great teams are supposed to do against “just okay” teams.
To be clear: Indiana and Cincinnati aren’t Oklahoma and LSU.
They’re also not UConn and UMass, either, but the Buckeyes made them look like it.
And after a disastrous 2018 in which they were repeatedly gashed for big plays, those defensive performances represent major strides.
The only play of 30 yards or longer they’ve given up in the first half of any game this year was the 49-yard touchdown Indiana scored on a double-pass on Saturday.
By halftime, all three games were functionally over.
Last year at the same point in the season, the Buckeyes had already given up touchdowns of 49, 80, 78, 93, and 51 yards.
It’s still early. The calendar still says September, and the road is going to get a lot tougher starting in a couple weeks.
Without a win over a top-level team yet, the Buckeyes haven’t proven for sure that they’re for real.
But three games into the season, they’ve done just about everything they could to start building that case.
And in mid-September, that’s pretty much all you could ask.