Here we go with this week’s edition of Head of the Class, and do we have some bangers this week!
First up, we have Ashton Jeanty of Boise State. In the Broncos’ 45-24 win over Washington State, Jeanty ran for 259 yards and four touchdowns. He currently leads the nation with 845 rushing yards and an average of 10.3 yards per carry. In addition to being named the Mountain West Conference Player of the Week, Jeanty has now moved into the Heisman conversation as a challenger to all of the quarterbacks currently being mentioned for the award. The #21 Broncos face Utah State in their Mountain West Conference opener this weekend.
Next, the USC Trojans bounced back from their difficult loss at Michigan to post a 38-21 victory over visiting Wisconsin in its B1G Conference home opener. This game looked like it would be a blowout win for the Badgers, who raced out to a 21-10 halftime lead thanks to opportunistic defense and special teams. Miller Moss took over in the second half, throwing two touchdowns and rushing for another. The Trojan defense sealed the deal with a pick-six by Mason Cobb with just over five minutes left. It was a great bounceback win for the 11th ranked Trojans, who head to Minnesota this weekend for a matchup with the Golden Gophers.
These two games were nice, but the Georgia-Alabama game was my performance of the week. We usually don’t recognize moral victories here, but this game was definitely an instant classic down in Tuscaloosa by the top two teams in the Southeastern Conference – and there’s no apologies to Tennessee or Texas for this. First, Alabama raced out to a 28-0 lead thanks to a suffocating defense and three touchdowns by another emerging Heisman candidate, Jalen Milroe. He passed for one score and ran for two more as the rout was on.
With a 30-7 halftime lead, it looked like Alabama would cruise to the easy win. But, Carson Beck and the Georgia Bulldogs definitely had other ideas. After a brutal first half performance (where Beck threw two interceptions and took a safety on an intentional grounding penalty), he led an improbable comeback, throwing a touchdown in the third quarter, and then another one early in the fourth. Meanwhile, the Georgia defense stuffed the Tide, holding Alabama to just three points in the third.
After a Dillon Bell touchdown run to close the gap to five, Beck and the Dawgs took the lead on an incredible 67-yard touchdown pass to Bell. The comeback was complete, but only for one play. Jalen Milroe threw his own long touchdown pass to his favorite target, Ryan Williams, to put the Tide back on top. Georgia was driving down the field when Beck threw his fourth interception of the night in the end zone, ending the game.
This was such a fantastic game to watch. It was definitely the SEC slugfest of the year, but not the under play that I expected. Give me this at least one more time this season (maybe in the SEC Championship Game?) and maybe two, depending on how the playoff shakes out.
It was great to see two excellent football teams – who have the utmost respect for each other – go mano-a-mano under the lights in Tuscaloosa. This is what college football is all about. And we saw Jalen Milroe also enter the Heisman talk with his performance. Let’s hope that Carson Beck can bounce back as his Dawgs take on Auburn this week. Alabama, the new #1 team according to the AP Poll, is at Vanderbilt this weekend, with a looming matchup against Tennessee in a couple of weeks.
Honorable Mentions:
Arizona goes to Utah and beats the 10th ranked Utes 23-10, behind Noah Fifita’s two touchdown performance. What was more impressive for the Cats is that the defense, which had given up almost 27 points per game in its first three games this season (against a couple of terrible teams and Kansas State), held Utah to just 10 points at Rice-Eccles Stadium. They also forced Utes quarterback Isaac Wilson into two interceptions and sacked him three more times. Great performance by Arizona in a hostile environment!
Hajj-Malik Williams of UNLV had three touchdown passes and another on the ground in the Rebels’ 59-14 dismantling of Fresno State. The new QB1 helped Rebel fans forget about Matthew Sluka, who unceremoniously quit on his teammates earlier in the week. Williams threw for an efficient 182 yards on 13 completions, 10 to his favorite target Ricky White. UNLV is ranked for the first time ever after this performance.
