In Week 4 of the college football season, the surging Oklahoma State Cowboys will be faced with their first tough test of the season.
Week 4 of the college football season might not look the best on paper when you give it a quick glance. But, this is the glorious game of college football after all, where really no week is void of some top storylines to keep an eye on as the action progresses.
In Week 4 of the season, here are four things to watch for this Saturday as we continue to make our way through the 2017 campaign.
Vanderbilt set to make a statement
If you had informed someone prior to the season that in Week 4 a matchup everyone would be looking forward to involved a No. 1 Alabama team taking on Vanderbilt, your sanity would immediately be put into question. Yet here we are at the end of September and one of the marquee SEC games early in the season here does indeed feature these two teams.
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We know that Alabama, the top-ranked team in the nation, is … well, they’re Alabama once again. But the Commodores are the real story here. When he took over this program in 2014, head coach Derek Mason had a plan in place to make Vanderbilt a viable threat in the SEC. They got progressively better the last two seasons, improving to 4-8 in 2015 and and 6-7 in 2016, which included an Independence Bowl appearance. Now, here in 2017, Mason has his team at 3-0 heading into this important game against Alabama behind a defensive unit that’s No. 1 in the nation in total defense and an efficient offense led by quarterback Kyle Shurmur and running back Ralph Webb.
On Saturday, Vanderbilt doesn’t have to beat the Crimson Tide — and quite frankly not many people expect them to — at home. But Mason and his crew could make a very emphatic statement about where this program is right now by just going out there and being competitive with Alabama, going punch-for-punch with the best in the land.
By Saturday night, we could have ourselves a new, legitimate top contender in the SEC East.
How does Florida State perform with James Blackman?
Although just a few weeks ago in reality, it seems like the showdown between Alabama and Florida State in Atlanta took place ages ago. To that point, it also seems like ages since we’ve seen the Seminoles on the field, which is because their last two games were put on hold due to the devastating storm that was Hurricane Irma. FSU’s Week 2 game against Louisiana-Monroe was cancelled, while their scheduled Week 3 game against the rival Miami Hurricanes was postponed to Oct. 7.
Saturday, though, Jimbo Fisher and his team will take the field once again, meaning we’ll finally get to see the first start under center for freshman quarterback James Blackman as the ‘Noles play a pivotal ACC Atlantic contest against another preseason favorite in the division, NC State. As we all remember, in that Week 1 loss to Alabama, starting quarterback Deondre Francois suffered a season-ending knee injury, thrusting the true freshman into the limelight a lot earlier than expected.
It’ll be interesting to see what this Florida State team looks like as a whole, mainly because they still have one of the best defenses in the country. They held Alabama to just 269 yards of total offense, as it was really their own mistakes and blunders in the special teams that did them in on that evening in Atlanta. With another freshman in Cam Akers showing in that loss that he’s ready to emerge as the top rushing option on offense, FSU might be able to still get by in the ACC by not putting too much pressure on the youngster.
We havne’t gotten a chance to see this just yet, but we will on Saturday afternoon when the Seminoles take on the Wolfpack in Tallahassee.
Talk about the Pac-12 Championship rematch
It’s been said time and time again that the Pac-12 Conference generally doesn’t get the attention and notoriety that it deserves — well, that is unless USC is front and center. There might not be a bigger argument for this side than not many people talking about Washington and Colorado clashing in Week 4, a rematch of last year’s Pac-12 Championship Game.
Last December these two met in a conference title game that virtually no one predicted would take place prior to the season starting, with the Huskies coming away with the convincing 41-10 win and heading off to the College Football Playoff. Saturday, Colorado gets their chance at some revenge — albeit with the stakes a tad lower this time around — in Boulder.
Through three weeks of the season thus far, neither team looks ready just yet to give up their seats atop their respective divisions. Led by the core of quarterback Jake Browning, running back Myles Gaskin and wide receiver Dante Pettis the Washington offense is potent once again this season, averaging 39 points per game through their first three wins, good for 11th in the nation. As for Colorado, most thought they would see a drop-off this year following their enjoyable run last season, more specifically, they’d experience a lag on the defensive side of the ball with the loss of coordinator Jim Leavitt, but all things considered, they’ve rebounded well to start the season on defense, which is a credit to head coach Mike MacIntyre. Case in point, they held a pretty solid Colorado State defense to three points, the same Rams offense that put 23 on Alabama last week.
For whatever reason, this game is flying under the radar, especially for being a rematch of one of the major conference title games that took place last season. It has the opportunity to be a good one late-night Saturday, so folks might want to tune in to watch these two battle again.
Oklahoma State gets their first test of the year
After the first couple weeks of the season, you can’t go very long without hearing about the terrifying Oklahoma State Cowboys offense. The Pokes are 3-0 entering the fourth weekend of the season, and as expected, quarterback Mason Rudolph, wide receiver James Washington and Co. are just chewing defenses up and spitting them out. This unit ranks third in the nation in total offense with 607 yards per game, and are tied for fourth in the country in scoring offense, averaging 54 points per game.
This Saturday, the Cowboys will start their Big 12 slate and they’re not exactly getting a cupcake to begin conference play. No. 6 Oklahoma State will be home in Stillwater on Saturday as they welcome in the the 16th-ranked TCU Horned Frogs into T. Boone Pickens Stadium.
Head coach Gary Patterson and TCU come into this one with a similar 3-0 record on the year, and once again, the Horned Frogs are boasting a pretty solid defensive unit thus far. Patterson’s crew on that side is currently ranked 15th in the country in scoring defense, but what might be even scarier for the Cowboys here on Saturday is the fact that the TCU offense is getting the job done as well, ranking 7th in scoring offense nationally. That second stat mentioned could mean we’re in for a good old fashioned Big 12 shootout in this one on Saturday, much like the one Patterson and TCU were involved in last week with Chad Morris and SMU.
All due respect to TCU, who absolutely could pull off the upset, much of the focus here is on the Cowboys, who do look like a legitimate national contender from what we’ve seen so far. If they can pass their first big test with flying colors on Saturday at home, then the talk of the Pokes being one of the last four teams remaining come December will only heat up more.