College football Week 5 takeaways: Big 12 bottoms out, SEC QB’s on fire, Trey Lance aces NFL audition

College football Week 5 takeaways, including the Big 12 hitting rock bottom, SEC quarterbacks remaining on fire and Trey Lance passing his NFL audition.

It’s October and that means it’s spooky season and we’re already seeing it hit the Big 12 where the two preseason favorites, Oklahoma and Texas, are more trick than treat. The Big 12 was the biggest loser from college football Week 5 schedule but there were plenty of winners, especially in the SEC where quarterback play has been stellar to start the year and at North Dakota State where Trey Lance made the most of his one-game season.

Tom Herman is a fraud

Since Tom Herman took over as the head coach at Texas, his teams have lost six games as an AP-ranked team against unranked opponents, including to TCU on Saturday afternoon, the most in the FBS.

I thought Herman was going to be a superstar coach after he left Urban Meyer’s staff when he was the offensive coordinator on the national championship team that went from Braxton Miller to J.T. Barrett to Cardale Jones and still won it all. He looked like he was well on his way after going 22-4 in two seasons at Houston, including a 13-1 season in his first year that ended with a Peach Bowl win and a No. 8 finish in the AP and Coaches Polls.

Texas football hoped he’d be their savior to bring the Longhorns back to the peak Mack Brown had them under a decade prior, but his 10-win season in 2018 is looking more like a fluke than a building block and source of momentum for this once-proud program.

Herman has been able to recruit fairly well, although nothing compared to the SEC heavyweights or Clemson and Ohio State as far as national powers are concerned. The lack of development and producing NFL talent has been a sore spot for Texas football for years and it’s not being fixed under Herman’s watch.

There are always coaches who look like they’re a prodigy or the next wunderkind in the organization (Will Muschamp, Scott Frost, Lane Kiffin) but Herman is looking like one of the bigger frauds since Charlie Weis at Notre Dame.

Red River Showdown of sadness

Growing up, Texas-Oklahoma was a rivalry right behind Ohio State-Michigan and Alabama-Auburn for me. Both programs were annually ranked among the top-five teams in the nation and produced great games. Sure, Oklahoma and Bob Stoops put Texas on the wrong end of some boat races, but for the better part, the rivalry meant a lot and carried with it national championship implications.

Not anymore. Not with Oklahoma 0-2 in the Big 12. Not with Texas lucky to avoid an 0-2 start in league play after a 15-point fourth-quarter comeback in overtime vs. Texas Tech two weeks ago.

It’s still a big deal for fans of the two Big 12 teams, even if this year is different with the pandemic affecting the normal atmosphere with the State Fair of Texas canceled. But after Texas lost to TCU on Saturday and Oklahoma lost last week to Kansas State — both home losses — neither program is deserving of making the College Football Playoff this year.

Neither may finish in the top 10 of the final AP Top 25. That may be harsh, but until Oklahoma has a defense and until Texas can play a complete game and not look like a jumbled mess trying not to self-destruct, there’s no legitimate reason to suggest either is championship-worthy. They’ll have to settle for a Big 12 participation trophy if either can knock off Oklahoma State, who looks like the class of the conference. It doesn’t say much, they’re not that special either. It’s like being the smartest kid in summer school.

Alabama experiencing no dropoff from Tua to Mac Jones

Is Alabama the new QBU? After losing Tua Tagovailoa to the NFL, Alabama hasn’t suffered any sort of dropoff in passing production with Mac Jones under center. Jones threw for 435 yards in Alabama’s 52-24 win over Texas A&M, which is the fourth-most in a game in program history. This also marked the 19th career win for Nick Saban by 25-plus points, tying him with Tom Osborne for the second-most in the AP Poll Era (since 1936). With one more blowout win, he’ll match Bobby Bowden for the most. In other words, Saban should have the record before Halloween.

Jones is one of two Heisman candidates with running back Najee Harris trying to join Derrick Henry and Mark Ingram as the only Alabama football players to win the coveted honor. Jones has the best shot though, considering the position he plays and because he gets to throw the ball to Jaylen Waddle, DeVonta Smith and breakout star John Metchie III, who had five catches for 181 yards and two touchdowns vs. the Aggies. Jones also showed off his big-strike ability with his third career touchdown pass of 85-plus yards, the most in Alabama history.

Kyle Trask is the Heisman front-runner

Jones and K.J. Costello have had great starts to the year, but the SEC quarterback with the best shot of winning the Heisman is Florida’s Kyle Trask. With four more touchdowns in the Gators’ win vs. South Carolina, Trask is up to 10 touchdowns on the year, six going to All-American tight end Kyle Pitts, and joins Tim Couch in 1998 and Terry Dean in 1994 as the only SEC quarterbacks to have at least 10 passing touchdowns in the first two games.

Trask is operating a Florida offense that looks like the good old days when Steve Spurrier was dialing up plays for Heisman winner Danny Wuerffel and competing for national championships. Trask could join Spurrier, Wuerffel and Tim Tebow as the only Heisman winners in program history if he continues to average five touchdown passes per game and lead the Gators to win after win.

Georgia is gonna be a problem

Maybe all the attention about who is going to play quarterback for Georgia is a little overblown? Yes, it’s certainly a focal point of the conversation, and if Georgia is going to ultimately win a national championship, they’ll need consistently great quarterback play. When Jamie Newman opted out, it was assumed USC transfer JT Daniels would be the guy under center for the Dawgs. However, he only got medically-cleared this week and saw Stetson Bennett IV lead Georgia to a blowout victory over Auburn after he relieved D’Wan Mathis in the season-opening win vs. Arkansas.

Bennett is not going to be asked to be Joe Burrow or put up the type of numbers that Trask, Jones or Costello will, but he doesn’t have to when Georgia has the best defense in the nation, and it may not even be remotely close either.

I could go the analytics route and pepper you with a bunch of numbers and provide the proper context about what the numbers mean, but all you need to know about the Georgia defense is the eye test. Put simply, they make the opponent want to quit. That’s all you need to know about the nastiness of a defense.

Georgia had Auburn players wanting to go home in the first half of their rivalry game. The Dawgs get a physical Tennessee offensive line that’s playing with a lot of confidence next week. That’ll be a fun test and I’m already looking forward to Nov. 7 when they meet Florida in Jacksonville, where the winner will most assuredly lock up the SEC East and a potential playoff berth.

Clemson is good but hasn’t played the way they’re capable of playing yet

No. 1 Clemson is undoubtedly great. They’re going to make the College Football Playoff and Trevor Lawrence may win the Heisman Trophy. But we still haven’t seen Clemson scratch the surface with how great they can be. It’s okay. It’s early and the spring and preseason were disrupted and we’ve seen some underwhelming or sloppy play from other good teams and not-so-good teams in the first month.

To be fair, it’s okay for Clemson to sleepwalk through Wake Forest, The Citadel and Virginia — who they smoked in last year’s ACC Championship Game. Simply put, Clemson has no peers in the ACC and it’s been that way for the last few years since they broke Florida State. However, Clemson needs to snap out of it when they host a resurgent Miami next week.

College GameDay will be on hand for the biggest ACC game of the year when the No. 1 Tigers host D’Eriq King and the No. 8 Hurricanes. Many pundits are questioning whether Miami is back (they’re not), but an upset win at Clemson would be the biggest indication that this good start isn’t a fluke.

Do I think they’re going to beat Clemson?

I think it’s about as likely as an Adam Sandler movie winning the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Trey Lance nails NFL audition

North Dakota State quarterback Trey Lance may be the best NFL prospect you haven’t heard of. But you should know the name and the game, especially if you’re a fan of an NFL team in need of a franchise quarterback in the 2021 NFL Draft.

The 6-foot-4, 226-pound Minnesota native was overlooked as a recruit, but he is going to be a first-round pick and could be a top-10 pick, even though his team only got to play one game this season after his conference canceled their season, with the exception of one game vs. Arkansas State.

https://twitter.com/CollegeGameDay/status/1312429749613010945

You know about Lawrence and Justin Fields, who may be the first two picks, but Lance will be right in the mix to come off the board shortly after the big two. Lance threw 2,786 yards and 28 touchdowns last year and didn’t throw a single interception. That’s not a typo. He didn’t throw an interception for the entire season. Not bad for a redshirt freshman, huh? 287 attempts and none were picked off. He also added 1,100 yards and 14 touchdowns on the ground, showing off the dual-threat skills and ability that will make him a coveted NFL prospect.

Lance proved he is a human and not a football-playing-robot sent from the future to show us how to play quarterback with his first collegiate interception on Saturday (and he lost a fumble), but he extended the Bison’s winning streak to 38 games, the third-longest winning streak in Division I history.

North Dakota State had to mount a comeback too and did so on the legs of Lance, who had 15 carries for a game-high 143 yards and two touchdowns.

https://twitter.com/ESPNCFB/status/1312512953724342272

If your NFL team misses out on the Tank for Trevor race or the Fail for Fields, then Losing for Lance is not a bad consolation prize.

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