College football rankings 2023: Projected Week 2 AP Top 25 after Georgia, Ohio State sleepwalk, Colorado upsets TCU
- Georgia, Ohio State and Top 10 teams sleepwalking through Week 1
- Colorado upends TCU in Coach Prime's debut for Buffs
- UNC lays down the law on the "real Carolina"
Projected AP Top 25 college football rankings after Week 1: No. 2-1
2. Michigan Wolverines
The 30-3 final score in Michigan’s win over East Carolina doesn’t tell the complete story of how dominant the Wolverines were to open the season. J.J. McCarthy was brilliant to begin his second season as the starter in Ann Arbor, going 26-of-30 for 280 yards and three touchdowns. Blake Corum was equally impressive in limited work, toting the rock just 10 times, but amassing 73 yards and a touchdown.
Without Jim Harbaugh on the sidelines for this game and the next two as well – in addition to offensive coordinator Sherrone Moore also out for the ECU contest – it was evident that Michigan was keeping things relatively vanilla to begin the year. All told, they didn’t need anything more than that to comfortably dispatch the Pirates from the Big House, but we’ll obviously want to see more from the Wolverines moving forward to believe they’re a national championship contender.
1. Georgia Bulldogs
The Carson Beck era got off to an inauspicious start on Saturday night. Everyone was expecting a walk-over from the two-time defending champion Dawgs against lowly UT Martin, but Georgia found itself incapable of moving the ball with the expected ease in the first half, taking a minuscule 17-0 lead into halftime with Beck and all-world tight end Brock Bowers accounting for a pair of rushing touchdowns.
Georgia came out with a bit more fire in the second half as they built a 31-0 lead, but it was still not the overly impressive performance that fans in Athens wanted to see to begin the post-Stetson Bennett era for the program.
Even still, the defense looked as dominant as one would’ve hoped against a noticeably inferior opponent and, as such, that’s something to build on as this offense hopes to move forward. But after this performance, it’s hard to see Georgia being as heavily voted as the No. 1 team in the college football rankings going into Week 2.
SL: Way Too Early 2024 NFL Mock Draft. Way Too Early 2024 NFL Mock Draft. dark. Next