College football winners and losers: Notre Dame hits a stunning roadblock

Remember a week ago? When Notre Dame survived its trip to Texas A&M - one of only three true road games all season - and appeared, ahem, “well-positioned to make a push to get to at least 11-1″?

So, about that and the fool who wrote it … Northern Illinois would like to have a word. And so would the Fighting Irish’s shaky offense.

The Huskies seized a 16-14 victory Saturday after Kanon Woodill made a 35-yard field goal with 31 seconds remaining and Cade Haberman blocked Mitch Jeter’s 62-yard attempt as time expired. It was the first victory over a top-five opponent in Northern Illinois program history; its previous best was an overtime defeat of then-No. 15 Maryland in 2003.

Saturday was hardly its first high-profile victory, of course. The Huskies also beat Alabama and Iowa State behind star tailback Michael Turner in 2003, the year after current coach Thomas Hammock graduated from the DeKalb, Ill., school. And they made a near-annual habit of picking off a Big Ten team from 2009 to 2014, largely with Chandler Harnish and Jordan Lynch at quarterback.

And it’s not as if Hammock hadn’t added to that lore during his coaching tenure, leading Northern Illinois past Georgia Tech (2021) and Boston College (2023) in season openers.

Yet winning in South Bend hits a bit different - even if Fighting Irish Coach Marcus Freeman has some real problems to solve in the coming weeks.

This was a bit of an echo to two years ago, when Marshall moseyed into Notre Dame Stadium and claimed a 26-21 victory in the second game of the season. The Irish had just lost at Ohio State the week before, and it also had an offense that wasn’t quite right (and frankly wouldn’t be until the second half of the schedule).

This Notre Dame offense, with Duke transfer Riley Leonard at quarterback, has yet to produce a passing play of more than 20 yards. It doesn’t have a passing touchdown (Leonard threw two interceptions against Northern Illinois). Three of its four touchdowns have come on runs of at least 21 yards.

There’s always a danger in relying on big plays to get things done - especially when it’s either only through the air or only on the ground.

It was a bit easier to chalk up Week 1′s problems to the usual issues that can pop up during an opener: New quarterback in a new system, playing a team with a new coaching staff, simply trying to work out some kinks.

Those issues are either reduced or eliminated in a second game. And Notre Dame simply was a predictable, largely unexplosive bunch Saturday.

It does lend itself to a fun thought experiment: If the Irish go 11-1, with victories over Louisville and Southern California along the way, will it make the playoff? But if Notre Dame can’t muster a more dynamic offense, it isn’t going to matter to anyone outside South Bend besides the ACC team that gets bumped by the Irish in the pecking order for second-tier postseason destination.

Here are the rest of the biggest winners and losers in college football this weekend:

Texas (winner)

The Longhorns accomplished two things in their 31-12 rout of Michigan in the Big House.

One, they buried the defending national champions by halftime in methodical fashion, with Quinn Ewers (246 yards and three touchdowns overall) piloting an effective offense while the Texas defense did fine work in bottling up the Wolverines.

Two, they helped paint a vivid picture of just how much of a step back Michigan has taken after losing so much from its title team - hardly a surprising development, but a stark one nonetheless.

The latter issue is not the Longhorns’ problem. Their task was to go on the road and beat a brand-name opponent before venturing into their first SEC schedule, and they did precisely that. Whether it holds up as a valuable triumph or merely a hyped one will get sorted out over the next 2½ months.

South Carolina (winner)

High on the list of most proffered coaching platitudes is how a team makes its most improvement between its opener and its second game.

This year, at least, Shane Beamer is justified in harping on that thought.

The Gamecocks were not good at all last week, barely surviving Old Dominion at home. Saturday, they thumped Kentucky, 31-6, on the road while limiting the Wildcats to 183 total yards.

To suggest Kentucky is a bit overmatched at this point of the season - at least against conference foes - would be an understatement. It didn’t offer much of a passing threat in the face of a South Carolina defensive front that managed five sacks and 11 tackles for loss in 63 snaps.

Still, this was an improvement for the Gamecocks, and it was especially welcome with LSU paying a visit to Columbia next week.

Kyle McCord (winner)

The former Ohio State quarterback has settled in nicely at Syracuse, where he torched Georgia Tech for 381 yards and four touchdowns in a 31-28 victory.

McCord has thrown for 735 yards, eight touchdowns and an interception in his first two games with the Orange, both victories to start the head coaching career of Fran Brown. And it surely helps to have targets such as Trebor Pena and Oronde Gadsden II, who both caught a pair of touchdowns Saturday.

Nonetheless, McCord is responsible for a fair bit of that success, and he is off to a fine second act after a largely competent (if not always flashy) season running the Buckeyes’ offense a year ago.

Cincinnati (loser)

The Bearcats blew a 21-point lead in the final 16 minutes against Pittsburgh, ending up with a 28-27 loss that figures to leave a mark on a program that really could have used something to build on after going 3-9 in its first year in the Big 12.

Cincinnati had the Panthers thoroughly flustered while building a 27-6 advantage. But Pitt stitched together three consecutive touchdown drives before taking the lead on Ben Sauls’s 35-yard field goal with 17 seconds remaining.

The Bearcats already had a victory over Towson to their credit, and they face Miami (Ohio), Houston and Texas Tech over the next three weeks. A 5-0 start wasn’t out of the question (and it’s not as if 4-1 is an outlandish possibility even now).

Still, Cincinnati let one get away. It hurts now, and it might hurt every bit as much if the Bearcats fall a victory shy of bowl eligibility at season’s end.

Iowa State (winner)

The Cyclones coaxed just enough points to claim its Cy-Hawk showdown with Iowa as Kyle Konrardy nailed a 54-yard field goal with six seconds remaining. The triumph snapped a 1-7 stretch for Iowa State in its in-state rivalry, and the 20 points were the most it scored against the Hawkeyes since 2017.

In addition to the always-welcome bragging rights, Iowa State also erased a 13-point halftime deficit to scrap its way back into the game. The Cyclones get an open date next, followed by a relatively manageable stretch - Arkansas State, at Houston, Baylor, at West Virginia, Central Florida - over the following five weeks.

It’s not the only way Iowa State’s schedule is favorable. It doesn’t face Arizona or Oklahoma State, and games against Utah and Kansas State are backloaded into the last two weeks of the regular season. The Cyclones have a long way to go, but they could be a surprise that bubbles up into the top 10 or top 15 by the time November rolls around.

Auburn (loser)

The Tigers barely escaped a visit to California last year with a victory. They weren’t so fortunate when the Golden Bears visited the Plains on Saturday.

Auburn’s 21-14 loss to California - which acquitted itself nicely in the first of its five trips east across multiple time zones - made it abundantly clear the Tigers’ offensive woes from a year ago have yet to be solved.

Hugh Freeze’s team committed five turnovers, including Payton Thorne’s four interceptions, leaving Auburn (1-1) in a spot where exceeding last year’s 6-7 record is already a mild stretch. And if it does, it probably isn’t going to be in particularly exciting fashion.

Nick Marsh (winner)

The Michigan State true freshman wideout piled up 194 yards - then 10th most in school history - in just his second career game, helping the Spartans inch past Maryland, 27-24, in the Big Ten opener for both teams.

Marsh had eight catches, none bigger than a 77-yard scoring strike he hauled in to tie it with 4:11 to play just after the Terrapins chose to attempt a field goal rather than go for it on fourth and one from the Michigan State 23 with a 24-17 lead.

The 17-year-old also had a couple of catches during Michigan State’s game-winning field goal drive, a push that improved the Spartans to 2-0 under first-year coach Jonathan Smith. Chances are, this isn’t the last people hear from Smith or Marsh in the next couple of seasons.

Penn State (winner, barely)

A week after dispatching West Virginia in a weather-delayed opener, the Nittany Lions returned home to face Bowling Green and … didn’t completely shake off the Falcons until the final five minutes of a 34-27 victory.

Chalk that up to Bowling Green largely doing as it pleased on offense in the first half. And while Penn State did a better job of limiting the Falcons after the break - they only had six first downs and three points in the second half - those first 30 minutes are a justifiable point of concern for James Franklin and his staff.

The Nittany Lions get an early open date next week to sort through some things. They didn’t particularly distinguish themselves in Week 2, but they still managed to survive without a stumble.

Indiana (winner)

When a coach with considerable success boldly swaggers into a program with a history devoid of too much success over the past 30 years or so, it doesn’t hurt to back up some of the inevitable early talk with some action.

So kudos to the Hoosiers, whose second game under Curt Cignetti resulted in breaking a school record for points that had stood for more than a century. And they get bonus points for doing it on a Friday night, when the lack of other games means more people could realistically notice it.

Indiana’s 77-3 pounding of Western Illinois doesn’t mean the Hoosiers have arrived as a threat to win eight or nine games annually. But surpassing the 76 points the program dropped on Franklin College in 1901 - and amassing 703 yards in the process - certainly provided a reason for Indiana fans to check in on next week’s game at UCLA as the 2-0 Hoosiers look to match last season’s victory total.

Kent State (loser)

There wasn’t much to like about the Golden Flashes last year when they went 1-11 and had only one loss by fewer than 10 points. But they did handily beat Central Connecticut State, the Football Championship Subdivision program on its schedule.

And that puts them ahead of this year’s iteration of Kent State.

Saint Francis scored the first 17 points on the way to a 23-17 defeat of the Golden Flashes, who dropped their 11th game in a row. The Red Flash - the singular, in the case of the Pennsylvania school - rolled up a 402-280 total yardage advantage en route to its first victory in four tries against a Football Bowl Subdivision program.

To make matters worse for Kent State, things are not about to get any better: Next up are trips to Tennessee and Penn State.