Week 2 of the 2024 college football season was filled with stunning upsets, and even more near pitfalls, but one result stands above the rest: No. 5 Notre Dame fell 16-14 at home against Northern Illinois. There's really no need to mince words -- the Fighting Irish are the biggest disappointments of the year no matter what happens the rest of the way.
Nothing can match the complete meltdown we saw in South Bend, Indiana. Notre Dame had everything in front of it after a Week 1 win on the road against Texas A&M. The remaining schedule had College Football Playoff written all over it.
It all unraveled in record time. The Irish were favored by 28.5-points against the Huskies. They couldn't even score more than two touchdowns. At home. Against Northern Illinois.
It's really unforgivable, yet this is nothing new under Marcus Freeman. He has now lost three games against unranked opponents within the friendly confines of Notre Dame Stadium. Not to rub salt in the still-fresh wound, but former Irish coach Brian Kelly closed his time with the program on a 40-game winning streak against unranked opponents.
Maybe 11-1 the rest of the way is enough to make the selection committee forget about this complete embarrassment and still include Notre Dame in a 12-team field. Ten-straight wins seems like an almost impossible task now.
Oklahoma is not SEC ready
Turns out replacing your entire offensive line in one offseason isn't a recipe for success. The Sooners couldn't block, couldn't run the ball and couldn't sustain drives against a Houston team that entered Saturday's contest as a 27.5-point underdog.
Young signal caller Jackson Arnold was sacked three times for a second straight week, following Temple's impressive Week 1 performance against OU's front, and struggled mightily as a result by completing just 19 of his 32 pass attempts for 174 yards. Oklahoma averaged a paltry 2.6 yards per carry. This against a Houston defensive front that allowed 195 yards rushing against UNLV a week ago.
Oklahoma's defense is miles ahead and will likely show well against SEC opponents. But that offensive line is going to keep the Sooners from having a successful year in their new conference digs.
Michigan and Auburn lost their seasons months ago
They did so when they failed to pull a new starting quarterback out of the transfer portal. For Auburn, especially, there was really no excuse. The Tigers saw what Payton Thorne was last year. With how bought-in that entire community is on the recruiting trail, and with Hugh Freeze's track record, it shouldn't have been hard to convince an above-average transfer, at the very least, to bring his talent to The Plains.
Auburn certainly upgraded the roster in almost every other spot. Especially at wide receiver, where the Tigers landed the nation's best recruiting haul during the 2024 cycle. And it's all a waste with Thorne back running the offense.
Michigan was put in a tough spot with Jim Harbaugh's constant NFL flirtations and the fact that he didn't leave for the Los Angeles Chargers until well after the winter window ended. The Wolverines also didn't see an entire season of meh from either Davis Warren or Alex Orji and say, "Yeah, we want more of that."
As an offensive coach, Sherrone Moore should have seen that neither of those guys would sustain Michigan's high level of play. It also would have been beneficial to get someone with experience, even if it was from another program, given all Michigan lost in the offseason.
But the lack of movement doomed both teams before the 2024 season even began. Reality just hit Saturday.
Tennessee will have a top-10 defense this season
Tennessee defensive coordinator Tim Banks gets a lot of undeserved flak from Vol fans, but he's turning out to be one of the best assistant coaching hires for Tennessee since the Phillip Fulmer era ended. Following UT's 51-10 shellacking of NC State Saturday evening, the Vols have now gone three straight games without allowing an offensive touchdown.
Now, even though the opponents in that span -- Iowa, Chattanooga and the Wolfpack -- aren't exactly 2019 LSU, it's still impressive to keep teams out of the end zone for 12 straight quarters. And that stat alone doesn't even begin to tell the full story of how elite Tennessee was against NC State.
The Wolfpack had 143 total yards and averaged a paltry 2.9 yards per play. They didn't convert a single third down after the first drive of the game. Tennessee's defensive line, which flew under the radar in the offseason, had its coming out party as one of the nation's best units by thoroughly dominating an NC State offensive front with over 90 combined career starts.
NC State scraped out 1.4 yards per rush attempt. The Vols swarmed for 13 tackles for loss -- a staple of Banks' defense -- and three sacks. And that's without All-American pass rusher James Pearce Jr. getting the quarterback to the ground (he was credited with two pressures). As good as Tennessee's offense has been with Nico Iamaleava calling the shots, the defense has been way more impressive. It's going to continue to turn heads as the weeks speed by.
Kentucky is in a purgatory of its own making
Mark Stoops got paid $750,000 to lose 31-6 to South Carolina. The same South Carolina team that beat Old Dominion by four points in Week 1 and finished the 2023 season with a 3-5 showing in SEC play. The same South Carolina team that despite not having a winning conference record in three years under Shane Beamer, is now 2-1 against the Wildcats.
This is what Kentucky is under Stoops. Even the random 10-win season once every few years seems like an unattainable dream at this point. Stoops is making $9 million a year to barely drag the Wildcats to a bowl game, although preseason hype -- whether internal or external -- has them expecting so much more every single season.
And there's nothing Kentucky will do about it. His current salary keeps him locked down through June 2031 with a buyout north of $40 million. Though that isn't a tremendous figure when schools like Texas A&M are paying Jimbo Fisher $77 million to not coach, it seems like more than enough to keep the athletic department sitting on its hands.
Stoops deserves credit for the work he's done at Kentucky. Turning the 'Cats into a consistent bowl team is admirable. But the program is starting to fall woefully behind in an SEC that gets more competitive with each passing year.
