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Week 2 SEC Primer: Michigan filled its championship void. Is Texas next?

Matt Hinton

By Matt Hinton

Published:

Everything you need to know about the Week 2 SEC slate, all in one place.

Game of the Week: Texas (-7.5) at Michigan

(All betting lines provided by FanDuel Sportsbook.)

The stakes

Michigan spent 2 solid years consumed by an all-or-nothing pursuit of its first national championship in a generation, and its dream came true. The drought is over, the thirst is quenched, and the void is filled. Now? Leave the angst to somebody else for a change. In Ann Arbor, it’s hangover time.

If you’re just catching up with the Wolverines for the first time since the confetti fell in January, a lot has changed. I mean, a lot has changed: Besides the NFL-bound Jim Harbaugh, the mass exodus from the 2023 team included nearly his entire staff and 18 of 22 starters in the CFP title game. (Plus the kicker, for good measure.) Harbaugh’s successor, 38-year-old Sherrone Moore, is a first-time head coach charged with replacing a first-round quarterback, All-American running back, both starting wideouts, the entire starting offensive line, and 9 of the top 12 tacklers on defense.

All those new faces, and a full trophy case? Take your time, man. Potential NCAA sanctions looming in the background? Don’t even sweat it. The Wolverines will be back when they’re back.

It’s good to be the champs, as most Texas fans still remember, vaguely, from the Longhorns’ last title 19 years ago. (If they didn’t, they could always have their memories jogged by the broadcast of the January 2006 Rose Bowl airing on a loop on the late Longhorn Network, RIP.) They’re also familiar with the feeling that it’s been much too long since the championship itch was scratched. Quinn Ewers was 2 years old when Vince Young sauntered into immortality, and most of this year’s freshman class wasn’t even born.

The ‘Horns got reacclimated to that altitude in 2023, beating Alabama, winning the Big 12, and punching their Playoff ticket for the first time before bowing out in the semis in a game they we we favored to win. The urgency that Michigan felt to go all the way the past 2 years is alive and well in Austin.

Unlike Michigan, whose championship window came with an implicit expiration date, Texas is looking forward to having plenty of bites at the apple. Steve Sarkisian has improved the talent level via traditional recruiting and the portal: In his first season, he inherited a roster that ranked 11th in 247Sports’ Team Talent Composite; 3 years later, the current roster ranks No. 4. It’s not exactly now or never, assuming crown-jewel understudy Arch Manning remains on deck to extend the window into 2025, at least. But now would be nice, before the vibe shifts into defining Sarkisian’s tenure by the one big looming box he hasn’t checked rather than the ones he has.

The stat: 4.73

That was Texas’ net points per possession in its Week 1 win over Colorado State, best in the nation vs. an FBS opponent. After a slow start on their first possession, the Longhorns proceeded to score 52 points over their next 10 (7 touchdowns, 1 field goal) while pitching a shutout against the CSU offense, the first time the Rams had been held to a goose egg since 2013.

Actually, leaving it at “shutout” might be selling the defense’s effort short. Colorado State didn’t come close to scoring, crossing midfield just once in the competitive portion of the game. (That drive ended with a punt from the Texas 49-yard line.) Despite the presence of Tory Horton — the active FBS leader in career receiving yards and touchdowns — the Rams averaged a dismal 3.1 yards per pass with a long gain of 12.

Colorado State had more punts (7) than passing first downs (6), and more yardage on punts (279) than in total offense (192). Texas’ defense accounted for more yards on one play, a 30-yard interception return by Jahdae Barron, than it allowed on any CSU possession prior to garbage time.

There’s no such thing at this level as a truly perfect game, but even against one of the scrubbier members of the Mountain West, that’s about as close as it gets.

The big question: Who the heck is Davis Warren?

In the portal era, starting quarterbacks at a name-brand program fall into 1 of 3 columns: 1) Entrenched vet; 2) Blue-chip prospect on the rise; or 3) Big-ticket transfer. This is just how it works, in 2024. In fact, the higher a team resides on the food chain, the more of those boxes it tends to go out of its way to check.

At the moment, Alabama, Georgia and Texas all have 1) and 2), for insurance. Ohio State and Oregon, lacking a 1), went out and landed 2) and 3) over the offseason. And so on down the line. Adjusting for ambition, nearly every starting QB in a Power 4 conference plausibly fits in that rubric. If you don’t, your destiny is the portal or the clipboard, pretty much without exception.

I have to use qualifiers like “nearly” and “pretty much” in that last sentence because of Warren, the exception. When Michigan elevated Warren to QB1 for its opener against Fresno State, he became the only opening-day starter for a ranked team who is none of the above. He is inexperienced, unheralded, and prior to last week, the only place he was entrenched was in obscurity. Now, he’s the starting quarterback for the defending national champs.

A former walk-on in his 4th year in Ann Arbor, Warren has traveled a long way to the top of the Wolverines’ depth chart, literally and figuratively. His final 2 years of high school in Los Angeles were all but erased by a leukemia diagnosis in 2019, which cost him his junior season, and the pandemic in 2020, which shut down prep football in California entirely.

To recruiters, that left Warren as just a skinny kid with no tape. Although he managed to stick at Michigan as a walk-on, over his first 3 seasons he was little more to the outside world than a name on the roster, attempting 14 passes in a handful of garbage-time appearances in 2022-23. The competition to replace JJ McCarthy this offseason included a veteran with starting experience in the Big Ten (Indiana transfer Jack Tuttle); a couple of huge, athletic redshirt sophomores who’d come off the bench ahead of Warren in ’23 (Alex Orji and Jayden Denegal); and a touted true freshman (Jadyn Davis). If you read a breakdown of the position over the offseason, it was almost certainly written with the assumption that Orji was the frontrunner.

When Michigan kicked off its title defense against Fresno State, though, it was Warren who trotted out with the starters and Warren who took nearly every snap, only yielding to Orji for a handful of “change of pace” downs in the Wildcat. On paper, his debut was nothing to write home about: 4.7 yards per attempt, just 1 completion of 10+ air yards, no contribution as a runner, red-flag numbers in terms of efficiency (104.9), EPA (-0.2), and Total QBR (33.0). Of Michigan’s 2 touchdown drives, the first covered just 31 yards following an early takeaway, and the second unfolded almost entirely on the ground.

Still, at the end of the day Warren gave the Wolverines what they needed to survive in a defensively-driven game, avoiding the killer mistake — his lone interception was effectively a punt — and finishing the aforementioned run-heavy scoring drive with his first career touchdown pass from 18 yards out. He didn’t do anything with the slightest potential of going viral, which as far his coaches are concerned, I promise is just fine.

Is it sustainable in a game where the defense allows more than 1 touchdown? They’ll cross that bridge when they come to it.

The key matchup: Michigan Edge Josaiah Stewart vs. Texas OT Kelvin Banks Jr.

Michigan pressured quarterbacks by committee in 2023, splitting snaps and sacks among 4 full-time edge rushers. The nominal starters, Braiden McGregor and Jaylen Harrell, both moved on. That left Stewart, a former transfer from Coastal Carolina, and junior Derrick Moore, a former top-100 recruit, to make their mark in an expanded role. Neither projects as the second coming of Aidan Hutchinson, but together they should form one of the more imposing duos in the country. Against Fresno State, Stewart and Moore combined for 7 QB pressures and 2 sacks — both officially credited to Stewart, but with a substantial assist on the first one from his fellow bookend:

https://twitter.com/chas_post23/status/1830135659912146989/

Getting to Ewers is not so straightforward. His blindside is protected by Banks, already a virtual lock to end Texas’ 22-years-and-counting drought since it last had an offensive lineman drafted in the first round.

A Day 1 starter as a freshman, Banks has held down the left tackle job in all 28 games he’s played, earning second-team All-Big 12 in 2022 and first-team in ’23. He barely came off the field during last year’s Playoff run while allowing a single sack, in the opener; he extended the shutout streak to a full calendar year against Colorado State. At 6-4, he comes in slightly below the towering, power forward-esque ideal for a modern blindside protector; in every other respect, the most important boxes are already checked, mean streak included.

The verdict …

Michigan, as always, would love to make this a line-of-scrimmage game: Stuff the run, turn up the heat on Ewers, ideally force him into a mistake a la the game-clinching pick-6 by All-American CB Will Johnson that turned an uncomfortably close game against Fresno State into a routine dispatch. (The final 30-10 margin came just 1 point shy of covering a 20.5-point spread.) The uglier, the better. Even if they succeed in dragging the game into the gutter, though, how are the Wolverines going to score? The offense was anemic against a middle-of-the-pack D from the Mountain West, getting next to nothing from the wideouts or NCAA Football cover boy Donovan Edwards. The lack of explosiveness at the skill positions is as pressing a concern as a walk-on quarterback and a rebuilt offensive line.

Texas has no such concerns. The Longhorns boast the nation’s best QB room, a bounty of options at wideout, and an o-line that returns 4 starters from last year. Whatever the defense’s issues might turn out to be, they weren’t on display against Colorado State, and it’s difficult to see how Michigan is going to generate much stress without getting extremely creative. The ‘Horns have considerably more juice, but if it comes down to it they can handle themselves in a slugfest, too.
– –  –
• Texas 24 | Michigan 13

Tennessee (-9.5) vs N.C. State

Who do you trust more with the ball in his hands: A decorated, 6th-year vet with an abundance of experience but limited upside? Or a rising star still at the beginning of his ascent? That’s the dynamic between the starting quarterbacks, NC State’s Grayson McCall and Tennessee’s Nico Iamaleava, whose very different career arcs will intersect Saturday night in Charlotte, NC. Both guys arrive with high expectations and a lot to prove in a game that will serve as their introduction to much of the country.

McCall, the vet, has been cruising just below the national radar for years. From 2020-22, he posted a 29-5 record as a starter at Coastal Carolina and won Sun Belt Offensive Player of the Year 3 years in a row, ranking among the FBS leaders in pass efficiency each year. (In fact, in 2021 he set the single-season record for efficiency, since surpassed by Jayden Daniels). McCall briefly tested the portal in 2023 following the departure of CCU coach Jamey Chadwell for Liberty, then reconsidered; his production subsequently dipped last year under a new staff before his season was cut short by a concussion.

Back on the market last December, McCall’s stock was still high enough that his commitment to NC State qualified as a coup for the Wolfpack, who have juggled multiple QBs in 4 of the past 5 seasons. As for whether he qualifies as a draftable prospect in 2025, the jury remains out. His performance against the Vols will figure prominently in the verdict.

Iamaleava, if you’ve been living under a rock, is the buzziest young QB in America on the basis of 1) elite recruiting hype; 2) a wiry, 6-6 frame that invites comparisons to Trevor Lawrence; and, finally, 3) his actual performance in his first 2 career starts.

Elevated to QB1 last year ahead of the Citrus Bowl, Iamaleava launched the bandwagon by accounting for 4 touchdowns (3 rushing, 1 passing) in a 35-0 rout over Iowa. Last week, he commemorated his first start in Neyland Stadium by torching Chattanooga for 314 yards and 3 touchdowns in the first half, then sat out the second in a 69-3 blowout that looked like the real-life equivalent of a kid playing NCAA Football 25 in Junior Varsity mode.

Iamaleava is still very much in the growth/hype stage, but not for long. We can read a map around here, and his course to Heisman contention and first-round status has already been routed through the GPS. The only question on Saturday night is just how far along he is down it.
– –  –
• Tennessee 34 | N.C. State 23

Arkansas vs Oklahoma State (-7.5)

Running backs aren’t valued as highly these days as they used to be, a trickle-down effect from the pros. But don’t let anybody convince you the old-school workhorse is extinct. Instead, show them Oklahoma State RB Ollie Gordon II. In 2023, Gordon led the nation with 324 offensive touches, averaging a grueling 27.7 per game after emerging as the Cowboys’ primary back in Week 4. In last week’s opener, he picked up where he left off, logging 31 touches for 146 yards and 3 touchdowns in a 44-20 win over FCS powerhouse South Dakota State. The vast majority of that output came after contact, per PFF, which credited Gordon with 17 missed tackles forced — the most of any FBS player in Week 1.

Both Gordon and Oklahoma State’s long-in-the-tooth o-line are about as known as quantities get at the college level. Arkansas’ run defense, on the other hand, is a wild card.

The Razorbacks have struggled against the run the past 2 years, giving up 210 yards per game on the ground (excluding sacks) vs. Power 5 opponents. I’m not going to cite anything that happened in a 70-0 humiliation of Arkansas Pine-Bluff in Week 1 as evidence of anything that might happen against real competition, but suffice to say the effort against UAPB didn’t raise any red flags. Saturday will be Hogs’ fans first taste of what to expect the rest of the year.
– –  –
• Oklahoma State 32 | Arkansas 20

South Carolina at Kentucky (-10.5)

Stars are not born in this league against Old Dominion, but it’s safe to say 5-star South Carolina freshman Dylan Stewart is well on his way. In his first college game, Stewart was a bona fide terror off the edge against ODU, racking up 6 QB pressures, 3 sacks, 2 forced fumbles and the top overall PFF grade (92.8) of any FBS defender in Week 1 who logged at least 20 snaps. His second forced fumble, coming with Carolina trailing 19-16 midway the fourth quarter, saved the Gamecocks’ bacon, setting up a struggling offense inside the ODU 10-yard line for what would turn out to be the decisive touchdown in a 23-19 escape.

Now, going from facing a pair of Sun Belt tackles at home in Week 1 to facing a pair of veteran SEC tackles on the road who see him coming in Week 2 is no small step.

Kentucky’s Marques Cox and Gerald Mincey have played a lot of football and have spent all week hearing about what a freak this kid is. But there is no accounting for the kind of raw speed off the ball Stewart put on film his first time out. If he still finds a way to make an impact against a couple of upperclassmen who have his number, go ahead and pencil him in as a week-in, week-out factor for the next 3 years.
– –  –
Kentucky 22 | • South Carolina 17

South Florida at Alabama (-29.5)

From a distance, the panic that followed Bama’s waterlogged, 17-3 win at USF in 2023 looks a little absurd. At the time, though, let the record show the sky really was falling. The Crimson Tide opened the season with question marks across the lineup after missing the Playoff in 2022, and had no ready answers in a 34-24 loss to Texas in Week 2, Alabama’s most lopsided defeat at home (10 points!) in Nick Saban’s entire tenure.

Jalen Milroe had just been benched as a result, apparently ending his stint as QB1 after just 2 games. Then came the uncharacteristic slog in Tampa, where Milroe’s understudies performed miserably and it suddenly occurred to everyone for the first time in 15 years that Bama might be just another team battling from one Saturday to the next.

A year later, the team and the mood are in such a completely different place it’s hard to remember what anybody was ever worried about. The dynasty held, rebounding from the USF episode to win 10 straight en route to the SEC title; Milroe is an entrenched Heisman candidate; and the Tide looked as dominant as ever in all phases in their debut under Kalen DeBoer, a 63-0 slaughter of Western Kentucky. In the first half, the offense scored 6 touchdowns in a span of 17 plays, 4 of them covering 40+ yards.

USF under second-year coach Alex Golesh is not chopped liver by any means, but by the time they welcome Saban back at halftime to officially name the field in his honor the party should be in full swing.
– –  –
• Alabama 45 | USF 14

Houston at Oklahoma (-28.5)

Whatever minor concern this game might have inspired in Sooners fans evaporated in Week 1 with Houston’s 27-7 loss to UNLV, a surprising flop that was every bit as depressing as the score implied. The Cougars were wretched offensively, failing to score until tacking on a garbage-time TD to avoid their first home shutout in 30 years. Fifth-year QB Donovan Smith, in particular, had a night to forget, averaging a dismal 4.5 yards per attempt with 2 interceptions, including a pick-6; he ended the weekend ranked 129th out of 130 quarterbacks nationally in Total QBR and dead last in overall PFF grade.

Games like that are why first-year coach Willie Fritz has what he calls a 24-hour “gloat and pout” rule. Smith is still listed as the starter on the official depth chart, and has generally been a cromulent middle-rung Big 12 QB over the course of his career at Houston and Texas Tech. Possibly he was just shaking off the rust from offseason shoulder surgery that sidelined him in the spring. Regardless, if he moves the needle against Oklahoma, something has gone very wrong on the other side of the ball.
– –  –
Oklahoma 39 | • Houston 13

Cal at Auburn (-13.5)

Auburn saw exactly what it hoped to see from its revamped wide receiver room in Week 1, with newcomers at the position collectively accounting for 393 yards and six touchdowns on 28.1 yards per catch. So, fine, those numbers came at the expense of Alabama A&M, not Alabama. So what? Blue-chip freshmen Perry Thompson and Cam Coleman both got in on the bonanza, hauling in long TD receptions covering 70 yards and 44 yards, respectively, as did Penn State transfer KeAndre Lambert-Smith. Who is the last Auburn wide receiver you can remember generating excitement against anybody? How many chances are the Tigers going to have to see Payton Thorne look good? Let them have this.

OK. Now for the first of many reality checks, against a Cal defense that held Auburn to 230 total yards last year in a low-octane, 14-10 rock fight in Berkeley. Cal’s offense might not be much better this time — the Bears managed just 281 yards in Week 1 in a 31-13 win over UC-Davis — but here’s betting Auburn’s additions are the kind that translate.
– –  –
Auburn 31 | • California 19

Mississippi State at Arizona State (-5.5)

This is a late-night kickoff in the desert, where daytime temps have topped 100 degrees for 100 days in a row and weird things happen. The Bulldogs and Sun Devils both overachieved in Week 1, in a 56-7 win over Eastern Kentucky and a 48-7 blowout over Wyoming, respectively. The latter game was an eye-opener for ASU, especially, which ranked last in the Pac-12 in 2023 in total and scoring offense and was favored against Wyoming by just 7.5 points. The Devils’ rebuilding project under second-year coach Kenny Dillingham has a 1-year head start on Jeff Lebby‘s gut job in Starkville, which seems like just enough to get them over at home.
– –  –
• Arizona State 36 | Miss. State 27

Middle Tennessee at Ole Miss (-42.5)

It’s worth emphasizing, repeatedly, that no matter how good Ole Miss looks over the first half of the season — and all indications are the Rebels are going to continue to look very good — or how high they rise in the polls, we’re all best served holding our judgment until mid-October, at the earliest. That’s when they visit LSU, the first of 3 prove-it dates over the second half of the year. (The trip to Baton Rouge is followed by Oklahoma in Week 9 and Georgia in Week 11, both in Oxford.) Their toughest game in the meantime is a Sept. 28 date against Kentucky, sandwiched between trips to Wake Forest and South Carolina. By then, an all-gas-no-brakes effort against the likes of the Blue Raiders will be a distant footnote.
– –  –
• Ole Miss 54 | MTSU 10

Buffalo at Missouri (-34.5)

Missouri held Murray State to 85 total yards on 1.7 yards per play in Week 1, fewest in the nation on both counts, and a long gain of 9 yards. The Racers managed 5 first downs, 3 of them coming on a couple of garbage-time drives in the fourth quarter that still went nowhere. Does Buffalo have the juice to reach the end zone? The Bulls might have more firepower than Murray State, but not that much more.
– –  –
• Missouri 48 | Buffalo 3

Tennessee Tech at Georgia (-53.5)

Georgia can name its score here, obviously, but beware a 50-point spread. Excluding a close shave against Nicholls State in 2016 — Kirby Smart‘s second game as head coach — the Dawgs’ average margin of victory vs. FCS opponents under Smart is roughly 40 points per game, with the largest MOV coming in a 56-7 win over Charleston Southern in 2021.

As a rule, they’re not interested in inflicting that deep of a wound, so unless there’s a secret grudge between the coaching staffs or somebody on Tennessee Tech’s side gets a little too filled with the spirit or something, expect the proceedings to remain relatively civil.
– –  –
Georgia 51 | • Tennessee Tech 6

Nicholls State at LSU (-51.5)

One of the bright spots in LSU’s opening-day loss to USC was the play of RB John Emery Jr., a 6th-year senior who accounted for 71 scrimmage yards against the Trojans in one of the best games of his turbulent LSU career. Unfortunately, the comeback tour ended there: On Wednesday the Tigers confirmed that Emery is out for the season with a torn ACL, his second in as many years.

Between COVID, injuries, and academics, Emery has been through it all; he’s only managed to last a full season once, in 2022, while the promise that made him one of the top backs in the 2019 recruiting class has long since receded into the distance. His performance in Week 1 was a brief but effective reminder that he’s still around, and that he still has (or had) enough in the tank to play a big role in LSU’s thin backfield rotation. His opportunity being done in, again, by a tiny sliver of fibrous tissue is yet another reminder that no matter how finely tuned the rest of the body may be, human ligaments are basically garbage.
– –  –
• LSU 66 | Nicholls 10

Samford at Florida (n/a)

All eyes are on Florida’s quarterback situation, with Graham Mertz in concussion protocol and the entire fan base eager to see the keys handed over to 5-star freshman DJ Lagway. Meanwhile, the locals surely have not forgotten the last visit from Samford, a surreal, 70-52 shootout in November 2021 that served as one of the final nails in the coffin for then-coach Dan Mullen. Despite the final margin, the Gators spent much of the afternoon in panic mode, trailing by as many as 14 points while giving up 42 in the first half alone. Mullen was fired a week later following an overtime loss to Missouri.

That game was an extreme outlier in all respects, and only a handful of players who were there 3 years ago are still around to remember it. Still, given how loudly the clock is ticking over Billy Napier‘s shoulder right now, anything that inspires so much as a whiff of deja vu is the absolute last thing he needs.
– –  –
Florida 45 | Samford 16

McNeese State at Texas A&M (n/a)

Aggies fans will be watching this one with slightly more interest than they’d hoped coming off an opening-night flop against Notre Dame. Specifically, they’ll be watching for acts of contrition from QB Conner Weigman, who turned in the worst performance of his young career against the Irish and might be playing for his job. If that seems a little extreme based on one game, well, go back and watch the game.

Coach Mike Elko — who at one point was caught on camera yelling ”tell them to run the (bleeping) ball!” — was forced to defend his decision to leave leave Weigman in, the absolute last question any coach wants to be answering after his debut at a new school. There’s no reason to expect much resistance from McNeese State, all the more reason to give a struggling young QB the green light to go off.
– –  –
Texas A&M 52 | McNeese State 3

Alcorn State at Vanderbilt (n/a)

Vanderbilt is playing with house money for a while after springing a 34-27 upset over Virginia Tech. One of the few ways the ‘Dores could blow their sudden gust of goodwill before the calendar turns to October — in fact, possibly the only way — would be to turn around and play the fool against a SWAC outfit that lost its opener 41-3 to UAB. We trust our new favorite boy Diego Pavia will never allow this to happen on his watch.
– –  –
Vanderbilt 44 | Alcorn State 7

Scoreboard

Week 1 record: 14-2 straight up | 10-6 vs. spread

Matt Hinton

Matt Hinton, author of 'Monday Down South' and our resident QB guru, has previously written for Dr. Saturday, CBS and Grantland.

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