A wild Week 1 of the college football season is in the books and UCLA, Notre Dame and pretty much the entire SEC are riding high. On the flipside, teams like Stanford, Nebraska and Kansas are already in tough positions after unexpected losses.
Expect that to be a recurring theme in Week 2 as a number of other ranked teams can and will go down. The loser of Oklahoma-Tennessee and Michigan State-Oregon will fall into the category but we’re digger a little deeper with our Top 25 upsets. Here are four teams that could be in trouble:
No. 14 LSU Tigers vs. No. 25 Mississippi State Bulldogs
Saturday, 9:15 PM ET
The rumors of the SEC’s demise have clearly been greatly exaggerated as they enter Week 2 of the college football season with a record 10 teams in the Top 25 – including LSU at No. 14 and Mississippi State at No. 25.
The Tigers were rained out at McNeese State on Saturday night and while it was assumed they would dominate in that game, it would have been a decent dress rehearsal ahead of this week’s showdown with the Bulldogs. Now LSU faces a tough Mississippi State team on the road and the only guarantee is that there should be plenty of fireworks with the Bulldogs looking to take another leap up in the Top 25. The Tigers are on definite upset alert for this primetime matchup on Saturday night even though they’re a small road favorite.
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No. 9 Notre Dame Fighting Irish @ Virginia Cavaliers
Saturday, 3:30 PM ET
Notre Dame put together a lopsided win in Week 1 with junior quarterback Malik Zaire going off for over 300 yards passing and three touchdowns against Texas and it will be very interesting to see what they have in store for an encore when they visit a Virginia team that played pretty good early on last week at UCLA before the game got away from them in the second half.
The Fighting Irish run game will be tested after they lost Tarean Folston for the season so Zaire will be tested as he attempts to lead Notre Dame to its second consecutive victory and avoid an upset on the road.
ECHOES AWOKEN pic.twitter.com/eEsUnLNqCi
— SB Nation GIF (@SBNationGIF) September 6, 2015
No. 22 Arizona Wildcats @ Nevada Wolfpack
Saturday, 7:00 PM ET
Arizona suffered a major blow with the loss of star linebacker Scooby Wright and now they have to go on the road and take on a dominant Nevada rushing attack that could give them some trouble. The Wildcats gave up 525 total yards of offense in their Week 1 win over UTSA and while the final result looked comfortable (42-32), the game was closer than that score might indicate (Arizona led 21-20 at the half).
Arizona will face a much tougher test from the Wolfpack as they attempt to hang on to a spot in the AP Top 25 with a win. This should be an exciting game with both teams scoring – at least – in the 30’s.
Appalachian State Mountaineers @ No. 12 Clemson Tigers
Saturday, 12:30 PM ET
Clemson is coming off a lopsided win over FCS opponent Wofford in Week 1 with sophomore quarterback Deshaun Watson shining before being taken out of the game early in the second half. Expecting an upset here could be a reach (especially as an 18-point favorite) but we could see a pretty entertaining game.
App State is returning pretty much every impact player they had on their team a year ago and they’re going to come into this game very confident. They stumped Howard 49-0 last week. Sophomore quarterback Taylor Lamb is a stud and App State has enough playmakers on both sides of the ball to at least make this game an interesting one. Maybe Clemson does get the win but this could be a tougher test than most are predicting it will be and it will certainly be fun to see Watson under center for the full four quarters with maybe even a little adversity thrown his way in this contest.
