Week 1 college football winners and losers: Georgia dominant, Oklahoma starts fast, ECU stumbles
You might need a program to get a handle on No. 3 Georgia’s depth chart. Five players from last year’s team went in the first round of the NFL draft and nine were taken within the first 102 picks, part of a record-setting 15 players selected overall from the defending Bowl Subdivision national champions.
New cast, same story. Saturday’s 49-3 win in the season opener against No. 12 Oregon saw last year’s dominance continue, only reinforcing the widely held belief that Georgia will be one of the teams to beat in the race for the College Football Playoff.
New Oregon quarterback Bo Nix averaged just 4.7 yards per attempt and the Ducks’ defense did just about nothing right under first-year head coach Dan Lanning, formerly Georgia’s defensive coordinator.
Meanwhile, the Bulldogs ripped off 5.3 yards per carry and scored four rushing touchdowns spread across four different players: running backs Kendall Milton and Kenny McIntosh, wide receiver Ladd McConkey and quarterback Stetson Bennett. McIntosh also led the Bulldogs with 117 receiving yards, nearly tripling his previous career high.
Bennett should appear on some early-season Heisman Trophy lists after completing 25 of 31 attempts for 368 yards and three total scores before exiting in the third quarter with the Bulldogs ahead 42-3.
Scores from the Top 25 with all you need for the top games
For the Ducks, getting bullied is less than an embarrassment than a sign of reality: Oregon is in the fourth tier of championship contenders, a couple thousand miles off from the top group of the Bulldogs, Alabama and Ohio State.
Would it have been nice not to be run out of the building by the midpoint of the second quarter? Yeah, but Georgia’s going to put more opponents than not into a blender and hit puree — Oregon’s just the first of many to get this sort of treatment.