2 Big Ten football teams with their hand on the panic button in Week 3

After the first two-quarters of Penn State’s Week 2 home opener against Bowling Green, Nittany Lions fans might’ve been rummaging through the closet to see where they left the panic button, but in the second half, new defensive coordinator Tom Allen’s defense figured out his former quarterback, Connor Bazelak, and the Nittany Lions got to 2-0 with a 34-27 win. 

James Franklin’s team is on a bye in Week 3 and likely won’t have an important test in the Big Ten until an October 12 trip to LA to face No. 12 USC, so there’s no reason to panic for the No. 8 team in the country. Though, other Big Ten contenders might be setting off alarms after their Week 2 performances. 

USC has emerged as a potential powerhouse in its new conference after a Week 1 win over LSU in Las Vegas. Head coach Lincoln Riley was able to replace his Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Caleb Williams with Miller Moss, a veteran now operating Riley’s offense at a high level. More importantly, for maybe the first time in not just his USC tenure, but going back to his Oklahoma days, Riley has a defense. 

The Big Ten has six teams ranked in the Week 3 AP Poll and Ohio State, Penn State, Oregon, and USC are all top 12 teams in the country, in a great spot to make the 12-team College Football Playoff. No. 3 Ohio State has rolled over two MAC opponents and the Buckeyes offense has looked great under new offensive coordinator Chip Kelly and with transfer quarterback Will Howard. 

The Buckeyes, Nittany Lions, and Trojans have all had strong starts to the 2024 campaign, but these two Big Ten contenders, not so much. 

Head coach Dan Lanning has somehow gotten his team to 2-0, but these Ducks do not look like the 2023 Oregon Ducks that were two Washington losses away from making the four-team College Football Playoff. In Week 1, the Ducks struggled with Idaho up in Eugene, and then in Week 2 Boise State had Oregon on the ropes at home. 

The Ducks needed two special teams touchdowns on Saturday to pull out a 37-34 win on a last-second game-winning field goal. Oregon’s defense had a hard time stopping Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty who is making a compelling Heisman Trophy case with 459 yards and nine touchdowns through his first two games. However, the offense is the bigger concern. 

Oklahoma transfer quarterback Dillon Gabriel has completed 83.1% of his passes across two games and with Tez Johnson and Evan Stewart at wide receiver is generating 0.519 expected points added (EPA) per dropback which is only slightly down from Bo Nix’s 0.579 per dropback last season. The problem for the Ducks and OC Will Stein’s offense is the run game. 

A season ago, Oregon’s running backs Bucky Irving and Josiah Jordan-James combined for 30 runs over 15+ yards and as a team, the Ducks finished with 40 such runs. This year, leading rusher Jordan James has accounted for the team’s only 15+ yard run. 

The overall effectiveness of the run game hasn’t significantly fallen off from 2023, but the lack of explosiveness is apparent and is a problem. 

That lack of explosiveness is likely more tied to the talent at running back than that of the offensive line, but that’s not to say the blocking up front hasn’t been an issue. Gabriel has been very accurate, but he’s been forced to get rid of the ball very quickly. 

Gabriel has a time to throw of 2.25 seconds compared to Nix’s 2.44 seconds in 2023 and yet Gabriel is being pressured on 27.2% of his dropbacks while Nix was only pressured on 15.8% of his last year. 

Those numbers for Gabriel also come in two games against Idaho and Boise State, teams that should be widely overmatched in the trenches. If that doesn’t cause panic, then a look at a Big Ten schedule that includes Ohio State and Michigan, should. 

Then there’s the defending national champions, who weren’t quite as lucky as Oregon to escape a bad start with a 2-0 record. After struggling with Fresno State in a 30-10 win at the Big House, the 1-0 Wolverines were stomped by Texas, now the new No. 2 team in the country, in Week 2. The Longhorns left Ann Arbor with a 31-12 win and Michigan fans wondering how things got so bad. 

The thing about Michigan is that the defense still has a ton of talent. Mason Graham and Kenneth Grant are the best interior defensive line duo in the entire country and Will Johnson is a future first-round NFL draft at cornerback. 

Over an entire year that included plenty of lifeless Big Ten offenses on the other side, Michigan posted a 0.00077 defensive EPA per play which will not be matched in 2024, but through two games this unit has allowed a success rate of 36.8% which stands up to last season’s 34.3%. Beyond Jim Harbaugh leaving for the NFL, Michigan just lost far too much on offense. 

Harbaugh’s replacement, Sherrone Moore was forced to replace all but one starter (tight end Colston Loveland) from the offense that he coordinated to a national title in 2023. However, none of the other replacements seem to matter because Moore and his staff got it wrong at quarterback. 

Alex Orji was the presumptive starting QB coming into the season. Instead, Moore has gone with Davis Warren and it's been a disaster. Through two games, Michigan has a 37% success rate on passing plays, which is like playing Michigan’s defense and Warren has been just a bit worse than JJ McCarthy was. 

That’s the guy that Moore and his staff decided was Michigan’s best quarterback. If that isn’t a reason to panic, I don’t know what is. It also begs the question, why didn't Michigan address the quarterback position in the transfer portal this offseason? And another; how did they think this offense was going to work?