Florida falls flat, Miami makes a statement: Winners and losers from Week 1 of the college football season

Week 1 of the college football season is (almost) in the books, and while most of the marquee matchups from the opening week proved to be fairly lopsided, it still feels like we learned quite a lot — some of it good, some of it bad.

A pair of somewhat surprising beatdowns headlined the daytime blocks on Saturday as Clemson had no answers in a 34-3 loss to Georgia while Florida was embarrassed by rival Miami in the Swamp to the tune of 41-17, putting embattled coach Billy Napier's future in Gainesville in serious jeopardy.

In prime time on Saturday, we saw Marcus Freeman and Notre Dame spoil new Texas A&M coach Mike Elko's debut in College Station, and Sunday night saw USC outlast LSU in what may have been the best game of the weekend.

That only scratches the surface of the action we saw in Week 1, though. College football is back in full swing, and with that in mind, here are the winners and losers from around the country in the opening week.

Winner: Penn State's revamped offense

If you simply look at the offensive stats from Penn State's 2023 team, you would get the impression this was a fairly solid group. But when they played the best teams, the Nittany Lions looked downright anemic offensively.

New offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki was brought in from Kansas this offseason, and the longtime assistant to Lance Leipold was tasked with bringing a more explosive product to Happy Valley after commandeering a dynamic offense with the Jayhawks.

Through one game, the returns have been encouraging. Penn State rolled to a 34-12 win on the road against West Virginia, and it actually seemed interested in throwing the ball downfield. Drew Allar, a former five-star who enters the year with a lot to prove, shined in his debut with the new offense.

Though he attempted just 17 passes and completed only 11, he threw for 216 yards and three touchdowns. Star running back Nicholas Singleton went over 100 yards on just 13 carries, and a 457-yard day is exactly the kind of start this offense was looking for.

Kotelnicki's offense could do a much better job of taking advantage of the talents of Allar, Singleton and other stars on the roster this season, and if that's the case, this team could be much closer to a Big Ten title than we thought coming into the year.

Loser: Clemson's slide under Dabo Swinney showing no signs of slowing down

I didn't expect that Clemson would win against the No. 1 team in the country on Saturday. But man, it would have been nice to be at least competitive.

At this point, it's a broken record when it comes to the Tigers. The problems under Dabo Swinney are clearly visible: While the defense is solid and held UGA to just six first-half points, it doesn't have nearly enough on the other end, as has been the case since Trevor Lawrence moved on to the NFL.

The talented offensive lines and receiving corps that defined Swinney's best teams at Clemson haven't been present for a few years now, and with Cade Klubnik continuing to struggle in his second season as a starter and third overall, it feels safe to say he's now missed on back-to-back five-star quarterbacks.

Offensive coordinator Garrett Riley, who was brought in ahead of last season in a rare outside hire for Swinney, either isn't capable of getting the job done or isn't being given the authority to do so. While the high school recruiting remains strong, the development has been questionable and it's compounded by Swinney's outright refusal to engage with the transfer portal — the Tigers took no transfers this offseason and just one, a backup quarterback, ahead of 2023.

A bad loss to Georgia doesn't have to define the season, especially in an ACC that looks like it could be fairly wide-open. But even if Swinney gets things back on track, this team clearly isn't good enough to compete in games against these kinds of teams anymore. Responsibility for that fact ultimately falls on Swinney.

Winner: Miami makes the week's biggest statement

Most of the talk in the wake of Miami's dominant win in Gainesville centers around the increasing pressure surrounding Billy Napier and Florida — believe me, we'll get there — but this Miami team definitely deserves its flowers.

While coach Mario Cristobal didn't enter this game with quite as much to prove as his counterpart on the other sideline, his 12-13 record at his alma mater still didn't inspire a ton of confidence in his tenure. The Hurricanes began the year with quite a bit of hype behind a transfer-heavy roster that looked like Cristobal's best so far, and they mostly looked the part on Saturday.

Quarterback Cam Ward had a day, looking like every bit the Heisman candidate he was billed as in a 385-yard, three-touchdown day. Miami's defense was also smothering, holding the Gators to just 261 yards of offense as they were doubled up in yardage.

This Florida team could be genuinely awful, and I don't want to get ahead of my skis here. But please, just look at the schedule and tell me why this team couldn't go 12-0. The ACC is filled with question marks after Week 1, and Miami is the only team in the league that seems to be in a truly great spot.

The first ACC title in program history could be in the cards in a pivotal Year 3 for Cristobal.

Loser: Something's rotten at Florida

Whoever lost this game was going to be feeling some pressure, but there's a big difference between losing and losing the way the Gators did on Saturday.

After an offseason of positivity and quiet confidence from Napier, Florida had absolutely nothing in Week 1. The defensive line failed to get any push at all, the run game left a lot to be desired and whatever attempts to open things up that the team made offensively were hampered by inaccuracy from quarterback Graham Mertz, who was hyper-efficient in 2023 but had a rough debut to the season.

Napier is now 11-15 at Florida, and the heat seems to be turning up quickly. He likely didn't help his situation at his Monday press conference when he mentioned the need to tune out fans posting from their "basements" in rural central Florida, a problematic statement for more reasons than one. Given the brutal schedule that remains, a fourth consecutive losing season — something that hasn't happened at this program since 1938 — seems like a probability.

Florida fans have seen this movie before. Napier's position in Gainesville seems to be deteriorating quickly, and if this team continues to perform the way it did on Saturday, he won't be sticking around in 2025. His best hope may be the fact that a decision to fire him would likely be preceded by a change at athletics director, a process that could be complicated by the fact that an interim president currently leads the university.

A buyout that sits around $25 million also could complicate things, but there's clear frustration here after one of the worst home losses in program history. If Florida loses at home again to Texas A&M and a first-year coach in two weeks, things could start to move pretty quickly.

Winner: Notre Dame spoils Mike Elko's debut

Marcus Freeman is 20-8 at Notre Dame and has mostly maintained the standard his predecessor Brian Kelly left behind over his first two seasons. But the Fighting Irish have missed opportunities to elevate to the next level, most notably a heartbreaking three-point home loss to Ohio State last September.

Only time will tell just how impressive Saturday's 23-13 win on the road against Texas A&M will look come November, but Notre Dame was an underdog in this game and looked like it could be a College Football Playoff team.

The defense was smothering, completely shutting down the Aggies' passing game and forcing Conner Weigman into multiple ugly interceptions. The offense wasn't exactly explosive, but it was punishing and totaled nearly 200 yards on the ground.

New quarterback Riley Leonard, who defeated his former head coach at Duke in his Notre Dame debut, was a major reason for that. Leonard was efficient if underwhelming through the air, but he ran for 63 yards on 12 carries and showed the dynamic play that made him a sought-after portal quarterback.

Leonard has the potential to elevate the offense this season, and if the defense can play as well as it did in this game moving forward, this has the potential to be a dangerous team.

Loser: Brian Kelly's frustration grows at LSU

The last time LSU won its season-opener, Joe Burrow was gearing up for a Heisman and national title-winning campaign. It's lost five in a row since then, including three neutral site showdowns to begin the Brian Kelly era.

The Tigers didn't play poorly in Sunday night's 27-20 loss to USC, but they couldn't finish the job in a game they led in the fourth quarter and had the chance to seize the lead before settling for a game-tying field goal in the final minutes. USC responded with a quick, game-winning touchdown drive, and the Tigers started another year 0-1.

Kelly was visibly frustrated after the game, launching into a heated postgame rant in which he said he was "angry" at his team. He banged his fist on the table as he lamented having to repeat the same message after losses over and over again.

Did that response make things better for Kelly? Probably not. But the frustration is understandable considering the team struggled in ways that validated most of the preseason concerns about it.

The offense, which lost Jayden Daniels and two first-round receivers, was not nearly as explosive as what we saw last year despite a solid performance from quarterback Garrett Nussmeier. The run game, which was the subject of a lot of offseason conversation, was not nearly productive enough to make up for Nussmeier's lack of impact in the rushing game compared to Daniels.

And the defense, which was abysmal last fall and didn't make significant personnel upgrades in the transfer portal, looked improved up front but still got picked apart in the secondary by Miller Moss.

The Tigers just don't look like a playoff team in Year 3, and while Kelly has been far from a failure in Baton Rouge, the trajectory is concerning for a program that expects Kelly to win a national title, as each of his three predecessors did.

Quick Hitters - Winners

• Vanderbilt: The Commodores were 2-10 last fall and not expected to improve significantly in 2024, but coach Clark Lea may have cooled his seat off quite a bit with an overtime upset against Virginia Tech, a team many viewed as an ACC dark horse. Transfer quarterback Diego Pavia looks just as fun and explosive as he was last year at New Mexico State.

• Iowa: Is that 40 offensive points? From my Iowa Hawkeyes? It's Illinois State, so we'll see if it's a sign of what's to come, but Iowa's first game without Brian Ferentz looked like a pretty strong case against nepotism.

• Tennessee QB Nico Iamaleava: I promise, I'm not about to crown a guy for throwing for a million yards against Chattanooga. But the former five-star looked very sharp and threw quite a few eye-catching passes. In an offense built to make things easy on the quarterback, he could put up some video game numbers this season.

• Sam Houston State: The Bearkats had a really rough go of it in their first season at the FBS level, finishing 3-9 in a campaign that featured five one-score losses. A 34-14 win over Rice on the road is quite a way to start 2024, however, and it will be interesting to see if this team makes any noise in Conference USA.

• USC: The Trojans' win over LSU seems like the game from this week that is most prime for overreaction, but it's hard not to be impressed with what USC put out on the field in Las Vegas on Sunday night. Miller Moss looked just as effective as he did in the bowl game, and the defense under new coordinator D'Anton Lynn impressed, giving up over 400 yards but just 20 points.

Quick Hitters - Losers

• Minnesota: It's painful enough to drop your season-opener due to a missed field goal from makeable range. But did Minnesota really have to set off the postgame fireworks, too?

• Virginia Tech: Sleeper ACC contender, huh? Virginia Tech just did not have it on the road in Nashville, and it couldn't hang on despite erasing a 17-point deficit to retake the lead. To make matters worse, star quarterback Kyron Drones was injured late in the fourth quarter, and his status moving forward is unclear.

• South Carolina: The Gamecocks avoided a loss to Old Dominion on Saturday after trailing in the fourth quarter, but a 23-19 victory at home in which the offense led by redshirt freshman quarterback LaNorris Sellers struggled doesn't inspire a ton of confidence in Shane Beamer's team.

• Houston: Losing to a UNLV team that had a surprisingly successful 2023 season under first-year coach Barry Odom in Willie Fritz's debut isn't the end of the world, but you would certainly have liked to see more life than the Cougars showed in a 27-7 home loss.

• Texas A&M: Elko won't be defined by a loss to a potential playoff team in his debut, but it was a discouraging performance from a team many thought could surprise people this year. Weigman looked shaken in this game, and the Aggies were worn down by the run game in the second half. This may take some time for Elko.

• Michigan: Some drop-off was to be expected with Jim Harbaugh and 15 players heading to the NFL, but a 30-10 win over Fresno State that was 16-10 in the fourth quarter was a bit alarming. Expected starter Alex Orji lost the quarterback battle to Davis Warren, who was not good at all in this game. It could be a rebuilding year in Ann Arbor.

• Texas Tech: Like South Carolina and Michigan, the Red Raiders avoided an upset loss on Saturday. But it was certainly one they'll want to forget as they eked out a one-point overtime win against FCS Abilene Christian in a game that featured over 100 combined points. The Wildcats were a failed game-winning two-pointer away from changing the conversation around fourth-year coach Joey McGuire significantly.

This article originally appeared on For The Win: Florida falls flat, Miami makes a statement: Winners and losers from Week 1 of the college football season