CFB Blitz: Iowa's stunner headlines Week 3 takeaways

The weekly CFB Blitz is the spot to catch up on the most important developments from the day's action and examine their significance moving forward.

Iowa shocks Michigan ... with passing?

Stop me if you've heard this before, but Michigan Stadium was home to a dramatic, last-second, walk-off touchdown. However, after a controversial Hail Mary saved the Wolverines in Week 1, they were on the losing end this time out.

You'd get through almost the entire FBS level of football before you picked Iowa's passing offense to lead a game-winning drive. It's no secret the Hawkeyes do not care to throw the football, with the offense sitting 129th, 130th, 130th, and 123rd nationally in passing the last four years. However, Hank Brown has added that threat to this year's team, and the final drive showed he's capable of creating some magic through the air.

As good as the final throw was, the play to set up the TD might've been even more unbelievable, with a tipped catch giving Iowa the chance for the win.

It's not being a prisoner of the moment to suggest that Iowa is now set up for a run to the playoff. The Hawkeyes are undefeated with mighty Ohio State coming to Kinnick Stadium next week. Following that contest, the Hawkeyes do not play a ranked team the rest of the way, avoiding all of Oregon, USC, and Indiana.

Michigan choked

Yes, Michigan scored an important Week 2 win over Oklahoma at home, but as the weeks go by and the Sooners continue to struggle, that win doesn't quite hold the same shine it did at the time. It's probably safe to say that the first four games of the Kyle Whittingham era have been underwhelming. We won't relitigate the Week 1 replay fiasco against Western Michigan, but the Wolverines are very lucky to hold a win from that contest. Saturday should have been a win, but some very poor second-half execution cost them.

Michigan had first-and-goal from the 5-yard line, leading by three in the final minutes of the third quarter, when Whittingham opted to kick a field goal from the 4-yard line. A touchdown would've stretched the lead to 10. While the field goal pushed the lead to six, it took a one-score game and made it ... still a one-score game. Not exactly the boldest of calls by Whittingham.

The offense gained 19 yards total on its final two drives, taking only 3:27 off the clock in the process. The Michigan teams of old would end games with ease based on its rushing attack, but that didn't happen Saturday.

We can criticize the defensive coverage on the game-winning touchdown, but the most egregious thing on the final drive was an unnecessary roughness penalty on third-and-12 with 26 seconds to play. That turned an incompletion into a 15-yard gain and set Iowa up at the Michigan 45 where the final two plays of magic would happen. We talked in the Week 1 CFB Blitz about Michigan's penalty issues, and they don't appear to be fixed heading into October.

Florida throws 2008 party

Tim Tebow was on location for the broadcast of the Ole Miss-Florida blockbuster Saturday at The Swamp. He might as well have been in uniform on the field, because the display from the Gators looked very similar to when the legendary quarterback was behind center. Florida took advantage of an Ole Miss team clearly suffering from an LSU hangover, putting 52 on the Rebels in a dominant showing. That puts Florida over 40 in every game this season - the first time that's happened for the program since Tebow was on the 2008 squad.

Jon Sumrall's hire of coordinator Buster Faulkner continues to look like the best appointment of the offseason. The former Georgia Tech play-caller has the rushing attack cooking, with Jadan Baugh and Duke Clark combining for 268 yards and four touchdowns against Ole Miss.

Florida's punter continues to be the most relaxed man in college football, as the Gators have punted just five times all season. In back-to-back SEC games, Florida has scored on 16 of 22 drives and is averaging 48 points per game. It took just one month of the Sumrall-Faulkner era for the Gators to build the nation's most explosive attack.

The Ole Miss side of the story is fairly simple - the team is simply not the same without Kewan Lacy at running back. Lacy's absence due to injury was felt throughout, putting a ton of pressure on Trinidad Chambliss to carry the team. He did his best with 298 yards and a touchdown, but it wasn't enough to match Florida's firepower.

Mateer bet a disaster for Oklahoma

John Mateer was one of the more popular transfer targets in the country following an electric 2024 season at Washington State. Programs like North Carolina and Miami came calling - with Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski even intervening on behalf of Bill Belichick. Ultimately, Mateer ended up following his coach, Ben Arbuckle, to Oklahoma, where he had been named the new offensive coordinator.

"They were throwing some freaking money at me, man - oh my God," Mateer told ESPN's Eli Lederman at the time. "But it wasn't about that. The money was always going to come. The scheme and the fit had to be right."

Through a year and a month of Mateer's tenure with the Sooners, it's probably fair to say Oklahoma is having significant buyer's remorse. The senior quarterback was once again a turnover machine against Georgia, giving the ball away on three straight possessions to, effectively, end the game in the first half.

A mind-numbing fumble inside the Georgia 15 that was taken 85 yards for a defensive touchdown, an interception on a crucial third-and-9 in Bulldogs territory, and another fumble to set up the home team on Oklahoma's 11-yard line took away any chance at an upset in Athens.

Mateer's three turnovers Saturday gives him six in the last three games - the offense is averaging 12 points per contest in that span.

Colin Simmons is a menace

You hear Colin Simmons frequently described as a superstar for the Texas defense, but a better word for the elite pass-rusher is "menace." Dictionary.com defines the word as "a person whose actions, attitudes, or ideas are considered dangerous or harmful," and Simmons was certainly all of those things Saturday in a 20-17 win at Tennessee.

The junior was an absolute wrecking ball off the edge, tormenting an overmatched offensive line from the jump. He finished with five sacks on the day - more than 40 FBS teams had total entering play Saturday - while registering eight total tackles and forcing a fumble. The five-sack showing makes him the first FBS player in the last 20 years to hit that number against a ranked team, according to ESPN Insights.

Of course, there's more than one side to a menace, and Simmons showed he's happy playing the other part in the first half. The result was one of the most absurd - and funniest - penalty announcements we've ever heard.

It's probably a safe bet that Steve Sarkisian will allow Simmons to celebrate sacks however he wants if he keeps putting up five per game in SEC play.

UCLA nailed the coaching hire

It's only been four games for Bob Chesney at UCLA, but we are already confident enough to call it: The Bruins got themselves an elite coach. Chesney's latest performance featured a 2,600-mile trip across the country to play Maryland in a game that kicked off at 10:30 a.m. PT. We only need to look at last week's narrow win by USC at Rutgers to see how difficult that trip can be for west coast programs. Nobody told Chesney's UCLA that.

The Bruins boatraced Maryland from the jump, hanging 54 points on the hosts and holding them without a touchdown all game. Chesney's already established an elite rushing attack with the Bruins, who piled up 266 yards on an absurd 6.8 per clip and found the end zone four times.

The coaching contrast on display was stark, with Mike Locksley's Terrapins totally unprepared for the game. Locksley is now in his eighth year with the program and things are going backward, quickly. Back-to-back four-win seasons put Locksley on the hot seat, and the start to the 2026 campaign should make the final call an easy one in College Park.

The biggest regret for Maryland brass might be that it didn't make the move last year when it had a chance to hire an upstart coach from James Madison just 140 miles away: Bob Chesney.

Louisville gonna Louisville

It wouldn't be a college football season without Louisville taking down a ranked opponent only to follow that up with an absolute stinker as a big favorite. That tendency struck the Cardinals once again Saturday, with Jeff Brohm's team losing at home to Wake Forest just one week after beating SMU in a dramatic affair.

The offense that ran wild for 286 yards on 8.7 per carry last week was nowhere to be found, with Wake Forest's 78th-ranked rushing defense completely owning the line of scrimmage. Louisville needed 38 carries to gain only 75 yards on the day and forced Lincoln Kienholz into 36 pass attempts as a result. The Ohio State transfer has been electric in the starting role, but that's not the recipe to a Louisville victory.

The Cardinals win over SMU put them in the driver's seat for the ACC title race largely thanks to a very comfortable schedule. The Cardinals avoid Miami, Virginia, Virginia Tech, and Clemson in conference play and should have been favored in every game the rest of the way. However, Saturday served the latest reminder that Louisville is one of the rare teams that can both beat, and lose to, virtually anybody in the country in any given week.

Smith will threaten NCAA TD record

Watch Jeremiah Smith for 10 minutes and he certainly looks like the kind of player that should hold the all-time single-season receiving touchdown record. Consider Saturday's performance against Illinois the launching pad for that pursuit from the Ohio State star. Smith caught four touchdown passes against the Illini - taking advantage of a curious decision to frequently play man coverage against the freakish receiver.

The FBS record for touchdown catches in a season is 27 by Louisiana Tech's Troy Edwards in 1998. Smith now has 7 through four games, but a prolonged Ohio State playoff run will give him plenty of time to hit that number - especially if future opponents also play him man-to-man.