Identifying College Football Teams’ Most Glaring Flaws

From Iowa’s offense to USC’s defense and Colorado’s offensive line, these weak spots have proven mighty costly.

Forty names, games, teams and minutiae making news in college football (healthy quarterbacks sold separately in Lubbock, where third-string freshman Jake Strong has been pressed into action and thrown six interceptions in 65 passes):

First Quarter: Michigan’s spygate silence | Second Quarter: Questions for first CFP ranking | Third Quarter: Can Dabo adapt?

Fourth Quarter: Fatal Flaws

The Drive to 325 is over at Iowa (31), where offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz has been fired effective at the end of the season. After eight games, he’s less than halfway to his contractually mandated goal of Iowa scoring 325 points in 13 games, an average of 25 points per contest, so Hawkeyes interim athletic director Beth Goetz pulled the plug on one of the longest-running nepotism gigs in college football. After seven seasons as the OC, the last three of them varying shades of futile, Kirk Ferentz’s son will be done at Iowa.

The Hawkeyes have had incredible defenses and special teams the past two seasons. They’ve also been squandered by playing alongside the worst offense in the country, keeping Iowa from contending for anything bigger than the Big Ten West title (which it didn’t win last year and might not win this year).

Kirk Ferentz has stayed loyal to Iowa for decades, and the school has repaid that by essentially making him its unassailable Coach For Life. But keeping his son in a coordinator position past the point when someone with the last name of Smith would have been fired finally had to end. Maybe in 2024, Iowa can field an offense that the defense can be proud of.

A Dash rundown of other teams with a glaring weakness holding them back:

Through nine games, USC ranks 113th out of 133 FBS teams in scoring defense (32.6 points per game) :: Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports

The USC defense (32). Here’s your Dash stat of the week: The Trojans have surrendered 213 points in their last five games. It’s merely the most in a five-game stretch in school history.

Similar to Kirk Ferentz, Lincoln Riley has stubbornly held on to coordinator Alex Grinch for at least a season too long. Arguably more, since Grinch was Riley’s DC at Oklahoma from 2019 to ‘21. The Sooners were 76th nationally in yards allowed per game and 79th in yards allowed per play in ’21, but Riley still brought Grinch with him to SoCal.

The Trojans have won 18 out of 23 games since then, which is very good. But they have given up more than 40 points in four of those five losses—and now they’ve done it in USC’s last three wins, too. Quarterback Caleb Williams has been too great a talent to saddle with a defense that stops nobody.

The North Carolina defense (33). The Tar Heels were undefeated and at the forefront of the ACC championship game race until two weeks ago, when their defense collapsed. In losses to Virginia and Georgia Tech—two teams that entered those games with losing records—the Heels gave up 1,071 yards, 576 of them on the ground.

North Carolina has a get-well game this week against FCS Campbell. After that, DC Gene Chizik has to have his unit playing better for a closing stretch of Duke, Clemson and North Carolina State.

The Arkansas offense (34). The Razorbacks have already fired OC Dan Enos, for good reason. With a third-year starting quarterback who averaged nearly 300 yards per game of total offense in 2022, the Hogs have somehow become the worst offense in the SEC, 30 yards per game behind Vanderbilt. They’ve scored 16.3 points over their last four games, all losses, and haven’t produced 300 yards of offense in any of those games.

The South Carolina offensive line (35). The Gamecocks have rushed for 136 fewer yards than the next-worst running team in the SEC, averaging just 86 yards per game and 2.76 per carry. Giving up 230 yards in sacks certainly impacts that number, with Spencer Rattler being dropped for 57 sack yards in the last two games alone. Mario Anderson, a transfer from Division II Newberry, has added some juice to the running game in the last five games after getting just eight total carries in the first three.

Wyoming’s road toughness (36). The Cowboys are 5–0 in “Laradise,” including upsets of Texas Tech and Fresno State. The road is a different story—they’re 0–3, with consecutive losses to Air Force and Boise State. Wyoming's only touchdown drive at Boise was one play and 19 yards after a muffed punt by the Broncos. The Cowboys had 112 yards of total offense in that game.

Colorado’s massive sack totals (37). The Buffaloes—primarily quarterback Shedeur Sanders—have lost 381 yards to sacks. That’s 126 more than the next-worst team (Florida International). It’s easily on pace to be the most sack yards lost in the 15 seasons that Sports Source Analytics has on its website. (Right now that honor belongs to the 2011 Pittsburgh team, which lost 418 yards to sacks.)

A lot of Colorado’s sack issues can be attributed to a leaky offensive line, but not all of it. Sanders’s propensity for holding onto the ball and trying to make something out of nothing can occasionally produce great results, but it also can lead to huge losses: the Buffs average 9.1 yards lost per sack.

Sanders is at least in some good company there: Louisville led the nation in sack yards allowed in 2016 with 334, which happened to be the season when Lamar Jackson won the Heisman Trophy. But Jackson was a far better runner than Sanders will ever be, which made his extending plays more understandable.

Kansas handed Oklahoma its first loss of the season with Saturday’s 38–33 upset :: Denny Medley/USA TODAY Sports

Coach Who Earned His Comp Car This Week

Lance Leipold (38), Kansas. When the football coach at Kansas beats Texas and Oklahoma in consecutive seasons, he deserves the same level of fan reverence as Bill Self. The Jayhawks are 28–80–6 all-time against the Sooners and 4–18 against the Longhorns. Until Saturday, they hadn’t beaten Oklahoma since 1997. Leipold might be 59 years old, but he should be a hot commodity on the job market—if he wants to go anywhere.

Coach Who Should Take the Bus to Work

Jonathan Smith (39), Oregon State. Put it this way: the only coaching decision dumber than Smith’s doomed fake field goal on the final play of the first half against Arizona was Mario Cristobal not having Miami take a knee and thus losing to Georgia Tech. You don’t want to be a close second to Mario on the 2023 Brainlock List.

Point After

The Dash kept it local in Louisville last week and sampled a good collective beer: Cardinale (40), brewed by Gravely Brewing Company, is a crisp pilsner that wets the whistle and puts some money in a college athlete’s pocket. Try one and thank The Dash later.