Sunday Morning Coming Down // Week 1

Ohio State Buckeyes quarterback Julian Sayin (10) celebrates during the second half of the NCAA football game against the Texas Longhorns at Ohio Stadium on Aug. 30, 2025. Ohio State won 14-7.

Ten Fourteen Eighteen B1G Things

Rugters might want to do something about that defense.
And Minnesota might want to find some offense.
Speaking of offense, wasn’t Dana Holgorsen supposed to fix Nebraska’s offense?
Wisconsin and breaking their quarterbacks early in the season. Name a more iconic duo.
If you played an FCS team I’m not writing about you.
Western Michigan may very well be an FCS team this season.

IN THE GAME OF THE CENTURY OF THE WEEK, DEATH STAR TOOK DOWN NEW DEATH STAR!
Nevada isn’t going to suck this year. No, really. Seriously!
Wait a minute I googled it and I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be a bigger win than that.
Pre-October Maryland is in Pre-October Maryland form!
Purdue is already halfway through beating their win total from last season.
…and Northwestern might already be halfway through that under.
I’m here to let you know that all 34 points came from touchdowns or field goals. And none of them were scored by the defense!
Nico Iamagetmyasswhooped!
It appears Michigan can pass the ball now.
And so can Washington

The Rundown

Rutgers escapes Ohio, 34-31

Either Ohio is going to be a juggernaut again in the MAC, or Rutgers has serious problems on defense.

RUReady4Brazil: Rutgers defense was abysmal, even worse that we could have possibly expected. No pass rush at all, DB nowhere near interceptions, bad tackling angles, pretty much just bailed out by the offense and a key penalty to sustain the game icing drive. On the flip side, Rutgers has their best offense since 2007 which we already kind of knew. For all future Rutgers opponents, up your expectations

on how your offense can do against them.

Minnesota also escapes Buffalo, 23-10

Very P.J. Fleck game. Do the absolute minimum required to get out with a win.

WhiteSpeedReceiver: That was just fine. We allowed just 3.44 YPP with a 40 yarder in there. And a RS freshman QB performed perfectly fine in his debut. Nobody’s hurt, and we continue to move forward. Always rowing. The biggest concern of the night is that getting inside the 20 is no longer the Case-IH red zone. Is a real B1G team losing farming sponsors?

Nebraska outlasts Cincinnati, 20-17

~~Patrick Mahomes~~ Dylan Raiola passed the ball 42 times, but somehow only managed 20 points. Make it make sense.

BigRedTwice: Taylor Swift was at a Husker football game, and that’s my main takeaway.

However, the game was… Husker-shaped. A strong first half where things looked good, followed by a second half where the wheels wiggled and threatened to fall off. It was a song the Huskers knew All Too Well.

Amazingly though, the wheels stayed on enough this time for the Huskers to save the W. An extremely timely pick by Malcolm Herzog, Jr. prevented what likely would have been a winning heave by Cinci QB/thorn in the Huskers’ side/Anti-Hero Brendan Sorsby. Arrowhead Stadium, filled with long-suffering Husker fans, heaved a sigh of relief and joy… tempered by the knowledge that the 2025 Huskers seem to still be committed to playing with fire.

Thankfully, august didn’t turn out to be a Cruel Summer after all, and maybe the Corn can Shake It Off against Akron. Could this be a new era for the Huskers? Certainly in our Wildest Dreams it is, but in the meantime, we’ll take 1-0.

Wisconsin pisses off gamblers everywhere, defeats Miami Ohio 17-0

What I said about Rutgers, but in reverse.

Michigan State defeats Western Michigan 23-6

It wasn’t all bad, Aiden Chiles did not throw an interception! So maybe it was all good!

Illinois covers a massive spread idk, beats Western Illinois 52-3

The Illini did what good teams do to bad teams. Kudos!

HWAHSQB: Illinois ended the longest punt return TD drought with a 69 yard return by Hank Beatty. NICE! We know nothing more about this team than we did before the game.

THE Ohio State University defeats Texas is BACK 14-7

Two galaxy defenses duked it out in the game of the century of the week! Ah pay no mind to all the dropped passes and lack of running game that’ll work itself out.

Purdue matches its win total from 2024, beats Ball State 31-0

BoilerUp89: Purdue won a game! Against FBS competition! Sure, it was just Ball State but Purdue looked competent and even got the shutout. This wasn’t a flawless game by Purdue and I wouldn’t run to your local booker to bet on them making a bowl game just yet. Several passes were overly aggressive by Browne that a better secondary will pick off. The O-line looked just okay. There were a few dropped passes. Most importantly the Cardinals missed some opportunities they had to hit some open receivers that could have kept drives alive and missed their two FG attempts. Still, it’s progress for Purdue. They won’t be the most talented squad in the B1G, but they seem to be coached well. Next week, they go to double the 2024 win total.

Indiana beats Old Dominion 27-14

That doesn’t look like a Curt Cignetti score.

BuffKomodo: I mean, it’s fairly difficult to play with expectations. Indiana came into this game being ranked and many people have discussed the Hoosiers over the past few months. Indiana did not meet expectations in this game. While not a season killing game, it was an eye opening affair. 2 70+ yard QB keeper touchdowns and 10 points left on the board means that there’s so much for Indiana to work on over the next couple of weeks. We’ll see what happens.

Maryland 39, Florida Atlantic 7

Yeah yeah pre-October Maryland and all that.

Larry31: August Maryland was a mixed bag. Kind of like Malik Washington’s true freshman QB debut. 1) QB – Malik Washington started the game 3 for 11 [Yikes!], then completed his next 18 of 22 passes, three of them for TDs. Probably 1st game jitters. I hope so, otherwise I will lose my shit if I have watch another streak of 3 for 11. He ended the game 25 of 43 for 258 yds, 3TDs and 0 INTs. He reads defenses very well and has great vision, seeing the field very well. There were whispers that he was underrated as a 4-star QB, and shoulda been a 5-star. I figure that was just program insiders trying to hype Locksley and the program a little. That 5-star talk looked reasonable today. We’ll see once we get into conference play. Once he got cooking, he threw some nice dimes, and he was on time with his throws all game. 2) Defense looked legit. Pressured the Air Raid QB for Florida Atlantic all day. MD got their first safety since 2019, and their first six-interception game since 1998. Coulda had eight INTS, except two were called back due to penalties on MD., which brings me to the bad 3) MD committed EIGHT penalties in the 1st quarter. At the beginning of the 3rd quarter, I looked at the scoreboard and noticed MD had ONE more first down (13) than penalties (12). Locks has never had the rep a a disciplined coach who minimizes penalties but, c’mon, that’s ridiculous. And finally, 4) the same old shit. The O-line looked okay in pass protection, Malik, unlike Billy Edwards from last year, helped himself a lot by reading the field and delivering passes on time. However, MD , once again, struggled in the run game, even against overmatched competition. Until MD solves this problem, they will NEVER have a winning record in the B1G. Nevertheless, based on what I saw today, I’d take the over for the Vegas line of 4.5 wins.

Ouch: Tulane 23, Northwestern 3

Looks like the bottom already fell out and it’s only week 1.

MNW: 5 turnovers. 3 points. 1-11 incoming.

There’s just not a ton to say. Throwing on 4th and 3 when you can’t. throw. the. ball. drives me nuts, and the trio of backs Northwestern has–Porter, Himon, and Komolafe, in whatever order–don’t seem like they’ll be awful. But the offensive line took a while to even get a clue, Preston Stone looked every bit of rusty at best, and the defense tackled and pursued at Jim O’Neill levels of incompetence. This was over at halftime, and Tulane laughed its way to the finish. What a start to 2025.

LincolnParkWildcat: There’s going to be a long fall in Evanston. Either Tulane is going to be amazing, or Preston Stone is just shitty. I think both are true. It’s going to be a long holiday weekend. Fuck it. I’m running low on beer and gotta get ready to cook burgers for my family. Let’s see if things get better next week.

Scorigami! Penn State 46, Nevada 11

Dani Dennis-Sutton had two forced fumbles in this game. He had two forced fumbles all of last season.

Oregon 59, Montana State 13

Iowa 34, Albany 7

No, really, this was all on the offense!

Michigan Flexes on New Mexico, 34-17

Michigan’s offense does things like pass the ball now, so watch out!

RockymtnBlue: New Mexico is projected to be one of the worst teams in FBS. And maybe they still will be, but they showed plenty of fight in Ann Arbor. Michigan lost 5 games last year, and got hammered in some of them, but this is the first time in years that it felt like only one team was keeping its composure, and it wasn’t wearing maize and blue.

I’ve been expecting Michigan’s defense to be really good, and possibly elite. It was not good last night. Michigan massively rotated personnel, including a ton of true and RS freshmen, so maybe this was experimental based on opponent. But if it doesn’t get a LOT better, Michigan will struggle to be bowl eligible, even with the easiest conference schedule of any team in the league.

On the other hand, the offense was a revelation. True freshman Bryce Underwood significantly out-performed any Michigan quarterback from last year. Not surprisingly, he struggles with reads as a play develops, but when his first read is there he looks nothing like a freshman.

Most surprising was it felt like the defense struggled all night, and the offense picked them up. That’s exactly opposite of Michigan of the last several years and certainly opposite of what’s expected this year. If the defense figures it out, it could be a fun season

Brian Gillis: Michigan held off a game Mew Mexico squad in the season opener for both teams. Michigan jumped out to an early 17-0 lead en route to a 34-17 victory in a game in which the Wolverines never really distanced themselves from the visiting Lobos but were never really challenged, either. Freshman quarterback Bryce Underwood wasn’t asked to do a lot, but looked good in doing what he did, completing 21 of 31 passes for 251 yards and a touchdown. If there was a concern for the home team it was that, with the exception of for two long runs by Justice Haynes, its running game never really got on track and it’s defense couldn’t keep New Mexico off the field – things Michigan will have to work on if the Wolverines hope to survive next week’s trip to Norman.