Best of Week 2: No, Texas is not back (yet), but it was no joke Saturday

• ACC reporter.
• Joined ESPN in 2012.
• Graduate of the University of Delaware.

Texas is not back.

Not on Saturday, anyway. Not without its burgeoning star QB, Quinn Ewers. Not on Nick Saban’s watch.

But for much of the 12 years since Texas last played Alabama — another game in which it lost its starting quarterback — the Longhorns have served as a national punchline, with “Texas is back!” the easiest joke in college football. (Though, credit to Texas for providing plenty of other material, from “OK, cool. Hook ’em” to multiple losses to Kansas to an attack monkey trained to steal Halloween candy. It has been a wild a decade.) And yet, Texas was no joke Saturday. It was a worthy competitor for a team many expect to win a national title. It was a team that, with Ewers — or, perhaps, a properly called safety in the end zone in the third quarter — might’ve pulled the upset.

Instead, it was still a loss, the seventh in the past nine games for Texas. But the feeling in the aftermath isn’t the familiar aura of malaise. No, as the Gen Z kids would say, Saturday felt like a genuine vibe shift.

It should be said that Alabama still has the true legends on its side. Bryce Young once again delivered as compelling a performance as a quarterback is capable of delivering when it mattered most. Young accounted for 68 yards on Alabama’s gotta-have-it 11-play touchdown drive with 8:29 to go, a merciless shredding of a Texas defense that had been dominant to that point. Then, after the Longhorns took a two-point lead with 1:29 play, Young delivered again, a Houdini-esque escape from a sack turning into a 20-yard gain that set up the game-winning field goal.

“When his best was needed,” Saban said after the game, “he was really good.”

Young has done this again and again in his brilliant career, saving Alabama against Florida and LSU and Auburn last year, and again Saturday, with one unflappable late drive after another. Much as we might want to turn our attention elsewhere, he is without question college football’s best player.

But so much of what we thought we knew about these two teams now seems far less solid in the aftermath of Alabama’s 20-19 win.

How good is Texas? Ewers was shredding Alabama’s secondary before suffering a shoulder injury in the first half, and Longhorns fans will spend the next few days — heck, maybe the next few years — wondering what might’ve been if the former five-star recruit had remained in the game. The Texas defense dominated at the line of scrimmage, inhaling Alabama blockers and tormenting Young throughout, while the DBs gave the Tide virtually nothing downfield.

How seriously should we consider Alabama’s struggles? Young remains a super star, and Will Anderson Jr. delivered with a game-saving sack when it was needed the most. But Xavier Worthy exposed the Tide’s secondary routinely before the Ewers injury, the Alabama receivers offered little help, and the O-line was hardly the brick wall we’d grown used to seeing from Saban’s teams over the years.

Are we living in a computer simulation? The fact that a red-haired kicker named Bert Auburn nearly sealed a Texas win over the Tide would lead us to believe that, yes, we are. No way that happens unless we’re in the Matrix.

That’s actually fitting because, for much of the past 12 years, the only case to be made for Texas’ return to national prominence required a bit of theoretical physics and a healthy imagination. After Saturday, however, it’s not so crazy.

No, Texas isn’t back, but even a win Saturday wouldn’t have proven the Longhorns had reached some long-anticipated mountaintop. The journey back is exactly that — a journey. And what Saturday was, in spite of the final score, was a necessary and emphatic step in the right direction.

Break up the Blue Devils

Is it too soon to start talking about Mike Elko as a coach of the year candidate?

After winning just five games in the previous two seasons combined, Elko has Duke at 2-0 after knocking off Northwestern, 31-23 on Saturday. Jordan Waters scored twice on the ground, and Duke recovered a fumble in the end zone with just seconds left on the clock to secure the win.

A look ahead at the Blue Devils schedule — FCS North Carolina A&T, Kansas, Virginia and Georgia Tech await next — and there’s a real chance the ACC’s worst team will go bowling in Elko’s first year at the helm.

Or, perhaps, it’s a bit of Duke’s patented early season success.

Since 2017, the Blue Devils are 7-1 in Power 5 non-conference games in August and September — the most such wins by any Power 5 team. Their lone loss came to Alabama in 2019. Five of those wins came as an underdog.

After the season’s opening month, however, things haven’t gone quite as well. Duke is just 8-28 vs. Power 5 teams in October, November and December in that stretch.

Big bets and bad beats

Betting Alabama to cover the first-half spread had been one of the safest wagers in the sport. Since 2020, Saban’s team is 21-7 against the spread in the first half of games (and 11-4 ATS overall in non-conference play).

Not surprisingly, the bettors at Caesars backed the Tide heavily. The line opened with Alabama as 11.5-point favorites, but that number climbed all the way up to 14 as 95% of tickets backing the Tide.

Instead, the Tide went to halftime tied with Texas at 10 — a reminder that even Bryce Young can’t outrun Vegas.

Northwestern was headed to a potential game-tying TD — and a cover for bettors who took the over of 57 — as Evan Hull rumbled toward the end zone with just seconds left on the clock. But Hull fumbled at the 1, and Duke recovered in the end zone to secure the 31-23 win — and the under, in painful fashion.

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