College football analyst Josh Pate reacts to Week 1's results

Key notes from Josh Pate interview

• I have no clue what I saw from Alabama. I was impressed by them when I went to their practice. Nick Saban went to Florida State’s practice and said they were going to win the ACC. I was dumbfounded. It was one thing to get out executed. That happens in Week 1 every year. That’s explainable. Some of the nonnegotiables that we get from the top 10 teams, just effort, that stuff wasn’t there. For everyone’s staff that says they will get it right, I am going to have to see it to believe it. I am starting from scratch for Alabama. No matter how many games they win, the possibility of that kind of game is always there for Alabama.
   
• When you win, they are loose and having fun out there. When they lose, it is all an indictment. Kalen DeBoer’s Alabama is different from Saban's. The base of it should be the same, though. It goes for all teams. The tree is the same, but the branches looked different between the DeBoer and Saban’s Alabama teams. If we find out that the root system is corrupted, that would surprise me. But it would be one of the only ways it could explain what we saw Saturday, to me. Sometimes you get a result on Saturday, people in programs will say, “Yeah, this is the way our team is going.” Someone asked Kane Wommack, the defensive coordinator, if they were unprepared. He said we were prepared. It wasn’t a matter of unpreparedness.
   
• There are certain programs that I don’t expect to be victimized by bad performances. Georgia is one, Ohio State, and I thought Alabama. It may be that no one is immune to it. The next train car in that is the floor for these teams. For a long time, for an elite program, 9-3 or 8-4 is the absolute worst it can get. That only applies to three or four teams in the country, but that may not be the case anymore. But for Florida State in 2024, it was just off the cliff. And maybe now there are no more guardrails. If you don’t think Alabama could miss a bowl game, you don’t understand the world we are in. If it goes bad, it is going to go really bad. They play ULM and Wisconsin in the next two weeks, but then they go to Georgia. This is going to be the most chaotic season in a while. I am just going to have to see it to believe it.
   
• I floated the idea that Texas could be a two-loss team going into the Red River game, and I got excoriated. They are the preseason favorite, but what happens between the lines, on the field, is real. It was a very competitive game. They could straight up lose in Gainesville. Those are tough spots to play; it doesn’t mean they are a bad team. Then they have to go to Dallas to play Oklahoma. It was never unfathomable, how bad could it be for them? Maybe four to five losses. It is much more possible than people realize. Nobody’s worst case is 8-4. Unless you have a schedule like Penn State. You play Oregon and Ohio State. Those are the only point-spread competitive games. I would suggest to you that there will be a 7-5 team at the end of the year, and we will say that they could be a playoff-type team, not making it, but have the skills to compete.
   
• I don’t think LSU is a mirage. I kept thinking what if Blake Baker were there in the Jayden Daniels era. I was still a little bit out on them because of their offensive line. We’ll see if it is there consistently. Then, of course, the defense was the big story. Garrett Nussmeier had to do so much because the defense was a liability, and a lack of run game. Now, Clemson might be in that situation with the run game. For LSU, they’ve always had the talent. I wanted to know if all the facets were there. It is Week 1, so I want to be careful about it. But that is about an encouraging performance by any team. Tennessee’s offensive line was great. I thought that game would be close, but they pulled away. LSU answered a lot of questions for me. So now they need to stack those results on top of each other.
   
• The offense was the takeaway for me for A&M. There was another team that gave up more than they were comfortable with. It was Tennessee. With A&M, I looked at the offense. There was a back door cover. I had UTSA covering. I understand that the defensive numbers in the box score were more than what you were comfortable with. Offensively, it snapped into place.
   
• If you are not playing a marquee matchup in Week 1, people say you are playing a tomato can. The fact is, UTSA would be a multi-touchdown favorite over many of the opponents' other teams played this weekend. It is not the biggest shock in the world that they didn’t just lie down.
   
• How do we define a blowout? 18 or more? Wow. If three plays go the wrong way, it’s over. This idea by you, David, I would ask you, “If you lose to a Northern Illinois kind of team, do you get eliminated?” So here’s the problem: If Pate State plays Nuño Tech, what if we have an in-game injury and that causes the loss? And we try to use that as a defense. We really have to workshop this. I like some of the parameters that are cutthroat.