The Friday Notebook: Hurricane Isaias vs. Georgia-Alabama, Five Games Tonight, and Pitt Just Lost Its Quarterback

LAS VEGAS — There is a hurricane headed for the biggest college football game of the season, and the game is not blinking. Hurricane Isaias is forecast to make landfall around the Alabama Gulf Coast late tonight into Saturday morning, with 50-to-60-mph wind gusts expected across Alabama and eastern Mississippi overnight. Tuscaloosa is under a tropical storm watch and a flood watch through Saturday night. And No. 2 Georgia vs. No. 6 Alabama is still kicking off at 7:30 p.m. ET Saturday on ABC. It's a loaded Friday across college football: five games tonight headlined by No. 8 BYU hosting Iowa State, and 5-0, newly ranked Pitt just lost its starting quarterback to a torn ACL.

The storm that couldn't move the game

This one got serious enough that both schools spent the week game-planning around the weather instead of each other. Georgia coach Kirby Smart told ESPN's Scott Van Pelt on Wednesday night that “there were some other options on different kick times on Saturday” as officials studied the storm models — but the storm is moving fast, and Smart said it “could be out before kickoff.” Alabama's official line, from a Wednesday evening statement: the school is monitoring the forecast with the National Weather Service, the SEC office and Georgia, player and fan safety is the priority, and everyone should rely on official channels. Translation: we're playing.

The most visible casualty is ESPN's College GameDay, which is in Tuscaloosa for the showdown but will broadcast from inside Coleman Coliseum instead of its usual outdoor set — 8 to 11 a.m. CT, doors opening at 5:30 a.m. CT, no camping. It's the fifth time in six weeks GameDay has set up at an SEC venue, and the 21st time Alabama has hosted, second only to Ohio State's 26. Saturday marks the fourth straight year the show has come to Tuscaloosa. The weather forecast for game time itself is actually encouraging: Saturday brings a 100 percent chance of rain in the morning and afternoon with gusts to 45 mph, but by night the chance drops to 40 percent with temperatures in the low 60s. Alabama meteorologist James Spann told Fox Weather on Friday morning that “because this thing is accelerating so quickly, we think the game will be just fine. No rain. Breezy? Yes.” His real worry: power outages from 4-to-6 a.m. gusts, hours before kickoff. For the full storm-and-game breakdown — the picks, the GameDay details, what the weather does to the matchup — we went deep on it here.

Friday night's five

Before Saturday arrives, there's a real Friday slate — five FBS games, and the late one is a banger. Florida State visits Louisville at 4 p.m. PT to open the evening, and the nightcap is No. 8 BYU hosting Iowa State at 10:15 p.m. ET on ESPN — a Big 12 game with genuine stakes and a brutal injury report on both sides.

The Cougars will be without star running back LJ Martin, the reigning Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year, who is expected to miss about a month with the lower-body injury he suffered in last week's 17-10 win at TCU — ESPN's Pete Thamel reported the timeline, and it means Martin also misses the looming showdown with No. 3 Notre Dame. Martin leads BYU with 344 rushing yards, and he's not the only Cougar out: linebacker Isaiah Glasker and running back Sione Moa are also ruled out. Iowa State isn't healthy either — linebacker Rylan Barnes was downgraded from questionable to doubtful, and safety Drew Surges, defensive end Caden Crawford and defensive tackle Ka'Mori Moore are all out. The Cyclones are chasing their first back-to-back Big 12 wins under first-year coach Jimmy Rogers after quarterback Aiden Florda's five-touchdown eruption in last week's 45-42 win over West Virginia. A short-handed BYU at home, at altitude, at night, against a quarterback who just hung five touchdowns on somebody: this is the best Friday game of the season so far.

The rest of the slate: No. 20 Iowa (4-1) travels to Washington at 6 p.m. PT, bringing a defense allowing just 12.6 points per game into a road environment that has swallowed better teams. Washington State visits Utah State and Wyoming heads to San Jose State, both at 6 p.m. PT.

Pitt's season just took a gut punch

The cruelest news of the week belongs to Pittsburgh. The Panthers are 5-0, ranked No. 25 in the AP poll for the first time this season, 2-0 in the ACC — and they just lost starting quarterback Mason Heintschel to a torn ACL suffered in the fourth quarter of last week's 35-33 win at Virginia Tech. He's out for the season. Heintschel had been one of the breakout quarterbacks in the country: 98-of-148 for 1,304 yards, 14 touchdowns and one interception. Pitt trailed Virginia Tech 14-0, scored 21 unanswered, led 35-24 in the fourth, and survived only when Hokies kicker John Love missed a 36-yard field goal wide left as time expired. Coach Pat Narduzzi said afterward that he hopes “the country will respect the Panthers now.” The country might. The injury report doesn't care.

Here's the thing, though: oddsmakers haven't buried them. Pitt is still a 3.5-point favorite at home against North Carolina on Saturday (noon ET, ESPN). The Tar Heels are 2-2 and still searching for a run game — they managed 77 rushing yards on 23 carries in last week's loss to Notre Dame, and Pitt allows just 55.6 rushing yards per game, one of the stingiest marks in the country. UNC quarterback Billy Edwards Jr. has thrown for 819 yards and six touchdowns against three picks, but he threw two first-half interceptions against the Irish, and that's 14 points you can't give a Pat Narduzzi defense. If Pitt's defense travels the 300 feet from the locker room to the field intact, the Panthers can absolutely win an ugly one. The question is whether anyone in gold and blue can throw the ball forward.

The quarterback files

Tennessee's quarterback situation went from intriguing to alarming in one half of football. Freshman Faizon Brandon remains listed as questionable on the SEC availability report ahead of Saturday's trip to Arkansas (4:15 p.m. ET, SEC Network) — and the reason is what happened last week. Brandon started the win over Auburn and completed 3 of 8 passes for zero yards and an interception before sophomore George MacIntyre replaced him in the second quarter and went 8-of-10 for 86 yards. Zero yards. On eight attempts. In the SEC. The No. 15 Volunteers (4-1) are playing their first conference road game of the season at a 2-3 Arkansas team with nothing to lose, and they might be doing it with a quarterback controversy they absolutely did not plan on.

And then there's Michigan, where the quarterback discourse has officially left the rails. Robert Griffin III revealed on his Outta Pocket podcast this week that Michigan offered him a job two years ago to be Bryce Underwood's personal quarterbacks coach — and he turned it down to keep calling games and building his YouTube channel. Griffin's larger point: Michigan doesn't need a new quarterback, it needs to figure out the one it has. The numbers say the frustration is real: Underwood completed 10 of 21 passes for 101 yards and two interceptions in last week's 20-14 loss to Minnesota, dropping the Wolverines to 0-2 in the Big Ten, and the calls to bench the former five-star phenom are getting louder by the day. When a Heisman winner is publicly explaining why he said no to coaching your quarterback, your quarterback development has a perception problem that goes beyond one bad Saturday.

The Heisman minute

At some point we stop calling it a race and start calling it a coronation. Ohio State wide receiver Jeremiah Smith has 44 catches for 823 yards and nine touchdowns through five games — he leads the country in receptions and yards and is tied for the touchdown lead. He went for 206 yards on 11 catches in last week's 31-14 win at Iowa. And here's the absurd part: through five games, Smith has better numbers than DeVonta Smith had through five games of his 2020 Heisman season at Alabama (556 yards, four touchdowns on 45 catches). DeVonta finished that year with 117 catches for 1,856 yards and 23 scores and a statue. Jeremiah is on pace to shatter all of it.

Even the skeptics are folding. Ohio State coach Ryan Day laid out the math this week: single-covered, Smith is open; double-covered, he's sort of open; triple-covered, he's covered — and somebody else has to be open. Fox Sports ran the column headlined to just hand him the trophy already. And David Pollack — who said on September 7 that he'd rather have Miami's Malachi Toney, and who posted in August that the gap between Smith and Texas receiver Cam Coleman was “a lot closer than you think” — got his old posts resurfaced this week and responded that he'd already recorded his apology. Pollack now says Smith “has to be” his Heisman frontrunner. For the record, Toney caught 5 of 10 targets for 40 yards in Miami's 41-13 win at Clemson, a game Pollack said left Toney looking “a little human.” Smith, meanwhile, has four 150-yard games, tying David Boston's 1998 Ohio State single-season record — and he needs four more touchdown catches to pass Braylon Edwards' Big Ten career record of 39. He's a junior. Chasing him: Alabama quarterback Keelon Russell, who has three straight 250-yard games and threw three touchdowns in the 56-23 demolition of Mississippi State — and who gets the biggest stage in the sport Saturday night against Georgia. For more on Russell's rise, we covered his surge earlier this week.

Saturday, at a glance

Georgia-Alabama is the headliner and it isn't close, but the undercard is loaded. No. 3 Notre Dame (5-0) hosts Stanford at 3:30 p.m. ET on NBC, and the Irish are playing their best football of the Marcus Freeman era — 5-0 for the first time under Freeman, 15 straight wins, all by double digits. Quarterback C.J. Carr has 16 total touchdowns against one interception, and his connection with receiver Jordan Faison (eight catches, 132 yards, two scores against North Carolina) is completing 75.5 percent of its targets, among the best marks for any active duo in the country. Win this one and the runway gets serious: No. 8 BYU and No. 4 Miami are next on the docket.

The nightcap is No. 19 USC at Penn State (7:30 p.m. ET, NBC) — a desperation game for both. The Trojans (5-1) are in must-win-out territory for the playoff if they lose in Beaver Stadium, and Penn State is reeling: a 34-14 home loss to Northwestern in which the Nittany Lions gave up 413 rushing yards on 55 carries while managing 48 of their own, with quarterback Rocco Becht (26-of-41, 243 yards, one touchdown, two picks) insisting afterward his confidence hasn't wavered. Somebody's season ends Saturday night. Elsewhere: No. 5 Ohio State hosts Maryland with Smith's Heisman campaign as the main attraction; No. 15 Tennessee goes to Arkansas with the Brandon question hanging over everything; No. 14 Missouri hosts Texas A&M at 11 a.m. CT on ABC in a game where both teams are banged up (full injury rundown in yesterday's notebook); and No. 4 Miami (5-0) gets a bye week to sit back and watch the chaos.