clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Three Things We Learned From Week 2 AAC Football

Temple is awesome, and everyone else is just trying to keep up.

Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

Well this was an interesting week. The standings are a big jumble, but if you dig down only a few inches, things appear very different on the inside.

1. Temple is for real, people.

After a dominant performance against Penn State, we were hopeful that Temple was for real and would continue the roll, but we couldn't know until it happened. While the 34-26 final score was closer than we would like, that's due in large part to playing a team with a good passing offense that wouldn't be shut down completely for four quarters.

The Owls did eventually surrender 556 yards (270 of which came in the furious fourth quarter comeback) but they also pulled together four interceptions, two of which came in the red zone, to minimize the threat. They are the heads-above favorite in the AAC right now.

2. The remaining undefeated teams are a mixed bag.

UConn is 2-0, but do we really know anything from them beating Villanova and Army by a total of 10 points that we didn't know already?

Memphis is definitely a better team than UConn, but wins over a bad FCS team and a bad Big 12 team tell us little other than they can score points.

Tulsa has at least beaten a pair of FBS teams, so I might actually rank them towards the top at the moment.

Houston also has at least a win over a P5 team at this point, but we still don't know much good about them defensively.

3. Central Florida is in for a long season.

The loss to Stanford was unexpected, but the complete lack of a rushing game will make the season even more challenging now that Justin Holman might be done for the year. Not only that, but between an inability to stop the deep pass (Stanford got 224 of their passing yards on only five completions), an inability to game manage in close and late situations (see FIU), and almost no consistency on offense before Holman got hurt, this season just got a lot longer. Given what we've seen so far, there are no obvious wins left on the schedule.