In a word, Week 2 of the college football season was ruthless. If you had a weakness to uncover, an insecurity to exploit, Week 2 exploited it.
If you have an offense you haven't modernized in years, and you haven't developed a particularly good quarterback in a decade (Texas A&M's Jimbo Fisher, Iowa's Kirk Ferentz) ...
If you have a defense that quietly fell apart in the offseason while you were spending all your time fixing your special teams and close-game woes (Nebraska's Scott Frost) ...
If you're a young head coach taking on a big job with an even younger offensive coordinator and a redshirt freshman at quarterback (Notre Dame's Marcus Freeman) ...
... then Week 2 didn't work out too well for you. If you're named Wisconsin, West Virginia, Virginia, Missouri or Northwestern, it didn't either.
Week 2 was so packed with madcap games and confusing results that we should step back and make sense of what we saw. Which particularly disappointing/resounding performances were signs of impending doom/glory, and which were just funky? What's real and what's fake two weeks into a wacky 2022?
(Note: While I referenced Ferentz and Iowa above, there's nothing about the Hawkeyes below because there's very little about their ongoing offensive disaster that is surprising at this point.)
Alabama is probably fine
It has felt for a while that we're in a particularly predictable time for college football. Ohio State, Clemson and Oklahoma all put together long runs of dominance in their respective conferences rather recently, and Georgia seems to have become a second Alabama. But the first Alabama is still the primary reason for said predictability. In an era with scholarship limits and massive spending, it's not supposed to be possible to finish in the AP top 10 for 14 straight years, spend at least part of 15 straight years at No. 1 and win five national titles. Nick Saban taught the college football world how to build a proper, uncertainty-killing juggernaut, and he still steers his better than pretty much anybody.