Georgia Tech's Week Zero upset of Florida State in Ireland proved that college football doesn't even have to stay in-country for the chaos to start.

It was an apropos beginning to a three-week season intro that has already provided a handful of surprises. From the Seminoles' sluggish start to an upset for the ages, from young players shining to a career resurrection, the 2024 campaign has given us so much already.

Just when you think you have a grasp on which teams look like they could separate from the pack, more shenanigans ensue.

And we're just getting started.

Some of the powerhouses predicted to persevere throughout the season already look vulnerable in the early going. The best thing about believing in some of those top teams to live up to greatness just makes the next upset even better.

Here are the biggest shockers in a season full of them so far.

Florida State's Monumental Fall

Last year, the gripe heard around college football came from Tallahassee when an unbeaten Florida State was left out of a four-team playoff after quarterback Jordan Travis was lost for the year.

The consolation prize was a 60-point loss to Georgia in the Orange Bowl after half the Seminoles' playmakers elected to sit out the game. Since then, Mike Norvell's program seemingly has fallen apart.

There's no bigger "What the heck?" in college football than a winless FSU team.

Despite a preseason ranking of 10th and the belief the 'Noles would have one of the nation's top defensive fronts, they're currently 0-2 and have far more questions.

After losing to Georgia Tech in Ireland in Week Zero, Florida State really wasn't competitive with a Boston College team ushering in the Bill O'Brien era on Monday night. This doesn't look like a College Football Playoff team or even an ACC contender.

What made the Seminoles think transfer quarterback DJ Uiagalelei would be anything different than what he's been at two previous stops throughout his uneven collegiate career at Clemson and Oregon State?

He's a middling game-manager, and FSU doesn't have enough weapons around him. It hasn't been able to run the ball (59 yards per game), and it's been pedestrian on offense, too.

Norvell has done a good job recruiting, but after finding success in the transfer portal in the past, he attempted to rebuild a team that lost a bunch of pro players that way again. The chemistry and the infusion of stars simply haven't been there.

No Leaf Clover

If you're discounting the tradition of the little MAC school in DeKalb, Illinois, you shouldn't.

The Northern Illinois Huskies have a legacy of winning and even played in a BCS bowl back in 2013 when they went to the Orange Bowl.

But what they did Saturday against Notre Dame was special.

The Huskies marched into South Bend and overwhelmed the Irish throughout the game, then watched a 35-yard, game-winning field goal from Kanon Woodill sail through the uprights to give them their first-ever win over a top-five opponent.

Even for the chaos of college football, this one was a stunner.

NIU coach Thomas Hammock couldn't contain his emotions after the game:

Hammock is right, the Huskies didn't need luck. They were the better team, and they delivered what may be the biggest surprise of the season. Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman, on the other hand, continues to watch his team put up at least one baffling display per season.

The Irish have to fix that to ever join the ranks of the elite again. A storied program doesn't get by on name alone.

USC's (Dare We Say) Vaunted Defense

It's extremely early, sure, but you don't have to look closely to find the massive differences between USC's 2023 and 2024 defenses.

The physicality, the fewer missed tackles, the ability to come up with big plays and get key stops are all hallmarks of this early-season Trojans defense, led by D'Anton Lynn. This is a well-coached unit that is the most improved of any side of ball in the nation.

When coach Lincoln Riley finally made a change from Alex Grinch during last season, he searched far and wide for the perfect-fit coordinator and found him across town, luring Lynn from rival UCLA.

Doug Belk left his role as Houston defensive coordinator to take over as secondary coach. Co-defensive coordinator Eric Henderson's last stop was defensive line coach/run game coordinator for the Los Angeles Rams.

Matt Entz left his job as head coach of North Dakota State to be the linebackers coach, and he won two FCS championships leading the Bison.

Riley didn't just upgrade, he traded in a Pinto for a Maserati, and it's looking like a luxury ride into the Big Ten for the Trojans. They held a high-octane LSU team to 20 points in a season-opening win, then shut down a decent mid-level offense in Utah State.

Competition ticks up after next week's bye when they travel to the Big House to play Michigan, but this turnaround is legit. And the validity and completeness of it so quickly is unexpected.

A Fresh(man) Start

College football is full of megastar wide receivers, so it would be a bit of a stretch to say the two best players at the position are true freshmen.

Don't be shocked if a pair of them don't contend for first-team All-America honors, or at least wander their way onto first-team all-conference lists. That's the type of start a special pair of former 5-stars have gotten off to.

The talk of college football may just be the immense talent of Ohio State first-year pass-catcher Jeremiah Smith. It's not really a surprise that he is terrific because he was the consensus top-ranked recruit in the country.

It's a bit shocking that he's the Buckeyes' best receiver, especially when Ohio State still has Emeka Egbuka.

But, after a couple of games, here we are. Smith has 11 catches for 211 yards and three touchdowns. Even though the Buckeyes were playing Akron and Western Michigan, he was Will Howard's top target.

Alabama freshman Ryan Williams reclassified and is supposed to be in high school this year. But all he's done so far is show out in Kalen DeBoer's offense and be a huge part of the Crimson Tide's early-season approach.

He has six grabs for 207 yards and a trio of touchdowns in Alabama's 2-0 start.

Again, these two dudes are elite. We know that. But they've stepped onto two of the four most talented teams in college football and looked like the best players on the field. That's saying something.

Ducks Hunting for Consistency

Oregon is 2-0. Nothing about that is surprising because the Ducks are probably considered one of Georgia's primary threats this year alongside Ohio State.

But a deeper dig into the Ducks shows a lot of ugly truths, the biggest of which is: They aren't a very good football team right now.

During Week 1, they needed a fourth-quarter surge to beat FCS opponent Idaho. Yes, the vaunted Vandals.

Things were a little more respectable in a tough matchup with Group of Five power Boise State on Saturday. The Broncos are expected to make a run at the College Football Playoff, but the Ducks were nearly a three-touchdown favorite.

Instead of pulling away, they trailed in the fourth quarter and needed a last-second field goal to win 37-34. They allowed 369 total yards to the Broncos, and running back Ashton Jeanty torched them for 192 on the ground.

After a piddling offensive start to the season against Idaho, the Ducks converted just 4-for-12 on third-down conversions and turned the ball over twice. It's those type of mistakes that have plagued a pedestrian start. It's also not the kind of things championship teams do.

Dan Lanning's team has a ton of talent, and the only thing that matters right now is that undefeated record. But the Ducks have got to get better.

SMU's Stumble Out of Starting Gate

One thing SMU coach Rhett Lashlee always has been able to hang his cowboy hat on with the Mustangs is a speed-racer offense that puts up a ton of points.

Unfortunately for his program, that seems to have petered out at the worst possible time.

This is the first season for SMU in the new-look Atlantic Coast Conference, alongside Stanford and California. While its defense was believed to need a couple of recruiting cycles to get up-to-speed with Power Four-caliber depth and talent, the offense had some believing they were ready to run.

But that side of the ball has been the problem spot this year.

If you look at a 34 points and 421.3 yards-per-game average, those don't look bad, right? But already quarterback Preston Stone hasn't looked like himself after last year's season-ending injury suffered late in the campaign, and Lashlee has thrown in Kevin Jennings to play the position, too.

After needing a fourth-quarter rally to beat Nevada at home, 29-24 in Week Zero, SMU bolstered those offensive numbers with a 59-7 rout of FCS opponent Houston Christian in Week 1. But in its last contest before ACC season cranks up, SMU fell flat Friday night.

Hosting BYU, the Mustangs couldn't figure out the Cougars' defense, mustering just 261 offensive yards, going 3-for-16 from third down and turning the ball over three times. Now, it looks like SMU has punching-bag potential in its new league.

It's an ugly start for the offensive-minded Lashlee, and while it's never a good time to happen, now makes it a mess.

V-U-tiful!

It's been quite the start for SEC Dore-mats.

Well, maybe we need to put that joke to rest and just say "door mats." Vanderbilt is taking the butt-of-the-joke thing to heart, and it's getting the last laugh on those underselling the team so far this season.

There was nothing earth-shattering about Saturday's 55-0 win over FCS foe Alcorn State, but it was a nice follow-up for coach Clark Lea's team to dominate so wholly and not allow a point. There was no semblance of a letdown after a huge Week 1 upset.

That's when ACC dark horse Virginia Tech marched into Nashville as big favorites and expecting maybe a nice little warm-up before making a run at the league title.

Instead, it fell behind by 17 points, and after the Hokies stormed back, Vandy found a way to win in overtime despite missing a would-be game-winning field goal at the end of regulation.

It's that type of resiliency former VU player and Notre Dame defensive coordinator Lea demands, and sure, things are going to get muddy for the Commodores once SEC play starts. But this isn't an awful football team.

They have played well, and that win over the Hokies is one of the big surprises of the season so far.

Arkansas (which probably would have made the yearbook as Team Most Likely to Fire Its Coach) nearly made this list with a near-upset of Oklahoma State on Saturday. Alas, the Hogs couldn't close the deal, but they look much better than expected, too.

Little 12?

Well, the good news is all the Big 12 favorites have survived with unbeaten records so far.

The bad news is none of them have looked good (at all) doing it.

What does that mean? In the survive-and-advance world of college football, not much. But the new-look Big 12 doesn't look a whole lot different on the national scale as the old one. With Texas now in the SEC, the conference is going to have to see a monumental improvement from somebody to make any national noise.

For much of three quarters, it looked like Oklahoma State was going to lose to SEC cellar-dweller Arkansas, but the Cowboys somehow found a way to pull out a 39-31 double-overtime win.

Kansas State needed the assistance of a questionable offensive pass-interference call to go on the road to Tulane and somehow survive a Green Wave team that hasn't missed a beat in the post-Willie Fritz era. It's still very dangerous.

Utah lost quarterback Cam Rising to injury and won an ugly 23-12 game over Baylor, and Arizona looked far from an offensive juggernaut in a 22-10 win over FCS Northern Arizona.

Thank goodness for Iowa State, which beat rival Iowa in the Cy-Hawk Rivalry with a 54-yard, game-winning field goal.

But there's nothing about the Big 12 that looks big right now except the question marks.

Hurricane Warning

The Miami Hurricanes won the transfer portal lottery when Cameron Ward decided to bypass the NFL draft and come to Coral Gables for a season.

The former Washington State (and Incarnate Word) signal-caller has been the perfect fit for a Hurricanes team needing a difference-maker at quarterback and a new identity as they search for a program upheaval in Mario Cristobal's third year.

What they may have on their hands is the best team in the ACC.

The league is down, for sure, and after Clemson looked a little more like itself against Appalachian State this past weekend, the 'Canes don't appear like they're just going to waltz through without any battle wounds, but this is a good football team.

Cristobal has won some huge recruiting battles for top-tier recruits on both sides of the ball, the same as he did at Oregon. Miami is also a destination spot for kids in the transfer portal.

It's not always easy to build that way, but the Miami coach seems to have a winning formula and the best team in the Sunshine State. He rubbed Billy Napier's and Florida's nose in the dirt a little amid all the hot-seat rumors in Week 1, and the 'Canes did what they were supposed to against Florida A&M.

Miami is playing like a top-five team, and that's unexpected after 5-7 and 7-6 seasons.

Jekyll and Hyde Starts

There a few Tier 2 teams on the national spectrum that we just can't figure out yet, and the inconsistency of a few has been shocking.

The two biggest culprits we're thinking of here are Clemson and Penn State.

Are the Tigers the team that got boat-raced by Georgia in Atlanta and didn't muster anything offensively in a pathetic display? Or are they the team that was unstoppable in dismantling Appalachian State with Cade Klubnik accounting for seven first-half touchdowns?

There's a huge difference between the Dawgs and Mountaineers, but Clemson is somewhere in the middle of those two polar teams. Which one will write the story of their 2024 season?

Hey, at least the Nittany Lions can search for their identity with a 2-0 record.

During the opening weekend, they looked stout when they went to Morgantown and dominated old-school rival West Virginia. But they played terribly in a lucky-to-escape, one-score win over Bowling Green on Saturday.

Notre Dame won on the road against a ranked Texas A&M team, then lost to Northern Illinois. Michigan won against a tough Fresno State team, then got whipped by Texas.

Will the real version of these teams please stand up?

Kyle McCord's Revival

For whatever reason, the Kyle McCord era was brief and rocky at Ohio State last year.

He was never going to fill the massive cleats of CJ Stroud, but it's almost like the Buckeyes fans expected the former elite recruit to do that. When it didn't happen quite as quickly as they thought it should, boos ensued, McCord lost confidence and then looked to move on.

Both sides moved on. Both are better for it.

So is Syracuse.

That's where McCord landed to be first-year coach Fran Brown's field general as he looks to rebuild the Orange, and, boy, has he stepped into that gap. The only negative thing is this is his only year of eligibility, but it's started out exceptionally.

Syracuse is 2-0, and McCord is the biggest reason. In a season-opening win against Ohio, he completed 27-of-39 passes for 354 yards and four touchdowns. In a much-tougher 31-28 win over Georgia Tech on Saturday, he threw for 381 more yards and four additional scores.

He looks like a star. Why shouldn't he? This is a guy who won 11 games for the Buckeyes last year but, as Syracuse.com's Chris Carlson noted, seemed to fall out of favor when Ohio State lost to Michigan again last year.

"Kyle's a good football player," Brown said. "I should send Ryan Day a bottle of champagne for allowing us to get him. It's pretty cool."

Pop the corks, 'Cuse. You've got a good one.