CFB Blitz: Simmons the menace headlines early Week 4 takeaways

The weekly CFB Blitz is the spot to catch up on the most important developments from the day's action and examine their significance moving forward.

Colin Simmons is a menace

You hear Colin Simmons frequently described as a superstar for the Texas defense, but a better word for the elite pass-rusher is "menace." Dictionary.com defines the word as "a person whose actions, attitudes, or ideas are considered dangerous or harmful," and Simmons was certainly all of those things Saturday in a 20-17 win at Tennessee.

The junior was an absolute wrecking ball off the edge, tormenting an overmatched offensive line from the jump. He finished with five sacks on the day - more than 40 FBS teams had total entering play Saturday - while registering eight total tackles and forcing a fumble. The five-sack showing makes him the first FBS player in the last 20 years to hit that number against a ranked team, according to ESPN Insights.

Of course, there's more than one side to a menace, and Simmons showed he's happy playing the other part in the first half. The result was one of the most absurd - and funniest - penalty announcements we've ever heard.

It's probably a safe bet that Steve Sarkisian will allow Simmons to celebrate sacks however he wants if he keeps putting up five per game in SEC play.

UCLA nailed the coaching hire

It's only been four games for Bob Chesney at UCLA, but we are already confident enough to call it: The Bruins got themselves an elite coach. Chesney's latest performance featured a 2,600-mile trip across the country to play Maryland in a game that kicked off at 10:30 a.m. PT. We only need to look at last week's narrow win by USC at Rutgers to see how difficult that trip can be for west coast programs. Nobody told Chesney's UCLA that.

The Bruins boatraced Maryland from the jump, hanging 54 points on the hosts and holding them without a touchdown all game. Chesney's already established an elite rushing attack with the Bruins, who piled up 266 yards on an absurd 6.8 per clip and found the end zone four times.

The coaching contrast on display was stark, with Mike Locksley's Terrapins totally unprepared for the game. Locksley is now in his eighth year with the program and things are going backward, quickly. Back-to-back four-win seasons put Locksley on the hot seat, and the start to the 2026 campaign should make the final call an easy one in College Park.

The biggest regret for Maryland brass might be that it didn't make the move last year when it had a chance to hire an upstart coach from James Madison just 140 miles away: Bob Chesney.

Louisville gonna Louisville

It wouldn't be a college football season without Louisville taking down a ranked opponent only to follow that up with an absolute stinker as a big favorite. That tendency struck the Cardinals once again Saturday, with Jeff Brohm's team losing at home to Wake Forest just one week after beating SMU in a dramatic affair.

The offense that ran wild for 286 yards on 8.7 per carry last week was nowhere to be found, with Wake Forest's 78th-ranked rushing defense completely owning the line of scrimmage. Louisville needed 38 carries to gain only 75 yards on the day and forced Lincoln Kienholz into 36 pass attempts as a result. The Ohio State transfer has been electric in the starting role, but that's not the recipe to a Louisville victory.

The Cardinals win over SMU put them in the driver's seat for the ACC title race largely thanks to a very comfortable schedule. The Cardinals avoid Miami, Virginia, Virginia Tech, and Clemson in conference play and should have been favored in every game the rest of the way. However, Saturday served the latest reminder that Louisville is one of the rare teams that can both beat, and lose to, virtually anybody in the country in any given week.

Smith will threaten NCAA TD record

Watch Jeremiah Smith for 10 minutes and he certainly looks like the kind of player that should hold the all-time single-season receiving touchdown record. Consider Saturday's performance against Illinois the launching pad for that pursuit from the Ohio State star. Smith caught four touchdown passes against the Illini - taking advantage of a curious decision to frequently play man coverage against the freakish receiver.

The FBS record for touchdown catches in a season is 27 by Louisiana Tech's Troy Edwards in 1998. Smith now has 7 through four games, but a prolonged Ohio State playoff run will give him plenty of time to hit that number - especially if future opponents also play him man-to-man.