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College Football's Craziest Stats Of The Week: Week 1 Video Game Numbers

College Football's Craziest Stats Of The Week: Week 1 Video Game Numbers

Want the craziest college football stats? Take a look back at some of the best “Video Game Numbers” of Week 1 across FSC, D2, and D3 college football.

Sep 5, 2024 by Briar Napier
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If you’ve been playing a bit too much College Football 25 in advance of the college football season, you know exactly what’s meant whenever an announcer calls a player’s stats “video game numbers.”

It’s the beyond-belief type of stats that make you wonder how numbers like those are even possible as they’re difficult enough to achieve in a video game, let alone reality.

Well, that’s what the purpose of this new series from FloFootball is for — highlighting those types of numbers from across the college football landscape on a weekly basis and showing who had weeks that are worth your attention.

All levels of NCAA football will be showcased in this series, and if you can’t get enough, FloFootball will be the exclusive home of multiple FCS and Divisions II and III leagues across the entire season and will be here to help satisfy your cravings.

Here’s a look back at some of the best “Video Game Numbers” of Week 1 across college football: 

Justus Breston, DB, Mary (two interceptions, two touchdowns, one tackle vs. Jamestown)

What’s better than a pick-six? Two pick-sixes.

A defense is rarely the most productive source of points in a football game, but that’s exactly what happened when the University of Mary took down NAIA Jamestown 23-6 off the back of a two-interception, two-score day from Breston in his team debut.

The Marauders’ defense was active early, nabbing a safety near the end of the first quarter when a high Jamestown snap went airborne and out of the end zone. Then on the Jimmies’ next offensive play (the final snap of the first quarter, as well), Breston got in front of an errant pass and took it back 25 yards to the house.

The junior from Atlanta, however, was just getting started.

Just a few minutes of game time later in the second quarter, Breston once again was able to intercept a Jamestown ball and take it back 47 yards along the sideline, putting Mary up by a 16-0 margin almost entirely on his own. His coverage stayed solid the rest of the game as the Jimmies finished with just 178 yards passing and were only able to get a touchdown when the game was out of reach late in the fourth quarter.

Will the Marauders’ strategy of relying on their defense for points work out in the long run? Probably not, especially with gunslingers like Minnesota Duluth’s Kyle Walljasper and Minnesota State Moorhead’s Jack Strand looming in Mary’s Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference slate. But they will need to think twice about throwing Breston’s way.

Gideon Lampron, LB, Dayton (11 tackles, two forced fumbles, one sack, safety vs. Saint Francis)

Whatever the Flyers needed Lampron to do on the defensive end this past weekend, he came up clutch and was heavily involved in the team getting out to an early lead to take down Saint Francis by an 18-10 margin last Saturday.

Dayton, which is looking for its first Pioneer Football League championship since 2015, got a monster day from Lampron, who saw three of his 11 tackles go for a loss as he recovered one of the fumbles he forced, which eventually led to the Flyers’ first touchdown in the first quarter.

 Later in the same frame, Lampron immediately took advantage when UD’s punter pinned Saint Francis at its own 1-yard-line, bringing down Red Flash tailback Markell Holman for a safety on SFU’s first play of the drive and helping grow the Flyers’ first-quarter lead to 9-0 in the process.

Lampron continued to wreak havoc for the rest of the game, leading his team in tackles and earning himself the first Stats Perform National Defensive Player of the Week honor given out of the season for his performance. The 5-11 redshirt sophomore and Ohio native was one of only two players in the FCS last week to have forced multiple fumbles. 

Maverick McIvor, QB, Abilene Christian (36-for-51 passing, 506 yards, three touchdowns vs. Texas Tech)

There were plenty of near- or successful FCS-over-FBS upsets — Montana State winning at New Mexico, Idaho threatening Oregon late in the game, etc; — over the course of Weeks 0 and 1 in college football, but arguably the most entertaining game of that bunch was when Abilene Christian played at Texas Tech and nearly defeated the Red Raiders in a 52-51 shootout.

The Wildcats can thank McIvor (a former Texas Tech player for three years) for nearly giving the program one of the greatest wins in its history.

A big underdog in Lubbock which found itself down 15-0 less than halfway through the first quarter and 32-14 late in the first half, ACU roared back into the game through the brilliance of McIvor, who became the first Wildcat signal-caller to throw for over 500 yards against a Division I opponent (ACU moved up from D-II in 2013).

ACU’s pass game accounted for a massive chunk of the team’s 615 yards for the game, with McIvor skillfully dicing up the Red Raider defense all game and either hitting his receivers for big plays — like when he and Blayne Taylor connected for a 71-yard house call with two minutes left in the first half — or chunk passes that got the Wildcats in threatening positions to score.

McIvor led the Wildcats to overtime, and while he was unable to convert what would’ve been a go-ahead two-point conversion to win it, it’s abundantly clear after that performance that ACU is a team to be feared in the United Athletic Conference this season.

Keaundre McCullough, RB, William Jewell (25 carries, 402 yards, five TDs vs. Fort Lewis)

A solid running back for the Cardinals in 2023 who ran for 731 yards and five touchdowns in 10 games, McCullough — based off of his first game of 2024 at Fort Lewis — has plans to absolutely shatter those marks this fall.

There was absolutely no stopping the Mississippi native as he ran free in the mountain air of Colorado, becoming one of the few players in the history of college football to have ever run for over 400 yards in a single game as he scampered for 16.1 yards per carry.

The redshirt senior was able to find paydirt all over the field, picking up touchdown runs of 1, 4, 43, 75 and 93 yards with his longest being his last in the fourth quarter, sealing the Cardinals’ 35-20 victory when they were backed up deep in their own territory with under four minutes to play.

William Jewell only went 2-8 last season — and hasn’t had a winning season since 2007 when it was in the NAIA — but if McCullough puts up numbers like he had in Week 1 on a frequent basis, the Cardinals’ 2024 record should be much, much better. 

Reggie Retzlaff, WR, Colorado State Pueblo (11 receptions, 241 yards, three TDs vs. South Dakota Mines)

Maybe Retzlaff and the ThunderWolves caught wind of FloFootball’s D-II playoff projections and didn’t care for the fact that CSU Pueblo wasn’t predicted to make the postseason.

After a 35-6 rout over South Dakota Mines to open their season on the road in which multiple program records were set, the ThunderWolves sure have the attention of the D-II universe now.

In winning its eighth straight game (the second-longest active streak in D-II), CSU Pueblo threw for a school-record 548 yards, 508 of which were tossed by quarterback Dylan Larsen and most of which were caught by Retzlaff, a senior from California. Retzlaff’s yardage haul — also a school record — saw him snag the ThunderWolves’ first three touchdowns of the game, with a stingy Pack defense preventing the game from turning into a points fest as the Hardrockers only managed a pair of field goals.

It was a breakout game for Retzlaff, who is in his second season with the ThunderWolves and by comparison had three 100-yard receiving games a season ago and none over 200 yards, as well as no games in his CSU Pueblo career with over seven catches until last Thursday.

He’ll have a couple of chances coming up in which he’ll get to prove that his massive game to start the year wasn’t a one-off — a pair of 2023 playoff teams, Texas Permian Basin and Grand Valley State, visit Pueblo over the next two weeks — but it’s a good sign for the Pack in that they have a QB-WR duo that can break out and thrive on any given day.

Division 2 College Football Rankings

D2football.com Poll

  1. Harding (0-0) - Prev. 1  
  2. Central Missouri (0-0) - Prev. 2  
  3. Pittsburg State (1-0) - Prev. 4  
  4. Grand Valley State (0-0) - Prev. 5  
  5. Valdosta State (1-0) - Prev. 6  
  6. Colorado Mines (0-0) - Prev. 7  
  7. Central Washington (0-0) - Prev. 8  
  8. Minnesota State (1-0) - Prev. 11  
  9. Ferris State (0-1) - Prev. 3  
  10. Kutztown (0-0) - Prev. 9  
  11. Slippery Rock (0-0) - Prev. 10  
  12. Delta State (1-0) - Prev. 14  
  13. Lenoir-Rhyne (0-0) - Prev. 12  
  14. West Florida (0-0) - Prev. 13  
  15. UT Permian Basin (1-0) - Prev. 16  
  16. Indianapolis (0-0) - Prev. 15  
  17. Ouachita Baptist (0-0) - Prev. 17  
  18. Virginia Union (1-0) - Prev. 18  
  19. Western Colorado (0-0) - Prev. 19  
  20. Bemidji State (1-0) - Prev. 20  
  21. Augustana (0-0) - Prev. 21  
  22. Henderson State (0-0) - Prev. 23  
  23. Minnesota Duluth (1-0) - Prev. 25  
  24. Fort Hays (1-0) - Prev. NR  
  25. Charleston (1-0) - Prev. 24

Watch D2 Football On FloFootball

Here's the D2 broadcast schedule on FloFootball for week 2 and 3 of the college football season. Subscribe to watch. 

Thursday, September 5

Saturday, September 7

Friday, September 13

Saturday, September 14

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Don't miss the latest college football action by bookmarking the FloFootball schedule page for the lastest games. 

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