You definitely touch on the heart of the issue here. Summative vs Predictive, essentially.
You are correct that FSU/Bama was settled on the field. FSU earned it. Going forward, it will be interesting to see if they maintain that trajectory. That's where the predictive part comes in. Based on metrics like points per play, yards per play, turnover margin, and others, depending on the weighting, you can get a feel for how things would go in the future. Like I said, it would be interesting to see what would happen if Bama/FSU played again. Did FSU perform above their pay grade that day? Did Bama wake up hungover and underperform? Doesn't matter for now, FSU won fairly. But down the road would the result be the same? That's the fascinating thing about trying to predict the future with math, two weeks into a long season.
Hopefully our Horns finish higher than 12th!
Addendum: Regarding scratching preseason after week 1, then you get things like Texas Tech winning by 60 points against Arkansas-Pine Bluff week 1. You have to factor in something to mitigate that, and it might as well be some sort of ancestral memory from how those teams did the previous season, at least until we have more data.