Oh how good did that win feel? It was ugly as all hell, but it still felt so freaking good. I can’t stand Steve Spurrier, South Carolina fans rank up there with Red Sox fans in terms of annoying, and it gave FSU their first ten win season in…well, too many years.
It didn’t turn out how I wanted, but it turned out how I kind of expected. The most frustrating thing about the final score is that it should have been closer than it was. A couple of things that I took away from the game.
Since I’m spending the day on the couch watching college football, I’ve decided to share in the experience. Instead of doing a “weekend review” post, I’m going to continually update this post through the day with observations and thoughts on the games I’m watching.
11:40 – Last update. This Sugar Bowl turned out to be completely anti- Continue reading
We interrupt our regularly scheduled honeymoon post to bring you some thoughts on the weekend of college football.
I know we’re half-way through the season, but this is the first full day of football that I’ve gotten to watch from Gameday through the games that I wanted to watch. I think I’m sitting on about eight straight hours of football right now. Life is almost good.
I say almost good because my teams are kinda suckin right now. This was the weekend of crushed freakin hope.
Florida State looked ugly through most of the game. They played really well towards the end of the game and were able to tie it up in the fourth quarter, but that was just to give me hope they could stomp on at the end of the game. I called it at half-time, too. I said they were going to play well in the second half and get it close enough to give me hope and then screw it up in the end.
Their defense just isn’t good enough to make us a good team right now. Its really frustrating because we finally have a decent enough offense to make us a team that can compete. We give up way too many damn big plays, and while our offense has gotten better, we still shoot ourselves in the foot by fumbling and dropping balls.
Georgia did the exact same thing. Both LSU and Georgia played pretty crappy through most of the game. Then they get to the fourth quarter and points start flying around. We led late and then gave up a huge run for a touchdown. Simply depressing.
At least one team that someone in this family likes won. Notre Dame, Cris’ team, was able to pull off a pretty exciting win in overtime over Washington.
As depressing as the games were, it was still great to be able to sit and watch lot of a football during the day. I love college football.
Before I get into the game I have to note my vehement disappointment with ESPN. I’m totally demoralized that they now have Billy Mayes doing promotional work for them, primarily for ESPN 360. That guy has to be one of the most annoying people I’ve ever seen on TV. I didn’t know all you have to do to hawk a laundry detergent is to yell for 45 seconds about how great it is. I hope that whole campaign is a bit of a joke by ESPN and it doesn’t last long. If they get the Shamwow guy on there, I might have to personally boycott ESPN for a while.
Okay, now for thoughts on the game.
Top notch win for the Noles. At half-time I wasn’t feeling all the comfortable with where we were, but we definitely stepped things up a little bit in the second half to secure a very solid win. I think Bobby stated it as succinctly as possible after the game when he basically said it came down to blocking. We weren’t blocking well in the first half and started blocking well in the second half and we got it done.
No question the defense won the game for us. Obviously we got 14 points from the defense on fumble returns, the first play being a pretty exceptional one, and they had an additional fumble recovery. They also played pretty solidly the entire game holding Wisconsin for 2 of 10 on third-down conversions, which has been a strong area for us the whole season. In an interesting move, Mickey Andrews, the defensive coordinator for FSU, was named the player of the game in recognition of the overall performance of the D.
The offense was nothing spectacular, but we did what was needed to be done to win the game, and we also won the time of possession by 10 minutes, which is something most experts were predicting Wisconsin was going to try to do to win the game. Christian Ponder wasn’t bad, but he’s going to have to really improve his passing game if we’re going to have a bigger presence in the conference and national conversation. That is likely to improve some with better protection from the offensive line and good lord do our receivers need to be more consistent catching balls. Its almost like they only want to catch passes that are hard to catch.
Um, Graham Gano is a beast. I know its sort of funny to call a kicker a beast but he singlehandedly won the field position battle. If I remember correctly, he downed 3 punts inside the 5 yard line, two of them on the one yard line, and averaged 48.2 yards per kick with a long of 58. He was also perfect on his PATs and he put two kick-offs in the endzone which weren’t returned. I don’t care who you are, that’s an impressive performance. Given our history with kickers, we’re really going to miss him next year.
Now begins the offseason game of who leaves early and recruiting rumor. Everette Brown is probably going early, which is going to hurt. Myron Rolle is also leaving for Oxford to take advantage of his Rhodes Scholarship, which will open another pretty important gap in leadership on defense. We’re also going to lose a handful of playermakers on offense at receiver, but we played alot of our young guys this season, so hopefully that fact and a more experienced offensive line will lead to some big strides for our offense next year.
Cris and I were out and about in Missouri doing wedding stuff this Saturday, but I was still able to catch the Florida State game and watch the five minutes of the Texas Tech game that was worth watching.
Couple of thoughts on those games.
Our defense played played really well against Maryland and Everette Brown is a beast. I would not want to be a quarterback playing against him right now. He’s now first in the nation in tackles for loss and second for sacks. Usually, offensive players are considered exciting to watch and get a great deal of attention, but I gotta say that if you’re watching an FSU game, pay attention to Everette Brown when we’re on defense. Its really something enjoyable to see.
Beyond, Everette Brown, the rest of our defense stepped up and played extremely solidly as well. Our yardage numbers for our defense weren’t as solid as they have been at times this season, but the huge thing was we forced four turnovers and at least one of those was a fumble returned for a touchdown.
The offense didn’t do anything overwhelming, but played a very solid game and didn’t turn the ball over, which is all you can ask for. Ponder was extremely efficient in passing and actually carried the load in the running game. If there is really one thing that I’m not all that happy with is that we seem to be relying on the running game a little too much and Ponder is carrying a little too much of the load for my liking. We were very successful on the option and they weren’t picking up the QB so he’s supposed to keep it, but I don’t like him getting hit a lot.
Last thing on FSU; huge, massive, monumental congratulations to Myron Rolle, FSU’s strong safety. Rolle was named a Rhodes scholar on Saturday before he hopped a plane to Maryland to get into the the game just before the end of the first half. Getting a Rhodes Scholarship is hard enough in and of itself, but doing it while graduating in around two years and being a standout defensive player for a major college football program is simply an incredible accomplishment. The only downsides to his Rhodes scholarship is that his streak of games started was snapped at 32 and he now has to decide whether he takes the scholarship and goes to study at Oxford for two or three years or he moves on to the NFL, which is a distinct possibility. No one knows for sure what he’s going to do, but I have a feeling that his desire to be a neurosurgeon is going to take him to Oxford and his football dreams are going to be put on hold or go by the wayside. Whatever he decides, he’s what a student athlete should strive to be.
About that other game. What the heck happened with Texas Tech. To sum things up with three of the top teams in the Big 12, Oklahoma got handled by Texas, Texas got handled by Texas Tech, and now Texas Tech got embarrassed by Oklahoma. I thought this was going to be a close game because I knew Oklahoma is a good team, but I had no idea that Texas Tech was going to be taken to the woodshed. The really bad thing for Texas Tech is that they lost late and the other teams lost earlier so they will get in to a worse bowl game than the other two.
Next week is the big rivalry week for both FSU and UGA. FSU has Florida next weekend and UGA plays Georgia Tech. Florida is likely to take it to FSU. We’ve been getting better, but Florida, as much as I hate to say it, is a really good football team and I don’t think we have what it takes to beat them yet. I’m feeling much better about UGA’s chances, but its definitely not a definite win. Georgia has a good offense, but their defense hasn’t been as good this year and Georgia Tech’s tiple option offense has given teams fits this year. I think a lot will be dependant on the health of Georgia Tech’s quarterback, Josh Nesbitt. His ankle has been giving him trouble and the times that I’ve seen their back up, Jaybo Shaw, run the offense they haven’t been near as effective.
What a nightmare of a game. Apparently, the Seminoles of old being back only lasted two games against really, really crappy opponents. The FSU defense definitely did their best to keep us in the game and played well for the most part. They got us some turnovers when we needed them most and held strong as much as they could. I also have to say that Wake Forest did everything they could to help us out and keep us in the game. Sam Swank, one of the most reliable kickers in the game, missed three field goals, I think. They also gave us some very opportune turnovers when they were knocking on the door of scoring again.
The most frustrating thing about watching the game was our offensive ineptitude. For two quarterbacks who have showed so much promise in previous games, Christian Ponder and D’Vontrey Richardson were just bad. I really would like to point to some stuff they did well, but there really isn’t much to point to. I guess, they did a decent job of scrambling or getting yards with their legs when they needed to, but that’s about it. The problem is, more times than not, when we tried to do something through the air, it ended up in an interception. Overthrown balls and misread coverages were bountiful.
I think we clearly proved that our top 25 ranking was a joke, which I pretty much thought from the second I heard we were ranked. The only future positive that I hope I can take from this game is that Wake has been picked as the team to win the ACC this year. Perhaps other games in the ACC will prove to be a little less painful. I’m not going to hold my breath though.
Next week we play Colorado in Jacksonville. They’re 3-0 so far this year but I’m not sure how their opponents stack up in the greater scheme of things. I can only hope that we find some offensive rhythm before next week or its going to be another really, really long season.
For what its worth, Georgia got a solid win over Arizona St. before they start their brutal SEC schedule. Knowshon Moreno had another really solid game with 149 yards rushing and two touchdowns. Maybe if my Seminoles can’t put together a respectable season, my Bulldogs can contend for a national title.