It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these, but the smorgasbord of football over the last several days is too good to go unacknowledged. A ton happened so I’m just going to quickly run through a couple of thoughts on each one.
Let’s get started with my favorite part of the weekend:
What a depressing weekend of football. I didn’t post about last week, because their just wasn’t that much exciting that happened. Most of the teams that I cared about were still playing scrimmage games, so I wanted to wait until they had a real test before I commented on their success or failures.
UGA lost to SC, which is depressing. I just don’t like SC. Gamecock fans are generally just annoying and they’re coach is a huge ass.
FSU got spanked by Oklahoma and any fantasies Ponder had of winning the Hiesman ended today. I knew our defense was going to be a problem, but our offense, which was supposed to be our strength just didn’t show up.
Given the rest of the ACCs goose egg of wins today, maybe the Noles can at least win the conference. Yeah, I doubt it too.
So the coaching carousel has started turning in a big way last week. A number of lower profile coaches lost their jobs last week, but there were a couple of others who were the subject of much debate due to the nature of the coach or the nature of the program they headed.
With the awesomeness of this college football weekend, I’m a little surprised at myself for how long its taken me to get this post up. Huge win for FSU, unexpected win for UGA, and USC lost its third game this year. I think the college football gods are starting to know that I see the end of the season coming and I’m getting sad so they gave me a little gift.
This was kind of a crap weekend for football. There were a number of decent games, but none of them went the way I wanted.
First, the quick and dirty. How does Oregon take USC behind the woodshed last week and then lose to Stanford, of all people, yesterday? That’s just embarrassing.
While we’re on the subject of embarrassing, Notre Dame lost to Navy again. Now, Navy isn’t terrible, but Notre Dame has been playing respectably this year and they should be able to handle Navy at home.
To rattle off a couple more scores that shouldn’t have been, Michigan lost to Purdue at home, Oklahoma lost to Nebraska, and Cal lost to Oregon St.
The crap game to cap off the weekend was FSU’s loss to Clemson. Now, if I’m honest I never really expected for us to win, but with our offense playing the way it had been I was harboring some dreams of a miracle. Again, FSU gave me some hope, only to dash that hope in the end.
I knew that they would gouge us for big plays like they did, especially with CJ Spiller in their backfield. What I didn’t expect was for Christian Ponder to have his worst game of the season. There is a positive way to look at his performance in that his numbers were still pretty good in terms of yards and completions. So even with a disastrous four interception performance, it wasn’t a complete meltdown.
Basically, what we can take from this is if our defense isn’t a complete nightmare next year, even on bad days our offense could still be decent enough to get the job done. As it is now, our season is pretty much over. Ponder is injured, possibly for the rest of the season, and Mickey Andrews is retiring at the end of the season. Our chances of making a bowl game are pretty much nil at this point, which pains me to say, and while I’ll keep watching games, here’s hoping for a better run next season.
So this was a sort of pseudo uneventful weekend of college football. Not that some pretty exciting things didn’t happen, but we’re at the point in the season where there have been enough crazy upsets and huge wins for teams that I’m not really surprised by anything anymore. My viewing this weekend was limited again, but I was able to catch the Florida State game on DVR and I watched a bit of the end of the Texas Tech games. So hear are my thoughts from the weekend.
Florida State’s win was pretty satisfying. For me, its not just getting the win, but I want to see us play a solid game in getting a win. I felt like we played a pretty complete game and didn’t make too many mistakes.
Our defense brought a little nostalgic tear to my eye. In our performance, particularly our defensive ends, I saw the FSU defenses of the 90′s that regularly struck fear into the hearts opposing quarterbacks. Our defense had six sacks, three by DE Everette Brown (beast), an interception returned for a TD by DT Neefy Moffett, and we limited Clemson, who has two of the best runners in college football, to 79 yards total rushing. That’s a performance Mickey Andrews can be proud of.
I’m surprised and pleased by our rushing output. During our glory days we weren’t known as a rushing power, but we’ve been putting up great numbers on the ground and, if I remember correctly, Antone Smith is leading the ACC with 11 rushing touchdowns. That’s a particularly impressive accomplishment considering we’re starting all sophomores and freshmen on our O-line.
Last thing on the ‘Noles. Graham Gano is a special-teams breath of fresh air in Tallahassee. Anyone who’s followed college football in Florida knows that kicking has been the Achilles heal in critical situations many times over for FSU. Right now Gano has successfully kicked 17 straight field goals and has hit a 50+ yarder in five straight games. The streak will end at some point, but until then I’ll enjoy the ride.
Moving on, Graham Harrell is a stud. I caught the end of the Texas Tech game and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a quarterback look so composed and comfortable running his offense. Credit due to the offensive line for giving him the time to throw, but I was struck by how relaxed Harrell looked. He had all the time in the world, he knew it, and he calmly picked apart the Texas defense. Very fun thing to watch.
Penn State’s loss to Iowa is an unsurprising surprise. No way they should have lost that game, but that has been happening a lot lately. We’re at the point now where you don’t question if its going to happen on a weekend, you just wonder who its going to be. The worst part about the whole thing is that it would have been great for Joe Pa to have an undefeated season at such a late stage in his career. The irony of the whole thing is Paterno’s response to a question about his team’s position in the BCS earlier in the week. He said he wasn’t paying any attention to it and he was only worrying about Iowa cause they were a good team. I wonder if that wasn’t trickling down to his players, because they obviously didn’t show up to play.
This weekend was so bad I can’t give a real review. This sums up my college football weekend.
Pick’Em was one of my worst records I’ve ever had in the game…ever.
Georgia got destroyed by Florida. It was embarrassing.
FSU fumbled on GT’s three yard line with 45 seconds to play to seal the win for GT. We would have won if we got in the endzone and would have had an inside track on the ACC championship game.
I realize that I have issues, but I’m depressed now.
Cris and I weren’t around the house last weekend so there wasn’t any CFB weekend review, but I was back in the college football saddle this weekend and it turned out to be a very good one.
I’ll go ahead and get this out of the way. We only had one missed game between Cris and I this weekend in College Pick’Em. Of course it would be me that would miss the game. Cris continues her hot streak and I’m not sure there is any chance of me catching up to her for the season. She’s sitting around the 93rd percentile and I’m ten points back in the 87th.
Florida State played alright this weekend against what quickly became a beat up Va Tech team. Their starting quarterback and one of my biggest concerns for the game, Tyrod Taylor, went down in the first play with a pretty tweaked up ankle. Then later in the game their backup, Sean Glennon, who started at the beginning of the season went down with a messed up ankle as well. Hats off to the third stringer, who hadn’t really played quarter back…well, ever at Va Tech came in and did a pretty respectable job considering the situation.
Florida State’s defense was pretty stout, but I don’t think our offense was very consistent or impressive. Our O-line struggled a bit more this game than we have the last couple of weeks. We weren’t really able to get our running game going and our pass protection didn’t survive Va. Tech’s defensive line very well. Just looking at the statistics. Offensively, for both teams this was a pretty mundane performance.
In the end we came out of it with a “W” and that’s the critical element. We’ve now put ourselves in the driver’s seat to win the Atlantic Division of the ACC, as Wake Forest lost this weekend.
HUGE, HUGE win for UGA this weekend over LSU. I didn’t get to watch this game as closely as I’d like since FSU was playing at the same time, but man there were some huge plays. I’ll use this game to start out my copying of ESPN in handing out helmet stickers. Each week ESPN analysts and bloggers hand out theoretical helmet stickers for a good performance, like many schools actually do for their players. Thinking through the weekend, this seemed like a good idea so here goes.
First one goes out to Darryl Gamble who opened and finished the scoring for Georgia with interceptions returned for touchdowns. He also had 13 tackles on the game while filling in for the injured starting MLB.
This one is painful but I have to give credit where credit is due. Second sticker goes to Florida’s kick coverage teams for 2 blocked punts and a blocked field goal Saturday. Some teams don’t block three kicks in a season and they did it in one game. I hope they suck next week. GO DAWGS!
An finally, we have one going to Duke for their win in the IQ bowl. Duke played Vanderbilt in a game where I’m betting the average IQ for the players on the field was probably rivaling that of an Ivy league game. They’re also getting this sticker for matching their win total for the last four seasons on Saturday. Let’s hope they can get a couple of more and actually get to a bowl game this year.
Florida State has Georgia Tech next week, which should make for an interesting game. Ga Tech’s new coach, Paul Johnson, brought the option from Navy this year, but they’ve been successfully passing much more than anyone anticipated so far this season. It will be very interesting to see how our defense matches up with their offense.
UGA’s game is one of the biggest in college football. Both teams are ranked in the top ten, and after last year’s game, there is no doubt UF is going to be pumped for the game. I don’t think there is any doubt that UGA will be up for the game as well. I just hope that we’re able to take momentum from Baton Rouge to Jacksonville and that there isn’t a letdown for this game. We go in with anything less than our best and they’ll kill us.
Little bit of a shorter review this weekend. Florida State didn’t play this weekend, they have a game Thursday night against NC State and I wasn’t able to watch all of the Georgia game because I went to the the US Men’s national team game against Cuba.
What a freakin weekend of football. Let’s just jump in.
Um, Michigan lost to Toledo…
Michigan lost to Toledo…
Michigan lost to Toledo? Oh how the mighty have fallen. I bet there are some WV fans dieing from laughter right now. I really hope that Rich Rodriguez can do something respectable with that program next year, otherwise he’s in some serious trouble.
Why did they feel the need to change the name to the “Red River Rivalry” from the “Red River Shoot-out?” Somebody please give me a good, reasonable explanation so I can stop being annoyed by it.
Oklahoma-Texas was a pretty entertaining game, but the reffing was definitely dodgy, and I’m wondering if the replay guy was drinking during the game. I think the call on OU’s first touchdown should have at least been reviewed. I think the call saying the defensive back for OU didn’t catch the interception in the endzone was a terrible call, and the replay guy is lost if he thinks he was losing control as he was going down. If you can’t look at the replay and see clearly that the DB had possession until he hit the ground, you shouldn’t be in the replay booth. I also think OU’s kicker has been taking acting lessons or has been playing soccer with Latin American soccer teams.
In the end none, of the crappy reffing mattered b/c I think it was clear that Texas was the better team. OU was pretty good on offense to start the game, but they just couldn’t keep up with Texas. OU losing their starting middle linebacker was an obvious huge loss for them because Texas exploited that hole for the rest of the game and was able to move down the field pretty easily.
I didn’t get to watch much more than that. Georgia started out strong and did enough to come away from the game with a win. This was a weekend of pretty evenly matched games that where the team I expected to win did not. Missouri lost, LSU got killed by Florida, and Vanderbilt lost to Mississippi State.
Now we just look forward to Thursday and NC State and hope that FSU doesn’t get caught in this perfect example of a trap game.
I didn’t watch a ton of football this weekend. Cris doesn’t have near the interest in watching football as I do, and in order to keep the peace in the house, I have to balance watching football with doing “her” stuff with her so she doesn’t go crazy.
The one game there was no way I was missing this weekend was the FSU-Miami game. For anyone that isn’t familiar, this has been one of the most bitter rivalries in college football, largely due to the number of times in the 90s the winner of this game was looking at a really solid shot at the national title. Both teams have kind of sucked since FSU’s last national championship from the ’99 season so the game hasn’t had the national title implications of late, but its still always a hotly contested game.
Here’s my quick summary with some thoughts about what I thought were key take aways from the game. FSU jumped out to a solid lead in the first half taking a 24-3 lead into halftime. Seeing what happened to Wisconsin last week (gave up a 19-0 lead at half to lose to Michigan) I had a bad feeling Miami’s second half comeback was imminent. Thankfully, FSU was able to hold off the Canes and get the “W.”
First, I think this was a better win for the noles than the score indicates. Our offense was able to move the ball pretty effectively when it needed to, though there was an obvious drop-off in the second half. Its really strange to think of the noles as a running team, but that’s what we’re turning into and if it gets us touchdowns and wins, I’ll deal with that. Antone Smith was really solid with four rushing TDs and just shy of 100 yards, while Ponder contributed 144 yards on the ground, many of those coming from options plays.
The big problems we had that really, really hurt us came from a lack of execution and discipline. I have a feeling there is going to be a great deal of work on the kicking game this week. One mishandled snap lead to a safety and the ensuing free kick gave Miami ridiculously good field position, which they immediately punished us for. On another punt, the snapper hit one of the personal protect guys, and the result of a total debacle of a play gave them them ball inside our 15 leading to an easy score.
The lack of discipline was seen on the blown coverage on their halfback pass touchdown and their kick returns. Not trying to take anything away from Travis Benjamin, because he’s freakin sick, but we should have figured out he was a kick returning stud and not kick it to him or maintain our lanes much better in coverage.
I’m also going to put seven of the canes points on Jimbo Fisher’s shoulders. Their second to last touchdown came on an interception on a play I don’t think should have ever been called. Everyone knows how inexperienced our qb and offensive line is. Why would you call any other pass than a three step drop from your own endzone in the fourth quarter when you have the lead, your defense has played well and you’re in the middle of a tropical depression. Maybe I’m a little too safe, but I call a slant or a quick out or a run, try to get a first down, and if it doesn’t work, you punt the ball and play D.
Next week the noles have NC State in Raleigh. Depending on which Wolfpack team shows up, it could be an easier or really hard game. We’ll see.
Last two quick notes. Having Gameday at a “smart-kid” school is awesome. My two favorite signs from the day. “If you’re an Auburn grad, one day a Vandy grad might hire you,” and “What’s worse, the economy or Aurburn’s offense.” The second one isn’t all that great on its own, but it’s headiness in comparison to the typical invocations of Borat references makes it a classic.
I would be remiss if I didn’t note that Cris went undefeated this week in Pick’Em and beat me and my two missed picks. She’s now beating me overall, and its a little bit of a tough pill to swallow, but it gets her more into the games, so its totally worth it.