On The Field
Notre Dame vs. Navy...
Could this game actually mean something this year? Navy has just beaten Vanderbilt and besides a tough game against another of the military institutions, Air Force, next week, they may have a chance to go undefeated this season. The crucial game will be October 16th against Notre Dame, who is currently trashing Washington and has a chance to move to 3-1. When was the last time this game meant something for Navy, let alone both teams?
Spoke a little too soon
I was struggling with my internet connection last night and finally gave up. Just as I was shutting down, Boise State quarterback Jared Zabransky took a play out of the BYU play book and tossed a long touchdown pass to T.J. Acree along the right side of the field to put the Broncos up by 1. The two point conversion failed on a nice sack by the BYU defense.
BYU managed to run drive down the field in the last 3 minutes of the game and had a chance to take the lead with 30 seconds left on the clock. However, as has been the case many times this year, the kicker for BYU, senior Matt Payne, missed the 37 yard field goal to the left. This saved all the Boise State streaks that were on the line in the last few minutes. They now have won 15 in a row overall and 21 straight on the blue turf.
One last thing to point out on this game. BYU's QB John Beck did play well, but his offensive line still gave up way too many sacks. He was brought down 8 times in the game and you can't let your passer get hit that many times and hope to keep him healthy for the season. They have already lost him for one game this season when he sat out the second game of the season after a shoulder injury in the opener against Notre Dame. As a contrast, Brock Berlin's sack woes come from his own inability to make decisions and avoid the rush. His line just the best job they can, but they can't hope to give him 8 seconds in the pocket each play. Last night's game was a good one for Beck. It is too bad his team is now 1-3.
This is what Miami needs: John Beck
In the BYU-Boise State game, the BYU Cougars are giving the Broncos all they can handle. The Cougars quarterback has confidence in his passing game and is taking it to the Boise State defense deep.
It is the 3rd quarter and quarterback John Beck has completed 2 touchdown passes on consecutive drives to his wideouts deep. One the first drive, he tried on first down and the corner managed to keep up. But on 3rd down, he went to the same exact play and this time completed to his wide receiver Todd Watkins for the long score of 79 yards. This was followed up one drive later with another deep pass to Austin Collie for a 57 yard touchdown. Beck displays the confidence in the passing game that Brock Berlin is missing.
The Cougars have now taken the lead on a Boise State team which has won 14 in a row overall and is playing at home on their blue turf, where they have won 20 in a row. You have to give BYU credit if they can pull this one out. They have had an up and down season so far and this would be a big up for their program. If John Beck displays this confidence the rest of the season, maybe they will stay up the rest of the year.
Apparently the coach wasn't happy either
Brock Berlin better shape up this week:
"I'm very disappointed in the passing game," Miami coach Larry Coker said. "We didn't get much at all. We've got to get back and work on it."We'll have to see how he improves in their next game. He is their best option at quarterback which doesn't make a replacement anytime soon seem likely.
Can't wait to see if Chris Rix still has his issues tomorrow. His job is definitely on the line.
Game Thoughts - Miami at Houston
Halftime and a little after:
Berlin has yet to impress me. On the last drive of the half for Miami, Berlin made a nice pass for about 15 yards to get a first down. However, he failed to follow it up. He tried to force two passes on the next two plays to WR Ryan Moore. The play after that, he fails to avoid the rush and gets sacked and fumbles the ball. The turnover led to a Houston touchdown, the first of the year given up by the offense. As I tried to log on, Miami had the ball again. But, Berlin struggled again. After a 15 yard run (Why did Houston squib kick the second half kick off?), Miami had a short run on 1st down. On the next play Berlin failed to avoid the rush again and was sacked. His 3rd down pass was another force up the middle and again a bad choice.
Houston is playing a great fast game and holding the Miami offense down. However, the Miami defense has already scored once on a fumble and another time on a blocked punt. Houston just has to be smart with the ball if they want to keep a 31-10 game closer.
6:42 left in the 3rd:
Ouch, tough drop in the end zone by the WR on a great pass from the Houston quarterback Kolb. Nice pass. Too bad Houston had to settle for a field goal.
3:00 left in the 3rd:
Berlin makes a great pass to Ryan Moore. A defensive lineman was bearing down on him unblocked and Berlin hung in and kept his feet still to deliver a gun of a pass into Moore's arms. Nice play. Maybe there is hope for this guy yet.
7:00 left in the 4th:
Another poor series by Berlin. I don't understand this guy. Miami will not be #1 in the MRI for long if they keep playing this way, especially against teams like Houston. Maybe the ACC isn't theirs just yet.
3:51 left in the 4th:
Miami's first string in still in the game, which means that Berlin is still struggling to run the offense. They just scored again, but the only way they are gaining any yards is on the ground. If someone could shut down their rushing game and really test Berlin and the receivers, they will have a great chance to beat Miami. Berlin didn't impress me this game. He needs more work.
3:20 left in the 4th:
That was a great hard tackle by Miami's WR Darnell Jenkins on the kickoff. I feel bad for the Houston return man.
Game Ends:
I am pretty sure that will drop the Cane's from the top spot. After just putting in that they were playing Houston, they dropped to 3rd. With the anemic offense, they will drop even further. Now you see why I don't post the results for a few weeks. They still were able to come through and win, but Houston isn't really the litmus test for the Miami team. Good luck for them in the weeks ahead. Good night all.
Maybe I was a little harsh to Boston College
Ok, so last week, I called Boston College a lame duck in the Big East, which they are, and said that they do not have a chance at winning anything, anytime soon in the ACC. What I failed to think of at the time was that BC is still playing in the Big East, a conference that this year is its own lame duck. With the loss of Miami and Virginia Tech, the Big East is left with few teams that are true national title contenders, and therefore, there is a chance that we may be scratching our heads in January when a team you wouldn't expect is playing in one of the Big 4 BCS games.
That team could be Boston College. With the win over Connecticut, Boston College firmly beat one of the teams which honestly had a shot at the conference title going into the season. Last year's 9-3 season was no fluke for the Huskies and they will most likely be one of the top teams in the new look Big East. And yes, I am still talking about football. Boston College's chances at the title in the Big East most likely will come down to two games against the two top teams in the league, Pittsburgh and West Virginia. If they can be Pittsburgh, which is a distinct possibility given the way the defense for Boston College is playing, they have an even better shot.
A win over the Panthers would put BC on a high they haven't felt in a long time. And that in itself might be enough to carry them over their Catholic League rivals, Notre Dame. A quick visit from Rutgers won't be an easy game for the Eagles, but it should provide enough tune up for the next one against West Virginia. Granted, by that time in the season, the Big East and West Virginia may look totally different and the Eagles may be the team being touted in the press.
Good luck to the Eagles this week against Wake Forest. I hope they prove to me that they can win now, before times look tough in the future.
Hurricanes
In a little less than an hour, the Miami Hurricanes flip the coin on their 3rd game of the season, and will most likely roll all over Houston. It is seemingly appropriate that after the last few weeks of weather, Miami currently sits atop the MRI in the current rankings (still not enough data to be posted in full).
Miami still has a lot of questions to be answered, but one of them isn't defense. They have yet to give up an offensive touchdown, and they are currently ranked second in yards allowed to their opponents.
Despite their big win last week, the biggest question seems to be the offense, and while Houston's defense won't be much of a test for the Hurricanes, they still could get a good look at the answers tonight. Last week's game against Louisiana Tech proved that Brock Berlin still has some improvement to make before he is going to make a big impact on the team. Playing against a defense which was not stopping the Hurricanes at all, Berlin only managed to put up 122 yards passing on 14 attempts. He missed a wide open receiver in the end zone, and threw a poor interception in the game. If not for the 200 yards of rushing and two punt returns for touchdowns by Devin Hester, the game may have looked a little closer than the 48-0 score.
Berlin will need to go out and prove something tonight. The light game should give the coaches more than enough reason to open up the passing game and let Berlin have his chances to do something big. He will need his confidence moving forward as the Hurricane's schedule begins to look a little tougher. They play a Georgia Tech team next week who has been known to make some noise in the past. After a week off, they have another Thursday night game against Louisville who is currently ranked 24th (#8 in the MRI). While Louisville will probably not come out of the game with a win, should they still be ranked and undefeated, they will definitely be up for the game and could prove to be a tough test for Miami. North Carolina State is currently the #1 defense in the league and the next game on Miami's schedule. The biggest two matchups could come the first two weeks of November when Clemson comes to Miami and the Hurricanes travel to current #12 Virginia (#9 MRI). Those two games could decide where Miami plays its bowl game this year.
Enjoy the game. Any updates that intrigue me will certainly be posted during the game.
Thoughts from Week 2
Sunday afternoon, the MRI numbers populated through my spreadsheet for the first time this season. The system needs all of the teams to have played at least one game before it can give a rating. Of course, I don't publish it right now. If I did, I would never hear the end of it. Especially when you see who is listed at #2 in the rankings right now (HINT: It is a West Coast School that has a tree for a mascot). As I have learned with college basketball, you need a little bit of time to pass during the season before the numbers make sense, time for the averages to work out any anomalies and blockbuster games against Division 1-AA teams. For basketball, this has always been the weekend after Thanksgiving. For football, last year, I used week 6 as the benchmark. That still leaves about 10 weeks before the conference championships and bowl games begin. So, you will have to wait a little longer before I send out the rankings.
Until then, I can provide you with a couple of thoughts on the season so far.
- Thanks to Rutgers, North Texas, and Hawaii, Division 1-AA teams are 3-28 against Division 1-A teams so far this year. This is particularly embarassing for Rutgers. They put on a great show against Michigan State in their first game. Unfortunately, they had a major let down against New Hampshire. This doesn't portend great things for Rutgers, a team with big hopes this year. Last year, they managed to win 5 games, which was only one less than the last four years combined for the school. This year, there was talk of a bowl game. If that is to be, they will need to play a lot more like they did against Michigan State than the team that was on the field Saturday.
- Title hopes for a few teams are already on the line. Losses by Michigan and Florida State have seriously put their National Title hopes in jeopardy. Neither of these teams could afford to lose and have a hope to remain in the running for their league championship, especially since they play in conferences with no title game. The ACC will add a title game next season when Boston College comes over. However, that will do under-achieving Chris Rix and the Seminoles no good this year. In order to get through now, Florida State will have to hope for 2 slip ups by Miami during the rest of their conference games. Miami's schedule might provide for just that. They have match-ups against Georgia Tech (who shocked Clemson this week), Clemson, Virginia, and former Big East rival Virginia Tech still on the schedule. Of course, Florida State will need to play a lot better and remain undefeated the rest of the season in the ACC. This won't be easy as they still face Clemson, Virginia, and Maryland. They have a tune up game against UAB this week to prepare for Clemson, but a loss against them, at home on top of it all, could end any BCS hope for Florida State. Michigan has it a little easier, since their loss came out of conference. However, they must now count on Notre Dame to do well. That is a scary prospect when two different teams have shown up on the field this season, one an uncoordinated scrapping team which got destroyed by a mediocre BYU team, or the one that showed heart and came back against Michigan to win. Obviously, Notre Dame was inspired for the rivalry type game. The questions remain if they can keep it up. A high finishing Notre Dame team means that Michigan may still have a chance to finish near the top of the BCS standings and contend for the National Title. I don't personally think they will manage it, though they will play well this season. With a freshman quarterback, there is too much that can go wrong for them in the Big Ten season.
- Speaking of Chris Rix, why is he still the quarterback. I know this topic has been beaten to death on talk radio lately so I have one thing to add to the discussion. Assume that Florida State has its act together enough to beat UAB. Their next game after that is Clemson, a team that could truly contend with the Seminoles. If Mr. Rix can't get the job done by half time, he should be done for the season. I know he is a senior, but the boy has lost 5 times to Miami, making him the only player to lose 5 times to the same team in his college career. Another loss in the ACC would end Florida State's season. If they are down at half time, Bobby Bowden has to go to a back-up, no matter how inexperienced they are. At least get them some game experience now, when the season won't matter anymore.
- I wanted to give a few kudos to UNLV's defense even though in the end, UNLV lost the game against Wisconsin. The defense played very well, holding Wisconsin to only 270 yards of offense, something that in college today is only happening about 30% of the time. In addition, they only gave up one score to the Wisconsin offense, something that is probably more worthy of praise. They kept their team in the game, despite the offense repeatedly trying to give the game back to Wisconsin in a big way. Wisconsin's defense should be praised at the same time. They held UNLV to 190 yards and at the same time got two, yes that's right, two safties and a blocked field goal that they returned for a touchdown. That made this game interesting to watch and frustrating at the same time. College football has become a game where high scores and big time excitement is expected. The lack of offense in this game may have made it seem boring, but the tough pressure defense and the amount of big plays on the defensive side of the ball sure made for some excellent moments. In all, Wisconsin had a great defensive game as should be expected. What impressed me more though was the play of UNLV and that is really the only reason I mentioned the game here.
To end, I wanted to point out something that just bugged me all weekend into Monday and Tuesday of this week. I managed to get up before kick-off on Saturday in enough time to catch the end of the College Game Day pre-game show on ESPN. Normally, I could care less about what is spewed there. Until this year, it was almost too hard to hear most times because the screaming fans behind the analysts (if you can call them that... keep reading) were so loud, they drowned out most of what was said. ESPN had enough brains this year to separate them a little with a sound killing black curtain, which at least showed the enthusiasm still while dropping the decibel level so you could hear what Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit were going to say. And say a lot they did. But in order to appreciate this fully, we have to step back a few weeks before the season got going. One morning during a six pack of questions on Sportscenter, they asked Corso and Herbstreit if there were any teams in Division 1-A football which would go undefeated this year. Herbstreit to his credit, gave an answer of one, that being USC. Corso, in a style that can only be compared to Dick Vitale, claimed that there would be 3, yes three, teams with a zero in the loss column by the end of the year. Those three teams he picked, and I remember this well, were USC, Memphis, and Fresno State.
So now, we flash back to Saturday morning. I had had my coffee, so I know I didn't misunderstand what was about to be spewed on tv. Corso and Herbstreit prepare to pick who will win the Fresno State-Kansas State matchup. And the pick is up, and the pick for Mr. Corso is... Kansas State?!? How can you pick Fresno State to run the table before the season, having looked at their schedule, having taken into account that they had Kansas State on their schedule, and then not pick them to win the game when they actually play Kansas State? This boggled my mind and almost led me to spit take the coffee in my mouth all over my friend's leather sofa. (Note: the coffee stayed put and the leather was safe.) I can only imagine that this was some secret plot on Corso's part to be able to be right no matter what when questioned about the game later. Few people probably remember his bold prediction from a few weeks earlier, so if Kansas State would have won, he would have been correct for the game, and that would be that. Since Fresno State won, he can now go out and loudly proclaim "I picked them to win them all and that is what they are doing". In his own words, "NOT SO FAST MY FRIEND!". I caught you this time, and don't think I won't be watching your other picks throughout the season now. So, I chalked that one up as strike one for the analyst team that morning. I thought maybe this would be their only problem that day, considering that there was little time left in the show. But I was wrong and Mr. Herbstreit provided me with the other big gaff of the morning.
One of the last games they were set to pick for the day was Penn State versus Boston College, a game that 10 years ago, might actually have meant something to both of those teams. However, both of the programs have fallen on hard times. Boston College is a lame duck in the Big East and is ready to move to the ACC where they still will lack a shot at winning anything, anytime soon. Penn State hasn't contended in the Big Ten for a number of years and you have to wonder if the Joe Paterno magic is gone and there is a need for a change just to revitalize a program that used to bring fear to other teams. And the pick is up for both analysts and they both pick Penn State. Ok, I can handle that. Neither team has distinguished themselves enough to believe that there was a clear favorite in the game. For my own part, I picked Boston College, only because having seen Penn State play the last two years more than BC, I could firmly believe that Penn State would find a way to lose the game and give it to BC. Herbstreit though almost caused the couch to be showered in coffee for the second time that morning. His "expert" anaylsis was that Penn State would win because they were a veteran team of Juniors and Seniors, and they would know what it takes to win that game. This would be great thinking if not for the fact that Penn State traditionally puts a team of upperclassmen on the field and they haven't found a way to win with that strategy in a long time. It doesn't explain how last year, with an upperclassmen dominated team, they only managed to win three games. It doesn't explain how last year, with the same upperclassmen dominated team, they lost to Boston College by 13. Sorry Kirk. I respect your pick this year, but please come up with a better reason. At least that way you seem like you know what you are talking about, especially when you lose. (And don't get me started on how he "almost" picked Arizona to beat Utah).
That's all for this week. Looks like they postponed Thursday night's game, so you probably won't hear anything from me until Sunday unless something strikes my fancy.
The Team is On The Field
Welcome to On The Field, the newest addition to
MRISports.com. On The Field will be a series of articles and posts on the current world of college football. The posts could take the form of an article about the past week, or a specific game, or they could be short observations from a game that I happen to be watching at the time.
As always, feel free to leave any comments on the article at the bottom of each one, and if you like what you see, please forward the article to your friends.
I hope you enjoy "On The Field".
