College Football - Week of Sept. 26th

[Guest]

Barring something crazy happening like putting both LSU and a one-loss Va Tech/OU/USC ahead of them, Boise State will be ranked in the top-5 when UCD goes there next week.

 

Not implying an upset by any means, but it'll still be cool for the team.

[TruffleShuffle]

SI Cover Jinx?

 

All 4 of the Regional Covers this year have lost.

 

plus Football Jesus was on the cover in july, and look what happened to him yesterday.

[Tracer Bullet]

Notre Dame may be the first team in history to have votes in the AP poll and lose them all with two straight wins. Horrendously unimpressive.

 

Granted, our three best players were hurt and two didn't even play, but we should have won by 20 anyway. Charlie Weis with a pretty horribly called game.

 

That being said, I'd rather say all this crap after a win than a loss.

 

What do you think of Weis as a coach? I don't really know what ND fans think of him.

I really want to like him. He's a decent (not great, but decent) offensive coordinator, and a fantastic recruiter. But he's made some horrible staff choices (Minter and Tenuta as DCs, John Latina as OL coach), he gets too cute way too damn often, and he completely and totally lacks the ability to finish teams off (ND lost 3 games last year in which they led by double digits in the 2nd half, and they should have 2 more such losses this year but was bailed out both times).

 

If tonight was a sign of what we can expect to see without Floyd, it looks like that injury may finish him at Notre Dame.

 

Come on, Andy. Weis made mistakes early with his staff hires, w/o question. The timing of his hire and the SB made his first staff and recruiting sort of a disaster. But Tenuta is a "horrible" staff choice? Come on. He's widely considered one of the greatest DCs in CFB. Verducci was a fantastic hire, as was Alford. There are holes in the coaching staff, but Tenuta isn't horrible.

 

Weis is a great OC and a very good to great recruiter. After a couple of misses his first couple seasons, he seems to be improving. He doesn't manage the clock well and burns a lot of TOs that way. He goes for it on 4th in dumb situations (at the 20 yard line last night and then on the 4th and 10 - both with backups).

 

But instead of accepting that JC was out last night and just game planning for Crist, he planned for both. If Clausen and Allen miss significant time, it's not going to matter the results as long as recruiting is still there. No coach should be fired b/c his #1 QB, RB, and WR miss the same game(s).

[hawkeyecub]

Our defense is [expletive] awesome. PSU's offense not being very good helped, but wow. When the front four gets pressure that's definitely a top 10 defense nationally. Donahue and the d-line completely changed that game on their own. Binns and Klug played their best games of the year by far.

 

bcl you really need to get off Stanzi. Considering the situation and the defense I think he played well last night. I counted 4 drops and one of them obviously led to the INT. He threw a few bad balls and made a couple bad decisions but overall considering circumstances it was a decent outing. Robinson really impressed me in that second half.

 

We should be ranked about 15 right now. We started 21 and have given 4 teams their only loss. We destroyed ISU on the road and won by two scores at PSU and home against Arizona. If the UNI game doesn't come down to the last second we probably would already have been 17-18 and would move to the top 10 after last night.

 

And sulley would you please stop talking about irrelevant teams?

[bcl412]

Our defense is [expletive] awesome. PSU's offense not being very good helped, but wow. When the front four gets pressure that's definitely a top 10 defense nationally. Donahue and the d-line completely changed that game on their own. Binns and Klug played their best games of the year by far.

 

bcl you really need to get off Stanzi. Considering the situation and the defense I think he played well last night. I counted 4 drops and one of them obviously led to the INT. He threw a few bad balls and made a couple bad decisions but overall considering circumstances it was a decent outing. Robinson really impressed me in that second half.

 

We should be ranked about 15 right now. We started 21 and have given 4 teams their only loss. We destroyed ISU on the road and won by two scores at PSU and home against Arizona. If the UNI game doesn't come down to the last second we probably would already have been 17-18 and would move to the top 10 after last night.

 

And sulley would you please stop talking about irrelevant teams?

 

I actually like Stanzi. And I actually think he played his best game as a Hawkeye last night. If our receivers don't drop any passes we win by a lot, and his numbers would look really good. I also get a little emotional during games and if I'm on a message board, or watching with fans of other teams I kind of gelt self depricating of my own to not rub other teams fans the wrong way.

 

That being said, I get a little hard on Stanzi because I know the talent is there and if he fine tunes his game Iowa may just have a shot at the title game (I can't believe I even consider this a possiblity, although it's really early still). He made some strides last night though.

[Derwood]

not sure how far PSU will drop, but it'll probably be into the range that's more accurate than #5. The next two games are (on paper) fairly easy, but I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing anymore.

[E.J.]

As for the rankings, I'd assume the teams looking to possibly drop out of the Top 25 are Washington (definitely), UNC (likely), FSU (possibly) and Michigan. Michigan is possibly based on an uninspiring win against likely bad team, and the fact that the team they beat to get in the top 25 is looking mediocre at best. Plus there are a lot of teams out there that can make a claim to the top 25 (Georgia Tech, South Florida, Oregon, Iowa, South Carolina).

 

I am gonna guess Washington, UNC and FSU are out, while Iowa, South Florida, and South Carolina make it in. If one of those teams didn't get in, Oregon probably looks next most likely.

 

I don't see Michigan dropping out, especially with the amount of teams in front of them that lost this week. I'm going to predict they stay the same or move up a couple spots.

[DiamondMind]

How could michigan possibly move down? If anything they move up like one or two spots, or just stay where they are now.

[bcl412]

How could michigan possibly move down? If anything they move up like one or two spots, or just stay where they are now.

 

Iowa dropped out after a close game against UNI. UNI is better than Indiana (or at least they are even) and Arizona is better than Notre Dame. If Michigan didn't have the name and didn't beat a team with a name, they might not even be ranked right now to begin with.

[rawaction]

I know I'm late, but damn IU got screwed. Still pissed about that. One more out of 4 redzone TDs and it's at worst, an OT game. IU did exactly what they needed to do, but couldn't get it done inside the 20. We ran the ball well, kept Michigan's O off the field, we got pressure on the QB, forced a couple TOs, stopped the run other than a couple big plays early. All to have a chance taken away at the end. All I ask for is a chance. Don't think IU would have been able to pull off a score to win it, but at least give us a fair shot.

[NewUserName]

Notre Dame may be the first team in history to have votes in the AP poll and lose them all with two straight wins. Horrendously unimpressive.

 

Granted, our three best players were hurt and two didn't even play, but we should have won by 20 anyway. Charlie Weis with a pretty horribly called game.

 

That being said, I'd rather say all this crap after a win than a loss.

 

What do you think of Weis as a coach? I don't really know what ND fans think of him.

I really want to like him. He's a decent (not great, but decent) offensive coordinator, and a fantastic recruiter. But he's made some horrible staff choices (Minter and Tenuta as DCs, John Latina as OL coach), he gets too cute way too damn often, and he completely and totally lacks the ability to finish teams off (ND lost 3 games last year in which they led by double digits in the 2nd half, and they should have 2 more such losses this year but was bailed out both times).

 

If tonight was a sign of what we can expect to see without Floyd, it looks like that injury may finish him at Notre Dame.

 

Come on, Andy. Weis made mistakes early with his staff hires, w/o question. The timing of his hire and the SB made his first staff and recruiting sort of a disaster. But Tenuta is a "horrible" staff choice? Come on. He's widely considered one of the greatest DCs in CFB. Verducci was a fantastic hire, as was Alford. There are holes in the coaching staff, but Tenuta isn't horrible.

 

Weis is a great OC and a very good to great recruiter. After a couple of misses his first couple seasons, he seems to be improving. He doesn't manage the clock well and burns a lot of TOs that way. He goes for it on 4th in dumb situations (at the 20 yard line last night and then on the 4th and 10 - both with backups).

 

But instead of accepting that JC was out last night and just game planning for Crist, he planned for both. If Clausen and Allen miss significant time, it's not going to matter the results as long as recruiting is still there. No coach should be fired b/c his #1 QB, RB, and WR miss the same game(s).

 

MSU and Purdue are also not awful. I am not saying they are good, but they are not chopped liver. Very Similar to Iowa playing UNI close, I think way too much is made of these "close" wins against "inferior" opponents. Notre Dame is much improved and looking like a potential top 5 next year

[inari]

I'm still drunk

[hawkeyecub]

Sagarin starting to look more accurate:

 

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/fbt09.htm

[bcl412]

Sagarin starting to look more accurate:

 

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/fbt09.htm

 

I heard the other computer rankings have us fairly high too. I would love to see where we are in the BCS in a couple of weeks if we get there undefeated.

[Andy]

Come on, Andy. Weis made mistakes early with his staff hires, w/o question. The timing of his hire and the SB made his first staff and recruiting sort of a disaster. But Tenuta is a "horrible" staff choice? Come on. He's widely considered one of the greatest DCs in CFB. Verducci was a fantastic hire, as was Alford. There are holes in the coaching staff, but Tenuta isn't horrible.

 

Weis is a great OC and a very good to great recruiter. After a couple of misses his first couple seasons, he seems to be improving. He doesn't manage the clock well and burns a lot of TOs that way. He goes for it on 4th in dumb situations (at the 20 yard line last night and then on the 4th and 10 - both with backups).

 

But instead of accepting that JC was out last night and just game planning for Crist, he planned for both. If Clausen and Allen miss significant time, it's not going to matter the results as long as recruiting is still there. No coach should be fired b/c his #1 QB, RB, and WR miss the same game(s).

Charlie does deserve a hell of a lot of credit for the gameplan he had. Those crazy couple of drives in the second quarter where we were running Wildcat every other play and passed like twice were weird to see, but they got us two scores, without which we lose.

 

I don't like Tenuta so far though. I know he's got the reputation, but he gets way too carried away with the blitzing and that killed us against UM and MSU. It was nice to see him back off a little bit against Purdue, and I'm certain that's part of why we held them in check until late.

 

Jimmy and Allen need to be back next week, I don't think we'll get away against Washington the way we did last night.

[Tracer Bullet]

Iowa jumped to 17 in the coaches poll.

 

ND, despite winning, lost votes for the 2nd week in a row.

[inari]

Iowa jumped to 17 in the coaches poll.

 

ND, despite winning, lost votes for the 2nd week in a row.

 

17? Nice.

[Tracer Bullet]

Come on, Andy. Weis made mistakes early with his staff hires, w/o question. The timing of his hire and the SB made his first staff and recruiting sort of a disaster. But Tenuta is a "horrible" staff choice? Come on. He's widely considered one of the greatest DCs in CFB. Verducci was a fantastic hire, as was Alford. There are holes in the coaching staff, but Tenuta isn't horrible.

 

Weis is a great OC and a very good to great recruiter. After a couple of misses his first couple seasons, he seems to be improving. He doesn't manage the clock well and burns a lot of TOs that way. He goes for it on 4th in dumb situations (at the 20 yard line last night and then on the 4th and 10 - both with backups).

 

But instead of accepting that JC was out last night and just game planning for Crist, he planned for both. If Clausen and Allen miss significant time, it's not going to matter the results as long as recruiting is still there. No coach should be fired b/c his #1 QB, RB, and WR miss the same game(s).

Charlie does deserve a hell of a lot of credit for the gameplan he had. Those crazy couple of drives in the second quarter where we were running Wildcat every other play and passed like twice were weird to see, but they got us two scores, without which we lose.

 

I don't like Tenuta so far though. I know he's got the reputation, but he gets way too carried away with the blitzing and that killed us against UM and MSU. It was nice to see him back off a little bit against Purdue, and I'm certain that's part of why we held them in check until late.

 

Jimmy and Allen need to be back next week, I don't think we'll get away against Washington the way we did last night.

 

I'd expect Allen back. Weis said he looked good in warm-ups. I'm not sure JC will be healthy before USC, if then. It would have been nice to not use him much yesterday.

 

Tenuta has 2 major issues that are killing him here.

 

1 - in 2 years, he hasn't had a good Mike. Brian Smith is a very good Will, he's a terrible Mike. Toryan is really bad there too. Te'o isn't ready. Hopefully Te'o can play Mike next year, which will solidify the LBs greatly.

 

2 - we don't have interior DL worth crap. Charlie's biggest recruiting misses have been DL, which is always a tough spot to get at ND. But the lack of a true DT that can hold down the middle have been disastrous. Putting our best DE at DT has hurt the line badly. I don't know if that's on Tenuta or Weis. Next year, when we're not starting 2 true sophomores on the DL, I expect it to be much better.

 

Those 2 issues on defense make it difficult to stop the run or get any pressure on the QB without bringing blitzes. I would have hoped Tenuta would have improved Filer and Fleming better than he has in his time on campus. But there's still hope. He's had very good defenses everywhere he's been, usually with less talent than he has now.

 

The D played better at times yesterday, but they also benefited greatly from Weis running it a bunch in the 2nd and 3rd quarters. It's hard to get burned on defense when they aren't on the field. As with the disaster against Cuse last year, the D gave up lots of points in the 4th quarter. That just can't keep happening.

[E.J.]

A couple of pics from the UM interception. Still very close, but it does look like Warren had the ball.

 

http://imgur.com/gGFrB.jpg

 

http://imgur.com/xHT8j.jpg

 

The second pic is the moment they hit the ground.

[Tracer Bullet]

Iowa jumped to 17 in the coaches poll.

 

ND, despite winning, lost votes for the 2nd week in a row.

 

17? Nice.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/usatpoll.htm

 

PSU fell to just 13, which is sort of ridiculous given who they've played and how they've performed in those games. 3 terrible teams, 3 almost identical scores (~ 30-7). Not exactly tough games, but not laughers either. 1 good team, 1 loss. I'm not suggesting they fall from 5 to out of the top 25, but I thought they'd be at the bottom teens, right next to Cal and Ole Miss.

[Guest]

Come on, Andy. Weis made mistakes early with his staff hires, w/o question. The timing of his hire and the SB made his first staff and recruiting sort of a disaster. But Tenuta is a "horrible" staff choice? Come on. He's widely considered one of the greatest DCs in CFB. Verducci was a fantastic hire, as was Alford. There are holes in the coaching staff, but Tenuta isn't horrible.

 

Weis is a great OC and a very good to great recruiter. After a couple of misses his first couple seasons, he seems to be improving. He doesn't manage the clock well and burns a lot of TOs that way. He goes for it on 4th in dumb situations (at the 20 yard line last night and then on the 4th and 10 - both with backups).

 

But instead of accepting that JC was out last night and just game planning for Crist, he planned for both. If Clausen and Allen miss significant time, it's not going to matter the results as long as recruiting is still there. No coach should be fired b/c his #1 QB, RB, and WR miss the same game(s).

Charlie does deserve a hell of a lot of credit for the gameplan he had. Those crazy couple of drives in the second quarter where we were running Wildcat every other play and passed like twice were weird to see, but they got us two scores, without which we lose.

 

I don't like Tenuta so far though. I know he's got the reputation, but he gets way too carried away with the blitzing and that killed us against UM and MSU. It was nice to see him back off a little bit against Purdue, and I'm certain that's part of why we held them in check until late.

 

Jimmy and Allen need to be back next week, I don't think we'll get away against Washington the way we did last night.

 

IMO Weis is like a combination to Jerry Faust and Bob Davie. Faust never coached in college before ND. Daive was supposed to be a defensive genius. Both could recruit very well, but couldn't manage a game very well.

 

ND got very lucky that Purdue called a time out at the end of the game.

[inari]

Iowa is up at 13 on the AP poll. Awesome!

[E.J.]

AP Top 25

RK TEAM RECORD PTS PVS

1 Florida (55) 4-0 1490 1

2 Texas (1) 4-0 1420 2

3 Alabama (4) 4-0 1400 3

4 LSU 4-0 1225 7

5 Boise State 4-0 1203 8

6 Virginia Tech 3-1 1190 11

7 USC 3-1 998 12

8 Oklahoma 2-1 979 10

9 Ohio State 3-1 957 13

10 Cincinnati 4-0 946 14

11 TCU 3-0 896 15

12 Houston 3-0 844 17

13 Iowa 4-0 788 NR

14 Oklahoma State 3-1 591 16

15 Penn State 3-1 470 5

16 Oregon 3-1 462 NR

17 Miami (FL) 2-1 452 9

18 Kansas 4-0 418 20

18 Georgia 3-1 418 21

20 Brigham Young 3-1 349 19

21 Mississippi 2-1 340 4

22 Michigan 4-0 271 23

23 Nebraska 3-1 256 25

24 California 3-1 206 6

25 Georgia Tech 3-1 185 NR

[Exile on Waveland]

Iowa at 13 is much closer to correct/fair than 17. They should be higher than either ranking -- I would have them top-10 easy, maybe even at No. 6. The UNI squeaker hurts, but they're a tough team and Iowa's other three wins have been impressive (Arizona is looking real good -- a win at Oregon State is a nice victory). And, honestly, LSU hasn't been terribly impressive -- I'm not sure they've distinguished themselves from Iowa so far.

[OleMissCub]

Why isn't Penn State around where Ole Miss is?? PSU lost at home with 100k fans behind them to a team that hadn't done much up to that point. Ole Miss lost on the road in a short week to a team that nearly beat Georgia. Both Ole Miss and PSU were equally unproven.