October 22, 2006
Weekend Football Report
Well, my picks are now a very respectable 26-17 against the spread (34-9 straight up), following another 5-1 performance yesterday.
But one stat makes me sad about yesterday, and that is Purdue’s 24-3 defeat at the hands of the Wisconsin Badgers. Ugliness all around. When a team averaging over 450 yards per game of offense, and 30+ points a game, puts up less than 300 yards and doesn’t score a touchdown for the first time since 2003, it’s just ugly. What makes it worse is that our defense finally started to step up. We were starting to see the defensive front seven performing (although the secondary wasn’t playing well). I thought Wisconsin could score in the 20’s on us, but I thought we could score just as many on them. Instead, the offense just never found a rhythm. To make it worse, we had some scoring opportunities that we failed to convert, and I’m really starting to believe our offensive playcalling needs a serious overhaul. This team leaves too many points on the field, that would have made a difference in each of our losses. So we fall to 5-3, 2-2 in conference. In all honesty, with a team as young as ours, we were supposed to lose to the teams we lost to, and we beat the teams we should have. But I’m not entirely happy with the way we’ve won and lost those games. We could have played with Wisconsin, and at least been in position to fight for a win, but instead only one half of the team shows up. Ugh.
In other news, Michigan State again shows why they’re consistently inconsistent, with the biggest comeback in NCAA history. I said before the game that MSU would try to lose that game, and going down 38-3 will certainly do it. But then to rip off 38 straight points in about 22 minutes to win the game? Quite impressive, even if it was against Northwestern… That worries me a bit, though, because we play MSU in two weeks. We can beat a demoralized MSU team, but a confident MSU team is another story. I’m hoping Indiana can find a way to beat them in a wholly demoralizing way so that we can play the crippled team in two weeks. But either way, congrats to the Spartans, who finally appeared to play to their talent level, if only for 22 minutes.
Around the league, Notre Dame put up a great comeback on UCLA, and as usual for the Irish, it required multiple 4th-down conversions to do it. One of these days that might catch up to them, but they seem be constantly defying the laws of probability. Michigan and OSU continue their dominance, and the AP poll has them #2 and #1, respectively (while the coaches poll has USC at #2 and Michigan at #3), which is likely to remain the case until they face each other on Nov 18. The way things are starting to shake out, we’re likely to see a matchup between the winner of the OSU/Michigan game and the Louisville/WVU game in the national championship, unless USC successfully navigates several land mines upcoming on their schedule. We’ve got a good shot at having 2 unbeaten teams, and perhaps 3,when the season ends.
Today, I watched the Pittsburgh/Atlanta game, since the wife is out of town and I had all day to watch football. That was a heck of a game from wire to wire, finishing with a 41-38 overtime win for Atlanta. Scores were coming so fast that it looked like a college game, doubly so with a mobile QB like Michael Vick. It did look like Big Ben got his bell rung, and I think he ended up leaving the game with a concussion. I’m now watching the Washington/Indianapolis game, which is not anywhere close to exciting.
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“Around the league, Notre Dame put up a great comeback on UCLA”
Brad, I know Notre Dame has a 3-1 record this season against Big Ten competition, but that alone does not make them a member of the conference.
I believe they have a shot to go 3-0 in the Pac-10 as well. Perhaps a Notre Dame/Notre Dame Rose Bowl this year?
Jim,
I thought it was obvious that by “league” I meant NCAA. I talked quite a bit about Michigan/OSU, but spoke in more wider terms of USC, WVU/Louisville, and the BCS championship implications. I wouldn’t let Notre Dame into the Big Ten if they came begging…