Official 2012 Football thread

[Dr. Pomade]

I'm picking Stanford over USC as my upset special.

 

Just in case any of you forgot how awesome I am.

[Dr. Pomade]

Some other thoughts:

 

- ND looked pretty good. As much as this makes me want to gouge my eye out, I'd rank ND higher than Ohio State in the polls.

 

- the Cal game was weird. It felt like Ohio State was dominating in lots of ways, but all the missed tackles, big gains (oh look another completed pass over the middle!), and stupid penalties kept Cal firmly in the game.

 

- LOL @ Va Tech. LJ said it best: eternally overrated. Here's what normally happens next: Va Tech falls to like 23 in the polls, then they go on to win the rest of their games in a weak ACC (and Big East before that) and quietly end up like #8 in the polls at the season's end.

[SpaceGhost]

Just in case any of you forgot how awesome I am.

 

LOL

[Dr. Pomade]

LOL

 

<3

[LJ]

OSU rightfully drops to 16th in the AP poll

[LJ]

I think Brian Kelly is a good coach and eventually ND will do well if they can get over him occasionally killing some students. MSU is just so one dimensional.

 

So word on the street is to make sure OSU got the W Urban took over EVERYTHING for the last 4 series of the game. Both sides of the ball. Not what he wanted to do when he came back to coaching. Not a good sign for any of the assistants right now. Herman/Warinner's playcalling in the 3rd quarter was very weird then the defense obviously is just a mess.

 

I heard he just kept telling Herman/Warinner to "try again" and would then call his own play occasionally when they didn't come up with anything he liked.

 

As for the defense, I still think it falls 99% on the players. Schematically they were fine all day. On a few of those drives where Cal moved the ball well without big fluke plays, it was obvious that Cal was just winning the chess match, calling every offensive play almost 100% accurately to counter the defense. The rest of the game was nothing more than missed tackles and blown coverages.

[DaddyBuiltRacing]

1. Alabama

2. LSU

3. Oregon

4. Florida St

5. Georgia

6. Oklahoma

7. South Carolina

8. West Virginia

9. Stanford

10. Clemson

11. Notre Dame

12. Texas

13. USC

14. Florida

15. Kansas St

16. Ohio State

17. TCU

18. Michigan

19. UCLA

20. Louisville

21. Michigan State

22. Arizona

23. Mississppi State

24. Boise State

25. Nebraska

 

There are some good matchups in week 4:

Cal vs #13 USC

#18 Michigan vs #11 Notre Dame

#15 Kansas St vs #6 Oklahoma

#10 Clemson vs #4 Florida St

#22 Arizona vs #3 Oregon

 

My upset pick:

Missouri over #7 South Carolina

[DaddyBuiltRacing]

Did anyone else see this about Miami's attendance yesterday? http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-dr-saturday/thanks-showing-miami-fans-photo-175408799--ncaaf.html

[Dr. Pomade]

tOSU totally deserved to drop to #16. Them at #16 is about right.

 

Teams deserving to be in Top 10:

 

-Alabama

-Florida State

-West Virginia

-Stanford

 

Teams in Top 10 that are waiting to be exposed:

 

-South Carolina (another perennially over-ranked team)

-Georgia (yet another perennially over-ranked team)

-Oklahoma

[DaddyBuiltRacing]

The SEC teams will beat each other with the exception of maybe UGA. They get off pretty easy. Their only challenging games should be South Carolina and Florida, but who knows maybe they get beat by one or both. Here is their remaining schedule

 

Vandy

Tennesee

@S. Carolina

@Kentucky

Florida

Ole Miss

@Auburn

Georgia Southern

Ga Tech (Could possibly get upset here)

 

Oklaoma is like Va Tech, they always start out high, choke, beat everone afterwards, go to bowl game to choke again. I just hope we dont have an SEC vs SEC NCG

[Dr. Pomade]

It's bullshit because the SEC also-rans - South Carolina, Georgia, etc. - get their rankings artifically inflated, which only serves to ensure that at least one SEC team stays in the national title hunt.

 

Oh, Alabama lost to South Carolina? Oh, well, that's because South Carolina is sooooo good - I mean, look, they are the SEVENTH BEST TEAM IN ALL OF COLLEGE FOOTBALL. So, Alabama, let's see, you'll drop to #5 in the polls, and South Carolina, you're now #3.

 

Fucking puke.

[Dr. Pomade]

LOL @ Kentucky getting beat by Western Kentucky and Auburn almost getting beat by UL Monroe.

[bicranium]

Auburn got lucky ULM missed their FG in OT. Should have gone to at least 2 OT's.

 

And the WKU-UK thing was great. I love it when underdogs go for it all like they should.

 

Some rankings for OSU through 3 games now...

 

Scoring defense: 36th

Total defense: 66th

Passing defense: 101st

Rushing defense: 31st

Sacks: 15th (thank you Cal)

Interceptions: 5th

 

Scoring offense: 20th

Total offense: 42nd

Rushing offense: 22nd

Passing offense: 76th

 

Turnover margin: 24th

Fewest penalties per game: 94th

 

Braxton Miller is 2nd in the country behind only Geno Smith in points responsible for, 10th in the country in rushing yards and 12th in the country in total offense.

 

Luckily there aren't a ton of heavy passing teams in the B1G (highest ranked passing offense in the B1G right now? Indiana at 12th followed by, somehow, Michigan St. at 50th) but it doesn't look like you need to be a great passing team to take advantage of OSU's defensive backfield right now.

 

The biggest thing seems to be... both sides of the ball returned a LOT of players. And one of them has improved a lot and the other has stayed the same or probably even gotten worse.

[DaddyBuiltRacing]

The Corners for OSU are very good, the safeties...well not so much

[BStowers023]

It's hard to argue against Alabama....They also get off with a fairly easy schedule though, only real chance at a loss for them is @LSU. If they get past them, which I think they will, they will roll easily to their 2nd consecutive national championship. Nobody in the country is even close right now.

[DaddyBuiltRacing]

I watched Alabama vs Arkansas and it was men amongst boys plain and simple. I really hate saying that they are good, but they are

[2 Sweet]

The next big thing in college football...

 

http://media.govolsxtra.com/media/img/photos/2012/09/15/221246_t607.JPG

[bicranium]

Pfft... Braxton Miller laughs at Jeff Driskel. Meyer realized all the recruiting sites had the rankings wrong and left Florida, beginning his corrective measure to eventually end up coaching Braxton Miller. :gabe:

 

Also, quote today from Meyer talking about our defense...

 

That is absolutely not acceptable. Let's get it fixed. There is no magic wand. We've got our personnel. Personnel I don't believe is an issue. But we've got to make tackles, tackle better in practice, make sure our schemes are more sound into the boundary area, which we're working on that now.

 

Saying "personnel I don't believe is an issue" and talking specifically about schemes (on more than one occasion in today's presser) is not exactly a great endorsement for Fickell.

 

Like I've said before, I love Fickell and he's a great Buckeye but the dude is making $750k a year. The defensive performance needs to be in the same ballpark as the salary. As long as they can get shaped up into a top 15-20 defense by the end of the season I think it will be OK. People earlier saying they want #1 or top 5 are a little too demanding. Plus, with the offense being better, they don't NEED top 5 like they did so many times under Tressel.

[DaddyBuiltRacing]

Wasn't Urban also quoted as stating they have taught the defense to go for the strip this entire off season and now they gotta try teaching them to go for the sure tackle sometimes instead of the strip? If you're wanting turnovers via balls being stripped, you're gonna lose out on some tackles. Its a catch 22 really, I think once the defense stops trying to go for sportscenter highlight hits and just starts tackling the Luke Fickell endorsement wont be an issue.

 

Since we're on the "I hate Luke Fickell" subject (theres several of them on scout), what about Urbans boys that he brought in *cough* Coombs and Withers *cough* The secondary has looked putrid outside of 2 defensive backs and Withers is co-defensive coordinator isn't he?

[BStowers023]

Wasn't Urban also quoted as stating they have taught the defense to go for the strip this entire off season and now they gotta try teaching them to go for the sure tackle sometimes instead of the strip? If you're wanting turnovers via balls being stripped, you're gonna lose out on some tackles. Its a catch 22 really, I think once the defense stops trying to go for sportscenter highlight hits and just starts tackling the Luke Fickell endorsement wont be an issue.

 

Since we're on the "I hate Luke Fickell" subject (theres several of them on scout), what about Urbans boys that he brought in *cough* Coombs and Withers *cough* The secondary has looked putrid outside of 2 defensive backs and Withers is co-defensive coordinator isn't he?

 

Fickell showed us last year what his coaching skills are. Urban, Smith and OSU kept Fickell on I think because they felt somewhat bad for him. If he doesn't get the defense shaped up by the end of the season, I think he will be finding a new job IMO.

[DaddyBuiltRacing]

Fickell won 6 games with arguablly the worst team at OSU in the last 10 years, several key starters suspended for the majority of the year and a program under fire. The games he did lose were by 7 or less points lol. I do not think he is a head coach yet, but I also don't think he deserves all the hate he gets by OSU fans. So funny everyone is on panic mode right now after a close victory, yet it was a victory. Talk to me when OSU loses to Purdue or someone like that and see how many Fire Urban threads pop up on the national forums.

[Dr. Pomade]

Going for the strip and just launching yourself headlong with wild abandon are two different things. We saw a lot of the latter during the game on Saturday. That shit has to go.

 

Wrap up, stop movement, and then go for strip.

[1fast5gp]

Wasn't Urban also quoted as stating they have taught the defense to go for the strip this entire off season and now they gotta try teaching them to go for the sure tackle sometimes instead of the strip?

I don't know if that was the cause, most of the missed tackles I saw were just bad technique and taking bad angels. Maybe the defense was too over confident in stopping the run, plus Brendon Bigelow has some pretty nice moves. It's going to be back to basics this week against UAB.

 

 

Fickell won 6 games with arguablly the worst team at OSU in the last 10 years, several key starters suspended for the majority of the year and a program under fire. The games he did lose were by 7 or less points lol. I do not think he is a head coach yet, but I also don't think he deserves all the hate he gets by OSU fans. So funny everyone is on panic mode right now after a close victory, yet it was a victory. Talk to me when OSU loses to Purdue or someone like that and see how many Fire Urban threads pop up on the national forums.

 

I think last years defense was better than this years. Even though our offense sucked, our defense did held their own and lost most of the game by 7 points or less. From the looks of things, maybe heacock was the better defensive coordinator and urban hired the wrong guy for his DC. What I don't understand is that we get beat playing the zone every time. With some of the best secondaries in the country, I don't see why they don't just go man.

[DaddyBuiltRacing]

Heacock was a beast theres no denying that. However someone posted up on Scout today showing that even Dantonio's amazing defenses struggled from time to time. It is still really early in the season and they are rotating so many damn players. I dont think the D will really be up to the level people expect until a normal rotation is found. I think someone said that 12 d-linemen alone have played. That doesn't include the 6 or so linebackers we have rotated (thats a ton considering we play nickel most the time) and think about all the DB's who have seen action, hell Archies kid got meaningful playing time this year so far.

 

Urbans quotes:

Q. You how much more can you emphasize tackling? What will you do differently starting say Tuesday and Wednesday that will make a change?

 

COACH MEYER: "Emphasis, you get what you emphasize. All I heard about was lack of turnovers a year ago, and certainly we are creating some more. Not as many this past week. But we've got something that I learned from my mentor, Coach Bruce. I know we tackled more than anybody, but obviously it's not getting the job done, so we have to tackle more. Instead of one day a week, we'll probably have to go two now. It's all about fundamentals technique."

 

We make a huge emphasis on stripping the ball. If you watch one of those tackles, it looked like the guy was going after the ball instead of wrapping him up. So we've addressed that and we'll have more conversation about that.

 

Q. In the first three games you guys have given up 13 plays in 20 yards or more on defense. It's gotten worse each week. Is it the scheme, lack of execution or just bad tackling?

 

COACH MEYER: "I think it would be too easy

to say bad tackling. There are some scheme issues involved that you've already addressed. There is an area where we're getting hurt. I can share that with you. It's not that big of a deal because you see it.

 

A good piece of it is poor tackling, but once again blame it on the kid for poor tackling. That's not acceptable. That is the most alarming thing. I can't remember Ohio State defense. I've watched them for a long time, and I can't remember the defense I've been around that's given up this many. We've got to stop or we'll lose the game.

 

Other than saying that is a high priority and getting"

[JuicedH22]

So, I thought this was kinda cool, but I am sure I will get some jeers from the jimmie rustlers, but anyway UC has been putting on/spreading these 'mini videos' every other week or so, kind of a 'neat'/different marketing gimmick. The last one was a time lapse video of the stadium before/during/after the game, and this one is a camera strapped to a cheerleader's boobs, lol.