Winners
Alabama
Sometimes in
college football you just have to survive a few. That’s exactly what Alabama did on the road in College
Station Saturday. It was a bad
defensive performance (they gave up a record 628 yards) but they made the plays
they needed to make to win. Plus,
is anyone else going to contain Johnny Manziel? The Crimson Tide won’t play another offense like that this
season but expect Nick Saban to have this defense much improved moving
forward.
After a
shaky week 1 win Alabama’s offense delivered against the Aggies. AJ McCarron was outstanding, having his
best game yet (20-29 for 334 yards and 4 TD’s). The offensive line owned the trenches, paving the way for a
clock-eating, demoralizing ground game that went for 234 yards (149 for TJ
Yeldon) and kept the ball for just over 35 minutes.
Alabama had
two big obstacles on their schedule going into the season- @ Texas A&M and
home against LSU. Check the Aggies
off the list. All that stands in
Alabama’s way of an SEC West title is LSU on November, 9th.
Pac-12
The Pac-12
went 8-1 against non-conference opponents this weekend. The conference had a particularly solid
outing against the B1G, going 3-1.
The only loss was a gimmie for Ohio State over Cal. Washington won on the road at Illinois
34-24. UCLA dominated on the road
at Nebraska, scoring 35 points in 16 minutes to finish with a 41-21 win. Arizona State won a strange meeting
with Wisconsin in the desert, 32-30.
In other
non-conference games, Oregon rolled Tennessee, USC got back on track against
Boston College, Stanford handled Army, Washington State beat Southern Utah and
Arizona beat UT San Antonio.
In an era
where everyone wants to know where their conference stacks up, the Pac-12 made
a big statement over the B1G.
Washington Huskies
This win is
important for a couple of reasons.
Washington is, for the first time in a long time winning games that they
normally wouldn’t be winning. They
played well in week one and won, at home against a well-coached Boise State
team. Also important is that they
won a road game. Under Sarkisian,
the Huskies were 5-13 (not counting bowls) on the road going into this game. Illinois isn’t a great team but they’ve
looked solid in the early going and I don’t think Washington would have won
this game the past few years.
Sarkisian
has his best team since coming to Seattle and things seem to finally be
clicking. The offense has come
together well and with a healthy offensive line, Keith Price is back to 2011
for and this year they have a game-changing ground game. The defense, under second year
defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox is a very good unit and strength of the
team, not a liability.
I’ve been on
the Huskies bandwagon since the start of the season and I think they’re going
to make a lot of noise in weeks to come.
Losers
Nebraska
I am only
putting Nebraska on here because of its on field performance; the Bo Pelini
stuff has been beaten to death already. The Huskers suffered their worst
non-conference home loss in a half a century on Saturday and allowed 504 yards
to UCLA. The Huskers have allowed nearly 1400 yards of total offense in three
games this season and are 105th in the country. The offense can put
up points although it did look very anemic at times on Saturday during the
second half. This team is going to struggle all season if it cannot get its
defense figured out and keeps giving up 500 yards games.
Pac-12
Officials in the Wisconsin-Arizona State game
I stayed up
late to finish watching this game on Saturday and watching it live I had no
idea what was going on and now it shows that the refs had no idea what was
going on. Turns out the officials botched the whole play and final 10 seconds
of that game and the conference came out with a slap on the wrist for them.
Nonetheless you hate to see a game influenced by an officials poor call
especially when you have instant replay to watch. So Pac-12 officials you lose
this week.
College
football media
I have no
idea why the newest witch hunt in college sports is the impermissible benefits
story. The latest two stories this week, the six par SI one about Oklahoma
State or the Yahoo sports story about the SEC players getting money, have
really made me stop and think about this. I am not going to get on my soap box
here about this, but come on…what is going to happen? What can the NCAA do if
all of this six-part story from SI is true? It can’t even figure out what to do
with Miami. What happens when SI has to retract parts or all of this article
because it did not vet is sources well enough? Ok that last one I threw in some
editorializing.
I am sure
that some of this went on at Oklahoma State and you know what? For that matter,
I think that you could take a look at every school in the country right now and
something is going on behind the scenes, but the fact is we chose to leave it
as an out of sight-out-of-mind issue, because it’s the sport we love. That does
not make that ok that this happens, but don’t try and tell me this is the most
ground breaking story in college sports. Its just another big program that had
some former players or some whistle blower that wanted to make their story
known. True? Untrue? I don’t really care, but lets stop the impermissible witch-hunt
and just cover the stories that matter.
Players of the Week
AJ McCarron
When Alabama
needed their quarterback to win them a game, their ‘game manager’ went and did
it. McCarron had the best game of
his career, leading the Tide to 568 total yards and going 20-29 for 334 yards
and 4 touchdowns. Manziel stole
the show, but McCarron did what he needed to do and won the game, moving
Alabama one step closer to another BCS Championship game.
Blake Bell
The
‘Bell-dozer’!! Turns out he can
spin a little. Bell was beat out
in the preseason by freshman Trevor Knight, watched the offense sputter through
their first two games and in week three, got his chance to lead the Sooners
offense. I think they’ve found
their starter as Bell completed 27 of 37 for 413 yards and 4 touchdowns leading
the Sooners to a 51-20 win over Tulsa.
Johnny Manziel
I think
Johnny Manziel showed that without him Texas A&M is a pretty average team
at best. Manziel made a lot of big plays and brought the Aggies within a
touchdown with 14 seconds to go in the game. Statistically Manziel went off
going 28-of-39 for 464 yards and five touchdowns with two interceptions. He
also led the Aggies in rushing with 98 yards. He accounted for 562 yards of
total offense. He kept his name high on the Heisman list with that performance.
Bishop Sankey
Sankey
scored two touchdowns and accumulated 268 yards of total offense touching the
ball 38 times in the Huskies win over Illinois in Chicago on Saturday. Sankey
leads the Huskies in rushing and has had 171 yards and 268 yards of total
offense in two games this season.
He is one of Keith Price’s best targets and together they have this
Husky offense rolling.
Team of the Week
UCLA
The Bruins,
coming in with heavy hearts after the death of receiver Nick Pasquale started
slow on the road at Nebraska dropping to a 21-3 deficit. They wouldn’t be down for long though
and came storming back, overcoming the largest deficit by an opponent in
Lincoln since 1996 and scoring 38 unanswered points to drill the Huskers 41-21.
Ole Miss
The Rebels
are young and talented showing that by cutting up a poor tackling Texas
defense. They scored 27 unanswered points in the second half to roll Texas in
Austin. Mississippi also has a big opening night win over Vanderbilt in
Nashville. The Rebels are averaging nearly 500 yards of total offense per game
with more than half of that coming from the run game. They have the week off
this week before traveling to Bryant Denny for a match up with Alabama.
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