Football thoughts on a Monday
Well, the Browns won yesterday. Basically that breaks down like this:
Cleveland's offense is actually pretty decent. A vastly improved Oline, very good receivers in Bryant, Northcutt, Jackson, and Braylon Edwards (who took a quick slant 80 yards). Rueben Droughns is showing people that it wasn't just the Denver system. He's good. And a serviceable TE in Heiden. Dilfer is Dilfer. He's quite possibly the easiest player to root for. A superb guy and a locker room gem. If he avoids making critical INTs, which has been his MO in the past, the Browns will score points.
The Browns defense is atrocious. It's expansion team bad. The fact that the Packers only scored 24 points and 7 of those came when the Browns were in 100% prevent mode shows much more about the Green Bay offense than it does the Cleveland defense. I have never in my life seen an NFL team with a weaker pass rush than the Browns. Next year we need to draft 8 defensive players and hope a few of them stick.
It was great to see them get a W. I still expect a 6-10 season because most teams will score 30+ on this defense. That way, we can draft A.J. Hawk next year and I will be extremely happy.
Speaking of Ohio State, a 27-6 win over San Diego State on Saturday was a classic case of a Texas Hangover. Coaches and former players said that this was the worst week of practice by a Tressel coached OSU team in 5 years. It showed. San Diego State scored on the first play of the game on an 80 yard flanker screen. That woke up the D and I think SDSU had like 3 first downs the rest of the game. The Buckeye offense stayed in neutral all day, but still won handily. If we were going to have a major letdown I am glad it was against SDSU and not Iowa.
This brings me to one of the things I hate about college football. There are few things that I hate but this is one of them. Polls. The polls themselves are bad enough but OSU wins its game by 3 touchdowns and Louisville, who beat Oregon State 63-28 leapfrogs over them because, I guess, OSU didn't beat SDSU bad ENOUGH. So if OSU scores in the final seconds and wins 34-6, would that have been enough to keep Louisville at #9 rather than jumping over Ohio State?
I certainly will not argue that the OSU offense looked lackluster on Saturday, but the defense gave up 1 score on the game's first play and SDSU didn't get into OSU territory the rest of the game. It's not like OSU beat SDSU on a last second FG.
When we start penalizing teams for winning but not by enough points it encourages Spurrier-like coaching when you throw 50 yard TD passes in the 4th quarter of a blowout. That's good?
If that's going to be the precedent then Louisville better blow teams out every week. There are cupcake schedules, and then there this:
at Kentucky
Oregon State
at South Florida
Fla Atlantic
North Carolina
at West Virginia
at Cincinnati
Pittsburgh
Rutgers
Syracuse
at Connecticut
If these are the rules the coaches poll is going to play by, fine. But the week that Louisville beats one of these weak teams late in the 4th -- they better get leapfrogged by someone else. If OSU, for example, beats #21 Iowa next week and Louisvile only beats South Florida by a few scores, then they should drop.
Right?
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Dan:
September 19th, 2005 - 11:13
Hey Bill, Ravens fan here…we’ll trade you Anothony Wright and Boller for Trent Dilfer!
God we suck!
September 19th, 2005 - 11:36
Bill, the polls just plain suck. There are voters who will put Louisville ahead of Ohio State because they are going to probably be undefeated at the end of the season. But who is the best team that L’ville plays this year? Pitt? WVU? Reporters complain about how you don’t get big matchups like OSU – Texas, but how do they reward the loser? Drop them below a weaker team that is undefeated.
But the polls have always sucked. My team, FSU, should have at least shared their title with Notre Dame in 93 – instead of being voted ahead of the team that beat them. Penn State had as much of a right to the title as Nebraska in 94 (but were dropped because they didn’t win by enough against Indiana).
It is more popularity contest than a vote for the best team. Hey, it’s time ole Bobby Bowden got his championship and hell, Lou Holtz already got one! Osborne’s retiring, lets give him a share of the title with Michigan! Or in the old days – hey, Notre Dame won their bowl game, let’s jump them from #5 to number #1 because……. well, because they are Notre Dame!
September 19th, 2005 - 11:57
It’s not exactly hard to find silly stuff in the polls – but here’s one more example. In the AP today, Notre Dame is one point AHEAD of Mich St – who just beat them and is undefeated!
And it’s time to officially pass the torch of “point runner-upper” from Spurrier to Frank Beamer at Va Tech. He’s left his starters in the whole game against Duke and now Ohio U. Their out of conf. schedule is worse than Louisville’s.
September 19th, 2005 - 15:51
Regarding the worst pass rush. I’m astounded that you didn’t think that the Packers pass rush was worse than the Browns. I actually saw Dilfer look at his watch when he dropped back once.
I read this on CNNSI yesterday and it tells you all you need to know about how people vote for the polls.
“Aditi Kinkhabwala of The Bergen Record in New Jersey had Michigan State 10th on her ballot, giving the Spartans extra credit for winning on the road.
“What it came down to is they’re 3-0 and they won at Notre Dame, a place that was all revved up and excited about Charlie Weis,” she said. “To go in there and withstand a charge, and beat a good team was very impressive.”
When you go from not ranked at all to #10, just because you beat an over-ranked team on the road in an offensive shootout… that’s just wrong.
I’m a fan of the thought that there shouldn’t be a single poll all year long, but at the end of the year, get a selection committee together and set all of the bowl matchups there. You can do the whole selection Sunday thing that they do with basketball and make a huge deal out of it.
The way it is now, a loss in September means less than a loss in December, and that’s just wrong.