In college football,
there’s only two things that are certain: Nick Saban "electing to kick ass" against Ed Orgeron and LSU, and Tennessee, no matter the week or year,
being a giant disappointment. Let’s start with the Vols….
Tennessee
gained only 172 yards of offense against…. Charlotte
I didn’t watch more than
five minutes of this game because I was so preoccupied with all the other
interesting matchups that were going on at the same time. Plus, it’s Charlotte. No way this should be
competitive, right? Wrong! The 49ers outgained the Vols 244-192, controlled the
ball for more than 33 of the 60 minutes, and held Tennessee to 0.8 yards per rush. 0.8! The Vols really had 20 rushing yards on 26
attempts against Charlotte. This really happened. What the actual hell?
I don’t think I’m
exaggerating here when I say this, but all the progress Tennessee made the first month and a
half of the season has vanished faster than the Baha Men's music career. Since the Auburn game, they got
outclassed in every facet of the game by Alabama, blew a 12 point second half lead against South Carolina,
and had their offensive line manhandled by Charlotte’s front seven. Jeremy
Pruitt said after the game that Tennessee and Charlotte were “very evenly
matched”… my god. If this is the best they can do on offense, they’ll get shut
out in Knoxville next week by a Kentucky defense that held Mizzou to zero
second half first downs just two weeks ago.
I don’t have any answers
or solutions for this stuff anymore. Tennessee is an awful program right now, a
once proud brand that commanded respect across the SEC and the entire country. General
Neyland has probably rolled over in his grave so many times that he busted out
the side of his casket. They need to win two of their final three to make a
bowl game, something that looks almost impossible right now. Kentucky is going to beat
them like a drum next week, and Mizzou, which looked like a winnable game a few weeks ago, now appears more difficult, considering the Tigers went
into Florida on Saturday and blew them out by 21 points.
I think Tennessee
loses their next two and goes into the Vanderbilt game as an underdog with a great chance to finish 4-8 in back-to-back years. At least Butch Jones won five games
in his first year back in 2013, and even Derek Dooley made a bowl in his
first season in 2010. Plus, the SEC is definitely worse now than it was back in
2013 or 2010, meaning Pruitt would do worse against a worse SEC with more
talent than what Butch inherited and had to deal with in his first season. Not
good.
Ed
Orgeron’s LSU teams have scored 10 points against Alabama in 12 quarters, and
have been shut out by them two consecutive times at home
Saturday’s 29-0 blowout
was just further validation that Ed “Swamp Monster” Orgeron has a zero percent
chance to ever beat Saban in a game where they are both head coaches. Both
programs always schedule bye weeks before each other, meaning Saban is always
going to have two weeks to prepare for whatever limited stuff Orgeron will be
able to put together over the same time period. Plus, if there was ever a time for Coach O to pray to the Bayou gods and take the field with an army of Swamp Men, this would've been the week to do it. But since that didn't happen, I guess he doesn't have that power after all. Good luck with Orgeron for the next couple of years, Tiger fans!
LSU and Alabama have similar
athletes, but you wouldn’t have been able to tell that from how they looked
Saturday. The difference was, as it often is, the quarterback position, but perhaps more importantly, the
sudden emergence of the Tide defense, who out of nowhere looked like a Saban defense
for the first time all season. Tua had probably the worst game of his career
(25-42 passing, 295 yards, two TDs, one rushing TD, and his first interception
of the year!) and he still absolutely crushed what Joe Burrow did for the
Tigers (18-35 passing, 184 yards passing, 0 TDs, 1 pick). Honestly, I’m
surprised his numbers were that good, but what was most shocking was the Tide
defense holding LSU to 12 rushing yards on 25 carries. Teams have been able to
move the ball a little bit on the Alabama defense all season, and there was always
a thought that some team with similar athletes could maybe put up enough points
to be able to outscore them, but there’s no way that happens if Alabama plays defense the rest of the season like they did on Saturday. And if they keep up that
effort, we could be talking about the ’18 Tide as not only the best Saban team
ever, but maybe one of the three to five best college football teams of all
time. They’ve won every game by at least 22 points, they’ve got the odds on
favorite to win the Heisman in Tua, and they’ve got a fast, young defense that will probably send every starter to the NFL. There’s a clear divide between
them and everyone else in the country right now.
Which leads me to this…..
Can
anyone beat Alabama?
The short answer is no.
They’re going to blow through their next three games (home for Mississippi
State, home for the Citadel, and home for Auburn) before they head to Atlanta
to face Georgia in the SEC Championship Game. I think the ‘Dawgs are really
good and seem to have fixed their issues in the running game, but LSU and their
clearly limited offense were able to put up 36 points on them; why can’t
Alabama and Tua put up 46? 56?
Let’s leave the SEC and
look at the teams they could potentially face in the playoff. Oklahoma’s Kyler
Murray would arguably be the best athlete Saban has ever faced at the
quarterback position, but it wouldn’t matter all that much because the OU
defense is hot garbage, and I don’t have to look any further than the 46 points
they gave up against Texas Tech on Saturday. Tua and the Tide offense would put
up 60 on them. West Virginia has the same problem; Will Grier is phenomenal at the
quarterback position, but they’ve got nothing on defense either. Out of the Pac
12, Washington State is a nice story, and it’d be incredible to get a month of
Mike Leach press conferences leading up to a playoff game, but come on guys,
the only way the Cougars could beat the Tide would be in Leach made a blood
sacrifice to the Pirate God Black Beard (and don’t rule that out). Clemson
probably has the players in the front seven to challenge the Tide, but so did
LSU and the Alabama still put up almost 600 yards of total offense. Plus, there’s
no way in hell I’d trust a true freshman quarterback like Trevor Lawrence in an
enormous, high pressure game against Saban. And I’m not even sure how great the
Tigers are, anyway, because they’ve played the worst schedule of any of these
contenders. Their best win is… Texas A&M, a four loss team? Two loss
Syracuse, who they have far better players than? So they’re out as well. Ohio
State can’t run the ball, and Urban Meyer constantly looks like he’s dealing
with the aftermath of an accidental forced lobotomy on the sidelines. So unless
that changes, they don’t have a chance either.
Which leaves us with two
teams, Notre Dame and Michigan. The Irish would be interesting, only because
they have an athletic quarterback in Ian Book paired with a very good defense,
but I’d still think the Tide would be favored by… ten points on a neutral
field? Maybe more? Michigan has one of the best defenses in the history of
college football, and they haven’t given up 300 yards in game since Week 3.
They’re so good that they made Trace McSorley look like he’d never held a
football before, the same guy that had almost 500 yards of offense himself
against Ohio State back in late September. I think they’d be the toughest
defense Tua has ever faced, but I’d be concerned about their offense, led by
quarterback Shea Patterson who has been AT BEST above average the entire
season, particularly if Alabama continues to play defense like they did against
LSU.
So if I had to rank the
teams, based on their ability to beat the Tide, I probably go 1. Michigan 2.
Notre Dame and 3. Georgia, with the knowledge that all of them probably have
less than a 10% chance of doing so.
Is the
Tide’s dominance bad for the sport?
This is the second
greatest sports guy/talking head guy/blowhard/drunk-idiot-at-every-bar topic
happening right now, only behind the MJ-LeBron “debate”. Honestly, I feel like
I should be typing this in all caps. “ALABAMA IS RUINING COLLEGE FOOTBALL!!! ITS
TERRIBLE, I DON’T WANT TO WATCH IT, IT SUCKS! NICK SABAN IS A FAILED NFL COACH!
COLLEGE FOOTBALL SUCKS!” Sorry, I don’t know why Stephen A. Smith and every old
drunk white dude at a bar just took over my body at the same time.
The ratings for Saturday’s
LSU-Alabama game were up 81% from last year, and it clocked in as the highest
rated college game on any network all season. Does that mean anything going forward? I
have no idea, though in general, I don’t think fans are bothered by dominant
teams as long as those teams are challenged from time to time. MJ’s Bulls won
six titles in eight years, and yet, the NBA ratings were higher than ever. Why?
Partly because Jordan was (and still is) the greatest to ever play, but also
because the Bulls were at least challenged in multiple playoff series during
his run and actually had to overcome adversity to win titles. The Patriots draw
large TV audience because they’re hated, but it also helps that they’ve also
been in some of the best regular season/playoff/Super Bowls of all time. The Warriors,
on the other hand, aren’t as interesting, because no one in the NBA ever seriously
has a shot in a playoff series against them. Did anyone think for a single
second last season that they weren’t going to win the title? No. How about the
year before? Ditto.
The best thing college
football has going for it is that for any team to win a playoff “series”
against Alabama, they’d only need to be better than them for one sixty minute
period. Michigan doesn’t have to beat the Tide four out of seven, they only
need to do it once, and no matter how unlikely that may seem, the very idea of “any
given Saturday” is what keeps fans across the country engaged. And as long as
the idea of “any given Saturday” still exists somewhere in the minds of fans,
college football is going to be fine.
I also think a lot of
this backlash is anti-SEC in nature; the college football media hates the SEC
because they kick everyone’s ass every year, and their jobs are often entirely
dependent on that conference, because the fans from that league drive the money
bus in college football. If the SEC didn’t exist in the same way it did now, someone like
Joel Klatt’s opinions wouldn’t matter anywhere near as much to anywhere near as many people, meaning he's basically needs the SEC around to keep his job paying as well as it does. The same thing goes for the rest of the college football media. So
there’s a natural resentment there. For instance, if this was Ohio State
kicking ass for a straight decade, I don’t think we’d here a peep about this
from anyone.
What we’ve got with the
Tide is the best coach in the history of the sport (and maybe all sports)
locked in at a football-mad program that is giving him everything he needs to
field the best team he can every single year, coupled with the impatient fan
bases and athletic departments of the other SEC schools who demand that their
coaches who don’t beat Saban enough get fired, which leads to cavalcades of
jokers like Ed Orgeron getting jobs at big times schools. Les Miles won ten
games a year and a national title at LSU, and even beat Saban three times (and
in back to back years!) and still got fired, partly because they didn’t beat
Alabama enough. He’s driven the entire SEC to the brink of insanity, and the
amount of coaching turnover in the conference is one reason he’s even more
dominant now than he was six or seven years ago.
Teams
Still Alive For The Playoff
Like always, I’ve
eliminated every two loss team from the Power 5 conferences, and every single Group
of Five team, because for the millionth time, no, UCF doesn’t belong in the
playoff (* by the undefeated teams).
SEC: *Alabama, Georgia
ACC: *Clemson
Big Ten: Michigan, Ohio
State
Big 12: Oklahoma, West
Virginia
Pac 12: Washington State
Independents: Notre Dame
We’re left with just nine
teams. Our three undefeated teams, Alabama, Clemson, and Notre Dame, just have
to win out to make the playoff, though I’d boot the Tigers if they lose again
because the ACC is a garbage conference, maybe even the worst we’ve ever had in
the entire Power 5. Clemson’s toughest game of the year is probably this Saturday
night at Boston College, where temperatures will be in the 40s. If they can’t
win that game (and I think they probably will), then what have they done to
prove they’re one of the best four teams? In short, nothing.
Alabama probably gets in
unless they lose twice, which is probably an impossibility. I even think they’d get in if they lost the SEC Title Game to Georgia, based solely on the
eye test. Notre Dame has an easy game this week at home against FSU, a weird
game at Yankee Stadium against Syracuse, and a road game against the hapless
USC Trojans left; I think they’ll win all three of those.
Hot take: Michigan is
going to beat Ohio State by at least three touchdowns when they play the
Saturday after Thanksgiving. The Buckeyes have a myriad of issues, particularly
on offense, and if they can’t run the ball by the time they play Michigan, good
luck getting to 14 points because that Wolverine defense is incredible. Michigan would be the fourth playoff team if ‘Bama, Clemson, and
Notre Dame all win out.
Oklahoma and West
Virginia play each other in an elimination game the Saturday after Thanksgiving,
but then, depending on how the rest of the Big 12 season shakes out, they could meet
each other the following weekend in the Big 12 Championship Game, meaning the
loser of the first matchup could theoretically eliminate the other team from
playoff consideration the next weekend. Even if OU or WVU win out, I still
think the committee would rank them out of the Top 4 unless Clemson loses once
OR one of the Alabama-Michigan-Notre Dame trio finishes with two losses.
Washington State needs
the most help, though their last three games aren’t overly difficult. They play
at free-falling Colorado on Saturday, and then host Arizona and Washington in
the last two weeks, before finishing with the Pac 12 Championship Game against
whatever bad team wins the South Division (probably Utah, who the Cougars have
already beaten). I think they’d need five of groups of these six teams (Michigan,
Ohio State, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Georgia, and Clemson) to all lose again
for them to make it, which seems pretty unlikely. Plus, I think they’ll
probably lose that Washington game the final weekend of the regular season;
Mike Leach has one victory in his six tries against them, including five
straight losses.
My
Top 4
Alabama
The Tide are one of the
greatest teams in the history of college football.
Michigan
The Wolverines, as
mentioned before, haven’t given up 300 yards in a game since Week 3. Yes yes, I
know they lost to Notre Dame in Week 1, but if those teams played now on a
neutral field, I think Michigan would win.
Notre Dame
The Irish took care of
Northwestern on the road by double digits, and have three winnable games
between them and their first appearance in the college football playoff.
Georgia
The ‘Dawgs won
back-to-back weeks away from home against top ten teams (Florida, Kentucky),
and finish out conference play at home against a mediocre Auburn team on
Saturday. They’ll need to beat Alabama in the SEC title game if they want to
make the playoff, though.
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