The first Saturday in
November brings us Week 10 of the college football season, and frankly, it might be the
weakest on paper schedule we’ve had all year. You know it’s bad when ABC’s Saturday
Night Game is SMU at Memphis. The "famed" Big Noon Kickoff on Fox is terrible
Nebraska at crappy Purdue. Scott Frost, the most handsome man in college
football, is the only thing that will keep that game from being the ugliest thing
to ever appear on television. Florida State-Miami is on Saturday, which would’ve
been a great game… if this was 2000.
It’s basically up to Georgia
and Florida to save the weekend, though their last five meetings have all been
decided by two touchdowns or more. Maybe that means we’re due for a classic?
Which brings us to
Tennessee…
UAB
at Tennessee
In the last three weeks, the Vols have a pretty good
showing at Alabama sandwiched between home conferences wins over Mississippi State
and South Carolina. The fanbase is all the way back in on this program. Jeremy Pruitt went on Paul Finebaum's show this week and got to yuck it up about
going to Gus’s to get fries for his pregnant wife. The pro Vol media has
declared that “Pruitt is going to make Tennessee great”, and there’s enthusiasm again around this program, levels that haven't been reached in Knoxville since the Dobbsnail Boot.
Which is why the Vols can’t
afford to lose this weekend. UAB is 6-1 and is having a nice year, but there’s
no way, at Tennessee, that you should get beat in the same year by Georgia
State and UAB. Pruitt has built up mountains of goodwill in the last month, but it
would be an absolute disaster for him personally if his team got beat on Saturday.
Hell, it would be an absolute disaster for everyone involved in the program if
this team didn’t make a bowl game for the third year in a row. You want to talk about jerking the rug out
from under the fan base? You want to see levels of vitriol that haven’t been
heaped on this program since Butch? Lose on Saturday.
Which is why I think there’s
a lot of pressure on Pruitt and this team tomorrow for a game that, under
normal circumstances, wouldn’t be super stressful. And again, UAB is a good football
team, particularly on the defensive side of the ball, where they allow the fewest
yards and fewest points per game in the entirety of Conference USA. Tennessee
isn’t just going to be able to show up on Saturday and move the ball at will.
They’re going to have to block like they did against South Carolina, and then
hope that the quarterback play is remotely close to what they got last week.
Both Jarrett Guarantano
and Brian Maurer have been cleared to play, but it does seem like JT Shrout
will get the start under center for the second consecutive Saturday as he took
the majority of the first team reps in practice this week. I suspect we’ll see
more of Jauan Jennings in the wildcat tomorrow as well. Maybe he’ll even throw
a pass or two, or at least one that doesn’t get called back (like his completion
to Marquez Callaway last week).
Darrell Taylor seems
ready to play according to Pruitt, which should help the defense on their quest
to bottle up UAB’s offense. The Blazers are in the middle of the pack in their
conference in most of the offensive metrics, and if Tennessee brings the same
defensive intensity that they showed in October, they shouldn’t have much trouble
with a UAB attack that isn’t special.
Pruitt’s reputation
rebound the last couple of weeks isn’t that surprising, because like I’ve said in
this space a million times, the only real thing that fans care about is winning.
Signing recruits, being wacky and funny in a press conference, and throwing out
catch phrases and platitudes is fine, but that stuff suddenly didn’t matter at all when Butch
Jones couldn’t win. Hell, fans don’t even care about the behavior of players
that much if the wins come. Vol fans were all in on Lane Kiffin because of his swagger
and the fact that they thought he could win games in the long term, even though
a ton of the guys he recruited to Tennessee didn’t end up graduating from the
university due to off field issues. Ohio State fans defended Urban Meyer last year
against credible accusations that he knew one of his assistants was
smacking his wife around, yet did nothing, because Urban won a hell of a lot of
games. For years and years Indiana enabled Bob Knight to be a miserable,
abusive a-hole who treated his players and members of the athletic department
like dogs because, you guessed it, he won a lot of games. This is the reality
of sports.
Pruitt got a heavy dose of hate in September when this team
started 1-3. Now everyone loves him because he beat Mississippi State and South
Carolina.
And you know what? I’m happy
they won those games. I am. Tennessee couldn’t win a single conference game two
years ago, and they hadn’t beaten the Gamecocks since 2015. But Pruitt’s legacy
and reputation in the coming years isn’t going to be decided by how he does against
South Carolina and Mississippi State, it’s going to be determined by how he performs
against Tennessee’s biggest rivals: Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. Those are
the teams he needs to beat with at least some regularity to get this program
back to where the Vol fans really want it to be. So far, he’s 0-6 against them and
has been outscored 255-84. What happens two years from now if he’s 0-12 or 1-11
against them? Is the fanbase going to still be over their skis about him? He
didn’t inherit the Vanderbilt program after all.
Prediction: Tennessee
Miami
at Florida State
A battle of the once
greats pits two coaches against each other who will both be assistants again by
2022.
The Hurricanes have been
in the ACC since 2004. In that time, they have zero conference championships,
1 Coastal Division Title, one New Years Six Bowl Game appearance, zero top ten
finishes in either poll, one ten win season, and seven seasons with six losses
or more. It would’ve been inconceivable to anyone back then that this would be how their
ACC resume would look through 15 years and counting. The Hurricane football
program is in such sorry shape that their no tradition basketball team actually
won the ACC before the football team did. Now they’ve got first
year coach Manny Diaz in charge of the program, and they’re
off to a roaring 4-4 start.
On the other side, we’ve got
Florida State, who won the national title in 2013 and went undefeated in the next regular season on their way to a berth in the inaugural college football playoff. The ‘Noles are now just 16-17 since 2017,
and a paltry 9-11 under second year coach Willie Taggart. Whatever momentum Jimbo Fisher
had going from 2010-2016 is gone, replaced by the lame as hell turnover
backpack energy that FSU smartly punted on before the year, the only good thing
Taggart has done during his tenure. Doak Campbell Stadium is half empty most Saturdays;
of course, do you blame them? Would you show up for your team if your coach was
replaced by the guy that took your order at McDonalds the day before?
Who makes it “back”
first? I guess Florida State is the odds on favorite, right? They have more
money, better facilities, the same access to the Florida talent that Miami has,
and significantly more recent success. They aren’t going to do it with Taggart
though.
The funny thing is that
both of these jobs are sleeping giants. The ACC sucks outside of
Clemson, so you basically have one really tough game a year and then a bunch of
cupcakes. There isn’t a school in the ACC outside of Clemson
that can reach the heights the Tigers have outside of these two (maybe you could
include Virginia Tech in this, but only maybe), and the good thing for Miami is
that they don’t even necessarily have to play Clemson every year until the ACC
Championship Game, since they’re in the opposite division. Both of these
programs really are just the right coach away from winning 10 games a year with
little to no resistance. Unfortunately for the Hurricanes, they’ve basically botched
every coaching hire since Butch Davis left after the 2000 season (Larry Coker
did win a national title, but that was with Davis’s players and he got run out
of town after the ’06 season due to the program deteriorating, and Mark Richt
might have worked out if he didn’t leave after only three seasons).I have about as much faith in Manny Diaz getting this thing turned
around as I did a girl in any girl agreeing to go on a date with me in high school.
In terms of the game Saturday,
hell, who knows? Does it even really matter? I guess this game means more to Taggart
since his seat is infinitely hotter, but at what point do the FSU fans start
rooting against their own team every week so they can get a new coach sooner? Honestly,
this has probably already started to happen.
Prediction: Miami (I
guess?)
#15
SMU at #24 Memphis
I’ll tell ya what, this
is the game we’ve all been waiting for! I don’t know about you, but I’ll definitely
be bouncing the grandkids on my knee telling them about the time Chris Fowler
and Kirk Herbstreit came South for SMU and Memphis!
Again, this is the ABC Saturday
Night Game. If you’re not a Tennessee fan, this would be the perfect night to turn college football off and take your wife/girlfriend to a movie or
on a date or pumpkin patch picking or whatever the hell she wants to do. Then
you can say, “Listen babe, I know I’m a dirtbag husband/boyfriend because I ignore
you every Saturday during the fall and watch football, but I love you so much that
I decided to give you one of my precious Saturdays. It’s all about you and me babe!
Please don’t divorce me!” Of course, she doesn’t know it’s a crap slate that you
don’t care about anyway, and now she thinks you’re a great guy, and
maybe she even decides not to call that divorce lawyer on Monday morning. If
you are a Tennessee fan, don’t worry, because the early slate isn’t that great
either, so you can do all the stuff I just mentioned in the early part of the
afternoon. Just make sure you’re in front of a TV for Georgia-Florida at 3:30.
Prediction: Memphis
#9
Utah at Washington
#7
Oregon at USC
The Pac 12’s playoff
hopes could die this weekend, as their only two remaining shots at the playoff,
Utah and Oregon, both go on the road.
For the Ducks to have a shot making the playoff, they’d have to do something that’s never been
done in the history of college football, which is win every game in a nine game
conference schedule AND THEN also win their conference championship game.
Is this
the place they trip up? Maybe. I haven’t been super impressed with either Oregon
or their quarterback Justin Herbert this season, and they very easily could’ve
lost to an average Washington State team at home last week. Of course, if you
thought I was cruel to Willie Taggart earlier, that was tame compared to
everything I’ve written about traveling tube sock salesman /7 Eleven bathroom
attendant Clay Helton.
To be fair to the Trojans
and Helton, they are undefeated at home, and they even beat Utah in LA earlier
in the season. USC definitely has the talent to win on Saturday, because again,
I don’t think this is a great Oregon team, and frankly USC probably has better overall
talent, which makes it even more mind-boggling that the Trojans have been this mediocre with Helton in charge.
I’m in a tough spot here
because I’m not sold on Oregon, and yet, picking against Clay Helton and not
believing in him (with good reason) have been my thing ever since he took the
job. I gotta stay on brand here right?
Now, the other game. Utah has zero wins against
teams that are currently ranked, and their best victory of the season came against
an Arizona State team that now has three losses. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t
think Washington is good either; they’re a three loss team in a Pac 12 that
doesn’t have any elite teams.
The Utes best shot on Saturday is the fact that they’re taking their number 1 ranked scoring and yards allowed
Pac 12 defense on the road against this Washington team that is in the middle
of the pack in the conference in passing and yards per game, despite having an “NFL”
quarterback in Jacob Eason. Utah has given up 20 points or more only once this season,
and have allowed 20 points total in the four games since USC lit them up for 30 on
September 20th.
I think USC has a better
chance to win than Washington does, but come on, I can’t take shots (fairly) at
Clay Helton for years and then turn around and pick him to win a game that would
help greatly in him keeping the job he never should’ve had in the first
place. We’re taking both favorites!
Prediction: Oregon, Utah
Side note: On my Monday
wrap up, I referred to USC, aka Southern Califorina, as “South California”. I went
back and corrected it because I want to have as few errors in this thing as
possible. Just a simple typo, or so I thought.
Of course, the only
reason I even realized I did that was because my “loving” father texted me to
tell me I was a “dumbass” for the error, and even though it’s now Friday, I’m
still hearing about it. I shouldn’t be shocked by this, because my
Old Man is the king of beating the living hell out of each and every joke he
thinks is funny. It’s been almost two years and he’s still ranting and raving
about how funny Larry Culpepper was and how we need him back to save the
college football playoff commercials. I know, he’s an idiot.
Obviously his old, fat,
Cheeto stained person was offended to its core that I left out three letters,
and since it’s that big of a deal to him, it MUST be that big of a deal to some
of the readers. I’m sorry folks. Don’t worry, I’ll fire myself.
#8
Georgia vs #6 Florida (in Jacksonville)
The game of the weekend also
brings us our “Bet the Mortgage Pick of the Week”. But I’m throwing a curve
ball this time around… because we’re not betting the point spread! The over/under
is 44.5, and we’re, without question, taking the under. I know I know, we’ve
revolutionized the “Bet the Mortgage Pick of the Week”. It was always headed
this way.
I’m saying to take the
under because this game is going to be very reminiscent of the 2012 Cocktail
Party, when the ‘Dawgs knocked off the Gators in a low scoring slog 17-9,
thanks to a late Jordan Reed fumble in the redzone.
Georgia is the top ranked
rush offense in the SEC, but they can’t throw it with any consistency. Florida
is the exact opposite; they’re 3rd in the league in passing, but
rank in the bottom 4 in rushing.
The spot where both teams
shine is on the other side of the ball; Georgia is the top ranked defense in the SEC in both yards
and points per game, while Florida comes in 5th and 3rd,
respectively. Both teams have struggled to score at times, and I think the Gators
will load up 8 or 9 guys in the box every play and dare Jake Fromm
to throw over the top of them. Of course, with their speed in the back end, it’s
not like they won’t be able to cover back there if he does. Georgia’s defense is
ferocious, and I can assure you that they aren’t afraid of Kyle Trask, which to
be fair, I’m not sure anyone is really afraid of Kyle Trask. I mean, I doubt Kirby
Smart snapped awake this week in the middle of the night, sweating profusely while thinking to himself, “Damn! What the hell are we
going to do against Trask? That guy… damn!”
Florida’s defense is
going to keep them in this one, but I just have no confidence in their ability
to move the football against the Bulldog defense with any consistency. Georgia
has allowed 20 points only once, against South Carolina, and seven of the points
came on a Jake Fromm pick six. Fromm doesn’t have to be Joe Burrow tomorrow for
the ‘Dawgs to win, he just can’t throw three interceptions like he did against the
Gamecocks.
I like Georgia here by a
field goal, which I guess means I’m “Betting the Mortgage” on Florida +6.5.
That one’s for free guys.
Prediction: Georgia
Enjoy football tomorrow,
you deserve it. Or hell, enjoy the pumpkin patch picking that you don’t want to
do because your wife/girlfriend drags you to it. Don’t get divorced fellas!
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