SB Nation User Blog: JCCW Jerry

Neko, for Nico: her new cover art for her next solo disc, coming out early next year. Crush level...

JCCW Jerry — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:57:51 -0000

Neko, for Nico: her new cover art for her next solo disc, coming out early next year. Crush level alert: RED.

Sekou needs a quick math primer

JCCW Jerry — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:13:39 -0000

Not that I'd usually gripe about the best beat man in Atlanta, but this sort of thing drives me bonkers:

Nothing could make up for the Hawks’ miserable shooting night, they made 37 percent (29-for-78) of their shots from the floor, including a 7-for-17 showing from beyond the 3-point line.

See, Sekou, when you consider that you get an extra point for shooting outside the three-point arc, it changes the "what's a good shooting percentage?" formula a bit. 7-for-17 is actually pretty gosh-darned good, the equivalent of shooting better than 61 percent from inside the arc. The story here isn't that the Hawks shot poorly, period; it's that on the offensive end, at least, some timely three-point shooting bailed out a wretched two-point shooting night. For one of the NBA's absolute worst three-point shooting teams in 2007, that's a pretty big deal.

SEC Bowl Eligibility is so 2007

JCCW Jerry — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:14:06 -0000

What has 30-minutes-or-less free delivery, 12 delicious available toppings, tons of family-friendly specials to choose from and is totally and irreparably screwed? These guys.

When I blog, I try to mention the papajohns.com Bowl as rarely as possible. It's my firm belief that every time someone types out the phrase "papajohns.com Bowl"--the bowl sponsored by and named after not the monolithic pizza company, but by the monolithic pizza company's website*--somewhere a jersey-wearing fairy falls down dead. But that doesn't mean the well-intentioned Birmingham leaders of commerce who put the thing together deserve a fate like this:

The SEC has nine bowl spots guaranteed and could send as many as 10 teams to the postseason, if two grab BCS slots.

That's a problem: The SEC may have a hard time getting 10 teams eligible.

"We're certainly watching closely," said Mark Meadows, executive director of the Papajohns.com game. "Our projection is that there's still an opportunity to get 10 teams eligible. If there aren't, we'll get a team from the Sun Belt."

And so the residents of Birmingham all responded: Really? Sun Belt, huh? Good for you then. No, I don't think I'm going to make it. I'm busy ... um, washing my hair. My dog's hair, I mean. I'll be busy washing my dog's hair.

But could the papajo ... I mean, the Bowl in Question be spared such a horrible fate? Even in this now 100% USDA-certified down year for the SEC, could the league still hit the magic 10-team bowl-eligibility mark? We take a team-by-team look after the jump.

In decreasing order of bowl-eligibility likelihood:

Alabama, Georgia, Florida, LSU: All mortal locks. 'Bama, Georgia, and Florida are all eligible already and gleefully on their way to New Year's Day bowls or better, and thanks to the cream-puffiest nonconference slate this side of Bill Snyder, all LSU needs to lock up their sixth win is a home win Saturday over backsliding Tulane. Bowl Eligiblity Chances out of 100: 100-0.

Ole Miss: Even after losing a whole string of heartbreakers thus far this season--all four of the Rebels' losses have been by a touchdown or less and Nutt's bunch finished with the greater total yardage in three of them--the team Kyle King accurately labels the best 4-4 team in America shouldn't have any problem making their first bowl game since that 2003 Cotton Bowl win over Oklahoma St. you've probably forgotten about. The Rebels need only to win two of their three contests against Sun Belt also-ran Louisiana-Monroe, offensively-decrepit Auburn, and toothless rival Mississippi St. to reach six wins, and all three of those games are at home. At this point, a better question for Ole Miss than "Will they make a bowl game?" is "How nice a bowl game can they reach?" And with LSU looking vulnerable after their shellackings at the hands of the Gators and Dawgs, the guess here is a very nice one indeed. Chances: 95-5.

South Carolina: Big road wins over the aforementioned Rebels and Kentucky Wildcats mean the 'Cocks are in very little danger of seeing their one-year absence from the postseason turn into a two-year streak. Sitting at five wins already and with three wobbly opponents in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Clemson still to play, 7-5 looks to be about Carolina's worst-case scenario. In the 2008 SEC, it's also safe to assume even a surprising drop to 6-6 won't leave Spurrier and Co. home for the holidays the way it did last season. Chances: 90-10.

Kentucky: With the 'Cats as banged-up and offensively inept as they appeared to be in their slaughter in the Swamp last Saturday, they're not a lock even sitting at 5-3. They still have games to play against the bottom two teams in the SEC in Mississippi St. and Tennessee, but both of them come on the road. The Georgia game looks like a lost cause, and even the home date against reeling Vanderbilt will come against a team every bit as desperate as they are. Nonetheless, it seems like a stretch for the 'Cats to face three teams as hapless on offense as State, Vandy, and Tennessee and somehow lose to all three. Rich Brooks should go bowling again. Chances: 75-25

Vanderbilt: Vandy, please, for the love of all this is just and right in this world, win a sixth game. Easier said than done when you've lost 16 consecutive times over a 26-season span with bowl eligibility on the line, I know, I know, but hope isn't lost for the 'Dores yet even with such gilt-edged opportunities as "at Miss. St." and "home to Duke" already having gone by the boards. "At Kentucky" won't be easy, but it certainly won't be any tougher than the games against Ole Miss and Carolina Vandy's already won. "At Wake Forest" to end the season might be an even tougher nut to crack, but the Demon Deacons' six-turnover disaster against Navy suggests that on the right day, they might be willing to make the big mistakes that Vandy thrives on. But the big one, the 'Dores last best hope, is "home to Tennessee" Nov. 22. The Vols' offensive problems run nearly as deep as Vandy's (No. 114 in total offense to Vandy's No. 116), the 'Dores should have their largest and most desperate crowd of the season, and by that point it seems exceedingly likely Tennessee will be playing for a de facto lame duck coaching staff. The guess here is that by season's end, the 'Dores will have had enough chances that that even they won't have been able to blow them all. Chances: 60-40.

Unfortunately, this ends the list of "likely" SEC bowl teams at eight (!). Your longshots:

Tennessee: This is how deep the SEC's bowl eligibility predicament runs: the wretched Vols still look, from here, like the next-most-likely team to reach six wins. Why? Schedule, schedule, schedule: after this week's road trip to Carolina, their final three games include home dates against Wyoming and Kentucky and a trip to the Vanderbilt for a taste SEC's least-intimidating road venue. The homecoming "battle" against the Cowboys (the country's dead-last team in turnover margin) is an almost certain win and with Nick Stephens still looking borderline competent, both the UK and Vandy games look too close to call either way. A sweep even of this motley crew isn't likely, but it's a shorter hill to climb than the ones facing the teams further down this list. Chances: 30-70.

Auburn: Auburn's trip to Ole Miss Saturday is indeed as important for the SEC as the Doug Segrest article linked above says it is; if the Tigers don't make six wins, eight teams is pretty much the SEC's bowl-eligible ceiling, since even if Tennessee crosses the finish line they'll almost certainly have to do it at the expense of Kentucky or Vandy's postseason plans. And even with Tommy Tuberville's track record of pulling rabbits out of top-10 opponents' hats and the freebie at home to FCS UT-Martin, any shot Auburn has at six wins has to start with a win in Oxford. A team whose objective "best" win to date remains the infamous 3-2 nightmare in Starkville can't exactly be counted on to finish a lost campaign by defeating one of the best teams in the country, at home (Georgia) or on the road (Alabama). Barring the biggest miracle of Tubby's career, Auburn will have to defeat Ole Miss. And it just ain't likely: the last three offenses of the Rebels' caliber Auburn faced--LSU, Arkansas, and West Virginia--torched the Tigers' banged-up defense to the tune of an average 420 yards a game. If the trend continues, there's very little hope of Auburn's somnabulant offense keeping up. Chances: 25-75

Arkansas: Things aren't quite as bleak for the Hogs as it might seem at a glance. Bobby Petrino's team was a bit unlucky to come away from two down-to-the-wire games against Kentucky and Ole Miss without a win, and if they can improve on those performances there's no reason to think they couldn't surprise any one of Tulsa, Carolina, or LSU. They also now have to be seen as a favorite to come out of Starkville Nov. 22 with a win. The problem is that sitting at 3-5, they wouldn't just have to beat the Bulldogs and spring one of those upsets; they'd have to beat State and spring two. I'd be willing to wager on the former, but the latter--especially with the Carolina game on the road and the Hogs' brittle defense looking unlikely to find an answer for Gus Malzahn's reign of destruction--seems a bridge too far. (That said? The Hogs' chances aren't all that far off from Auburn's.) Chances: 21-79.

Mississippi St.: The relatively comfortable win over a relatively decent Middle Tennessee team last week was a good sign, but assuming they lose to 'Bama the Bulldogs would still have to put together a clean sweep of Kentucky and Arkansas at home and Ole Miss in the Egg Bowl on the road. It's not impossible. But when you've already lost to Auburn and Tennessee this season, the odds aren't exactly in your favor, either. Chances: 10-90.

A final prediction: Believe it or not, it's worse for the SEC than it first appears, because it's my guess the league will fail to fill two of its bowl slots. Alabama looks poised to knock off LSU in Baton Rouge and go to Atlanta undefeated while the East's Cocktail-triumphant representative should wrap up the regular season with a single loss. With at-large candidates in both the Pac-10 and Big 10 looking in short supply (to say nothing about the ACC or Big East), a one-loss Alabama or a two-loss Florida or Georgia is going to be way too tempting for the BCS to pass up.

After those two shuffle off to the big-money games, that leaves only seven remaining eligible SEC teams as none of the Tennessee, Auburn, Arkansas, or Miss. St. crew promise to hit the six-win mark. (Note here how much those losses to UCLA, West Virginia, and Louisiana Tech could cost the conference.) So the Florida-Georgia loser heads off to the Cap One, Ole Miss to the Cotton, LSU to the Outback, Carolina to the Chick-Fil-A (!), Kentucky to the Liberty, Vandy to a thrilled Music City Bowl ...

and no one to the Independence, or--sorry, fairies--papajohns.com Bowl. It's a grim picture, unless you're a 7-5 Conference USA team (in which case, hello, Shreveport!) But it's a grim SEC this year, folks, and this, unfortunately, is the result.

*Can't find it, but I'm pretty sure both this phrasing and the all-too-appropriate sentiment is borrowed from Matt Hinton, back in his old SMQ days. Hopefully he won't notice it's missing.

Is it that bad?: Ranking the SEC's Quarterbacks and/or Quarterback Situations

JCCW Jerry — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:12:32 -0000

That's right: this guy is one of the SEC's best. Sorry.

Hi, Team Speed Kills readers. My name is Jerry, I write an Auburn blog, and I'm a fan of the SEC.

And so, like the rest of you, over the first half of the 2008 season I've gotten a little tired of hearing about the Big 12's oh-so-fabulous quarterback collection. It's all "Sam Bradford, Heisman candidate" this and "Colt McCoy is the new Tebow" that and "Holy crap, that dude from Baylor went 21-of-24 for 278 and two TDs with no picks last weekend, sweet merciful heavens" and whatnot. Sure, it all sounds great, but can a league that plays the sort of defense the 1980s WAC recently called "unforgivably soft" really hold up to the standard of quarterbacking in our beloved SEC?

Well, actually, yeah. It can. But is the gap really as wide as we're led to believe? I've ranked the SEC's 12 quarterbacks and/or quarterback situations below, in the hopes we can get a better feel for where exactly the state of quarterbacking stands in the SEC right now and how it might or might not measure up to all those fancy-schmancy Big 12 QBs with their "high completion percentages" and "touchdowns." So without further ado:

1. Tim Tebow, Florida. (Numbers: 62.4 completion percentage, 1235 yards, 8.3 yards-per-attempt, 10-1 TD-INT ratio, 152.86 rating; 179 yards and 3 TDs rushing.) No, he's probably not moving into Archie Griffin's two-Heisman penthouse at the end of the season. Ole Miss stuffing the Tebow Child's bread-and-butter smash play with the game on the line was as good a sign as any that as good as Tebow is, the 20-20 magic of a year ago is gone.

That said: he's still the best all-around quarterback in the SEC. Tim Tebow is still the once-in-a-lifetime version of Owen Schmitt where Owen Schmitt has one of his arms replaced with a cybernetic robot arm that allows him to tote a 10-1 touchdown-to-interception ratio and the league's best efficiency rating into the season's second half. The likes of Tim Tebow shall not pass college football's way again anytime soon, methinks.

2. Matt Stafford, Georgia. (Numbers: 61.7 CP, 1503 yds, 8.4 YPA, 8-3 TD-INT, 143.15 rating.) The league's best (only?) pro prospect by a country mile, save for one poor half against Alabama and a couple of missteps against Tennessee Stafford has continued his steady, inexorable ascent from rocket-armed-but-mistake-prone freshman to rocket-armed-and-chillingly-efficient protoquarterback. The SEC's best-thrown deep balls live in Athens, and given Stafford's and the Dawgs' minor troubles in the red zone, it might behoove them to have Stafford try them a little bit more often.

3. ... Um ...

... Er ...

3. Jevan Snead, Ole Miss. (Numbers: 55.2 CP, 1272 yds, 8.3 YPA, 9-9 TD-INT, 132.18 rating.) It's taken all of six games of Snead's Ole Miss career for him to establish himself as one of the SEC's best big-play artists, as evidenced by the sterling over-8 YPA and second-only-to-Tebow TD total. As you'll probably recall, he only completed nine passes against Florida, but those nine passes covered more than 20 yards a pop and were good for two criitcal TDs. Take away one nightmarish outing against Vandy's bona fide secondary and Snead could even boast a solidly efficient 9-5 TD-to-INT ratio.

The problem, of course, is that you can't just "take away" the Vandy game, or Snead's backbreaking mistakes against South Carolina. (For someone with Snead's mobility he's also been surprisingly "meh" on the ground, averaging only 3.5 attempts per game and less than a yard a carry.) There's a huge gap between Nos. 1 and 2 on this list and Snead, and he'll have to be much more careful to make it up.

4. John Parker Wilson, Alabama. (Numbers: 59.8 CP, 853 yds, 6.7 YPA, 6-2 TD-INT, 128.7 rating.) It seems awfully strange to say the SEC's best quarterbacking performance-to-date came from John Parker Wilson, but the SEC's best quarterbacking performance-to-date came from John Parker Wilson: 13-16, 205 yds, 1 TD, 0 picks on the road at Georgia. Wilson was similarly just-short-of-perfect in the beatdown of Clemson.

Against lesser teams, however, it's been the same ol' JPW that gave Auburn fans reason to stick the "Sarah Jessica" inbetween the J and the P: mediocre against Arkansas, bad against Kentucky, downright hideous (3.2 YPA!) against Tulane. To run the table, 'Bama will need better.

5. Stephen Garcia and/or Chris Smelley, South Carolina. (Numbers: Garcia-65.7 CP, 300 yds, 8.6 YPA, 2-1 TD-INT, 150.86 rating, 4.19 yards-per-rush; Smelley 60.0 CP, 1276 yds, 7.1 YPA, 10-9 TD-INT, 127.88 rating.) For the most part, Smelley hasn't been as bad as advertised; he was outstanding in the road win over Ole Miss and his TD-INT ratio, YPA, and efficiency rating are all perfectly acceptable. His issues are that a) as with Snead, the bottom's dropped out occasionally, including a hideous first half against Kentucky b) Garcia has been every bit as good as advertised. Stretch out those numbers above across an entire season and you're looking at someone who would make a push into that Tebow/Stafford stratosphere. To boot, for several drives on the road against a good Kentucky defense, he looked perfectly capable of maintaining that kind of production long-term. If the same Garcia shows up Saturday against LSU, consider him moved up a couple of pegs.

Yes, this is the SEC's great quarterbacking hope for the future. God help us all.

6. Jarrett Lee and/or Andrew Hatch, LSU. (Numbers: Lee-59.1 CP, 852 yds, 7.4 YPA, 8-5 TD-INT, 135.63 rating; Hatch-52.5 CP, 250 yds, 6.3 YPA, 1-1 TD-INT, 108.25 rating, 4.79 average on 24 carries and 2 TDs rushing.) Lee is a kind of lesser version of Snead: several big plays (particularly in the comeback against Auburn), more-than-reasonable level of efficiency, good mobility ... and an apparent penchant for catastrophic mistakes. If Andrew Hatch can complete a slightly higher percentage of his passes and avoid getting knocked slap out of the game on one of his various successful dseigned runs (as he was against Auburn), he might be able to re-challenge Lee for the starting job. In any case, as he showed with Flynn and Perriloux last season, Gary Crowton looks plenty capable of juggiling the two of them.

7. Him? Already? Really?

7. Yes. Casey Dick, Arkansas. (Numbers: 58.4 CP, 1411 yds, 7.2 YPA, 7-5 TD-INT, 119.81 rating.) Those miracle comebacks that kicked off the Hogs' season (and in retrospect likely kept their psyche just afloat enough to withstand the 'Bama-Texas-Florida poundings) were all Dick, and now he's at the helm of an offense that's rolled up the yards two weeks running on stout D's from Florida and Auburn. He still has too many classic Casey Dick brainfarts to rank higher, but he's not just a punchline anymore. (He is still a punchline, of course. His last name is Dick. There's no getting away from it.)

8. Mackenzi Adams and/or Chris Nickson, Vanderbilt. (Numbers: Adams-56.8 CP, 231 yds, 6.2 YPA, 2-1 TD-INT, 121.63 rating, 3.04 yards-per-rush; Nickson-51.4 CP, 311 yds, 4.4 YPA, 3-2 TD-INT, 97.18 rating, 4.34 yards-per-rush on 73 carries, 6 TDs.) Now here's a situation that could probably benefit from experimenting with some of that Leak-Tebow, Flynn-Perriloux type of rotation. Adams has almost without question outplayed Nickson overall to this point, but it seems such a shame to keep a weapon like Nickson's legs on the bench. This neutral would love to see what might happen if Adams (who's an efficient and underrated runner) and Nickson (who does ahve a capable arm) started mixing it up a la Florida 2006--the potential to keep defenses off-balance seems well worth the effort.

9. Tyson Lee and/or Wesley Carroll. (Numbers: Lee-63.4 CP, 547 yds, 5.9 YPA, 2-0 TD-INT, 119.95 rating; Carroll-53.7 CP, 528 yds, 5.6 YPA, 3-6 TD-INT, 98.16 rating.) Carroll built on his safe-but-successful freshman season by throwing away the Louisiana Tech opener, and he never really recovered; the job now appears to be firmly Lee's, and it's little wonder when he's throwing the ball 22 times against Vandy's secondary without a pick. Sure, those 22 passes only averaged gain of 3.7 yards, but particularly against a lo-fi offense like the 'Dores, that's still the quintessential victorious Bulldog QB performance. Now we'll see if he can keep it up.

10. Mike Hartline, Kentucky. (Numbers: 55.3 CP, 1026 yds, 4.9 YPA, 5-4 TD-INT, 100.8 rating.) A 5-to-4 TD-to-INT ratio isn't the end of the world in and of itself, but if you're going to average less than five yards an attempt, it's still too many errors for an offense that's trying to play it this safe. Thus the barely-over-100 QB rating, and an offense that hasn't broken the three-touchdown barrier on its own against any D-I school that isn't Western Kentucky.

11. Nick Stephens, Tennessee. (Numbers: 49.0 CP, 406 yds, 8.3 YPA, 3-0 TD-INT, 138.78 rating.) That completion percentage isn't anything to write home about, but when you've played two games in your college career and one of them has been at Georgia, the rest of these numbers are more than acceptable and might even border on "downright encouraging." They haven't translated into drives and points yet--maybe if the Vol staff stayed committed to the run a little longer, it'd help--and of course this is an awfully small sample size. But it's almost certainly enough to keep Jonathan Crompton on the bench for the foreseeable future, and that alone is cause for celebration where Stephens is concerned.

12. Kodi Burns and/or Barrett Trotter (?), Auburn. (Numbers: Burns-40.5 CP, 198 yds, 4.7 YPA, 0-3 TD-INT, 65.79 rating, 3.31 yards-per-rush on 35 carries, 2 TDs; Trotter-n/a) Oh, how this pains me. But as much potential as I (like all Auburn fans) believe the agile, strong-armed, five-star Kodi Burns to have if he can ever cement the job as his own and get some support from the Tiger coaching staff, to this point the scattershot, red-zone-phobic (at least where passing is concerned), poorly-coached Burns is what we have to go on. And in his two years that Burns has never (save the bowl victory over Clemson) been more than a tease. Here's to hoping that changes in Morgantown next Thursday. It might. It might not.

One thing I can assure you you won't see against West Virginia is Chris Todd, and it's extremely unlikely you see him take a snap again this season. This week Tommy Tuberville named junior Neil Caudle and talked-about true freshman Barret Trotter the candidates in a battle for the backup job and a potential crack at playing time if Burns falters. The brief, and brutal, Chris Todd era is as over in Auburn as the era of the offensive coordinator that recruited him.

Verdict: So, yeah, maybe the Big 12 has McCoy, Bradford, Chase Daniels, Zac Robinson, Graham Harrell, Todd Reesing, Robert Griffin, Josh Freeman, and Joe Ganz. But the SEC's third-best quarterback is Jevan Snead! The guy who went 7-17 for 70-some-odd yards and a pick at home against Kentucky is one of our best signal-callers! Does the Big 12 really want us to match up Todd Reesing with Jarrett Lee and Andrew Hatch? I don't think so!

Wait. Maybe they do. I'm not ready to concede, as many are, that the Big 12 has surpassed the SEC as the nation's most competitive conference. But the state of quarterbacking in the SEC isn't exactly a feather in the SEC's cap, either; in fact, I couldn't recall a time this decade when it's been worse. Aside from the top two, every quarterback and/or platoon on this list is "talented-but-inconsistent" at best and "a seeping wound on the flabby, punt-happy buttock that is our offense" at worst.

Let's be honest: this really might be a down year for the conference, and if it is, the list above is where you'll want to start when you go looking for reasons why.