Long live the MAC! What a strange season it's been, and what a strange set up upsets in the bowl season. To put this together, I ranked everyone with 9 wins and then I put them in order according to how they looked this season. If you lost your bowl game, you dropped, while if you won your bowl game, you got thrown into the pack. Almost didn't rank A&M, but everyone below them had also lost their bowl game.

Poll, as usual, after the break.

Continue reading this post »

Was pretty simple to put together this poll: If you have 9 wins, you get ranked. Less than 9 wins, you don't. Conveniently, there were 26 schools with 9 wins, and I refuse to re-rank Utah, so those are my ranked schools minus Utah.

Poll, as usual, after the break.

Continue reading this post »

Dunno how you do this over on the OSU side, but we usually have one of these pop up on DTN, figured I'd start it up.

I have 4 tickets, 2nd row, endzone. Sat there last year and they're very fun seats. I'd like $125/each for them, shipping included, but I'm willing to listen to offers.

Paypal, USPS or Fedex or UPS, etc.

kayakyakr@gmail.com if you'd like to contact me there.

Sorry this is coming late. Just as early season polling is hard, so is late season. I mean, we all know who the top 4 are and we all know who belongs in the top 15, but then you have another 20 or so teams that could jump up to the top 25. Northwestern gets the "We're sorry that you lost your pretty awesome QB" spot, while Southern Miss gets the "Football players should probably avoid night clubs" spot.

Continue reading this post »

Not much explanation today. Auburn gets the benefit of the doubt this week, hopping up to #2. Oregon is still my far and away #1 team. Note: Virginia should be Virginia Tech, just a little data entry error that we'll get fixed.

Continue reading this post »

Not too much commentary today, because I think most of the poll explains itself. Usually, if you have a better record, you're ranked higher, and if you beat another team near you in the polls, you're ranked higher.

Had a lot of fun putting together 20-25 this week, though. A whole lot of non-traditional schools in there. Very exciting.

Poll after the break

Continue reading this post »

This polling thing just gets harder every week. It was a real struggle to find 25 teams that I wanted to rank, so Mississippi State gets the "thanks for beating Florida" nod here.  Otherwise, you have an undefeated top 9 and Iowa getting the nod as the #1 1-loss team.  Poll after the break.

Continue reading this post »

SEC voting block! With Alabama's loss, it gives me an excuse to throw everything into disarray. So while I started with a Big XII block, I now have an SEC block. Transitive property rules here, and if you're an SEC team that beat another SEC team, you'll be ranked above that team. We'll see how long this block lasts. The rest of the poll is pretty self explanatory, except that a couple of 1-loss ACC teams snuck in the end. I don't like it, but there aren't many other options there.

Poll after the break

Continue reading this post »

Neal Brown: Air Raid

Good News: After last week, I was hopeful that Neal Brown had figured it out. We had a good offensive output against Iowa State and it seemed like the team figured something out right there. Well, we continued that today, scoring on 7 of our first 9 drives. When it works, it works, and it sure as hell was working today. Props to Detron Lewis who bounced back after losing the ball last week (and nearly losing it on his first catch this week), hauling in 11 catches for 97 yards and a score. You guys like stats? How about this line: Baron Batch - 17 carries, 97 yards and a TD; Eric Stephens - 14 carries, 52 yards and a TD; and Talyor Potts - 4 carries, 21 yards (2 sacks, rushes of 0 and 43 yards).

I think that we saw today what Tuberville visualized when he imagined what sort of offense he wanted. Yards on the ground, yards through the air, and plenty of scores. Baylor's defense isn't at the level of, say, Nebraska or OU, so I take the final tally with a grain of salt, but it's great to see this offense running and building up some confidence and rhythm for when we do play a better defense.

Continue reading this post »

I'm not at all happy with this week's poll. Not at all. That said, there's not a whole lot of movement. Those who jumped had either good wins or the benefit of my not really caring where I had them the week prior. KSU's fall is more of an adjustment than anything. TCU and Boise are interchangeable. Oregon has the best offense in the nation, by far, and I think Stanford is a good team. I wish I could have dropped LSU further. Luckiest team in the country.

Continue reading this post »

Click?

Good News: Click. That's the sound that the light makes when it goes on over the collective heads of the offense. When the clock read 2:59 left in the 2nd quarter, the offense changed. The average pass went from being within 2 yards in front of or behind the line of scrimmage to 8-15 yards downfield. In short, the team was throwing for the sticks (if I can toot my own horn a bit on calling that problem two weeks ago). Suddenly everything started to work. Once you get those linebackers and defensive backs back-peddling, all of the underneath stuff that this offense does well works a whole hell of a lot better.

Was this the offense coming awake for the first time under Neal Brown? I certainly hope so. We had 2 drives stopped in the 2nd half. The first was thanks to a fumble by Detron after a 2 yard gain on first down. The second was a 3 and out after an incompletion on a short pass to Cornelius Douglas, a 5 yard gain on a screen to Torres, and an errant pass intended for Zouzalik running a slant. Sounds to me a lot more like the conservative offense that kills us making a short return. Please Tuberville, for the love of Pete, pick up on that play calling strategy and keep it going against Baylor. Your bread and butter is medium range passes and we score points when we're throwing them.  We're going to need the points to beat Baylor.

Continue reading this post »

This week, Stanford makes a meteoric rise (again due to me not looking up where I had them last week) and I have now run out of rank-able undefeated teams (as I am not ranking USC this year nor the next two). Arkansas gets to be the beneficiary, staying ranked after going toe-to-toe with my former #1 team. Ohio State gets to chill in the top spot for a week until next week when, presumably, Alabama will put a beating on Florida.

Continue reading this post »

Play Calling

Good News: The defensive play calling and adjustment is solid. This will be a theme throughout this article, I think, where the defensive side of the ball is very good news. I was a little shocked yesterday when we were running a 4-3 pretty much the entire day or a 3-4 nickel or dime package. There weren't many blitzes at all and I was scared of that, but Willis knew what he was doing: protecting young defensive backs that were liable to give up big plays. It worked. We allowed 2 sustained drives, one of which was extended twice by a few bad personal fouls. We gave up the TD after the bad snap and only allowed a field goal after they got the ball on a near pick-6. It was a game plan and I trust in Willis

Continue reading this post »

Just to reiterate my voting strategy, which I've been following since week 1, I'm voting only for undefeated teams, right now, until I don't have undefeated teams to vote for. My top 4 1-loss teams are Iowa, Miami, Penn State, and Air Force, and I'm guessing that at least one of them will make an appearance next week. After that, it goes by resume, mostly, though I haven't seen any reason to drop Alabama and Ohio State from the top 2. I also build each week from scratch, so that's why you often see teams jump around.

The big XII block sheds a few members and breaks apart a bit more. Florida looks awful in their win, but still manages to do it impressively so they get to move up. Michigan State gets ranked as a reward for beating Notre Dame. Get well soon Mark Dantonio. Stanford could probably stand to be a bit higher and Nevada looked great tearing a new on in Cal.

Poll after the jump to try to not push Seth's 5 questions down the page. Go talk in there.

Continue reading this post »

So, this week's poll is much more "what have you done for me" than the previous polls. The Big XII block moves up at the expense of Auburn and Utah and some separation occurs: OU's win against FSU gives them a bit of separation while Oklahoma State struggling against Troy drops them below Baylor for this week. Baylor's inclusion in the poll is, well, mostly there just to demonstrate Oklahoma State's struggles. Nevada is #26, sorry to you Nevada fans for dropping you for Baylor.

Poll after the jump for space reasons.

Continue reading this post »

In this edition of Good News/Bad News, Taylor Potts wears a white helmet, Eric Smash, Zou and friends.

Taylor Potts

Good News: Taylor Potts's throws look sharp and accurate. I remember 2 bad throws (where no one was there), 2 or 3 throws forced into traffic, and that 1 near pick 6 that was a check-down that he didn't check. Don't be fooled by the announcer saying that pretty much every ball should have been picked off, most of the throws into traffic hit the intended receiver and were not near picks.

Bad News: There still was very little rhythm with the offense, either with Potts or Sheffield in the game. I hope that's an effect of the limited playbook and not of our offense itself. I could see it being a play calling issue, running a lot of very generic air raid plays and getting into a lot of third down situations. Pass catching has to improve, especially out of Cornelius Douglas as he's great once the ball is in his hands. I don't expect the next game to be near as vanilla.

Running Backs

Good News: Eric Stephens is playing (and snoring) like a man with his hair on fire. Not only did he take 10 carries for 46 yards (an ok average) and 3 catches for 43 yards, but he also had 175 return yards including his 93 yarder.

Continue reading this post »

Approach

I'll admit, this week left the situation no clearer, when it comes to putting together a poll. The top 2 stay the same based on preseason hype and how they finished last year. Oregon had the most impressive day of any team, not only winning the points race for the weekend, but also shutting their opponent out. Beyond that, this is pretty much a craps shoot.

The Big XII(?)

You'll notice that aside from Nebraska still holding down the Big XII's spot in the top 10 (think of them as a placeholder), most of the rest of the Big XII is sitting 20-25.  I'll admit, the only reason why I did this is because I have no clue how real any of these teams actually are.  I took the 6 Big XII teams that I thought deserved mentioning, put them at the end of the poll, and ranked them in the order of impressiveness of win.  KSU looked good in their victory over UCLA.  Oklahoma State buried their D1-A opponent.  Missouri finished off their Big Ten rival, though they struggled a bit to do so.  A&M did not struggle but did not impress. Texas struggled against a CUSA foe, but were never in real danger of losing.  Texas Tech struggled against their CUSA foe and was in real danger of losing, though I feel SMU will at least be bowling this winter.  And Oklahoma misses the cut, after struggling with their WAC opponent, facing even more danger.

Poll itself posted after the jump, for space reasons. I think the final poll might be due today, so get your commentary in fast so I can modify it.

Continue reading this post »

Special Teams

Good News: LaCour has one hell of a leg. He had 4 kicks, averaged 48.5 yards, belted one for 60+ yards with a hang time that was enough to have the returner swarmed when it arrived, and kicked another that was downed on the 6 yard line. I'm not sure if he had any punts into the wind, but he was solid all day. Punt coverage was also great, with Cornelius Douglas and others way down the field making plays on the return man.

Also good news was the kick returns. Eric Stephens hasn't missed a beat taking kickoffs and, while I hope that he doesn't have many opportunities to do so, I have a feeling he'll be taking one to the house at some point this year. And an honorable mention goes to Ben McCroy. Was nice to see the jackrabbit chasing down the returner to save the TD on that long return we gave up.

Bad News: Ben should have never had to chase down that return man. I was getting a bad feeling on our first few kickoffs that were returned: we were giving up way too many yards, giving SMU starting field positions in the 30's. I knew that broken return was coming, but alas, there was nothing I could do about it from my couch in Austin.

Also bad news were those field goal attempts. SMU is pretty good at blocking those, but our kickers have to at least make them work to block field goals. Carona's attempt was pretty much in the facemask of the rushing defenders. I'm guessing that with be a point of emphasis in this short week.

Taylor Potts

Good News: Taylor was a different man on Sunday due to one major aspect of his game changing. He looked comfortable and confident throwing the football, a confidence he never had last year. There were moments, namely the two drives sandwiched around halftime, when he looked every bit like the best of the Air Raid quarterbacks of old. I can also see the improvement in footwork coming out in his ability to move around in the pocket, something he did effectively many times in the game.

Continue reading this post »

So last night I went to my second high school football game of the season (after going to Pflugerville vs Austin Bowie Friday night). There were about 30k people at DKR and it was a great environment. Watching Michael Brewer play for Lake Travis was very easy to do. Their uniforms are TTU's blacks and they run an Air Raid offense. Being as tired as I was last night, I sometimes slipped into the mindset that I was watching Tech.

Brewer looks every bit like an Air Raid quarterback: accurate, plenty of arm strength, makes quick reads, and has a very good delivery. His receivers, on the other hand, have brick hands. There had to have been at least 9 drops, if not more, that directly killed 3+ drives. He made one bad mistake, didn't see a linebacker that was sitting in a zone while looking for a slant, but battled through drops against a very good defense to bring his team back from being down 21-10 to win 34-21.

On the night, Brewer went 21 of 40 for 289 yards, 2td and 1 int (pick 6). The stats would have been very, very different without that mess of drops.

On one other note, after watching Pflugerville (#7 regional preseason team) beat Bowie (#3 regional preseason team), I was amazed at the quality of football being played at Westlake (#1 regional 5A) and Lake Travis (#1 regional 4A, #10 national). The playcalling at Westlake was often questionable, but there aren't many schools in the state that have more talent, year after year, than those two teams.

Feel free, if you guys want to look up stats, to use this thread to post stats of some of our other high school commits this weekend. Next Friday, I will be trying to make it out to the Lake Travis @ Hendrickson game. Kenny Williams, playing for Pflugerville Hendrickson, doesn't have much support, if any, at his school. Vista Ridge was able to concentrate 9 men on stopping the run this weekend and held Williams to 15 carries for 44 yards. I don't expect he's going to be able to do much better against Lake Travis: that Lake Travis d-line is stout. I'd be happy to meet a few people at Hawk for the game, I'll be sitting on the Hendrickson side: Hawk Stadium's visitor stands are not very big and I expect Lake Travis will have a great crowd.

This year, I will be doing the honor of filling out DTN's SB Nation BlogPoll. As you all know, polling is an art, and my approach to it will be some sort of strange combination of where I think teams are currently, where I think teams deserve to be, and throwing stuff at the wall.

So, without further ado, I have my preseason poll:

As a little bit of commentary, you'll notice that I don't include Texas Tech in my initial poll. I'd certainly have Tech in my next 5, but I'd put us in a group with Missouri and A&M as the other team that's going to be good in the Big XII. You'll also notice that only one team has a new coach, FSU, and I kinda wish I didn't rank them now.

As to the rest of the year, I promise to attempt always to represent you fine posters at DTN well and submit a weekly poll that you can be proud of

These are the top 3 vote getters for suggestions for the name of Coach Tuberville's new pregame activity as seen here: fanpost

I am probably going to take all of these back to Chris Level at the always worthwhile RedRaiderSports.com as the DTN contribution, but I figured we'd get a consensus of the best of the top 3.

Go!

How do I begin coping?

I'm not really sure where to start writing this editorial today. Frankly, I'm in shock, I'm upset, and I'm not sure who to direct this anger, confusion, and frustration at. So, instead, I'm going to go ahead and write a bit about what I know and hope that you guys find it useful.

How did we get to this point?

The long and short of it is that Mike Leach and the Board of Reagents cannot get along. We have two different organizations, Mike and his legal counsel and the BOR, who both are determined to get their way and are not willing to negotiate peace between the two. While it's a lot easier to just blame the administration, there is part of my mind that believes that Leach is just as much to blame, considering that he had the opportunity to play politic and go back to normal.

Frankly, though, I wouldn't have played the politics either. What the TTU administration asked of Mike Leach was unacceptable and was never going to be agreed to. And I think they knew it. Someone with the power was ready to be rid of Mike Leach and we get to suffer for it.

Lots and lots more after the jump. Please read, it will make me feel better.

Continue reading this post »

Hard fought game, but TTU comes out with a win. Appropriately for the game and the season, TTU wins the game on a defensive stand. Near the goal line. Very hard fought game and I wonder which Taylor Potts we got. Mostly it was Taylor Potts but he actually seemed to be mobile and comfortable in the pocket today.

I give Brandon Sharpe the MVP for the game, he played a great game and got the key stop on 3rd down. Lyle Leong has got the offensive MVP, catching both TD passes, one of them with a linebacker on his back.

See you guys in the Alamo Bowl.

Ugly first half. Nick didn't get off the bus. Taylor Potts is wearing the wrong jersey.

Defense is playing fairly well.

Welcome to your postgame thread. Have a wicked hit:

What a frustrating game. that's all I have to say now.

Baron Batch takes over the game to close it out, good rebound after Texas A&M and a good game going into our bye week.

Game gifs here: gifs

Post comments here.