There are two games left to play this weekend, but the ten thoughts waits for no team. We'll do this every Sunday morning. I'll still post ten thoughts on every Mizzou game afterward and then post the Monday morning ten thoughts. This feature is about the rest of the country. I actually watched a ton of college football yesterday and have to rely on Twitter and box scores less than I'll have to a lot of other weeks. So let's go:
1) The most important thing to remember is this: It's one week. The college football season is basically 12 different exams. And the performance on one exam often doesn't have a major impact on the performance on the next one. You might take a geography test one week and do really well, but you might bomb your biology test the next week. That's the same as college football. What's my point? There are going to be sweeping generalizations made about 130 teams after one or two games. Those generalizations are dumb. Because Georgia destroyed Oregon does that mean Georgia is great and Oregon is terrible? Maybe. But maybe not. Georgia is better than Oregon, but maybe Oregon had a really bad day and Georgia had a really good one. Maybe Oregon will have a really good day in a couple weeks and beat someone that you thought was much better. Is Florida a better team than Utah? Maybe. It was last night. But maybe Utah will be better in its next 11 games and Florida will be worse. What's most likely is they'll both have some good weeks and some bad ones. Because that's what happens in college football. The transitive property just doesn't work. By glancing at the board last night and this morning, I've come to the conclusion that almost every team is terrible or at least overrated. Ohio State sucks because they barely beat Notre Dame, which is overrated. But maybe they're both really good. My point is we simply don't know. I know that's not going to prevent the overarching speculation and forecasting because that's kind of why most of us are here, but predicting how Mizzou will do against South Carolina eight weeks from now based on what we saw yesterday is complete and utterly pointless. Now on to all the speculating. The rest of these are simply going in the order in which I saw the teams and wrote them down.
2) Missouri's former starting quarterback got himself a nice win on Friday night. Connor Bazelak wasn't great against Illinois. A lot of the night, he wasn't even very good. He completed just 54% of his passes. But he did the two things Missouri fans were convinced he was incapable of: He hit some deep passes (4/9 for 155 yards and a touchdown on passes thrown more than 20 yards) and he led a game-winning drive in the final minutes. He did it without any semblance of a running game (26 carries, 32 yards) while getting pasted behind a pretty poor offensive line. Did Missouri get better at quarterback this season? Maybe, maybe not. Too soon to know. Nice start for Bazelak in Bloomington though.
3) It's good to know in such a wild sport that changes so much week to week that there are a few constants. Iowa will have a God awful offense and one of the best punters in America. That's true again. The Hawkeyes beat South Dakota State 7-3 on Saturday in Iowa City. They did in by getting two safeties in the second half of a game that was tied at 3 at halftime. Spencer Petras went 11/25 for 109 yards and was missing wide open receivers fairly regularly. The Hawkeyes had exactly one play of more than 15 yards. The two teams combined for 286 total offensive yards on 141 plays. There were 21 punts and 16 first downs. The Iowa offense was booed multiple times by the crowd. The MVP was punter Tory Taylor, who averaged 47.9 yards on ten punts and put seven inside the 20, including at least two inside the five. But they won. I was texting with some friends yesterday and said it must be kind of terrible to be an Iowa fan. They're a good, every now and then great, program. But a good season is going 10-2 and winning every game 10-9. I was morbidly fascinated by the game yesterday and couldn't turn it off (mostly because there weren't any other really compelling games at the same time). But to watch that every week seems absolutely dreadful.
4) When Iowa built an insurmountable four-point lead, I flipped over to watch the end of North Carolina/Applachian State. My word, what a beautiful mess. App State jumped to a 21-7 lead and then saw the Tar Heels score 34 straight points. It was 41-21 entering the fourth quarter. And then the teams combined to score 62 points in the final 15 minutes. That included 40 by the Mountaineers, who became the first FBS team in 15 years to score 40 points in a single quarter. Here's what happened after App State tied it at 49 with four minutes to go:
UNC 42 yard TD pass with 2:50 left
ASU 28 yard TD pass with 31 seconds left followed by a failed two point conversion on which the running back was absolutely uncovered at the goal line but inexplicably started backpedaling instead of continuing to run his route which resulted in Chase Brice overthrowing him and App State still trailing 56-55
UNC 43 yard onside kickoff return for a TD with 28 seconds left followed by a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty which resulted in the Heels having to kick off from the 20 and App State returning it to midfield
ASU 26 yard TD pass with 9 seconds left followed by a failed two point conversion on which Brice had no one open, tried to run and was tackled at the one.
Final Score: North Carolina 63, Appalachian State 61. It was beautiful. It was the best game of the day and may end up as the best game of the year.
The fact that two games that happened at the same time in the same sport ended 7-3 with more first downs than punts and 63-61 with exactly half the points in the fourth quarter is what makes said sport incredible.
5) That wasn't the only great game in the state of North Carolina on Saturday morning. NC State played at East Carolina and had a 21-14 lead and the ball with a little more than five minutes left. Devin Leary was intercepted and ECU scored to make it 21-20. And Owen Daffer missed the extra point. The holder didn't get the ball spun around, Daffer kicked into the laces and the announcers, I swear I am not making this up, started talking about Ace Ventura. Anyway, ECU forced a three-and-out in 31 seconds and got the ball back at its own 29 with 2:19 left down a point. In two plays and 30 seconds, the Pirates moved to the NC State 31 and then both coaches began to act as if they did not care if they won the game. Despite ECU being out of timeouts, NC State called two. Despite having a kicker who had just missed an extra point and was 1/3 on kicks between 40 and 49 yards in his career, ECU showed no interest in getting any closer to the end zone and letting its offense win the game. The end result was a 41-yard field goal attempt (which came only after NC State called a timeout with the clock running while ECU was desperately trying to get its offense off the field and the kicking team on the field before time ran out). Daffer missed it. NC State won. Neither team deserved to win. Also, college kickers, man.
1) The most important thing to remember is this: It's one week. The college football season is basically 12 different exams. And the performance on one exam often doesn't have a major impact on the performance on the next one. You might take a geography test one week and do really well, but you might bomb your biology test the next week. That's the same as college football. What's my point? There are going to be sweeping generalizations made about 130 teams after one or two games. Those generalizations are dumb. Because Georgia destroyed Oregon does that mean Georgia is great and Oregon is terrible? Maybe. But maybe not. Georgia is better than Oregon, but maybe Oregon had a really bad day and Georgia had a really good one. Maybe Oregon will have a really good day in a couple weeks and beat someone that you thought was much better. Is Florida a better team than Utah? Maybe. It was last night. But maybe Utah will be better in its next 11 games and Florida will be worse. What's most likely is they'll both have some good weeks and some bad ones. Because that's what happens in college football. The transitive property just doesn't work. By glancing at the board last night and this morning, I've come to the conclusion that almost every team is terrible or at least overrated. Ohio State sucks because they barely beat Notre Dame, which is overrated. But maybe they're both really good. My point is we simply don't know. I know that's not going to prevent the overarching speculation and forecasting because that's kind of why most of us are here, but predicting how Mizzou will do against South Carolina eight weeks from now based on what we saw yesterday is complete and utterly pointless. Now on to all the speculating. The rest of these are simply going in the order in which I saw the teams and wrote them down.
2) Missouri's former starting quarterback got himself a nice win on Friday night. Connor Bazelak wasn't great against Illinois. A lot of the night, he wasn't even very good. He completed just 54% of his passes. But he did the two things Missouri fans were convinced he was incapable of: He hit some deep passes (4/9 for 155 yards and a touchdown on passes thrown more than 20 yards) and he led a game-winning drive in the final minutes. He did it without any semblance of a running game (26 carries, 32 yards) while getting pasted behind a pretty poor offensive line. Did Missouri get better at quarterback this season? Maybe, maybe not. Too soon to know. Nice start for Bazelak in Bloomington though.
3) It's good to know in such a wild sport that changes so much week to week that there are a few constants. Iowa will have a God awful offense and one of the best punters in America. That's true again. The Hawkeyes beat South Dakota State 7-3 on Saturday in Iowa City. They did in by getting two safeties in the second half of a game that was tied at 3 at halftime. Spencer Petras went 11/25 for 109 yards and was missing wide open receivers fairly regularly. The Hawkeyes had exactly one play of more than 15 yards. The two teams combined for 286 total offensive yards on 141 plays. There were 21 punts and 16 first downs. The Iowa offense was booed multiple times by the crowd. The MVP was punter Tory Taylor, who averaged 47.9 yards on ten punts and put seven inside the 20, including at least two inside the five. But they won. I was texting with some friends yesterday and said it must be kind of terrible to be an Iowa fan. They're a good, every now and then great, program. But a good season is going 10-2 and winning every game 10-9. I was morbidly fascinated by the game yesterday and couldn't turn it off (mostly because there weren't any other really compelling games at the same time). But to watch that every week seems absolutely dreadful.
4) When Iowa built an insurmountable four-point lead, I flipped over to watch the end of North Carolina/Applachian State. My word, what a beautiful mess. App State jumped to a 21-7 lead and then saw the Tar Heels score 34 straight points. It was 41-21 entering the fourth quarter. And then the teams combined to score 62 points in the final 15 minutes. That included 40 by the Mountaineers, who became the first FBS team in 15 years to score 40 points in a single quarter. Here's what happened after App State tied it at 49 with four minutes to go:
UNC 42 yard TD pass with 2:50 left
ASU 28 yard TD pass with 31 seconds left followed by a failed two point conversion on which the running back was absolutely uncovered at the goal line but inexplicably started backpedaling instead of continuing to run his route which resulted in Chase Brice overthrowing him and App State still trailing 56-55
UNC 43 yard onside kickoff return for a TD with 28 seconds left followed by a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty which resulted in the Heels having to kick off from the 20 and App State returning it to midfield
ASU 26 yard TD pass with 9 seconds left followed by a failed two point conversion on which Brice had no one open, tried to run and was tackled at the one.
Final Score: North Carolina 63, Appalachian State 61. It was beautiful. It was the best game of the day and may end up as the best game of the year.
The fact that two games that happened at the same time in the same sport ended 7-3 with more first downs than punts and 63-61 with exactly half the points in the fourth quarter is what makes said sport incredible.
5) That wasn't the only great game in the state of North Carolina on Saturday morning. NC State played at East Carolina and had a 21-14 lead and the ball with a little more than five minutes left. Devin Leary was intercepted and ECU scored to make it 21-20. And Owen Daffer missed the extra point. The holder didn't get the ball spun around, Daffer kicked into the laces and the announcers, I swear I am not making this up, started talking about Ace Ventura. Anyway, ECU forced a three-and-out in 31 seconds and got the ball back at its own 29 with 2:19 left down a point. In two plays and 30 seconds, the Pirates moved to the NC State 31 and then both coaches began to act as if they did not care if they won the game. Despite ECU being out of timeouts, NC State called two. Despite having a kicker who had just missed an extra point and was 1/3 on kicks between 40 and 49 yards in his career, ECU showed no interest in getting any closer to the end zone and letting its offense win the game. The end result was a 41-yard field goal attempt (which came only after NC State called a timeout with the clock running while ECU was desperately trying to get its offense off the field and the kicking team on the field before time ran out). Daffer missed it. NC State won. Neither team deserved to win. Also, college kickers, man.
