The Back Corner Fade
It was about 11:30 on Saturday evening here in Ohio and I began to get text messages from buddies that are fans of other schools. Some OSU friends mentioned that “it was a nice win, but this is an awful USC team,” a MSU friend mentioned that “it’d be totally different if we played you now, we’re so much better than in September.” And my favorite was a Georgia friend already complaining that “if ND wins out, it wouldn’t be fair to let us in the Final Four because we don’t play in a conference championship game, hence one less game.” I had to laugh to myself when it finally dawned on me: we must be pretty good and people are getting real nervous, real fast.
Probably like you, I never saw this beat down coming. I thought we’d win for a variety of reasons, but never by 35 points. They treated SC like they were the Temple Owls and pumped the breaks early in the 4th quarter or it could have got a whole hell of a lot worse. This, by far, was the most enjoyable ND game I’ve watched in years. Yes, the drubbing we gave Michigan a few years back was nice, but this one was special. This one exercised a lot of 2016 demons, and sent a message to the CFB world: Notre Dame has a very good football team and they’re not going gently into that great night.
As I mentioned last week, the majority of the schedule was pretty blah. Not much too really get excited about. We did learn a few things though:
- Saquon Barkley is the greatest player and possibly the greatest human to ever walk the face of the Earth if you believe ESPN. The Boys in Bristol looked down on him and said “let it be so!” and are going to ride this kid all the way to the Downtown Athletic Club. Should be fun to see what OSU has in mind to stop him this week.
- How in hell does Bill Snyder do it? His purple-clad marauders damn near pulled a monster upset over Oklahoma and once again, as usual, has a team that you simply don’t want to play. Not very talented, but gritty, hard-nosed as all hell, and are going to compete for four quarters.
- You think Charlie Strong is sleeping a bit better these days? He’s got himself a 7-0 football team ranked 16th in the land, and their offense just keeps on putting up points. I’m happy for the man. Texas probably took 8 years off his life and he never had a chance there from day one in the first place. I mentioned when he took the job that this is a sweet retirement gig and he’ll ride off into the sunset a legend in Tampa when he shuts it down in 5-10 years.
- Baylor is getting better. Yes, I realize that they still haven’t won a game but they scored 23 unanswered at WVU in the fourth with a chance to tie the game on a failed two-point conversion. This tells me that the players are buying into Matt Rhule’s system and are playing hard. They easily could have tuned him out after week three, but they haven’t. That being said, I’ll still never understood taking that job. If he wanted to leave Temple, fine, I get it. But for that gig?
- Alabama played as poorly as they have all season…….and still beat hapless Tennessee by 36 points.
What are you going to plop down on the sofa and check out this weekend? Well, hopefully these steaming nuggets of knowledge will help you out:
- Well, well, well The Fightin’ Fredo’s are actually playing some offensive football to go along with a fairly decent defense (I get that they give up a ton of points. Anybody would when they’re on the field as much as they are) and have been able to win three of the last four. I’m all for BC winning as many as they can as it obviously improves our SOS. This is a perfect time to welcome FSU to town. I wonder what will happen this week if Jimbo gets beat? Maybe he’ll actually go up in the stands to scrap with a “Super Fan” or two. He’s trending towards John L. Smith Land and that’s by no means disappointing. It gets more delicious with every “L” this shady enabler takes and there are more on the horizon.
- Rutgers heads to Ann Arbor with a two game win streak (albeit against Illinois and Purdue) with the opportunity to knock Michigan down one spot in the Top 25. Corn and Blow fans are starting to get a bit nervous about their program and have good reason. They’re getting worse not better.
- Anyone notice the PAC-12 is just bad this year? The marque match-up in the conference this weekend: Wazzou on the road against 5-2 Arizona. The Rod has the ‘Cats balling and nobody could care in the least.
- Georgia and Florida head to Jacksonville for the Cocktail Party (or whatever PC name it’s called now.) Georgia, for whatever reason struggles against UF, but I’d be hard pressed to see that being the case this season. Florida’s offense is bad.. . . . .really, really bad. They didn’t score over 20 points in the last two home loses to A&M and LSU so cracking 20 on that defense should be loads of fun. Sad note as it was reported this week that UF players, coaches, and the coaching staff’s family members have been getting death threats. Stay classy, Gator Nation.
- Meteor Game Alert as Penn St and Ohio St square off in Columbus. Urb’s boys haven’t played meaningful snaps since the Oklahoma game (which they got smacked) and Penn State has played a true meat grinder of a slate against Akron, Ga St, Pitt, Indiana, NW, Meat Chicken, and that signature win. . .a last second conquest of 4-3 Iowa. I’d like to think OSU would beat these guys by 10-14 points being in Columbus and with a more talented team across the board. But, for whatever reason, PSU always seems to play them tough. I’d expect nothing less. OSU by 3 and Penn St drops to #5 in the poll.
While O-State and Penn St are getting after it, Notre Dame will be on the field with, in my opinion, a huge test in North Carolina St. It has all the makings of a trap game if there ever was one: coming off an emotional win against your rival, getting all sorts of national hype, and NCSU has had two weeks to get ready. That being said, I think that NC State is doing us a favor by being pretty damn good. There’s no way in hell they can be overlooked at 6-1. As crazy as it sounds, I think this game would scare me more with The Pack were 4-3 and not 6-1. We’ve heard all about how good the State front seven is and this is no joke. Even in their one lose this season to South Carolina, they only gave up 250 yards of offense and limited SC to 40 yards on the ground. Another really impressive stat about State is since the opener, they haven’t turned the ball over once.
It doesn’t take George Halas to figure out what they’re going to do on defense: shut off the run and make Wimbush beat them with his arm. One team has been able to do that this season and we know how that ended up. As good as NC State’s defense is, have they faced a line like ND’s? That’s a big, old negative. Their attention grabbing win this season was against FSU and their line isn’t ND’s and it’s be foolish to put them in the same conversation.
We blew against them last year (yes, pun intended) in maybe one of those most embarrassing games in the last 25 years of the program. No, not by the kids, but the coaching. No way Kelly 2.0 could have forgot about the fiasco he put his team through. I’d like to think he’s had this one circled since last year. I also think the 2017 Irish have a laser focus that we haven’t seen around these parts in a long, long time.
I got a feeling I’m going to be receiving more “nervous texts” come Saturday evening.
Beat NC State.