Canto X

College Football time! It was a full day of action, and I didn't miss much of it...

Games I watched: Massachusetts Maritime Academy @ MIT (19-0), Penn State @ Notre Dame (17-41), Clemson @ Boston College (33-34), Minnesota @ California (17-42), Ohio State @ Texas (27-7), Oregon @ Fresno State (31-24).

1) MIT lost their home opener 19-0. I only caught the second half due to a late brunch, but apparently the first half was much better. Twice inside the 5 yard line and they couldn't finish. Shut out at home, that hurts. MIT, we must protect this house!
2) Penn State had their chances and blew them all in the first half. Midway through the 2nd quarter ND found their rythem and it was over in the 3rd. Not a good showing from the Nittany Lions. Not sure how much this tells us about Notre Dame, though since fumble recoveries are random and they all went NDs way early. How is this team any different from Texas Tech last year? Lots of offense, spotty defense that will surprise at times but is really just average. The Michigan game next week will tell me a lot more. Also, for Penn State, the announcers kept raving about #2 Williams as a great athlete, but he just screwed up any time he took the snap as part of a mix-up sceme on offense, and dropped several key passes including one for TD. Why is this guy so special?
3) Clemson should have won this game, but a few key mistakes kept the game close, it went to OT, and blocked PAT decided it. I met some Clemson fans on the T in the morning, it's going to be a long trip back to South Carolina today...
4) The Bears made plenty of mistakes early, but finally showed why they actually deserved to be ranked. The offense looked like a Tedford offense of old, the defense played up to the hype, only giving up 2 drives for a TD and FG (and the opening one for TD was a blown assignment on the first play from scrimmage resulting in a ~50 yard gain). The Bears will be getting a lot better and will challenge for the Pac-10 title. The Tennessee game will be seen as an abberation due to a young team going on the road in a hostile environment. In other news, the Gophers finally played a team not in the bottom 20 (or D-IAA) for a non-conference game. Their big knock (similar to Kansas State) the last few years has been the cream puff 3-0 and 4-0 non-conference schedule. Here's betting Glen Mason doesn't do that again.
5) The game of the weekend didn't really live up to the hype in my mind. It wasn't a bad game, but no one will be calling this the game of the season. Two trips to the red zone by Texas resulted in a lost fumble and what should have been a FG turned into a TD by a questionable roughing the passer penalty. That was the best they could do. The Buckeyes are looking pretty good this season, and the offense stayed in control most of the game. Texas without Vince Young will go back to the Mack Brown teams of old: 10 or 11 wins and choking away the big ones. Enjoy last season Longhorn fans, it was pretty special.

Before we get to the Ducks, something for some of my Big Ten friends. Illinois got waxed by the State College of New Jersey 33-0 while Northwestern lost 34-17 in their home opener against... D-IAA University of New Hampshire (Wildcats Vs. Mildcats!). I'm not sure which is worse. I've got to say the the Big Ten is looking a little top-heavy, but I'll hold off judgement for a few more weeks. Not too many other games to comment on except for the two near-upset let-down games by Tennessee and FSU. Soclose. And UW hanging tough against Oklahoma. Nice try Huskies.

6) Last but not least, the Ducks. I was pretty nervous about this game. I think everyone knows what Fresno can do at home, and you have to worry about how much everyone is thinking about Oklahome next week. Of course, the big play was the fake field goal. Great call. When they lined up for the FG, I was a little angry about not going for it to really give themselves a cushion or at least pinned Fresno deep. But then the miracle happened. I guess this was an "audible" by Brady Leaf - he read the defense and if they were overloaded he could pick it up and run with it since they had blocked an earlier attempt - the only problem is he's the only one who knows! Martinez didn't even know what was going to happen until it was happening. If you look at the replays he takes 2 steps as part of his normal wind up, then realizes that he better start running the other way to score the TD! Great call, great execution, and a great win for the Ducks. Bellotti's Bag-o-Tricks comes through in the clutch. I breathed a huge sigh of relief, even at 2am my heart was pounding for that last hail mary. By the way, good use of the clock by Pat Hill at the end - the Ducks should have realized he was going to do everything he could to win and kept pushing the ball.
Now for more Duck stuff. The offense still doesn't look in-sync. It was like this last year the first few games. Some key drops also hurt. The announcers kept raving about the depth at the reciever position the Ducks have, but the reason they're so deep is because they're all mediocre. Williams led the team, but even he had some key drops (one would have been a first down and the other was a touchdown). There's really no stand-out guy, and I think that's going to hurt the Ducks. Stewart being out also didn't help, but Johnson wasn't bad. I'm not a big fan of the spread offense, especially because it doesn't use a tight end much (although they finally seem to have found some kind of role for Rosario). But 31 points will win you a lot of games, so lets hope they keep progressing. The denfense really needs some help stopping the run. We all knew they were going to miss Haloti, but watching Wright churn out the yards was really frustrating. We got them to 3rd down plenty of times, but just couldn't get off the damn field. But when you look at the numbers, it wasn't that bad. One long run by Wright was the biggest play given up all game (40 yards), and if you take that away Wright and the team as a whole only averaged 4 yards a carry and 4.5 yards per pass. That's not terrible against the run and phenomenal against the pass, they just need to work on their 3rd down defense: Fresno converted on 9-17 and went 1-2 on 4th down. Thats better than 50%, when it should be something like 30-40%. Aliotti has always been a stop-the-run-first kind of guy, so you better believe he'll be working on this over the week getting ready for Adrian Peterson. It also seems the Ducks are a little dinged up (Bates, Stewart, Strong), so hopefully everyone will be ready for next Saturday's big home match up. This opening is one of the hardest I've seen by the Ducks. After opening in-conference, on the road against Fresno, Oklahoma, road games at ASU and Cal, then UCLA at home. Wow. They're all winnable, but that's one tough schedule. The second half is a lot easier in theory, but features all our Northwest rivals and on the road against USC. And we don't have a bye week. What's our AD doing to these kids?

Okay, that turned out to be way more than I expected... Sorry about that.