I prefer this headline to reality

I was planning to take the day off but couldn't let this go unnoticed (it's since been corrected):

Errr yeah. That's exactly right LALALALALALALA.

Week 7: Uhh West Virginia?

Srsly, WTF happened to West Virginia? I have no idea. I take back everything I said/wrote about Texas Tech's pass defense; holding Geno Smith to 275 yards (on 55 attempts) and one touchdown is doin' work. Crazy stats: Texas Tech (a) is seventh in the country in pass-efficiency defense after playing both Oklahoma and West Virginia and (b) didn't produce a turnover or a sack yet held West Virginia to seven non-garbage-time points. How? Mostly by not giving up anything deep and making Smith throw to a lot of reasonably-well-covered guys underneath. I mean, I don't know how that happened, but it definitely happened. And the result was West Virginia's worst loss since 2001 (!!!) since Texas Tech was scoring more or less at will. The latter occurrence wasn't particularly surprising since it'd already been established that West Virginia's defense is terrible, but it finally became relevant when Smith wasn't throwing a touchdown pass on literally every possession. So ... West Virginia. I have no idea. It's possible that Texas and Baylor are just totally incapable of stopping anybody, which would render the previous couple games a lot less meaningful than previously assumed. It's also possible that Texas Tech is pretty good since that three-touchdown loss to Oklahoma (Tech's only loss so far) looks a lot less bad than it did a week ago. I guess the question is whether there's another pass defense in the Big 12 (other than Oklahoma) capable of doing what Texas Tech just did; I'm not sure what the answer to that question is. I am sure that a team capable of losing to Texas Tech by five touchdowns without committing a turnover is capable of losing any/all of the next five games: Kansas State, at TCU, at Oklahoma State, Oklahoma and at Iowa State (maybe). I'm trying to decide whether I'd be less surprised by 8-4 or 11-1 and am leaning toward the former.

GIF of the Week: Geno Smith had problems, man:

Worst day ever.

An enjoyable day at the fair for Oklahoma: TO THE WOODSHED. The story: Oklahoma outgained Texas 677-289, shut out Texas' first-team offense and didn't allow a first down until it was 36-2 (lol). It wasn't even as close as the score indicated. I know. Breaking news: Texas' defense is bad. I mean, yeah, Oklahoma State and West Virginia and Oklahoma all have elite-ish offenses; still, Texas has given up 44.5 points a game over the last month and is now 99th in total defense, 103rd in rushing defense, 89th in pass-efficiency defense and 94th in scoring defense. WTF, Manny Diaz? It's probably not a coincidence that Oklahoma has scored 55 and 63 points against Texas in the two years since Will Muschamp left to turn Florida into LSU East. Just sayin'. As for Oklahoma ... ummm ... wow? Landry Jones looked a lot like the Landry Jones of two years ago, probably in part due to Texas' craptacular defense but also in part due to having a pretty good group of receivers now  (Kenny Stills, Justin Brown and Jalen Saunders), and Blake Bell is physically incapable of not scoring when called upon inside the 10 (and has the best nickname ever). And the defense: great googly moogly. Mike Stoops FTW? Apparently. Texas' offense is still 10th in the country in scoring and 38th in yardage and just got totally destroyed in every possible way. David Ash went 13 for 29 for 113 yards with no touchdowns and two picks. The non-garbage-time running game totaled 33 yards on 19 carries. Etc. Oklahoma is legit; I can say that because Oklahoma is one Kansas State strip-sack touchdown from being undefeated right now with wins over three top-25 teams, the latter two by a combined 63 points. And given the schedule (Notre Dame in two weeks and West Virginia in four and Oklahoma State in five), a one-loss Oklahoma at the end of the year would have a resume that'd be comparable to/better than those of the one-loss SEC teams. That's obviously hypothetical and dependent on Oklahoma replicating The Best Game Ever a couple more times but seems a lot more plausible than it did a couple weeks ago.

Fullback-Related Entertainment of the Week: Trey Millard DO NOT TACKLE:


BOOM MILLARD'D.

Luck of the something something: So ... Notre Dame. I'm just gonna get this out of the way since it's the thing everybody cares about because OMG CONTROVERSY EXPLOSION: I think Stepfan Taylor got to the goal line. Forward progress is irrelevant once it goes to review (that's not reviewable), as is any whistle, according to Mike Pereira. So all that matters is whether he got there; I think he did. I'm not sure he did before losing the ball or putting his elbow on the ground, though, so I don't know if I could've overturned the original call. It was close. Notre Dame got lucky. It happens. And Stanford still would've needed to kick an extra point in crappy weather just to tie it and force another overtime, which I'm sure they would've like the opportunity to do but hey life's not fair yadda yadda cliche cliche. But here's the thing: Notre Dame is only marginally better than Stanford by every measure, which is kinda hard to reconcile with a top-five ranking. The wins over Michigan and Stanford were both extremely fortunate and provided no real indication that Notre Dame is anything more than a team slightly better than Michigan and Stanford, two teams currently ranked 22nd and 23rd (although both are probably underranked based on the requisite overreaction to losses, even quality ones). Everett Golson went 12 for 24 for 5.9 yards an attempt and would've been largely responsible for a loss (despite Notre Dame's defense not allowing a touchdown) if Tommy Rees hadn't come in and thrown a couple hilariously clutch third-down passes on the last drive of regulation and the only drive in overtime. Upshot: Rees should be starting. I just don't see how Notre Dame can beat Oklahoma and/or USC without a passing game, which Golson provides little of except against incompetent defenses. That said, Notre Dame's defense is unquestionably legit; Stanford's offense is very meh but still got held to 272 total yards and got physically dominated on two series at the goal line with the game on the line. That's why this Notre Dame team is in fact better than all the Notre Dame teams that went 9-3 and then got lit up by Oregon State/LSU/whoever. The floor at this point is 10-2 and a BCS bowl, which wow. The ceiling is unfathomable if Rees starts the rest of the way, which he might seeing as how Golson has a (conveniently timed) concussion. Brian Kelly for Coach of the Year. Guy who scheduled Notre Dame-Oklahoma at the same time as Michigan-Nebraska for Jerk of the Year.

Gary Danielson has warm fuzzies: I will now Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V what I wrote last week about the SEC:

Any differences between Florida, South Carolina and LSU are negligible; I'm ranking them in that order because I trust Florida's offense one unit of trust more than I trust South Carolina's offense and trust South Carolina's offense one unit of trust more than I trust LSU's.

The main point stands; the teams need some reordering. LSU outgained South Carolina 406-211 overall, outrushed South Carolina 258-34 (!) despite the existence of Marcus Freakin' Lattimore and allowed basically nothing until the final three minutes, when South Carolina got a tack-on touchdown after a fourth-and-17 conversion. In other words, LSU did what I expected LSU to do all season. Despite all that, South Carolina lost by two on the road against one of the five best teams in the country. The reasons: a de facto pick six that set up the first touchdown, general domination of the LSU passing game and a couple really good drives put together by Connor Shaw, who went 19 of 34 with two touchdowns and a pick (not counting the last desperation throw) despite getting his face eaten a lot. So my opinion of South Carolina has changed little. The defense but doesn't have the interior hugeness to stop a dominant running game but is borderline elite and the offense is balanced to the point that some level of effectiveness (albeit unexciting effectiveness) is pretty much a given. Translation: South Carolina's very good. The problem: Next week's game is at Florida. Come on, scheduling dudes. I will flip out next week when one of those teams drops to 12th despite losing by three to a top-five-ish team. As for LSU, the Florida loss won't really be relevant in two weeks, at which point there will be a win over A&M and something against Alabama that will determine whether LSU is really as good as I expected LSU to be or a 2012 version of 2010 Alabama. I'm expecting the latter. BTW, whichever team in the SEC East ends up 11-1 but not in the conference title game is probably better off (from a BCS standpoint) than the one that gets the courtesy of getting pwned by Bama and taking on an extra loss, with the caveat being that a win there would probably result in a national title, which would be swell.

Y U DO THAT? There were two games Saturday in which a team was losing by 10 in the final minutes, had the ball inside the other team's 25 and went for it on fourth-and-long. WTF? It is not possible to win without scoring twice, and the odds of making a field goal (even with a crappy kicker) from inside of 40 yards have to be better than the odds of getting it on fourth-and-long. One of those teams was South Carolina, which actually did get it and scored a touchdown on the next play but probably eliminated any chance of winning in the process by taking a timeout before the fourth-down play, then burning off another minute while scoring and therefore needing to recover an ultimately unsuccessful onside kick. It would've made infinitely more sense to kick the field goal as soon as reasonably possible and have two-plus minutes plus all three timeouts to potentially score a touchdown. Pitt was the other team, BTW; they didn't get the first down and lost by 10. Conclusion: All college coaches are Marty Mornhinweg.

Nice defense: Ohio State scored 52 points against Indiana and needed all of them since Indiana finished with 49 points and 481 total yards. To be fair, the game wasn't really as close as the score implied: Ohio State led by 10-17 for pretty much all of the second half until Indiana scored with a couple minutes left, recovered the onside kick, scored again with about 30 seconds left, got the two-point conversion and briefly made every trucker in the Midwest very nervous with a close-but-not-close-enough onside kick. Alas. Anyway, what matters is that Ohio State is now giving up just under 25 points and exactly 400 yards a game yet is probably going to be 11-0 going into the Michigan game with no better wins than the ones against Nebraska and ... uhh ... Cal? Michigan State? Yeesh. That's a Boise State schedule but with a bunch of three-/seven-point wins instead of a bunch of 38-point wins. I don't know where a hypothetical 12-0 Ohio State would be ranked but don't really have to worry about it since lol NCAA'd (that "lol" is all the gratification I get since the net result of CheatyPants McSweatervest being a cheatypants was Ohio State getting a better coach). Come on, Michigan. BTW, put me down for $20 on Braxton Miller to win the 2014 Heisman.

Big Ten woo and no that's not a real woo: Iowa and Michigan State played maybe the ugliest game in the history of ugliness Saturday. The quarterbacks went a combined 31 for 67 (guh) for 4.7 yards an attempt (that's bad). The running backs went for a combined 3.7 yards a carry. There were 12 penalties. The only redeeming quality was the evenness of the overall distribution of ugly: It was blah against blah. I'd like to say something nice about the defenses but was too busy watching the offenses be awful to notice any of the good stuff. The announcers at one point referred to de facto starting running back Marc Weisman, a walk-on fullback who's getting carries only because AIRBHG is a vengeful bastard, as "Iowa's best player." No joke. And Iowa won! On the road! The Iowa that lost to Central Michigan (which just lost to Navy by 10)! Woo Big Ten! Speaking of which, Iowa is now 2-0 in conference play, gets Penn State and Purdue at home and doesn't play Ohio State or Wisconsin (for some reason). Splitting the Michigan and Nebraska games might actually be sufficient to win the division, which please God no. Just no. As for Sparty, the offense has gone from really bad to really terrible since superhuman tight end Dion Sims went out a couple weeks ago with an ankle injury. The passing game is nonexistent; the running game seems like it should be decent with LeVeon Bell but generates 3.5 yards a carry regardless of all other factors because the O-line is just sort of there and doesn't really create anything. Considering that the next four games on the schedule are at Michigan, at Wisconsin, Nebraska and Northwestern (all teams that seem capable of scoring 20 points), Michigan State could legitimately be 5-6 by the middle of November and playing Minnesota for bowl eligibility in The Game of the Century (or something).

Way to Manage the Clock of the Week: OH WHY CAN'T JOHN L. SMITH STILL BE COACHING AT MICHIGAN STATE???


Obligatory:


Never gets old. Never.

Totally unrelated Big Ten note-type thing: Jerry Kill had a seizure (another seizure) after Minnesota lost to Northwestern and was briefly hospitalized for testing and generally having a seizure and whatnot. Jerry Kill don't care:

"He was evaluated (Saturday) and this morning, and all tests confirm that he remains in excellent health," team physician Dr. Pat Smith said in a statement Sunday. "His only concern is his team and staff, and he is excited to resume his normal coaching duties as Minnesota prepares for Wisconsin this week. He plans to be back in the office tomorrow."

Srsly? The guy has had two seizures during/after games in the past two years along with an unspecified number of "additional" seizures; isn't there a point at which being alive is preferable to being the coach at Minnesota? He's having seizures! Maybe he'd have the seizures regardless and therefore sees no benefit to not coaching? I dunno. Regardless, the guy deserves some credit for dragging Minnesota back toward respectability; beating Illinois (probable) and Purdue (possible) would give Minnesota six wins and a spot in a crappy bowl game, which would represent one small step toward replicating the Glen Mason era and one giant leap toward mediocrity.

Is Gene Chizik still employed? Auburn lost to Ole Miss by three touchdowns Saturday. Auburn is terrible. Auburn scored 20 points in that game and hasn't scored more than 20 points against any major-conference team other than Ole Miss since a two-touchdown loss to Clemson last September. Auburn is terrible. Auburn is now 1-5 overall (the one win was against Louisiana-Monroe in overtime) and, barring a win over Vanderbilt next week, will go winless in the SEC. Yeah: Auburn is terrible. This is the same program that won the national title 19 games ago and has had nothing but top-10 recruiting classes since Gene Chizik took over. How does that happen? Gus Malzahn was very good (at least last year's team could score points against bad teams); hiring Scot Loeffler to replace him and coach a bunch of spread guys probably wasn't so good. Brian Van Gorder has been OK as D-coordinator this year but is in a pretty tough spot since the offense never gets a first down. It's probably worth noting that Chizik has a 22-34 career record in seasons not starring Cam Newton. Terrible. What's the record for fewest games coached after a national title before being fired for performance reasons? Even Larry Coker made it four freakin' years.

Not Quite a Tackle of the Week: Jeff Scott got tackled but didn't really and then ran a long way:


Auburn would be complaining if not for that Michael Dyer run that was slightly more meaningful.

Oh hai Boise State: Boise is 5-1 and has only two losable games left on the schedule, the first being a home game against San Diego State in three weeks and the second being the regular-season finale at Nevada. An 11-1 record and Fiesta Bowl berth beckon despite a complete lack of offense, basically nothing indicative of overall goodness and a schedule featuring nobody better than Michigan State, a team that beat Boise and might still go 6-6. Ehh.

Game of the Week: Texas A&M 59, Louisiana Tech 57. Texas A&M led 27-0 with six minutes left in the first half yet had to stop a two-point play with 38 seconds left to avoid overtime. The difference in the game: a blocked PAT run back for two points late in the first half. Louisiana Tech's offense: It's legit. Texas A&M had given up 74 points all season coming in (including 20 to Florida); Louisiana Tech finished with 615 total yards (but got outgained by 63 yards lol) and scored 57 points in a span of 35 minutes of game time to make the ending relevant. Colby Cameron went 44 for 58 for 450 yards with five touchdowns and no picks. Wideout Quinton Patton had 233 receiving yards and four touchdowns. That's crazy. Equally crazy: Texas A&M committed 19 penalties (!!!) for 168 yards. I know. Even crazier: Johnny Manziel had 395 passing yards (on only 41 attempts) and three touchdowns and ran for 181 yards and three more touchdowns. The ending in video form:


Ridiculous. I'll be pretty disappointed if Louisiana Tech ends up 11-1 and playing in the Independence Bowl; both of those seem likely given (a) the remaining schedule and (b) the remaining schedule, which includes zero games anybody will pay attention to, especially with Louisiana Tech not even currently ranked (despite comfortable road wins over both Illinois and Virginia argh).

Player of the Week: Johnny Manziel. The end.

How good is Kansas State? Get back to me in a month. The Oklahoma win looks pretty good now but has to be qualified with the acknowledgment that Oklahoma would've won by 10 if not for two fluky fumbles, one by Landry Jones that K-State recovered for a touchdown and one by Blake Bell at the K-State 1-yard line that cost Oklahoma a touchdown of its own. I'm not totally buying that a team that's played almost dead even with both North Texas and Iowa State in the last four weeks and is statistically pretty dang comparable to Michigan is legitimately deserving of a top-five ranking. NEED MOAR DATA; I'll get it via the next six games (at West Virginia, Texas Tech, Oklahoma State, at TCU, at Baylor, Texas), of which Kansas State will probably be an underdog in two.

The ghost of Greg Schiano: Rutgers is gonna start 9-0. I'm serious: The next three games are against Temple (meh), Kent State and Army. The last three games are against Cincinnati, Pitt and Louisville; Cincy and Louisville are both undefeated right now, and it's plausible that the winner of their game next Friday will be undefeated come November. I don't think any of those teams is going unbeaten but have to acknowledge the possibility, although the existence of said possibility says a lot more about the Big East than it says about Rutgers/Cincinnati/Louisville, the three of which will have a combined zero wins over ranked teams other than themselves.

ACC nonsense: There's one team unbeaten in ACC play. Guess again. Not even close. It's Maryland, a team that's 2-0 in the ACC after losing to UConn (which in turn lost to Western Michigan) and beating William & Mary by one in the first month. Woo ACC! I hope for the Orange Bowl's sake that Florida State ends up winning the thing; the alternative is unfathomable. "YOU'RE LOOKING LIVE AT THE FEDEX ORANGE BOWL, WHERE NORTH CAROLINA AND RUTGERS ARE AAAHHHHH THIS NIGHTMARE MUST END NOW." BTW, Virginia Tech fell behind Duke 20-0 (!) in the first quarter Saturday before remembering that Duke (even 5-1 Duke) is Duke and going on a 41-0 run over the next 48 minutes. I still think Va. Tech ends up in the title game against Florida State but really have no idea since it's the ACC, where Maryland is unbeaten and Miami leads a division (I have no idea which one) despite being pretty bad.

Awfulness of the Week: Kentucky was losing to Arkansas 42-0 at halftime and 49-7 when the game was called with five minutes left in the third quarter (lightning and whatnot). No additional numbers needed. The chances that Kentucky wins an SEC game this year are the same as the chances that Joker Phillips still has a job as of January, which is to say that they're zero. High five?

High five!

Post-Week 7 top 10: I have no idea what to do with West Virginia (especially in relation to Notre Dame, a team with an awesome front seven, a crappy secondary and worse-than-crappy quarterback play); the bottom four teams could justifiably be rearranged in any order. The rest is pretty self-explanatory.

1. Alabama
2. Oregon
3. Florida
4. LSU
5. South Carolina
6. Oklahoma
7. USC
8. Florida State
9. Notre Dame
10. West Virginia

Sweet nothings

There was a game once in which there were 1,237 total yards and Michigan needed 67 points to win. Defense was a fanciful thing that existed only on the plantations. Fedoras were all the rage. Ron Zook's job was secure. This was obviously many, many years ago. I don't even know how many years ago. Many. A lot more than two.

. . . . .

I just watched a non-Minnesota Big Ten team get held to 134 total yards, 29 passing yards (!) and seven first downs. I stopped paying attention five minutes into the third quarter because it was obvious that there was no chance whatsoever that Illinois was going to make it competitive.

Michigan could have taken a knee on every play after the first quarter and won comfortably. No joke. Illinois got three first downs on its opening possession, punted from midfield and then had a total of two first downs in the ensuing 33 minutes of game time, a span in which Michigan scored 38 points. Illinois averaged 2.4 yards a play. Total yards were 527-134. The majority of Michigan's starters (on both sides of the ball) didn't play for the last 19-plus minutes of the game. Illinois had -2 yards in the second half and never crossed the Michigan 30. I'm running out of numbers/stats that are indicative of the paddlin' that just took place.

Paddlin'.

It was the Purdue game with MOAR DESTRUCTION. I felt nothing by the end except amusement that Jack Kennedy had completed a pass, which at seven yards gave him almost as many passing yards as Illinois and infinitely more total yards than Illinois managed on six second-half drives, three of which were against Michigan's backups. It really wasn't a game as much as a beating that felt almost gratuitous after three hours.

This is the spot where I fellate Greg Mattison. I heart Greg Mattison. In the last three games (UMass not included for obvious reasons), Michigan's defense has held three legitimate BCS-conference teams to 19 total points and an average of 195 total yards. Granted, all three of those teams are something other than good on offense, but 6.3 points and 195 yards a game lol wwwhheeeee!!!

It was exactly 35 days ago when I wrote this:

Yikes. Air Force averaged 4.1 yards per carry (which isn't that bad defensively), racked up 417 total yards and went a ridiculous 14 of 25 on third- and fourth-down plays (fake field goal excluded). It was infuriating/horrifying/pick an anger-based adjective. The stuff that happened against Bama apparently wasn't a fluke or just O-line awesomeness; it was indicative of a problem (quite possibly more than one) that was exploited again by Air Force and will be exploited again going forward without some not-insignificant development and/or adjustments: That problem: The interior of the line can't hold up and the linebackers either can't or won't fill (and thus account for the interior gaps) with any competency.

Yeah ... about that. All Illinois-related caveats apply (331 yards and 16.6 points a game against the five vaguely competitive teams on the schedule prior to Michigan, etc.); that said, Michigan more thoroughly dominated Illinois than any other team had (by far) and now has three games of data that indicate that the defense is actually good. Numbers: Michigan is now 12th in total defense and 25th in scoring defense, and that's with a 41-point, 431-yard anchor at the front end of the schedule.

This was pretty much the typical Illinois pass play:


The rest were rollouts that were totally covered and thus ended with Nate Scheelhaase trying to dump it off at the last minute to a guy standing along the sideline three yards downfield, which (a) wasn't effective even it "worked" and (b) whatever. Illinois did manage 103 rushing yards (woo) but needed 37 carries to get there, one of which was a 23-yarder by Scheelhaase on a pass play that should have been a sack, required a miraculous escape and ended with Scheelhaase getting his shoulder/head destroyed, ending any chance Illinois had of finishing the game with something other than a "0" next to Michigan's much, much larger number.

There's really nothing I can criticize after a game in which the other team (a real team) ends up with seven first downs and never comes close to scoring. Jake Ryan should be an All-American this year; he's that good (as a redshirt sophomore YES). Quinton Washington and Craig Roh have become legitimately effective starters on the line. Kenny Demens is filling with authoritah, making a couple big third-down stops a game and almost totally eliminating the relevance of any/all tight ends in the passing game). The secondary is giving up nothing. Summary: I know what it's like to be a Bama fan (except with literacy and stuff lol zing) just two years removed from 67-65 and fedoras and whatnot. Mind blown.

The only thing comparably impressive to the defense: the run game. The Illinois front seven is the one aspect of that team that isn't terrible, as evidenced by Illinois coming into the game 38th in the country in rushing yards allowed at 124.5 a game; Michigan went for 353 at 6.9 yards a carry. A lot of that was just Denard being Denard, but a lot of it wasn't. Fitz Toussaint and Thomas Rawls had a combined 20 non-garbage-time/non-short-yardage carries and went for 82 yards, which at 4.1 yards a carry is about a half-yard per carry more than Illinois had been giving up coming in. And it was the consistency that was ... uhh ... consistent: Three up-the-middle plunges in short yardage notwithstanding, Denard and Toussaint had a combined two carries that went for fewer than three yards in the first two and a half quarters, at which point it was 31-0 and I stopped counting. Basically alternating 4-yard and 9-yard runs results in the numbers above.

I'm gonna give Al Borges some credit* for turning off his brain and taking 6.9 yards a carry over and over and over and over and over. Nick Saban would've had an orgasm watching this:

Boredom FTW. Denard threw nine passes in the competitive-ish portion of the game, one of which was an I-form tunnel screen (a play that literally always works, for some reason) on the fourth play of the game that went 71 yards for a touchdown and only one of which was situationally unnecessary. Again: Saban orgasm.

There was a brief glimpse of a horrifying future** (on offense) when Denard went out with some kind of injury to his right hand that looked not enjoyable based on my admittedly amateur interpretations of facial expressions. Russell Bellomy came in, handed off three times for a total of a yard, threw two good passes that were dropped and produced the aforementioned one yard in a series and a half, causing me to swallow loudly and uncomfortably several times before Denard came back in, produced the drive broken down above and then completed three of his last four passes, with two of those being of the actual-downfield-pass variety. Yay for Denard and yay for Denard having a functioning throwing hand.

Also yay for this:


YESSSSS. More of that plzkthx.

The question at this point is whether Al Borges will continue doing that against defenses that won't give up 6.9 yards a carry (say, Michigan State's defense) rather than trying to turn Denard into Cade McNown and then being shocked and appalled when it doesn't work out spectacularly. The last two and a half games have been encouraging in that regard: 74.6 percent of Michigan's plays since halftime of the Notre Dame game*** have been designed runs, and those plays have averaged 6.1 yards a carry against rush defenses currently ranked 17th, 58th and 38th in the country. That's good. That's also largely due to the return of the veer that crushed fools for most of the second half of last season. And it's worth noting that Borges has pretty liberally used the bubble screen, the tunnel screen and the quarterback draw of late; Michigan has three touchdowns on those plays in the last two games, which hopefully will encourage their continued use seeing as how they're easy ways to get lots of yards and touchdowns because of the way defenses have to be aligned to not get crushed by the veer (that whole 6.1-yards-a-carry thing) and because of the way Denard is Denard.

Beyond that, the only takeaway from a game that wasn't a really game: Michigan didn't have to do anything out of the norm for the second straight week and thus should have a couple things in the playbook that neither Michigan State nor anyone else has seen. Given Sparty's sometimes-hilarious obsession with beating Michigan at the expense of everything else and Pat Narduzzi's irritating pwnage of Al Borges last year (and RichRod before that), I'm considering that a win and incrementally increasing my expectations for the offense next week. And based on the general craptacularity of Michigan State's offense, it might not even matter; I'll be seriously disappointed (SRSLY) if State gets to 20 points next week since that offense-type thing is averaging 16.6 points a game against real teams this year and has gone on the road road for all of one game, with that being a four-point win over Indiana that required a 17-point comeback and two fourth-quarter touchdowns.

There will probably be a game (another game) filled with inexplicable awfulness on offense since there's always a game filled with inexplicable awfulness on offense immediately after a game that make me assume there won't be any more inexplicable awfulness on offense; just don't be against Michigan State. Or Iowa. Or Nebraska. Or Ohio State. Or at least be against only one of those teams since Ohio State is irrelevant (from a standings standpoint) and every other team mentioned in this paragraph will almost definitely end up with at least two conference losses. I'd be satisfied with 9-3 this year; 9-3 this year would mean roses.

I WANT ROSES.

*I'm also gonna give Brady Hoke some credit since I have seen that Michigan-against-a-crappy-team-in-crappy-weather game many times and have seen it be closer than preferred similarly many times.

**To be fair, Bellomy actually has looked pretty good in his limited playing time this year. He's a very accurate passer with very good touch and a pretty good runner; assuming that the offense becomes something more similar to what Borges was running at San Diego State (or Auburn before that or UCLA before that), I could see the passing game taking a significant step forward next year. BTW, I'm assuming that Devin Gardner sticks at receiver and Bellomy gets the starting job at QB given Bellomy being a better passer than Gardner and Gardner being a far better athlete/receiver than anybody else who'll be on the roster next year.

***Denard has thrown zero picks in those 10 quarters. Just sayin'.

Catching up has an empty-corpse quality

Good-ish news for Oregon State: Sean Mannion's "indefinite" absence probably won't be a very long one:

Oregon State quarterback Sean Mannion had surgery Wednesday morning to repair damage to the meniscus in his left knee and is recovering, OSU senior associate athletic director for sports medicine Dr. Doug Aukerman said.

The surgery by Dr. Donald Pennington of Samaritan Health Services went as planned and Mannion started the early stages of rehab in the afternoon. Mannion wanted to be at practice on Wednesday, but Aukerman wouldn’t let him.

Mannion will be considered week-to-week when he returns. Normal recovery time is two to four weeks, but Aukerman wouldn’t give a timetable for Mannion.

Upshot: Expect him back within a couple weeks. It's probably worth noting that he didn't even leave the game in which he was injured, which would seem to indicate that he's capable of playing through some degree of discomfort. He also wanted to practice immediately after leaving the hospital, which ... uhhh ... no.

As for what that means for Oregon State, the upcoming schedule goes like this: at BYU, Utah, at Washington, ASU, at Stanford. The BYU game is a nonconference one and therefore means little in the big picture, and the Utah game should be a win regardless of the quarterback situation. After that is where it gets a little dicey: Washington, ASU and Stanford are all pretty good and collectively represent the competition for the Alamo Bowl, which is the realistic best-case scenario unless USC loses another conference game and then loses again to Oregon in the Pac-12 title game, in which case the BCS spot that's currently reserved for USC would be available. Anyway, the Washington game is 16 days from now; if he can make it back for that one, Oregon State should still be unbeaten in Pac-12 play and have a pretty decent shot of beating any/all of the aforementioned teams and potentially making the Civil War (which is in Corvallis this year) very interesting. To be clear, I don't think Oregon State's running the table (even up to the Oregon game) but even a one-loss Oregon State would probably have a lot to play for at that point.

Casey Pachall is getting help: What the headline-type thing says:

TCU quarterback Casey Pachall plans to enter an inpatient facility and withdraw from school, coach Gary Patterson said Tuesday.

Patterson said most of the inpatient programs such as the one Pachall will enter are 30 to 60 days. If Pachall completes the treatment, the door remains open for him to return to school and the team.

"There was only one way he was going to change the path that he was on," Patterson said. "And that was he just needed to step away from it all. I think it's the best decision for this football team and Casey Pachall."

There was never an expectation that Pachall was gonna be back this year; the guy obviously has some problems, and anything that results in a 21-year-old with multiple addiction problems getting his life together (in theory) is a good thing.

FYI, Pachall's a redshirt junior and thus has one remaining year of eligibility. TCU could probably use him next year seeing as how The Trevone Boykin Introduction went ... ummm ... not spectacularly.

Jalen Saunders is eligible? Apparently. Saunders transferred from Fresno State after an All-WAC season as a sophomore but was presumed to be a mandatory redshirt until Wednesday, when the NCAA (for some unknown reason) decided he should be eligible immediately. I dunno.

Saunders was cleared during Oklahoma's evening practice and is expected to play Saturday when the 13th-ranked Sooners face No. 15 Texas in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.

"We found that out midpractice and switched him over from scout team to the 1's and 2's," coach Bob Stoops said.

Interesting. Saunders represents a not-insignificant addition to the Oklahoma offense: He had 50 catches for 1,065 yards and 12 touchdowns last year and should be pretty effective in the slot, a position that has been nominally filled by freshman Troy Metoyer but has been largely unproductive since the Ryan Broyles injury midway through last season. I won't be surprised if Saunders -- who's somewhat of a Broyles clone at 5-foot-9 but uber quick -- basically splits snaps with Metoyer this week and takes over the starting job next week against Kansas so he'll have some meaningful playing time in advance of the Notre Dame game.

Regardless, Landry Jones haz a happy.

Pfft head injuries: So ... Robert Woods apparently got knocked out (literally knocked out) last week against Utah and had to be helped off the field. He returned one play later. I'm serious. Here's the video:


USC said afterward that Woods passed his sidelines concussion tests, which would be useful info if not for (a) Woods later saying that he "probably" lost consciousness, which is a concussion (either Grade II or Grade III) by definition, and (b) Utah beat writer Brian Smith directly refuting that story:

Smith kinda retracted that tweet the next day ...

Ok, time to eat some crow (as the attacks continue). I was not able to hear every word the trainer said, and my words were too sharp for...
— Brian Smith (@UtahInsider) October 9, 2012

...what I observed. For sake of the attacks coming my way, I'll leave it at that. I hope the discussions continue generally on concussions
— Brian Smith (@UtahInsider) October 9, 2012

... but didn't retract the implication that Woods failed his tests. And even if he's wrong, Woods' admission that he got knocked out should be reason enough to fire the doctors who cleared him to go back in (I'm gonna give Lane Kiffin the benefit of the doubt here and assume that he distances himself from that decision for plausible-deniability purposes) about 40 seconds after he was clearly incapable of performing basic motorsensory tasks. HOW IS THIS STILL HAPPENING SERIOUSLY PEOPLE THINK OF THE CHILDREN ARGHGHGH.

BTW, almost the exact same thing happened last week with Michigan State's Will Gholston, who laid motionless on the field for about 30 seconds before leaving the game for one play. There is no possible way the NCAA doesn't mandate some sort of non-team-affiliated concussion specialist at every game at some point in the next three years (and with good reason).

Ouch seniors: Charlie Weis loves him some "development":

Kansas coach Charlie Weis held a Sunday practice with no seniors, and he said that while the message is harsh, it is clear.

“If you are going to develop a team that’s at the bottom of the league, development is key to becoming competitive,” Weis said. “I think the team needs to understand that there is only so much developing you can do with the seniors. They are already five games into their senior year and have seven games to go. It is what it is, and for everybody else, you got to see progress being made on a daily level if we are ever going to get any better.”

Translation: This is so awful let's just pretend it's 2013 kthx. That'd be the Ouch Seniors Moment of the Week if not for Mike Leach, whose honesty is both glorious and horrifying:

“Some of (the seniors) have had kind of this zombie-like, go through the motions, everything is like how it's always been, that's how it'll always be. Some of them quite honestly have an empty-corpse quality. That's not pleasant to say or pleasant to think about, but that's a fact."

Best use of a corpse-related adjective this season? Probably. At least the guy's retained his sense of humor:

Just doing a little extra studying of this week's opponent.#GoCougs twitter.com/Coach_Leach/st…
— Mike Leach (@Coach_Leach) October 11, 2012

I have nothing to add.

IT'S NOT FUNNY DAMMIT: Surprise: Ohio State jokes don't go over well in Columbus.

A 25-year-old Columbus State student that did not want to be identified says he took an order from the wife of Ohio State defensive coordinator Luke Fickell prior to the Ohio State-Michigan State game on Sept. 29. According to the student, he joked that Ohio State needed to tackle better before hanging up the phone, to which Amy Fickell laughed.

The next day, the student found himself without a job.

According to the pizza boy, Amy Fickell called up the restaurant and complained, which resulted in his dismissal. Ohio State refuted that claim in a statement: “The manager found out about the incident. The manager called the Fickells. Just like they did not place a call to complain, they also did not ask that anyone be fired. All they did was order pizza.”

Is that even a joke? I mean, that might actually be a useful tip for Ryan Shazier. Just sayin'.

The timeliest man in the world: Spencer Hall (of EDSBS brilliance) on Gus Malzahn, who escaped the Arkansas/Houston Nutt disaster, went to Tulsa to destroy Conference USA for Todd Graham, left for Auburn just in time to have Cam Newton fall into his lap AND avoid the Graham-at-Pitt debacle and then left the tire fire at Auburn to take over at Arkansas State, which will probably win the Sun Belt this year:

If Gus Malzahn suddenly leaves a bus you are riding, you leave with him. That bus is about to explode.

Auburn boom.

This is so awful: This video is 3 years old but had never before come to my attention, which thank God because, I mean, just watch it (or watch as much of it as you can):


The first comment on that YouTube page says it all:

Zing!

A sad day for Ron Powlus

Beano Cook is gone:

ESPN college football commentator Beano Cook has died.

The 81 year-old commentator had worked for the sports network since 1986 and was the sports information director at his alma mater, the University of Pittsburgh, from 1956 to 1966. The university announced Thursday that Cook had died in his sleep.

The guy undoubtedly deserves to be remembered for his 40-plus years of involvement in various football- and/or media-related things but probably won't be by anybody who remembers this:

I remember.

Week 6: That changes things

Ahh, Florida State: Every Florida State season is exactly the same; writing things like "it's pretty hard to envision FSU losing before November" only feeds the inevitability beast. And inevitability is the only way to explain a 17-16 loss to an NC State team that had just given up 44 points and 651 yards (!!!) to Miami, which then went out and scored three points against Notre Dame. WTF, Florida State offense? The first half (17 points and about 250 yards) was fine; the second half was not fine at all seeing as how Florida State scored zero points and had 101 total yards (final play not included), almost all of them in the air because the running game ceased to exist. That's awful. Any offense that can be totally and completely shut down by NC State for 30-plus minutes is not a national-title-worthy offense. The defense was fine but got no help whatsoever in the second half. Actually, the defense almost won the game by itself but gave up three fourth-down conversions on the game-ending drive, including a fourth-and-10 NFL seam throw/catch and a spectacularly designed fourth-and-goal completion from the 2 with 21 seconds left that gave NC State the win. BTW, Mike Glennon will be playing for a paycheck next year; he's legit. Florida State apparently isn't.

Celebratory picture/GIF of the week: AAAHHHHHHH!!!

I have nothing to add.

Florida might be last year's LSU: I knew Florida's defense was good; I didn't realize it was good enough to totally dominate LSU's offense for the entirety of a game, nor did I realize that Florida's run game (by which I mean Mike Gillislee) was gonna be able to put up 146 yards and two touchdowns on what I considered to be the second-best defense in the country. Jeff Driskel had 61 passing yards and 56 rushing yards yet was by far the better of the two quarterback performances, although that was mostly because Zach Mettenberger was getting his face eaten on a regular basis; Florida had four sacks and I have no idea how many hurries. After the opening drive, LSU got past the Florida 49-yard line once, and that was on this play that was a foot from being a touchdown but instead must be recognized as the Inconvenient Fumble of the Week:


Yeesh. Anyway, LSU's only other points came on a field goal after a strip sack at the Florida 7-yard line at the end of the first half. In other words, fluky fumbles removed, LSU still finished with six points. Florida's defense FTW. Will Muschamp FTW. As for LSU, everything's still in play since two of the next three games are against South Carolina and Alabama (both at home). The defense is good enough to beat anybody; the offense is gonna need some work since, I mean, 42 rushing yards. I didn't think anybody could hold LSU to 42 rushing yards but have now seen it done and therefore must acknowledge that it's possible (anything's possible for Alabama).

South Carolina might be really good: How good? I dunno, man. Good. I honestly didn't think South Carolina had the offense to hang with Georgia; I was wrong, in part because South Carolina's defense was so hilariously dominant that "hang with" became "score seven points against" and in part because Marcus Lattimore is a man-child and Connor Shaw has quietly turned into a pretty good quarterback. As for the defense: Wow. WOW. Garbage-time touchdown notwithstanding, Georgia had one drive longer than 19 yards. Aaron Freakin' Murray finished 11 for 31 for 109 yards with no touchdowns and a pick. Keith Marshall and Todd Gurley went for 76 yards on 25 carries. It was 21-0 when Georgia ran its seventh play from scrimmage, although that's probably more indicative of the whoopin' South Carolina's offense put on Georgia's defense rather than the other way around. Lattimore and Shaw combined for all of South Carolina's 145 yards on the first two drives, both of which ended with perfectly thrown touchdown passes, and Shaw threw a total of three passes the rest of the night since (a) Marcus Lattimore lol and (b) it was evident at that point that Georgia wasn't gonna do a whole lot on offense. BTW, Shaw's a better runner than he gets credit for; the question is whether he'll be consistent enough with his arm against LSU/Florida/Clemson. Given what I've seen from the South Carolina defense and known quantity that is Lattimore, that's probably the only thing standing between South Carolina and a game against Bama for ALL OF THE MARBLES. As for Georgia: Yikes. That was unexpected and probably infuriating, and it's pretty hard to imagine the Florida game going much differently since South Carolina and Florida are basically the same team. The Capital One Bowl beckons (as always).

Related Punt Return of the Week: Ace Sanders is quite good at returning punts:


Indubitably.

Gus Johnson probably needs a lozenge: Things that are better than Gus Johnson calling a game between two top-10-ish teams featuring 12 touchdowns and seven ties/lead changes: ummm ... uhhh ... I got nothin'. As for the game, it was pretty much exactly what I expected, which is to say a game very similar to the Baylor one but with slightly lower point totals since Texas actually has a semblance of a defense (but not enough of one to stop West Virginia from putting up 460 yards and 48 points). At this point, the possibility must be acknowledged that nobody on the schedule will be able to stop West Virginia from scoring basically at will. Kansas State? Probably not. Oklahoma? Maybe. What was interesting about Saturday's game was that Manny Diaz's insistence on getting pressure off the edge (which made some sense given Geno Smith's accuracy and general awesomeness) got him pwned by Dana Holgorsen, who just kept exploiting the vacated gaps over and over and over and over with a previously nonexistent zone running game. Andrew Buie finished with 207 yards (!) on 30 carries; his previous career high for yards in a game was 82. In summary, Dana Holgorsen is a genius. And he needed to be since Texas was basically matching West Virginia score for score; really, the difference in the game was Anthony Fera's missed 41-yard field-goal attempt with just over five minutes left. David Ash was good (22 for 29 for 269 yards and a touchdown), the running game was fine (just over four yards a carry with sacks excluded), etc. Texas is a good team; West Virginia's just a little better because of an offense that's better than any other offense in the country right now, Oregon included.

Obvious Tweet of the Week: No! Not in Morgantown!

Riots in Morgantown, couch fires, tear gas, riot police, flashbangs, and smoke bombs #crazy
— Ryan Maxwell (@MaximusWellis) October 7, 2012

Ahh, West Virginia.

Ohio State might go undefeated: Trust me: This is as disturbing to me as it is to you. It's not so much that Ohio State's an elite team but that there might not be a very good team on the entire schedule other than maybe/hopefully Michigan; it's pretty obvious now that Michigan State has no offense and Nebraska has no defense. I mean, yeah, Braxton Miller's good (especially in that offense), but Ohio State at one point scored seven touchdowns in a span of nine drives, and one of the non-touchdown drives was a 70-yarder that ended with a Miller fumble just inside the Nebraska 20. Nebraska's defense is not good; Bo Pelini has turned into Bill Callahan but with an awesome running game (putting up 38 points and 233 rushing yards at about 4.9 a carry against Ohio State deserves some recognition). That's probably what he was going for when he took over, right? RIGHT? Anyway, Taylor Martinez was as craptacular in the passing game as usual against legitimate defenses, going 15 for 25 but with three picks, one of which went the other way for a touchdown and one of which was near the Ohio State goal line when the game was still competitive-ish. His arm would be less relevant if the defense could stop anybody, but it can't; Nebraska is now 92nd in rushing defense and 73rd in scoring defense. Denard Robinson might go for 400 rushing yards in two weeks; LeVeon Bell might go for 300 the week after. As for Ohio State, tell me which of these games is actually losable: at Indiana, Purdue, at Penn State, Illinois, at Wisconsin. Come on, Michigan.

Speaking of which: This week's coaches' poll is the first one in the history of the coaches' poll to include zero Big Ten teams. Ohio State would be in it if eligible; Michigan probably should be in it. Still ... I mean ... yeesh. Wisconsin has done nothing to demonstrate any semblance of goodness, Penn State lol no, Northwestern is Northwestern and Michigan State confirmed its mediocrity by needing to come back from 17 down and score two touchdowns in the last eight minutes to beat Indiana, which is awful. The Big Ten!

Unsurprising Notre Dame domination: Miami might have been able to make things interesting if their receivers could catch; they can't, apparently, and that's bad when points are a necessity because of a TERRIBLE defense. Seriously: Miami's defense is terrible. Everett Golson (who isn't Vince Young yet) went 17 for 22 and averaged 8.5 yards an attempt, and Notre Dame's slightly-above-average running game went for 376 yards (!) at a ridiculouos 7.4 yards a carry. Hilarious stat: Notre Dame went from 97th to 71st in total offense via that obliteration. I'm not sure how much to read into that. I was actually more impressed by the defense, which had already established itself as really good up front but also did reasonably well (with the help of the aforementioned eleventy billion drops) against a Miamia passing game that had been averaging about 330 yards a game. I'm skeptical that the secondary's gonna hold up against Oklahoma and USC but have seen enough to think Notre Dame should beat Stanford and every other team that (a) is reliant primarily on the run game or (b) has a crappy defense, and the only teams left on the schedule that don't fit either of those two categories are USC and Oklahoma. Upshot: I think Notre Dame's going to a BCS game since 10-2 appears to be the realistic worst-case scenario. The best-case scenario? LOU HOLTZ INSANITY NOTRE DAME SOUTH CAROLINA AAAHHHHH. BTW, these ...

... no. Never again.

The ultimate in offensive ineptitude: Auburn scored seven points against Arkansas and lost by 17. It's probably worth noting that Arkansas had been 116th in scoring defense and 113th in total defense coming in and held Auburn to 321 total yards and 40 rushing yards. I know. Kiehl Frazier got yanked after going his typical 9 of 14 for like 12 yards and a pick; Clint Moselely came in and did basically the same thing but at a higher volume (and with a touchdown pass). It was awful; I'm guessing the Paul Finebaum "WAR EAGLES" were a little less "WAR EAGLE"-y this morning. Some numbers: Auburn is 92nd in rushing yards, 103rd in passing yards, 113th in totaly yards, 117th in scoring, 95th in rushing defense, 79th in pass-efficiency defense and 75th in total defense. Unsurprisingly, that team is 1-4, and there are games yet to be played at Ole Miss, at Vanderbilt, against Texas A&M at home, against Georgia at home and at Alabama (wwwhheeeee!). BTW, Auburn is 4-6 in SEC play since Cam Newton bailed for a slightly larger paycheck. This is what happens when Bobby Lowder stops buying the best players.

Sooner boom: So Texas Tech apparently doesn't have the best pass defense in the country. Who knew? To be fair, Landry Jones finished with 259 yards (which isn't a ton) on a meh 6.5 yards an attempt; the difference in the game was the 10-minute stretch around halftime in which the possessions went like this: Oklahoma touchdown drive, Texas Tech pick, Oklahoma field goal, halftime, Texas Tech turnover on downs at midfield, Oklahoma touchdown drive, Texas Tech pick six. It went from 14-13 to 41-13 in a span of about 18 minutes of game time. Whether that means Oklahoma is Oklahoma again or Texas Tech just isn't that good remains to be seen; I think the Landry Jones OMG NO TOUCHDOWNS stuff has been overblown (Blake Bell has scored a ridiculous 13 touchdowns -- almost all of which would've been Jones' if Bell didn't exist -- in the last eight games) but still have some concerns about the offensive blah-ness that's shown up with some regularity since late last season. Blah-ness probably won't be sufficient against Texas or Notre Dame or Oklahoma State and definitely won't be sufficient against West Virginia; all those teams can be beaten by the good version of Oklahoma but are better than the version of Oklahoma that was averaging 21.5 points through two games against actual teams. Upshot: Anything from 7-5 to 10-2 is within the realm of plausibiliity (11-1 is possible but probably not plausible). I'm intrigued by the State Fair game and would like to subscribe to its newsletter.

Penn State isn't terrible: WUT? Penn State beat a pretty decent Northwestern team Saturday, kicked the crap out of Illinois last week, has won four straight overall and is a couple mind-blowingly awful kicks against Virginia from being 5-1. They aren't particularly great at anything but are getting enough from the passing game (Matt McGloin and Allen Robinson, specifically) and the defense (the front seven, specifically) to be respectable, and that might actually be good enough in this year's Big Ten to get to a bowl game (!) since the remainder of the schedule includes a few similarly mediocre teams and Indiana. So 6-6 is plausible; 4-8 is also plausible. Regardless, at least Penn State hasn't (yet) devolved into complete craptacularity.

Arizona can't stop anybody: BREAKING NEWS but not really. Arizona is basically the 2010 version of Michigan: really good offense, really bad defense. The difference: Jeff Casteel offers some hope for improvement and/or future success. I saw enough of Casteel over the previous five-plus years at West Virginia and enough of Arizona's defense over the past three-plus years to know that the problems are largely personnel-related. Casteel will be fine once he has some legitimate players, of which there aren't many right now (there are maybe three players on that defense who would start for Stanford). And the offense! It's pretty unfortunate for all involved that Matt Scott doesn't have, like, three more years of eligibility.

The ACC still makes no sense: Virginia Tech lost to North Carolina (giving up 48 points in the process) because it's the ACC. Boston College lost to Army because it's the ACC. Duke is 5-1 because it's the ACC. I have no other viable explanations for any of those things.

Nonsensical ACC Video of the Week: This is Virginia Tech wideout Dyrell Roberts finding a pair of industrial scissors on the field:


I have no idea.

Devastating Loss of the Week Ever: Concordia! Bethel! A little background: Bethel is trailing Concordia 14-7 but has the ball at the Concordia 24 for presumably the final play of regulation. Insanity ensues (start at the 2:24:15 mark):


Video streaming by Ustream
Guh. Kyle Whittingham was sitting at home and inexplicably shuddered as that pass was completed, BTW.

Post-Week 6 top 10: So ... yeah. Any differences between Florida, South Carolina and LSU are negligible; I'm ranking them in that order because I trust Florida's offense one unit of trust more than I trust South Carolina's offense and trust South Carolina's offense one unit of trust more than I trust LSU's. TRUST. I'm a little less enthused about USC this week (Utah meh) and a lot less enthused about Florida State (obvsly) but can't justifiably drop either team out of the top 10 given the alternatives. And I really have no idea whether Texas is better than Oklahoma and/or Georgia and/or Kansas State and/or Ohio State; as always, ignore everything at the bottom.

1. Alabama
2. Oregon
3. Florida
4. South Carolina
5. LSU
6. West Virginia
7. Florida State
8. USC
9. Notre Dame
10. Texas

Suck it, Vegas

When I was a junior in high school, I took a possibly unhealthy interest in Drew Brees because he was so amazingly good; he was throwing (based on memory) about 100 passes a game and completing about 80 of them for about 50 bajillion yards, in the process taking an average-ish Purdue team to an Outback Bowl via sheer awesomeness.

Michigan's fifth game that year was against a Purdue team that was ranked 10th entirely because of its Brees-iness and hadn't yet been established to be average-ish. I was pretty concerned; a 38-12 win later, I was ... umm ... slightly less concerned. It was not really competitive at any point, and I don't think I've ever been concerned about Purdue at any point since then despite a couple random losses and a couple fortunate wins. Purdue is Purdue.

. . . . . 

My typical game-week routine goes something like this: reading the MGoBlog UFRs on Tuesday/Wednesday, counting the hours until the game starts on Thursday, imbibing some preview-type materials on Friday, getting that I'm-kinda-concerned-about-this-game feeling sporadically throughout the rest of Friday, planning how to avoid work long enough to consume the entire game without interruption Friday night and then sleeping until as close to game time as possible Saturday morning.

This week's schedule went something like this: Watching the entirety of Season 8 of "The Office" on Tuesday and Wednesday, working a lot on Thursday, briefly perusing the MGoBlog preview on Friday, feeling no concern whatsoever about the possibility of losing at any point Friday afternoon/evening, getting up at the usual time Saturday morning, watching Michigan State come back from 17 down to beat Indiana (?!?) and then coming to the realization that "oh hey the game starts in like 20 minutes." I was unconcerned.

The line was Michigan -3 despite Michigan being one stupid play against Notre Dame from being in the top 15 and Purdue being a seemingly mediocre team with a resume consisting of a somewhat-comparable loss to Notre Dame, a 10-point win over a crappy version of Marshall and a lot of very meh numbers. I didn't get it.

I was right.

. . . . .

That was ... like ... satisfying? Yeah, that seems about right. One of the things that ceased existing for about four years was the gratification that comes with watching Michigan just kick the crap out of a vaguely competitive Big Ten team. Beating Purdue by five touchdowns in a game that was 21-0 when Purdue got its second first down? That's kicking the crap out of a vaguely competitive Big Ten team.

It was over after Michigan's first possession, a nine-minute, 17-play touchdown drive on which it became clear that (a) Al Borges used the bye week to remember that the veer should be the offense's base play, (b) Denard was throwing the ball pretty accurately and (c) Michigan's O-line was flat-out better than Purdue's front seven. Fact: Any game in which Michigan has the better line play and commits to the read-option run game from start to finish is going to end with Michigan ahead. IT'S SCIENCE.

The first drive featured 10 veer-based plays and a couple perfect throws on a third-and-7 and a fourth-and-8; the second featured five, the first of which was a 38-yard Denard run to the Purdue 25, and a third-and-11 completion to the Purdue 1 that basically established that the Michigan offense was gonna do whatever it wanted.

There's been some debate on the Michigan-centric interwebs about why Denard can go for 235 yards in the same game in which Fitz Toussaint finishes with 19 on 17 carries; in other words, Y U SUCK TOUSSAINT? His numbers this year are thoroughly unimpressive: Even without playing against Bama (DUI suspension), he's averaging 3.3 yards per carry and has now had two games with almost exactly a 1.0-per-carry average. Not good.

But here's the thing about those two games (Air Force being the other): Denard put up a cumulative 453 rushing yards (!) in those games. And here's a very brief explanation of why (note the playside defensive end, the nickel guy shifted out over the slot and the deep safety):

That was Denard's 38-yarder, BTW. And here's another example, this time with Jeremy Gallon coming across for the veer mesh (he's at the top of the screen here along with two Purdue guys keeping contain):

There is no possible way the jet guy is getting the corner there; there's also no possible way a Denard keep on that play is getting held under five yards. No chance.

Aaaand the money shot (this would have resulted in maybe one yard for Toussaint but instead resulted in 59 yards for Denard, who's accelerating forward from the 36):

That's not a recommendable way to defend Michigan but is what Purdue chose to do and what Air Force chose to do and what some other teams will, for some reason, choose to do. That's also why Toussaint getting totally shut down equals Denard going ham and why the veer option should be the base play when the guy taking snaps is the best running quarterback in the history of ever. Keeping an extra linebacker and/or safety on the interior to limit Denard is gonna result in giving up the edge sometimes, which is why Toussaint went for 4.5 yards a carry against a legit Notre Dame front seven; the alternative is the pictures above. I'm fine with the alternative.

Other things I'm fine (or more than fine) with: the designed Denard draw on third-and-5 from the Purdue 7 on the first drive, the three bubble screens to Gallon that reminded Purdue to keep a nickel guy out there while Denard ran wild and Denard's accuracy when given time to throw. All three of Michigan's meaningful touchdown drives included a third- or fourth-and-long completion that was an effectually perfectly thrown laser on a pattern that took some not-insignificant amount of time to develop. Said completions also were aided to some extent by the minimal pass rush generated by a complete lack of blitzing and a couple mediocre ends, so it's possible that Purdue just had zero idea of what to do against Denard. Still ... I mean ... yes plz.

More of all that stuff would be ideal. May Denard get protection and may Al Borges have long-term amnesia for the next two months and remember nothing other than the Purdue results and the Notre Dame results, the latter of which otherwise shall never be spoken of again. Denard + veer + interior protection = win.

As for the defense, Greg Mattison FTW. Purdue's actual drives in the first half went as follows: three and out, three and out, first first down of the game followed immediately by a fourth-down pick six, seven-play drive (aided by a terrible review of what should've been an incompletion) that resulted in a field goal, three and out. The only touchdown was on a 36-yard drive after a Michigan fumble on botched mesh point when it was 28-3. At no point did Purdue's offense produce any sort of consistent yardage/momentum, as evidenced by this hilarious stat: The short-field touchdown notwithstanding, it was a hook-and-lateral at the 2:01 mark of the third quarter that gave Purdue more first downs than Michigan had touchdowns for the first time in the game. No joke.

All the stuff I felt better about after the Notre Dame game I feel, um, more better about now. The Purdue running game did absolutely nothing (2.2 yards a carry) and the passing game went for a terrible 4.5 yards an attempt, a number pretty indicative of the standard 4-yard-hook-followed-by-an-immediate-tackle play. Again: At no point did Purdue's offense produce any sort of consistent yardage/momentum. Michigan didn't generate much of a pass rush outside of Jake Ryan's typical awesomeness, but it wasn't really necessary since the coverage was good to excellent and the front six (Michigan spent most of the game in a nickel look) needed little to no help to make the running game irrelevant. Quinton Washington and Will Campbell have become reasonably effective (gasp!) on the interior,  the linebackers are looking more like the linebackers of last year than the linebackers of the first two weeks of this year and the secondary has suffered minimally (if at all) from Blake Countess' knee destruction a few weeks ago. I like. I like very much.

I also like having a punter averaging 49.3 yards a BOOM, a kicker who's automatic from 42 yards and in and a borderline-elite kick returner who will score at some point this season, preferably in a game in which it'll matter. Woo special teams!

Anyway, the defense: It's improved to something resembling good. Michigan is now 19th in yardage and 37th in scoring after giving up roughly 100,000 cumulative rushing yards and 400 points against Bama and Air Force, with most of that statistical improvement coming from games against an average Notre Dame offense (lol Miami) and an above-average Purdue one. And outside of Nebraska and Ohio State, there's not an offense on the remaining schedule that's any more intimidating/effective than either of those two. I'll actually be surprised with finishes worse than 30th in either category, although that's of little importance in the big picture.

What's of a lot of importance: the two games following next week's should-be obliteration of Illinois. The division's gonna be decided by the Michigan/Michigan State/Nebraska Round Robin of Death that will be held in its entirety on October 21 and October 28, and considering what I just saw from Purdue and what I've seen all season from Wisconsin, the winner of that thing is going to the Rose Bowl. I'd prefer it'd be Michigan, obvsly.

I like Michigan and Denard and Rose Bowls. I like those things together even more.