Another college football post

Random thoughts on the last week or two of football and looking forward to this week. Last week was weird. To quote myself, "Dallas got crushed after looking great in week 1, USC lost to Stanford for the 4th straight year, A&M's top running back didn't play (and the fill-in only had 12 carries for 43 yards) yet the Aggies won by 45 points on the road, t.u. gave up 31 points to an SEC team yet won by 35 on the road, the Philly Eagles have turned the ball over 9 times in two games yet are 2-0, the Georgetown Eagles are undefeated and blowing people out, TCU struggled to beat Kansas, Kansas State struggled a bit with North Texas, Peyton Manning threw 3 interceptions in an 8 minute span... I think at this point, the only thing I know for sure is that Alabama is better than everyone everywhere. Every of the time." I should probably just stop there. But I won't.

A&M got off to a slow start but ended up doing exactly what they should do to a team of SMU's caliber. Johnny Manziel and the receivers made big, explosive plays like you'd expect out of this offense and the Wrecking Crew kept SMU's run and shoot attack in check all day. One thing to consider though is that their quarterback, Garrett Gilbert, formerly of the evil, devil beast Longhorns, is really, really bad. He was bad at Texas from the very first time he played significant minutes (turning the ball over 5 times against Alabama in a game that, for some odd reason, people thought he actually played well), and he was bad bad bad every time after that until he eventually left Austin and transferred to SMU. Well, he's still bad. 

One interesting stat I heard after that game: June Jones (SMU coach) has only seen his team go touchdown-less in three games in his entire coaching career, and last Saturday against A&M was one of them. That would suggest that this year's Wrecking Crew is, at a minimum, pretty good. Florida's 37 point outburst against Tennessee after only scoring 20 against A&M would also point to that. The season is young, but A&M currently ranks 14th nationally in scoring defense and 23rd nationally in yards per play defense, which are the two best defensive metrics in my opinion. (A&M has only played two games, while most teams at this point have played three. A&M also has not played an FCS school yet- they do this week- whereas many teams already have. My point? A&M's defensive (and offensive) rankings should all improve this weekend.)

Johnny Manziel, a.k.a. "Johnny Football," or "Johnny Freaking Football," had the first of what promises to be very many statistically impressive games, along with amazing highlight plays. If you ever have a few spare minutes, go look at his high school highlights on youtube. His best plays against SMU looked pretty much like those. He's innately slippery and hard to tackle. It's something that can't be taught, and he has it. Vince Young had it. Tony Romo has it. Not many people do. He's also incredibly fast and agile. If my memory serves me correctly, he ranked right up near the top of the Aggie team last year in all of their agility drills. That's a nice benefit for a quarterback. 

So when considering his performance, here are some numbers for you. He had over 400 total yards and accounted for six touchdowns. That has only been done one other time in Texas A&M history, by Reggie McNeal in 2005 (also against SMU, at Kyle Field). Reggie did it in his senior year, after four years of development. JFF did it in his second college game, on the road, in less than three quarters. 

Manziel has played two games now and still has not turned it over. His passer rating to start his career is higher than Ryan Tannehill's passer rating was in 2011. Tannehill was picked #8 in this year's NFL draft and is the starting quarterback for the Miami Dolphins. I know it's early and the numbers don't mean much yet, but still, it is an impressive start. 

Assuming he stays healthy, Manziel will absolutely destroy just about every offensive record A&M has. From the "way too early to make projections file," here are some projections: if he just averages for his whole career what he's averaged in his first two games, which is not unreasonable at all considering the fact that his game one numbers were very pedestrian, he would pass for 12,600 yards and run for just under 5,000. That's assuming 13 games a year. That would make him the school's all-time leading passer and basically tied for the all-time leading rusher. Now, realistically, the running numbers should fall off as he becomes more comfortable as a passer. But the passing numbers should increase dramatically in this offense. 

Here are things to consider regarding that. In this offense, which is at least in part derived from Mike Leach's offense (A&M's offensive coordinatr is Kliff Kingsbury, who just so happened to be the first quarterback at Texas Tech to play under Leach), it takes a program a few years to really figure it out when they are switching to it from something drastically different. When Leach started at Tech, in year one, they only threw for 272 yards per game. In their first five games that year, Kingsbury threw nine interceptions and only had one game with a passer rating over 120. Two years later, as a senior, he passed for over 5000 yards and 45 touchdowns. There are plenty of other similar examples out there. We are seeing Manziel at what figures to be the worst part of his career. Barring injury, it should just get better and better as both he and the program overall learn the new system and learn how to execute it in different situations. The difference here is that Manziel is mobile. Sumlin and Kingsbury run a pass heave system that they perfected in Houston, but they didn't have the luxury of a mobile quarterback. The Aggies will incredibly hard to defend as Manziel figures out how to truly pass in this offense and then still uses his legs to convert third downs and keep defenses honest. A&M will be scary good over the next three years.

This week, it's an easy game again South Carolina State. A&M is favored by 51 points, so this is the type of game you hope to pull your starters in the third quarter and get the backup quarterbacks some quality reps. 

As for other football news, Alabama is so much the best team in America right now that they shouldn't even be ranked #1. They should be ranked higher. Like -3 or something. 

Texas got a big win, and it's obvious that they are a much, much better team than they've been the last two years, but we still don't know too much about them, because their schedule has been brutally awful. The three teams they've played have only combined for ONE win against an FBS school so far this year. Still, they blew out the teams they're supposed to blow out. After their bye this week, they play four straight games they could easily lose, so we'll see just how good they are. 2-2 is pretty realistic for that stretch.

And now I'm tired of typing.

Preseason Top 25 thoughts

Today is a big day for college football fans. The first official top 25 poll has been released! I plan on writing a lot about college football (mostly A&M and Big 12 related) this coming year and here's a good excuse to start that party.


Here's the list:

Aug. 4, 2011 - preseason poll


Rank Team (first-place votes) 2010 record Points Final 2010 ranking 
1. Oklahoma (42) 12-2 1,454 6 
2. Alabama (13) 10-3 1,414 11 
3. Oregon (2) 12-1 1,309 3 
4. LSU (2) 11-2 1,296 8t 
5. Florida State 10-4 1,116 16 
6. Stanford 12-1 1,101 4 
7. Boise State 12-1 1,065 7 
8. Oklahoma State 11-2 933 10 
9. Texas A&M 9-4 885 21 
10. Wisconsin 11-2 829 8t 
11. Nebraska 10-4 814 19 
12. South Carolina 9-5 779 22 
13. Virginia Tech 11-3 767 15 
14. Arkansas 10-3 750 12 
15. TCU 13-0 687 2 
16. Ohio State 12-1 631 5 
17. Michigan State 11-2 536 14 
18. Notre Dame 8-5 440 NR 
19. Auburn 14-0 329 1 
20. Mississippi State 9-4 301 17 
21. Missouri 10-3 266 18 
22. Georgia 6-7 260 NR 
23. Florida 8-5 240 NR 
24. Texas 5-7 162 NR 
25. Penn State 7-6 161 NR 

Others receiving votes 
Arizona State (6-6) 158; West Virginia (9-4) 149; Utah (10-3) 50; Miami (Fla.) (7-6) 49; Iowa (8-5) 41; Northwestern (7-6) 30; Arizona (7-6) 28; Central Florida (11-3) 22; Michigan (7-6) 19; Air Force (9-4) 15; North Carolina (8-5) 14; Houston (5-7) 13; South Florida (8-5) 9; Hawaii (10-4) 8; Clemson (6-7) 7; Tennessee (6-7) 7; Southern Miss (8-5) 6; Brigham Young (7-6) 5; North Carolina State (9-4) 4; Northern Illinois (11-3) 4; Oregon State (5-7) 4; Pittsburgh (8-5) 3; Washington (7-6) 3; Georgia Tech (6-7) 1; Nevada (13-1) 1. 



So, let's start with teams ranked too high. My first instinct is Alabama. I don't think they can make it through the year with 0 or 1 loss, which is what they would need to be #2. Of course one question that is perpetually unsolved is the question of whether or not a preseason poll is supposed to guess the outcome of the year or is it supposed to rank where you think the teams are relative to each other right now. For my purposes today, I'm commenting on whether or not the teams will finish where they start.


Of course I'm excited to see Texas A&M at #9. This is the first time in ages the Ags have been a top 10 team. The only problem is that as much as I love my team and see real potential, I don't think we'll be that high come January. I'll touch on it a lot more in a later post, but I see A&M as a 9-3 regular season team, probably finishing the year ranked somewhere in the high teens. Of course 10-12 regular season wins are legitimately possible with everything we have coming back, but I don't believe it will happen.


I think South Carolina is a bit high at #12. I respect coach Spurrier a lot and think he's a great coach, but I think SC has reached a ceiling, and in the brutal SEC, which has 8 of its 12 teams ranked, I don't see South Carolina coming out of it with enough wins to justify a ranking that high. The fact of the matter is, when you do have that many teams from the same conference that are all ranked, some of them are going to get knocked out and underperform, just because of the schedule and the parity. 


I'm not sold on Ohio State at #16 or Notre Dame at #18. Ohio State obviously has a ton of adjustments to go through after losing their coach and several of their players including the stud QB. Notre Dame is ranked in the top 20 every season, no matter what, so I'm not surprised to see them there, but I'm at a point with them where I'll believe they're a quality team once they show it for a whole year. I do like their coach though and think in the next few years their ranking will be well-deserved.


And finally, let's just all admit that it's laughable to see the Texas Longhorns at #24. Let's be honest, this is just a name pick, just like Notre Dame is every year. If you took the logos off of every helmet and presented a fact sheet about every team to an impartial group, no one, and I mean NO ONE, would rank the team that showed up with Texas' resume. They went 5-7 last year, and this year's schedule only features two teams- that's right, TWO- that Texas beat last year. They have no proven QB, are relying on a true freshman running back, they only return two proven wide receivers, their offensive line was bad, they lost 3 of their 4 starters in the secondary, and they have a whole new coaching staff. Granted, they always recruit well and they could easily sneak their way into a good season if things go well, but no sane person should ever include the team I just described in the top 25. Not when they are leaving out Miami, Utah, W. Virginia, Air Force, S. Florida, Nevada, Pitt, NC State, Iowa and a handful of others with far better resumes than Texas. I'll have much more on Texas at a later date.


There are a few teams I would move up. Wisconsin is one I really like. They're always good, they play solid defense and can run the ball, and they play in a weak conference. But now they get a proven QB for this season in transfer Russell Wilson, who was one of the best QB's in NC State history the last three years and now will play for Wisconsin after graduating from NC State and having one year of eligibility left. Huge pickup for the Badgers and I think they're a top 5 team.


Virginia Tech is another I'd move up. They play a notoriously weak conference and are head and shoulders above anyone in the conference on a yearly basis. Beamer has the formula down and doesn't vary from it. They return enough from what was a VERY good team last year. Don't be shocked to see them in yet another BCS game.


Finally, I'll pick Florida as another underrated team. Yes, they too have to face the brutality of the SEC schedule, but I think Florida still has more athletes than any other team, and I think that Will Muschamp is actually a great defensive coach who will be able to slow down everyone they face. Meanwhile, the offense is going to be very interesting now that they have Charlie Weiss installing his NFL style passing game. Weiss's Notre Dame teams did very well offensively in his first couple years before falling off. I don't know if it was a talent issue or if teams figured him out, but I think that once again, he will come right in and have a successful offense. They have a winning culture at Florida, and I think that goes a long way, and it's why I'm more sold on them than I am on some other SEC teams like South Carolina and Mississippi State.