ND had two o-linemen making their first starts of the year against Penn State and were missing their best DT. Penn State had to shuffle their o-line mid-game. Texas was probably the healthiest semi-final team.
Totally agree. I'm hoping Sark learns from this. It seems weird to say that Sark is killing it as a head coach and punching himself in the dick as a playcaller.
I was responding to someone saying Sark just needs an elite QB to win a championship. Will Howard isn't an elite QB. Neither is Riley Leonard. Yet one of them is going to win a championship. Because OSU and ND have better coordinated offenses than Texas.
His numbers aren't bad, but Cam Ward had to play out of his mind to keep that team afloat. They need superman and instead they are getting a dude who wasn't exactly mr. clutch to begin with, coming back from a significant injury and likely playing behind a bad o-line.
I don't know, that second PI was a massive swing. It gifted PSU 7 points in a tie game with less than 6 minutes left in a game where points were hard to come by for both teams. It took spectacular chokes by both the PSU offense and defense to offset that call and lose the game in regulation.
Announcers rarely get confused for rocket surgeons, but damn. It's like both guys got concussed during the two minute timeout. Sean McDonough couldn't figure out why ND would throw the ball in their hurry up offense. Then Allar could be trusted to pass the ball. Then ND shouldn't try to score a touchdown. And that was only a minute or so of game time.
I liked when they talked about how good PSU's linebacker (#41) was, immediately followed by him getting beaten for a touchdown and then a couple minutes later getting hurdled.
Is the jury still out? Our top 4 guys all improved over the course of the season. Broughton has been a big surprise, Collins is consistently playing up to his potential, Norton and Lole were shaky early on, but play better just about every week. Heck, Baker got some decent snaps out of Sydir Mitchell. Bledsoe and Bryant didn't work out. My understanding is Bledsoe just wasn't big enough. I'm not sure about Bryant. The biggest question marks at this point are January and Hills.
Pedo is contractually obligated to piss down their leg against OSU. But I'm not so sure about ND. OSU and Texas have more talented rosters, but Freeman is really good at focusing on what his players do well. That's not always the case with Sark or Day.
Losing your starting QB is never good, but the backup played well enough given the circumstances. His turnover in the second quarter wasn't because he was inexperienced - he got drilled while attempting a pass. He also had a bomb hit a guy between the numbers and had several other good throws dropped. He's not the reason they lost. It's hard to win if you can't run the ball and your receivers can't catch. The sad part for Georgia was that the o-line issues weren't just mental mistakes that could get cleaned up in film review. They were just getting beat.
Can we not pretend that Georgia lost because Carson Beck was out? They lost because their o-line got destroyed, their receivers can't catch, and they don't know how to stop a running QB. Also, Marcus Freeman punked Kirby Smart multiple times. Carson Beck wouldn't have changed any of that. And he sucked against Texas so I'm not sure why people assume he would have looked better against an excellent ND defense.
Bond's last few games, he's been a net negative. He doesn't put much effort into blocking and doesn't fight for the ball. Early season Bond was great. Late season Bond... not so much.