2008 National Champ

This makes me thing that either our offense is completely vanilla, or that our receiver coaching is failing.

I think it’s a combination of both and the weighting comes down to preference. We have heard reports from coaches that have never coached against Utah how easy it is to discern what the play is going to be. We’ve also seen the same…[Read more]

Rick: how many people that didn’t watch that game are going to remember anything other than 9-0 parochial beat 8-1 SMU in a close game?

I’d starve if I had to go somewhere that people thought Kale chips were an entree. Gimme some good bbq and a nice amber ale and I’ll politely listen to the guy with only two snaggle-teeth tell me how the world works. I won’t agree with him any more than the ivory tower intellectual who pairs foie gras with the proper wine but I’ll enjoy the time…[Read more]

Team chemistry is such an overrated concept. Teams that win put aside their differences. Teams that aren’t winning remember their differences and hold them against each other.

You can’t buy team chemistry and it doesn’t matter how much you preach it. If it doesn’t result in wins it’s just platitudes. Teams that like each other and don’t care…[Read more]

Interesting thought exercise on your 2nd point. Indiana, a team that really only aspired to being mediocre every year has a legitimate shot at the playoff. If Cignetti rides all the accolades to the highest paying SEC job after this year and they go back to fighting for the bottom of the B1G? They know their level and can always point back to…[Read more]

The food would probably be better than what you get at the typical snooty west coast cookout.

Vele got the most targets of the receivers so at least they tried. It’s the distribution that’s the real issue for me. Whenever I see an article that says something like “Rising completed 17 of 27 passes with 9 different receivers catching the ball”, I don’t view that as a team strength.

If you’re going to have 3,000 passing yards in a season…[Read more]

DT’s? or are you lumping them in with DE’s? What about the linebackers?

Saturday was the first time since Tafuna was a freshman that the DT’s were absolute monsters all game long. And the Linebackers looked so much better going vertically all game instead of horizontally. But both groups have been average at best and below Utah standard the…[Read more]

I agree on that. I posted over the weekend that just getting to 25 points in every game would have been enough to be 8-1. But I meant that as a compliment to how consistent the defense has been because if 27 against ASU constitutes a blowup, you’re doing pretty damn good every week.

It’s that next step of changing individual play outcomes in…[Read more]

any censorship is too much but I agree that the amount we deal with in the US constitutes a first world problem.

That’s also the bigger issue: their SOS is only going down at this point. They still get cache for beating an SMU team that is better than just about anyone thought would be, and K State is still a good win. But if your remaining hope in impressing the committee is ASU, you’d better start curbstomping fools because giving up 35 points to a team…[Read more]

While we’re at it, someone needs to take a hard look at Whitted. I assume Freddie has a job as long as Whitt is head coach, and I think Harding is recruiting well enough even though the offense doesn’t seem to be such that it matches the OBlocks strengths.

What are we seeing out of the receivers that makes us think Whitted has been an…[Read more]

You’re not wrong. Hasn’t done anything noticeable to improve the last guy’s recruits – I’m crediting the 2022 class to McDonald – and I don’t see anyone in the 2024 or 2025 classes that was/is specifically recruited as an RB. For a guy who can recruit off Utah putting backs in the league as well as himself going to the league based on his time…[Read more]

I assume a lot of people are fading that undefeated record. 3 points against 4-4 Utah, 2.5 at home against 3-6 Kansas. If Vegas set those lines like they would for any other P4 undefeated, they probably couldn’t get any money on the parochial school side.

The bikini issue was always so overrated. If it wasn’t for the faux controversy, it probably would never have been a thing. You could see women in bikini’s in any of the women’s magazine on a monthly basis and for anyone who has ever experienced a summer in their lifetime, they’ve probably been exposed to a lot more than what was in Sport’s…[Read more]

2 years. That’s all I lived in Salt Lake for. It was a great 2 years. I knew plenty of people who were BYU grads, went to BYU, or just liked that school better than mine for whatever reason, although it usually had to do with church membership. No bad interactions with BYU people.

And then November 19, 1988 happened. The school I went to…[Read more]

My favourite part of my Sports Illustrated subscription was always “This Week’s Sign that the Apocalypse is Upon Us”

I like optimism. But you are assuming that a healthy Rising this season would have produced like he did two years ago and in our limited sample of the first half of Baylor, that wasn’t true. I don’t fault him for not performing while injured against ASU, but he does have a history of having to play hurt even if you don’t count the season ending…[Read more]

I have and hope he succeeds. It would close an inequity in how eligible years are counted that was created through the Covid year and transfer requirements. I’m not sure how many kids it would actually help based on the new rules but the point about Bo Nix and Dillon Gabriel getting 5 full seasons as starting QB’s while he in only able to do 3…[Read more]

that’s an interesting coping technique. why even have a season? just let the fans decide the outcome they want and then there’s no reason to play the games.