Sports Agenda for Monday (9/16/2013)
Top Stories:
We're up to our eyeballs in football and South Florida teams are riding high, well most of them, after a solid weekend of games. The Fins are 2-0, the Canes are 2-0, FSU is 2-0, FAU finally won, and FIU got to watch former coach Mario Cristobal a lot on Saturday if they watched the Alabama game.
Quote of the Day:
"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." – Albert Einstein
Miami Dolphins (2-0, next game vs. Falcons)
Watching this Dolphins team gives you quite a bit of hope.
They are 2-0 with both wins coming on the road.
The first win against the Browns doesn't tell you much, but this win in Indianapolis was big for the Fins.
They beat a good quarterback and even though the defense gave up 321 yards passing, Andrew Luck finished with just a 79.7 quarterback rating and also had an interception.
No such worries for Ryan Tannehill who finished with 319 yards passing, 1 touchdown, and no interceptions.
The Fins as a team ran for 101 yards, which is better, but still not great.
Lamar Miller led the running attack with 14 carries for 69 yards (4.9 yards per carry) and one rushing touchdown.
I'll take that, especially if Miller can get it up to around 20 carries and 100 yards per game.
But Tannehill spread the ball around with Mike Wallace and Charles Clay each going over 100 yards receiving.
All total, six different players caught passes from Tannehill.
On a side note, T.Y. Hilton is a beast and should be starting for Indianapolis.
Here's what I didn't like…five sacks of Tannehill.
It just seems like the o-line is so close to getting it together, but when it opens holes in the running game, it gives up sacks.
Still, on that pass to the flat to Hartline he took for a touchdown in the first quarter…Mike Pouncey and Tyson Clabo were beasts opening up holes for Wallace to fly through.
So the Fins put up 398 yards of offense in the game on 66 plays. No bad, but they allowed Indy to go 7-15 on third down…not good.
The Fins don't get any reprieves this coming week as they return home to play the Atlanta Falcons.
Atlanta has struggled at times early in the season, but can light you up in a heartbeat if you let your guard down.
And if you want to check out how hard Atlanta's defense can hit….check out this spinebuster by William Moore…of Missouri…against the Rams this week.
http://cdn2.sbnation.com/assets/3225931/mooresuplex_medium.gif
Dadgum!
NFL Thoughts:
Kudos to E.J. Manuel for leading a last minute comeback for his first professional win.
Happy trails to the Washington Redskins defense….that was some kind of ugly yesterday.
Paging the 49ers offense….please pick up the green courtesy phone the Seahawks would like to know if you have gotten to Seattle yet.
So if Colin Kaepernick is Superman, does that make Seattle kryptonite? Their jerseys are almost that color after all.
Peyton still > than Eli
Does anyone else realize the Raiders are 1-1?
How bad are the Jaguars? The CBS affiliate in Orlando ran a crawl apologizing to viewers for having to show the Jaguars vs. Raiders game rather than the Broncos vs. Giants game.
Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.
Oh, and the Seahawks said they were the loudest crowd in sports history? Please, tell me when the cheering registers on the Richter Scale as it did at LSU's Death Valley in the late 1980's.
Tonight's game….Cincinnati over the Steelers. Pittsburgh would be 0-2 if that comes true. Yikes!
College Football:
Some good college football games over the weekend.
Lets start at the top where Alabama took out Texas A&M and Johnny Manziel.
Yknow, one of the reasons I can't watch A&M games is the same reason I couldn't watch Tebow games….the announcers.
They just fall all over themselves to give kudos to Manziel as if he does it in a vacuum.
Look, the kid is good, don't get me wrong. But he's not that good.
They ran into the same problem every other team has against Alabama…you may beat them once, but you won't beat them twice.
Alabama is your undisputed number one team in the country…but that defense….that defense worries me.
Let's go coast to coast here:
Oregon mauled Tennessee…not much of a surprise there. Anyone else dreaming of Oregon vs. Alabama in the BCS championship game?
Stanford struggled but took care of Army.
Speaking of struggling, Teddy Bridgewater struggled, but eventually pulled out a close one over Kentucky….Kentucky?
FSU just opened up a can on Nevada, who could have used Colin Kaepernick in that game.
Speaking of FSU, I believe if I remember the numbers right, Jameis Winston has thrown more TD's than he has incompletions….WOW!
Oklahoma is going to go with the Bell-dozer at quarterback…that should make some defenses a little nervous.
UCLA…kudos for the win and the comeback after the death of a teammate earlier in the week. And great job by Nebraska and its fans showing respect to the Bruins before the game.
There's also a whale of a mess that is the Texas Longhorns.
I don't want to say the Longhorns are bad but…they better be happy they aren't playing A&M in the next few weeks.
I think Manziel and company could drop 100 on the Longhorns defense.
Ole Miss hit a running play and just kept running it, and running it, and running it in the blowout of the Longhorns in Texas.
On the bright side, Texas didn't give up 500+ rushing yards.
On the down side, they still gave up 449 total yards of offense including 272 on the ground.
The Longhorns are now 1-2 on the season and have Kansas State coming into town this weekend.
Ruh-Roh Shaggy.
Looking ahead at UT's schedule….they have a likely loss against K-State, win against Iowa State, loss to Oklahoma, loss to TCU, win vs. Kansas, win vs. West Virginia, loss to Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, and Baylor.
So realistically, Texas may win only four games this season if they keep playing like thy are.
Needless to say, if Mack Brown survives the season…he won't survive the offseason.
Texas has a choice of some pretty good coaches out there…namely Will Muschamp (he would leave UF for enough dough), Kirby Smart (best d-coordinator in the country), TCU's Gary Patterson, or maybe even Baylor's Art Briles.
Whoever it is will have to be able to inject some energy into a program that has fallen on mighty hard times.
And finally, let's take a moment to look at FIU.
Watching the Alabama vs Texas A&M game I kept seeing former FIU head coach Mario Cristobal.
It made me think about just how poor of a job FIU's athletic director Pete Garcia has done at the school.
Cristobal may have had a bad year and may have struggled this year, but he's a great young coach with a lot of energy who was building a program at FIU.
So naturally Garcia fired him….bad move.
Cristobal now roams the sidelines of an SEC power and will be back as a head coach at somewhere much better than FIU soon.
Who did Garcia get to replace Cristobal?
Ron Turner…yeah, that Ron Turner who stunk it up so bad in college football he was out of the collegiate ranks for a decade.
How has Turner done in his first three games?
0-3 and his Panthers got blown out by Bethune-Cookman on Saturday…BETHUNE-COOKMAN…an FCS school!!!
Let's also look at FIU's basketball hires….remember Isiah Thomas and that madness?
Yup, that was a Garcia hire too…and FIU is still suffering penalties from the Thomas era.
He hired one good coach in Pitino, but he took off the first chance he got, and the way Garcia runs the place, who can blame him.
FIU has such a large student population and could do a lot more, but with Pete Garcia heading up that athletics department; they are doomed.
