It’s been a while since we’ve blogged around here, and we’ll get into things like Notre Dame’s ACC tiff, Penn State’s coaching search, and our Matt Campbell lamentations down towards the end of this. For now…32 thoughts on 17 teams, starting with six playoff previews.
Alabama at Oklahoma
1. A lot of things broke Oklahoma’s way this year, which is a funny thing to say about a team whose quarterback hurt his hand a few weeks into the season. LSU became a non-factor. Tennessee became a non-factor. South Carolina became a non-factor. At the moment, Oklahoma’s only played one team in Movelor’s top ten, and that team suffocated them. It was a tough schedule, but half the SEC had it tougher.
2. That all said, Oklahoma’s a tough team to measure. The offense really does stink. They play alligator ball, luring teams into the muck and capitalizing on their mistakes. They make their own fair share of mistakes—John Mateer looks like a gunslinger without a gun these days—but when they limit those, they can pounce on other teams.
3. Justifiably, then, Alabama’s probably worried about mistake-making tonight. That’s what doomed them when these guys played in November. But the real problem for Alabama is more what we saw against Georgia: These guys can’t move the ball. Their offense also stinks, and Ty Simpson sometimes keeps it aloft. Their defense isn’t as spectacular as OU’s, but a lot of what’s said about the Sooners is true about the Tide.
4. Add this all up and we’ve probably got a smashmouth game in store tonight, especially if it gets windy up there in Norman. Unless…
5. Unless Alabama puts it together. This is the tantalizing thing about Bama. They have so much speed, size, and strength relative to everyone in this besides Ohio State and Georgia. It isn’t clicking—it’s hard to remember the last time everything consistently went smoothly for both quarterback and offensive line, and I’m referring to the 2021 SEC Championship here, not September—but if it does click, look out.
6. The question for tonight, then, is not whether Oklahoma can keep John Mateer’s gun out of his own boot. It’s whether Alabama can get itself on the rails enough to beat the sixth-best team in the SEC and the tenth-best team in the College Football Playoff.
Miami at Texas A&M
7. A meaningfully better team than either Alabama or Oklahoma will play tomorrow morning, and they’ll be wearing their road whites. It’s happened oddly quietly, given how much attention was on them over this stretch, but I’m not sure people realize how well Miami’s played since the SMU loss. This is a team who opened the year with three of the best quarters of football we’ve seen anybody play all year. Down the stretch, they started looking like that team again.
8. The first risk for Miami is their habitual complacency. You can change the players and change the coach and change all sorts of things around the program, but it’s hard to really change identities in college football. The issues are tied to the universities themselves, and they go on and on and on. Miami is a university whose football team struggles with focus. That’s who Miami is, and this year, they showed that issue from the jump. In August, they let Notre Dame back into the football game. In October, they let Florida State back in it. These were ominous signs, especially with off-field focus such an eternal problem in Coral Gables. You’d really think this wouldn’t rear its head in a playoff game, but against an offense as explosive as Texas A&M’s, Miami’s going to be playing with fire if they don’t go for the jugular should they get the chance. That was the difference between Miami for the first 75% of the season and Miami for the last 25%: Once they knew style points mattered, they finished the job.
9. The second risk for Miami is that Mario Cristobal owns an idiot hat, and he sometimes puts it on at inopportune times—namely the last few minutes of the fourth quarter. Pair this with letting teams back into games, and…yeah. This is a terrible combination of risks. Miami’s a lot better than A&M in theory—more on that in a second—but the script for disaster is obvious.
10. There’s a chance Texas A&M has the best offense in this College Football Playoff. But aside from Tulane and maybe James Madison, both of whom are physically overmatched, it’s hard to find a worse defense than A&M’s out of these twelve teams. This hasn’t gotten a lot of attention, partly because A&M played so many dysfunctional offenses down the stretch, but these guys played a weak schedule by SEC standards and they routinely got gashed.
11. The other reason A&M’s defense hasn’t gotten very much attention is that it’s out of character for a Mike Elko team. As we’ve said before and will say again, this is a great sign for the future of Texas A&M football. If Mike Elko’s team is dynamite offensively, the prognosis is good. The defense will regress in a positive direction next year. Of course, Collin Klein’s departure will change things on offense, but the fact the offense could get that good bodes well for the future. It’s a good time to be bullish on A&M.
12. Tomorrow doesn’t look great for the Aggies. Maybe Miami gives them the game. Maybe the crowd helps take it. But if Miami plays A-minus football, Miami should be able to handle Texas A&M.
Tulane at Mississippi
13. The importance of Lane Kiffin’s absence is easy to overstate, especially with Jon Sumrall working two jobs on the opposite sideline. But the tumult of Kiffin’s departure might have taken something out of Mississippi, who already wasn’t exactly a crisp product on the field. This was a team who ran up against its ceiling against Georgia once already this year and never showed any indication they were better than they were in that first half. Tomorrow should be fun, but they’re not a contender unless Georgia messes something up big-time.
14. Can Tulane pull the upset? The bad thing for Tulane is that they might not be the FCS favorite right now if they were playing in that tournament. Against Montana State, we’d have them a 2.5-point favorite in New Orleans and a 3.5-point underdog in Bozeman. But what we saw from Tulane in the AAC Championship is representative of what they are: They grab opportunities when the other team gives them those opportunities. They’re scrappy. They’re tough. So far, Jon Sumrall is a winner. The odds are long, but like Miami self-combusting, the script is easy to write.
James Madison at Oregon
15. I do and don’t understand why certain talking heads have decided to rip on JMU and Tulane’s inclusion in the playoff. I think the logic was that they didn’t want to say Notre Dame or Alabama or Miami didn’t deserve a playoff berth, and with these games feeling like formalities, they turned their guns on the little guys. The problem with their logic is that if you want to limit the playoff field to teams who can win a national championship, there’s no reason to have more than four or five teams in the playoff, max. And if you want quality games between teams on the edge of the top ten? We used to have those in these cool historic things called bowl games. Mississippi got smacked once this year by Georgia. Alabama got smacked a week ago by Georgia. Miami opted out of about a month of the football season. If we’re focusing on the noncompetitive teams who made the playoff, why draw the line so loosely? (JMU and Tulane both deserve to be in, and if you must have a twelve-team playoff, the five automatic bids is one of the best things about it.)
16. I don’t think people realize how good Oregon is. They’re the fourth-most talented team in this, and there’s a big gap between them and number five. They’ve won a variety of ways this year. They’ve experienced playoff football against the toughest team in this. They have the depth to spend all year preparing for January. Are they the second-likeliest to win it all? I wouldn’t go that far, because Georgia has that higher ceiling and such a cakewalk in the Sugar Bowl. But between this game which should be tons of fun, the Texas Tech game which is a huge mystery but is loud and titanic, a potential Indiana rematch that should not be friendly, and a potential Ohio State rubbermatch after last year’s split? Oregon might be the main character.
17. On JMU’s side: We return yet again to the first half of that South Dakota State vs. Holy Cross game from the 2022 FCS Playoffs. Bob Chesney is going to be up to some things tomorrow night.
Montana at Montana State
18. Plenty others have said this, but thank goodness the FCS bracket broke the way it did, with these two teams on the same side rather than meeting in the national championship. This is a game that should be played in the state of Montana.
19. Montana State hasn’t been clicking. They’re the best team left in the FCS, but something’s off. Montana’s been clicking, but they’re still significantly worse than Montana State. The rivalry game can throw off composure enough to give Montana a chance (and this isn’t as big a gap as Georgia–Alabama), but so far, it looks like Montana’s A-plus isn’t good enough to beat Montana State’s B-minus. We’ll see if Montana has another gear yet.
Illinois State at Villanova
20. Credit to Illinois State, the unexpected menace of these playoffs so far, but credit as well to Villanova. Two road wins. One over one of the best teams in the FCS. A 45-point smacking of Harvard. Don’t sleep on the Cats. Matt Szczur’s legacy is awake.
21. This is the undercard. This is going to be really, really fun, but it’s not the national championship. The other one is.
Odds and Ends: Pete Kwiatkowski
22. There’s obviously been a ton of news, but we’ll hit the big stuff since that’s where we have more opinions. Texas firing Pete Kwiatkowski, who preseason was sometimes called the best defensive coordinator in the country? Bold, and that’s probably good. Maybe it backfires, but a sense of urgency is important in Austin, and the secondary (Duane Akina, former DB’s coach, was also fired) did suck.
Odds and Ends: Michigan
23. Was Jim Harbaugh oblivious or nefarious? What a hive of wrongdoing he fostered in Ann Arbor. The worst part is how ill both Matt Weiss and Sherrone Moore seem to have been. At the very least, you’d hope Harbaugh would look out for his own people.
24. Michigan should just make Dusty May the football coach too. I’m only half-kidding. Give him a consulting role in the coaching search. At this point, he’s the only person in that city anyone should trust.
Odds and Ends: Penn State
25. I’m not sure Pat Kraft hired Matt Campbell, and I’m not sure what that means for the future of Penn State football. The vision Kraft laid out as he ran James Franklin out of town doesn’t exactly mesh with Campbell’s strengths. Hopefully for Campbell’s sake (and maybe Penn State’s, too), Kraft being sidelined will become the norm.
Odds and Ends: Iowa State
26. As an Iowa State fan, obviously I’m very sad that Penn State coaching search took the turn it took. It all adds up, and Campbell left on great terms, and I hope he succeeds at a job that really fits what we’ve always heard he wanted. But I’m going to miss him, and Iowa State’s going to miss him, and I’m nervous things won’t go as well at Penn State as they went for even Franklin. Game management’s not a Campbell strong suit. Campbell’s strengths don’t align with Kraft’s vision. Penn State has major civil war tendencies going on right now and terrible messaging. These are the dummies who just put all their chips into one early-season game against Oregon where they should have been home underdogs. College football is all about being unrealistic, but no one was less realistic this year than Penn State and their gullible AP Poll backers.
27. I’m also nervous about the Jimmy Rogers hire in Ames. He was a great defensive coordinator at South Dakota State. That national championship he won might have had more to do with John Stiegelmeier’s successes and Matt Entz’s failures than anything Jimmy Rogers did well as a head coach, though.
28. More than anything, Campbell leaving makes me feel old. In the immediate aftermath, I couldn’t stop thinking about where I’d watched the 2016 Texas Tech game, where Campbell improved to 3–8 on what was legitimately a landmark day. I couldn’t stop thinking about upsetting Oklahoma with Kyle Kempt, and where I watched the ending. I couldn’t stop thinking about watching that West Virginia upset in 2018 and the field storming. There were other highs and a lot of lows, but Matt Campbell turned Iowa State from Kansas into Kansas State. He was Iowa State’s closest thing to Bill Snyder, and we can only hope it sticks.
Odds and Ends: Notre Dame and the ACC
29. I understand why Notre Dame declined a bowl bid, but it’s malpractice that they let themselves be so blindsided. To be fair, sure, I was also thoroughly convinced they were in. But I wasn’t convinced before the Alabama blowout loss. On that Saturday morning, Notre Dame should have been ready for the Pop-Tarts Bowl. Maybe they still wouldn’t have wanted to play in it, but Sunday should have been a reversion to a Saturday expectation, not a total shock out of the blue.
30. What I’d worry about, if I were Notre Dame, is entitlement making a comeback in South Bend. Would preparing for the Pop-Tarts Bowl have sucked after believing you’d be playing playoff football against Oklahoma or Texas A&M? I’m sure it would have. But the story of Notre Dame’s post-Lou Holtz downfall was entitlement. Notre Dame thought they could keep being Notre Dame even as college football evolved around them. Turns out, they couldn’t, and it wasn’t until Jack Swarbrick left as athletic director that Notre Dame really stepped into college football’s modern era. Last year’s team had a humility and a hunger. Those are great foundations for a program. Turning down a bowl game when making the playoff was well within your control (Texas A&M’s defense stinks, stank, and stunk) is a bad foundation for a program.
31. I get why the ACC turned what messaging power it had against Notre Dame, but that doesn’t make it a smart move. What it really boils down to is that prior to the last week or two of the season, Miami had no legitimate playoff case. Miami’s only playoff case was that they’d beaten Notre Dame, and Notre Dame had a legitimate if borderline playoff case. If Notre Dame wasn’t a partial ACC member, the ACC would have missed the playoff this year, and the ACC would have fully deserved it. But Miami caught Notre Dame in the one week of the season when Miami played like a national championship contender, and after Miami predictably (and we did predict it) lost focus in October, ACC communications staffers had no other case to make but the dumb one (which, we’ll remind you, at one point implied that Virginia should be ranked ahead of all of Miami, Notre Dame, USC, and Michigan because Virginia beat Louisville, Louisville beat Miami, Miami beat Notre Dame, Notre Dame beat USC, USC beat Michigan, and all those teams at that point had two losses). Eventually, Miami righted the ship, as we talked about above. By the end, the ACC could have said, “Let the best teams in! Miami and Notre Dame both!” But the ACC didn’t do that, and that made the dumb move even dumber. Anyway, the ACC needs Notre Dame a lot more than Notre Dame needs the ACC, and while it’s an unfortunate situation that has the ACC up shit creek like this, they should have known what they were getting into. When the next wave of realignment comes, it will be sad. But the ACC schools who sink deserve to sink. The bigger tragedy is that the ACC schools who float—UNC, Miami, maybe Clemson and Florida State—deserve to sink too.
Wrapping Up
32. We like the number 32 around here, so one last thought: This year’s first round is better than last year’s first round, but even then, the twelve-team product’s kind of mediocre. We’ve got two likely good games this weekend where last year we had zero. In the quarterfinals, we’ve got two likely good games where last year we had two. By the semifinals, people are going to be getting distracted again, so while it’ll be a thrill for the teams involved, it’s going to be laborious and it’s going to be all about depth, which doesn’t help Indiana, the team who earned their success this year more than anyone else. This won’t happen because schools are already beholden to the money this generates, but we need to shrink the damn thing and play the national championship in the Rose Bowl where it belongs. On New Year’s Day, too.
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