The Hangover Cure: Week 9

Darryl Gamble took Jarrett Lee’s first pass to the house to put the Red and Black on top, and it was an SEC shootout from there. Knowshon Moreno got loose for a touchdown; Matthew Stafford passed for 249 yards and two scores; Charles Scott thundered for 144 yards and two TDs; Jarrett Lee matched three picks with three scores.

The smoke clears, it’s a 52-38 win, and Georgia’s suddenly flammable defense has allowed 497 total yards. Daniel Ellerbe, Rennie Curran, and Asher Allen were supposed to be dominant, not yield 309 through the air to the sensational tandem of Lee and Andrew Hatch. Georgia’s grinding, ball-control offense has turned into a quick-strike assault triggered by Stafford and Moreno’s occasional breakaway run.

And this reminds me of the team that Florida was last year: all offense, all the time, and the defense plays well when it wants to. That team’s a good one, no doubt, but not one a fan can be confident about entering any big game.

Of course, it’s appropriate that Florida’s taken their script out of Georgia’s ‘07 yearbook.

Behind a line that is opening craters where once there were holes and holes where there were defenders, Demps, Rainey, Harvin, and Tebow are compiling some absurd rushing numbers and transforming these Gators from the bomb-heavy spread they were last year to the Quantum Wing their head coach wants them to be. In the three games since the Ole Miss upset, Florida’s gone over 200 yards rushing and scored 11 TDs on the ground.

And the Gators have gone from a talented young defense to an impressive, fast, disciplined squad. There’s still little to no pass rush, but these Gators stuff the run early, let their offense build a lead, then cover beautifully for the rest of the game. Only on two short-field possessions and one end-of-half fusillade did LSU move the ball effectively and aerially, and theirs were the only successes in this three-week period.

This team is good. Really good.

Entering the week of The World’s Largest Outdoor Non-Alcoholic Beverage (And Certainly Not Cocktail) Party, Florida and Georgia are staring at fun house mirrors that apparently bend space-time. C’est la vie, and viva la vida.

Disturbia

Joe Paterno has a national championship contender.

That means, as you know if you saw the Brandi Carlile-backed tribute to the craggy visage of the Penn State coach, that we will be hearing and reading no less than four trillion words between now and either the Nittany Lions’ first loss or an early January game in Miami.

I’m all for giving credit where it is due, but the most Paterno has done in the last few years is recruit, relax the rules on recruiting, and, uh, like, oversee some stuff, right? The man is a shell of the fiery guy who was truly a visionary leader in the football sense, taking Penn State from obscurity to notoriety, and, eventually, the Big Ten.

But we need to resist this. Talk about Penn State’s recent troubles with the law. Talk about the stellar cast of characters around JoePa. Talk about how good the players on the field really are.

Just don’t canonize the head Lion in winter this fall. I don’t particularly feel like drowning in a tsunami of superlatives.

I Kissed a Girl

In Northwestern’s game against Indiana, a touchdown was scored. Two Northwestern coeds celebrated the success of that play in their own way. And then Northwestern ended up losing that game, to a team that had no Big Ten wins coming in, and missing one more chance to be in love with winning or being a candidate for a New Year’s Day bowl.

Also not in contention for that sort of love: Vanderbilt, woefully inept on offense against Duke; Pittsburgh, getting torched by the immortal Mike Teel and Rutgers; USF, unable to run the ball against Louisville; Boston College, crushed by North Carolina; and Georgia Tech, falling to the somehow decent Virginia team that (gulp) leads the Coastal Division of the ACC. Hot and cold, indeed.

Closer

Texas was going to have to do this at some point.

Oklahoma was down by two scores when it came time to rally. Missouri was dead and buried by the second quarter.

But Oklahoma State stuck around. And, in the end, Texas gutted this one out.

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