Erick Blasco's College Huddle: Week 4

Saturday’s Georgia-Alabama game taught us a lot of things about the Georgia Bulldogs.

First of all, despite Nick Saban getting all the attention and all the hype, there was Mark Richt leading his Bulldogs to yet another road victory against a ranked team. Since 2001, the Bulldogs are 9-2 in true road games against ranked opponents. Richt simply knows how to prepare his teams for quality opponents in hostile environments. It isn’t a surprise that over the past decade, the Bulldogs have been a model of football consistency. It all starts with the head coach.

Secondly, we learned that Matt Stafford is pretty darn good. Stafford’s only a sophomore, and he was thrust into the middle of a circus, the way the fans and media in Alabama were reacting to Saban leading the Crimson Tide back into the rankings.

Stafford remained poised throughout the game, and made a few nice throws late in the fourth quarter to set up a potential game winning field goal. A fourth down double clutch throw to Tripp Chandler on 4th and 2 was particularly impressive. Instead of forcing a pass to Thomas Brown out of the backfield, Stafford brought the ball down and found his second option in Chandler for a 10 yard gain. If Brandon Coutu’s 48-yard attempt went a little more to the right, then Stafford’s pass to Chandler would have been the key play in the game.

But instead, Coutu missed and the game went into overtime. But with the Bulldogs only down three, Stafford dropped back and floated a perfect over-the-shoulder pass to Mikey Henderson for the game winning touchdown. The kid simply knows how to play quarterback.

Finally, we learned that the Bulldogs are resilient. A week after a tough loss to an arch-nemesis in Steve Spurrier and South Carolina, the Bulldogs marched right down the field and scored an early touchdown.

After they blew a 10 point lead at the end of regulation, they marched down the field again and gave themselves a chance to win the game.

And after yielding a field goal to start overtime, they struck swiftly, hitting the Crimson Tide with a perfectly placed touchdown pass.

The young Bulldogs grew up a lot during the game and will look to take a bite out of the SEC East.



The Arkansas Razorbacks have a lot of problems right now, and the rest of the SEC is leaving them in the dust.

To be sure, Darren McFadden and Felix Jones running the ball isn’t a problem right now. McFadden gashed out 173 yards rushing against a Kentucky defense that had no way to stop him—while Felix Jones carved out 133 yards rushing on only 12 carries.

But everywhere else, the Razorbacks are deficient. Casey Dick just isn’t a good quarterback. He completed under 50% of his passes against Kentucky and threw two interceptions. In fairness though, his receivers didn’t help him out, dropping a multitude of passes—especially on 3rd downs.

Third string runningback Michael Smith coughed up a fumble late in the second quarter, which Kentucky turned into 7 points. Arkansas was up 20-7 before the fumble, but the fumble return cut the lead to 20-14 and wiped away any momentum the Razorbacks had accumulated.

McFadden and Jones were still running wild on the ground and on special teams—but the Razorbacks weren’t coming together on offense as a unit. How much of that has to do with the turmoil surrounding the program in the offseason is just a guess. But the team has the cloud around them where the whole is less than the sum of its parts, and that’s never how you want to view your team.

And then there is the defense. The Razorbacks pride themselves on aggressive man to man defense, but the secondary has been torched by Alabama and Kentucky. The unit just hasn’t been making plays like they did last season. Now the Razorbacks are 0-2 in the SEC and are looking very, very beatable.

After watching OK State, Texas, Texas Tech, and Texas A&M, I've come to the realization that the Big 12 South isn't as good as we thought it would be.

Some day in the future, Randy Shannon will harp back on Miami's 34-17 drubbing of Texas A&M as a turning point for the program.

Tulsa gave Oklahoma a good game, and the Sooners still won by 41. It's scary how easy the Sooners are making their victories look.

The team with the best record in the ACC lost to Wyoming to start the season. Still, despite the tough loss to the start the year, the Virginia Cavaliers had a great stretch run to end 2006, and their win over Georgia Tech is a nice step forward in 2007. The young Cavs are a team with potential that hasn't been tapped yet, but with Cedric Peerman running, Jameel Sewell throwing, and the defense shutting Tashard Choice down to 19 yards on five carries, the Cavs are a team on the rise.

Greg Robinson has had to deal with a lot of negativity at Syracuse but he finally has the impact victory that can steer the program in the right direction. Andrew Robinson is probably the best QB the Orangemen have had since Donovan McNabb, and he was terrific on Saturday, throwing for 423 yards and 4 scores against an awful Louisville secondary. Robinson is only a sophomore and the win will do wonders for the program next season.

On the other hand, how bad are the Louisville Cardinals if they're losing shootouts at home to Syracuse? If Louisville had any defense at all, they'd be 4-0 right now. Instead they're 2-2—and opposing offenses are licking their chops. Losing to this year's Kentucky team isn't a bad loss, but the loss to Syracuse is embarrassing. Everyone on that defense has to look in the mirror right now, and Steve Kragthorpe has to teach them the basics of tackling and taking proper angles. It's a mess right now.

But on the other side of things, Brian Brohm went 45-65 for 543 yards and 4 scores. Those numbers are ridiculous. If the Cardinals were 4-0 instead of 2-2, Brohm would be the Heisman favorite by far.

The team that is hurt the most by Louisville's inept defense is West Virginia. The Mountaineers desperately need impact wins to jump ahead of the Big 4, but now it looks as if Louisville wont count as an impact win.

Nebraska must've still been hungover after their loss to USC. How else can you describe their near defeat at home to Ball State?

BYU put Air Force back in their place with a 31-6 smacking. The Mountain West was supposed to be TCU's for the taking, with BYU gaining steam towards the end—but now Air Force is winning games and BYU has a couple of nice wins, and Wyoming looks talented too. It's going to be a fun couple of months following the conference this year.

Steve Spurrier is a good enough coach to keep a far superior LSU team from getting out of hand. LSU tried to win their game vs South Carolina by 50, but couldn't quite get there and had to settle for a 28-16 win.

Can we stop overreacting about Michigan's losses to a National Championship winning school and a pretty damn good Oregon team, and start realizing that they have as much of a chance to win the Big 10 as Wisconsin and Ohio State do?

And can we realize that just because a team beat Buffalo, FIU, and Notre Dame handily doesn't mean that they're a good team? Penn State might as well have scheduled three bye weeks with those opponents.

How does Utah demolish UCLA and then get shut out by UNLV?

Wisconsin is the most unimpressive 4-0 team in the country right now. I wonder how they'll fare against a quality opponent, when they've struggled against The Citadel, UNLV, and Iowa.

Someone predicted Texas A&M would beat Miami. Yeah, that was umm... (looks around room), that was that guy! (points at mirror...sees reflection) Dammit!

Don't worry though, my personal Top 25 is a reflection of exactly where each team should be ranked.

Top 25

1) USC
2) LSU
3) Oklahoma
4) Florida
5) West Virginia
6) Cal
7) Ohio State
8) Oregon
9) Wisconsin
10) Boston College
11) Rutgers
12) Texas
13) South Florida
14) Georgia
15) Kentucky
16) Clemson
17) Arizona State
18) South Carolina
19) Virginia Tech
20) Nebraska
21) Penn State
22) Purdue
23) Cincinatti
24) Missouri
25) Alabama