Louisville 44 - WVU 34

Cafe Society
1

Evening everyone,

I didn’t see a thread and I know there’s a lot of college football fan dopers out there. I know that we’ve talked specifically about this game and its implications for the national championship, so let’s get down to it.

Louisville 44 - WVU 34. Thoughts?

Here’s mine: Wow.

First of all, let me admit it - all you Card fans, congrats. I really thought that WVU would win this game, but you pulled together the black out and pulled it off. It was an impressive win offensively and you should be proud.

Second of all, those are two really good offenses. Really good. And two embarassingly bad defenses. Both knew what they had to do going in - Louisville had to stop the run. WVU had to stop the pass. And neither was able to achieve it. I just looked at the stats and together they had 42 first downs. FORTY-TWO FIRST DOWNS! And 1000 total yards of offense. Just great offenses and really bad defenses.

Third, I want to give some serious respect to both QBs. Brohm can flat out sling the ball - I think he just earned himself some serious coin if he decides to come out after this year. And Pat White was phenomenal. He runs like a freaking gazelle. And I was impressed with his arm too. He really showed up tonight.

Fourth, what the hell was going on with Steve Slaton? At first, I thought he should sort of suck it up and gbtw. But the more I thought about it — I mean, this is a guy who doesn’t fumble, and he coughed up two. I wonder what the heck was going on with his arm. By the way, Herbstreit was hilarious tonight when he was like “well, just put the ball in your other arm.”

Fifth, how crazy was that kickoff return where the WVU Mountaineer dropped the ball when he fielded it. Picks it up, almost catches the corner, and then drops the ball AGAIN. Unbelieveable. I would have sent him to the lockerroom right then.

All in all, great thursday night game. Lived up to the billing. I want to say it right now — I’m not convinced that I’ll be real happy with a Louisville - Ohio State/Michigan national championship game, but I think it would be interesting to see their offense v. a serious defense. And that’s not really a slight against Louisville. I think they are a one-dimensional team (without Michael Bush) fixated on the pass AND DAMN GOOD AT IT. But, I just don’t think that they’d be able to force Ohio State, for example, into a shootout. But we’ll see - they may get their chance to prove me wrong. Still a lot of football left in the season.

I’ll be watching them play next Thursday v. Rutgers with real interest.

Alright - over to you guys.

2

West Virginia’s long drive in the third quarter looked like something a high school offense would run, with the overwhelming emphasis on running and the spread-out sets and the misdirection. Hard to argue with the results, though.

3

Yeah, interestingly enough, they’ve been running the same sort of scheme all year long. And it’s not because their passing game isn’t that good (who knows?) it’s just that their running attack is that good. They’ve basically lined up and dared teams to stop their run and they haven’t been able to. Louisville didn’t really stop them either, they just outgunned them (despite having an acclaimed run defense, which was/is inflated from getting ahead early and forcing teams to rely on the pass).

The interesting thing to me about that drive was that Slaton wasn’t involved. It really brought it home to me how damn good Pat White is. He was flying everywhere, and their fullback didn’t do too bad of a job either.

4

I think I have a little more confidence than you do in Louisville’s rushing attack. Nobody’s arguing that Michael Bush’s absence isn’t huge, but the Cardinals have compiled total yards that compare well with the likes of Ohio State and Michigan. The yards are just spread out a little more among multiple backs instead of being concentrated in one.

5

Anyone know what the record is for number of fumbles in a game between top 5 ranked teams?

Lemme throw out this theory, and y’all tell me if I’m nuts: The team to watch to see if UL plays for the National Championship is Arkansas.

If Arkansas wins out, then they will play Florida for the SEC championship, and they will lose; giving Florida (assuming they don’t lose again) a better BCS ranking than UL. However, if Arkansas loses a couple games, then Auburn will beat Florida in the SEC championship game, leaving the way clear for UL to get beat by the winner of the OSU/Michigan game.

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That’s interesting, because according to Gregg Easterbrook’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback 10/23/2006 column at ESPN.com, the Atlanta Falcons led by Michael Vick are using a high school offense too. Link

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Boy, those Big East teams aren’t big on defense, are they?

8

Nice bsketball game.

9

The Falcons have already dropped the spread option as a bread-and-butter set, though I’m sure it’s still in the playbook. The New Orleans Saints exposed its weaknesses back in Week 3. Vick is hanging in the pocket more now.

On to WVU’s offense last night: I noticed that they’re offensive line was creating about 3-5 yards of space every rushing play. Impressive superficially … but: that might work against the usual Big East fare, and even against Louisville. But it’s hard for me to imagine WVU’s line pushing back, say, Ohio State’s or even LSU’s front seven like that. Unless I’m mistaken, and WVU’s line has three NFL first-rounders or something, they looked like one of those typical quick-but-light college lines that’s susceptible to physical domination by elite front sevens.

That spread option fake handoff? Elite defenses would have a guy in the WVU backfield on most spread option snaps … and White would be getting levelled every time they pulled that fake handoff thing, whether he had the ball or not (this is what the Saints were doing to Michael Vick, too). Louisville didn’t lay a hand on White, for some reason – they should have aimed to knock the blocks off of both Slaton and White on all of those option plays. Don’t worry about who’s got the ball … lay 'em both out.

I’m completely disregarding the fumbles in saying the following: despite the yardage racked up, I really don’t think WVU could consistently beat any of the top six SEC teams (Florida, Tennessee, Auburn, LSU, Arkansas, South Carolina), and I’d give Georgia and Alabama a shot at knocking off the Mountaineers, too. Compared to the Big Ten elite, it’s hard for me to imagine a Mountaineer victory over Ohio State or Michigan … I’m thinking less than a one-in-ten chance.

10

It was just as much that both of those teams have pretty stacked offenses, by anyone’s standards. I’m not going to argue that the defenses are especially great, but mostly that they just weren’t good enough to avoid being lit up by that particular competition. I’d say that both defenses are pretty average, nationally, which is to say worse than your general SEC D but no worse than a middle of the road D in any of the other BCS conferences. There’s no doubt that each team makes its living on the other side of the ball, though, which puts them at a disadvantage to the teams that are elite both ways (so, um, OSU and Michigan).

bordelond: re: the offensive line of WVU, something in between. They’re mostly smallish (only one guy over 300), but they’re also projected as pretty good. Two seniors, three kids (2 so. 1 fr.); one of the seniors, Dan Mozes, is a pretty highly regarded offensive line prospect for the 2007 NFL Draft and will be a first day pick. Typical questions about size are the only thing that keep him from going higher (listed on espn.com as 6’4" 290). It’s hard to find projections on the underclassmen without a premium membership to one of the various draft sites specializing in such, but they’re widely regarded as pretty elite as far as college football goes. I don’t think it’d work that well against OSU or Michigan, but would put the SEC teams much more on a case by case basis - let’s not forget that these SEC teams have all (a) showed themselves as having weaknesses at one point or another, and (b) with a couple possible exceptions, wouldn’t be putting up Louisville offensive numbers. WVU wouldn’t put up 50 or even 34 on the SEC teams, but 20 might be enough against a lot of them if they play even average D - then again, they put up 38 on a well-regarded Georgia D that was at home in the Sugar Bowl last year with exactly the same offense. So who knows.

I think Louisville probably loses to OSU in a hypothetical national championship game, but I think the only other two candidates with a better shot would be Michigan and potentially Texas… and if it’s OSU that’s there, each of them would have already blown their chance at them. No do-overs. (That opinion subject to revision if one of the SEC teams shows us down the stretch that they can put it all together, including an offense capable of scoring on an OSU/Mich D - which we haven’t seen yet, IMO.)

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I did go case-by-case :smiley: I came up with six SEC teams that I think are better than WVU. No way to determine that conclusively anyhow … just my opinion.

12

Let’s see? UF, Arkansas, Auburn, Tennesee, Alabama? (did you see the Duke game?), hope you’re not thinking of Georgia lest you need be reminded of last year’s Sugar Bowl shellacing

It will be interesting to see how the BCS responds to this. Last week it was OSU, UM, WVU, UF, Louisville. Will Louisville leap UF, even if UF wins at Vandy? Certainly if UF wins out the season (with a possible rematch with Auburn in the SEC championship), then UF has to be in ahead of Louisville. Either OSU or UM is going to drop out, as one will certainly face a loss to the other. I am not big on teams like this getting into the nat’l championship hunt with weak schedules when teams in the Big 10 and SEC cannibalize each other, but ti seems to be the way it goes

13

Let’s see? UF, Arkansas, LSU, Auburn, Tennesee, Alabama? (did you see the Duke game?), hope you’re not thinking of Georgia lest you need be reminded of last year’s Sugar Bowl shellacing

It will be interesting to see how the BCS responds to this. Last week it was OSU, UM, WVU, UF, Louisville. Will Louisville leap UF, even if UF wins at Vandy? Certainly if UF wins out the season (with a possible rematch with Auburn in the SEC championship), then UF has to be in ahead of Louisville. Either OSU or UM is going to drop out, as one will certainly face a loss to the other. I am not big on teams like this getting into the nat’l championship hunt with weak schedules when teams in the Big 10 and SEC cannibalize each other, but ti seems to be the way it goes

14

Let’s see? UF, Arkansas, LSU, Auburn, Tennesee, Alabama? (did you see the Duke game?), hope you’re not thinking of Georgia lest you need be reminded of last year’s Sugar Bowl shellacing

It will be interesting to see how the BCS responds to this. Last week it was OSU, UM, WVU, UF, Louisville. Will Louisville leap UF, even if UF wins at Vandy? Certainly if UF wins out the season (with a possible rematch with Auburn in the SEC championship), then UF has to be in ahead of Louisville. Either OSU or UM is going to drop out, as one will certainly face a loss to the other. I am not big on teams like this getting into the nat’l championship hunt with weak schedules when teams in the Big 10 and SEC cannibalize each other, but ti seems to be the way it goes

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aye carumba! sorry for the triple post. Note the addition of LSU to the list of potential WVU slayers

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:confused:

I spelled out the six SEC teams I liked over WVU in Post #9 above. Last paragraph. Drop Alabama, and add in South Carolina.

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slow reading comprehension day, sorry. I think you’re wrong on USC and the possibilities of a Bama or UGA win. I have game footage to back me up on the UGA claim. Carolina took in the chin from Clemson and Tennesee (and the woeful Dawgs). They’re spotty. Spurrier does the best wth what he has and the wins that they get are “coaching” wins. I agree with you on UF, Arkansas, UT, LSU, and Auburn, though.