EDSBS TOP 25: 10-12
We continue the long slog through the EDSBS top 25. The fascinating section involving “merely excellent” teams gets note now.
Joining us as special guest editor will be Harry Potter Spoiler Guy. If you think any of the spoilers are real and you’re very concerned about this, well…keep reading dorkboy/girl.
10. Georgia Georgia’s initial cheat sheet begins and ends with the fascination cloud surrounding Matthew Stafford, their burly, keg-lifting, baby-Sex-Cannon-in-the-making.
Stafford has an arm like something out of the bible. We’re betting he could throw beautiful pigskin bullets through the walls of Jericho, and that given his propensity for the deep ball, he would instead prefer to lob long balls to the top of Mount Nebo effortlessly.
Matthew Stafford: a qb of Biblical proportions, seen here toting a container full of “proof God loves us and wants us to be happy.”
The baby Rex Grossman aspect may obscure the superb job Richt did in handling Stafford last year. Richt, a conservative play-caller in his old(er) age, binged on the run to the tune of 426 rushes to 342 passes last year, setting up many of these off play-action, something the BSC thrived on to the tune of a 13/7 TD/INT ratio.
Umm…correction. Richt did do a superb job of handling Stafford last year, but reverse that ratio: 7 TDs, 13 INTs, including 3 each in the Kentucky, Miss State, and South Carolina games. A freshman doing this while throwing deep is “exciteable like a puppy!” A sophomore doing this is “zone defense dyslexic.” Thanks, Jonathan.
Still, Stafford was relatively productive. He did this, too, thanks to the magic of the UGA offense, one that’s managed to hum along nicely for years despite a failure to develop some of the tantalizing wide receiver talent that drops into the Athens recruiting chute.
Stafford’s leash won’t be as short this year–fuck it, he’s going deep, and most of the time with coach’s permission–so they should be more of a menace offensively, especially with the exquisitely named Knowshon Moreno and bionic recruit Caleb King joining the backfield. Stafford’s also mobile enough to offset any of the weaknesses of the young left side of the O-line, and certainly sturdy enough after an offseason of keg-lifting.
The defense is young, though–three out of four starters going across the front, Paul Oliver gone due to sprained cerebrum, and Akeem Hebron gone for drankin’, meaning that UGA must face points-friendly Oklahoma State with a rebuilt defense in week one. This is akin to waking up with a punch in the face and a shot of Calvados forced down your throat with a funnel, which isn’t so bad–it’s how we wake up every morning.
Harry Potter Spoiler Says: You neglected to read my post on Mugglenet.com, where I clearly stated that Georgia is a Mark Richt team, which means they are consistent, well-coached, and usually drop two or three games a year with the consistency of a Goblin accountant. Nevertheless, the SEC East is badly in need of a good ol’ fashioned reparo spell when everyone’s going all Luna Lovegood crazy about Kentucky’s quarterback.
Georgia could just as easily reach up and nip an East title with magical ease.
Oh, and SPOILER!!! Harry dies when Voldemort sodomizes him with his “Elder Wand.” Unfortunately for Voldemort, Harry has foreseen this and has cast the analingus petrificus
on his ass, freezing the Dark Lord for all eternity. SPOILER!
11. Louisville We’ve moved up Louisville a bit after getting serious cold feet thanks to a coaching change at the top. Kragthorpe is maintaining regime stability by keeping DC Mike Cassity on board and promoting quarterbacks coach Jeff Brohm to passing game coordinator, following the Les Miles Successful Regime Change handbook and not messing with what’s not broken on the Cardinals’ staff.
Offensive concerns are few and far between–Brian Brohm’s a mechanistic sniper of a quarterback, and the stated goal for him this season is to complete 70 percent of his passes, something he may actually be capable of doing. (We wouldn’t put money on it, but if you’d like to, Lloyd’s of London is ready when you are, punter.) Wideout’s stuffed with a stellar starting duo in contact-friendly Harry Douglas and Mario Urrutia. The O-line’s stocked with seniors, save for junior center Eric Wood. He’s an All-American, so perhaps his older brethren will forgive his youth.
Not messing with things too much, but is happy to talk about the wonders of Enzyte: Steve Kragthorpe.
Petrino got much credit for playcalling and aggression, but reserve respect for his administrative skills in the form of the depth chart: his emphasis on building depth is evident in the defense, which starts 9 upperclassmen this year including last year’s 2nd team All Big East Malik Jackson. Louisville’s defense does more than just hold serve in most games, unless we’re talking about what happens to them against WVU’s gun-knife spread option. They’re just as helpless against them as everyone else is, of course, donating a generous 34 and 46 points in their last two meetings, respectively.
Harry Potter Spoiler Guy: Hermione dies when she steps out in front of a London City Bus while listening to her new IPod Shuffle, one of 254 brand name products Rowling was paid to slip into the manuscript. Fortunately, she’s revived instantly by the quick handiwork of a surgeon passes by, who got the idea to help a bystander as a random act of kindness from those heartwarming Liberty Mutual commercials. Rowling goes as far as mentioning that “the following act of Muggle kindness is sponsored by Liberty Mutual,” which has Potterites enraged over the finale’s blatant commercialism.
(And no, those do not make us weep. They only make us weep when we are very, very drunk. Let that be clear.)
As far as Louisville goes, their only serious competition in the field of football wizardry given the pattern of their Big East seasons thus far will be a.) West Virginia, and b.) the “Tampa Surprise” game, meaning the one undervalued team the supremely talented Big East Dark Lords will overlook and get stunned on during one unfortunate week of the season. This is named after 2005’s still-shocking 45-14 loss to USF in Raymond James where Louisville’s title hopes disapparated mostly to the efforts of a one-night collegiate sensation Amarri Jackson. Jackson took two reverses for touchdowns, threw a TD pass, and singlehandedly demolished Louisville in their Big East opener like an angry horde of Centaurs dragging away Dolores Umbridge into the Forbidden Forest.
12. Wisconsin. Everyone else seems to have them ranked a bit higher, but Wisconsin lands here for a simple reason: we know they’re very good, but we can’t point to a single reason why they’re going to be great, aside from a luxurious schedule and their success in 2006. It’s still rubber-stamp preview material when discussing Wisconsin: a good, burly runner with a wall of beef clearing lanes for him in the form of P.J. Hill and an offensive line averaging 300 plus across the board, and a defense that ranked fifth in the nation last year just ahead of national title champs Florida. National title champs Florida. We typed that twice for obvious reasons. Because Florida won the national title.
P.J. Hill: running behind 1500 pounds of Wisconsin run-blocking beef.
Yet last year’s success emerged as much from the absence of certain teams on the schedule as it did from their performance in big games. Wisconsin beat the hair off the underlings of the conference, but won 13-3 over Penn State and lost to the other team of substance they played, Michigan, in a 27-13 game that never really seemed as close as the score indicated, it being a prototypical Lloyd Carr strangle job (run run run run booming PA pass run run score for Michigan.)
Wisconsin perks higher on the difficulty scale this year in the scheduling, facing both Ohio State and Michigan this time as well as the game against Penn State. They may be replacing their qb, but if you have to do it, do it with a senior with more mobility than your successor: Tyler Donovan, who will have the security of one of the best run games in the Big Ten behind them. Defensively, Bruce Ciskie loves weakside backer Jonathan Casillas, which is good enough for us.
Harry Potter Spoiler Guy says… Snape shocks himself to death attempting to install his new electric oven, proving that you should always, always work with proper floor insulation and gloves when handling electricity. Oh, and Hagrid dies, but not in battle. He instead suffers a massive coronary on page one, thus giving us the first line of the book, which is reprinted in toto below:
“Rubeus Hagrid rose, petted his faithful hound Fang and felt a pain radiating down the left side of his body. It was not a magical pain; it was the pain of a man suffering a massive coronary. He screamed “AAAAAHGGGGGHHHH MY HEAAAAARRRRT AAAAAAIIIIGGGHHHH!!!!” He then died.
Butter and genetics claims another victim in the new Harry Potter book.
Wisconsin’s got a lot going for it, most notably Paul Chryst, who is with you even as he guides the Badgers to massive point totals. Their offense alone may be worthy of this lofty of a ranking, even with the obstacles posed by a full-strength Big Ten schedule, something which this year could be as forbidding as the dangers posed by daring to rob Gringott’s Bank.
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Not to point out the obvious and deflate you completely, but the reason they’re excited is that PJ Hill recorded 5 ypc as a freshmen. Now, he did that mostly against terrible competition (note that he’s under 3 ypc against Michigan, Iowa, and Arkansas), but that’s not bad for a freshmen. Moreover, he only accounted for 58% of the teams carries last year, so the team stats don’t really reflect on him very well. Are they gonna win a national championship? Hell no. But they’re a decent rushing team.
Comment by Evan — July 24, 2007 @ 1:25 pm