CFB51 College Football Fan Community
The Power Five => SEC => Topic started by: OrangeAfroMan on October 15, 2017, 01:29:44 PM
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Ick.
Carolina barely beats UT. Unimpressive.
A&M barely beats UF. Unimpressive.
LSU could've easily gotten blown out, but came back to win. That's actually something.
Sure, Mizzou put up some points on UGA, but still got blown out.
Vandy is trending way down, Vandy-style.
UK didn't play, but I see no reason to put them above anyone in the giant ugly cluster in the middle.
1 - Bama
2 - Georgia
3 - A&M
4 - Auburn
5 - LSU
6 - Miss State
7 - Florida
8 - SCarolina
9 - Kentucky
10 - Tennessee
11 - Ole Miss
12 - Arkansas
13 - Missouri
14 - Vandy
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Florida is 5 points from being 5-1 and 5-0 in the SEC.
It's also 2 plays away from being 1-5 and 1-4 in the SEC.
Funnnnnnn. 22% of the roster didn't suit up for the A&M game due to suspensions + injuries.
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I won't argue with your rank ordering because I can't and it doesn't matter enough to try.
It all comes down to whether UGA can find some way to screw up winning the East and then how they play against whoever ends up winning the West.
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If I had to switch anything, I'd flip-flop Florida and Carolina. But they'll play, so we'll find out later.
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i'd put ole miss above UT- but only to avoid that husk poking out.
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Fla, Tenn, Clemson, Aub and Ga.Tech all lost this weekend.
That is just Dawg porn, y'all.
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One could argue for MSU ahead of LSU of course for obvious reasons. But then LSU beat Auburn and Auburn beat MSU.
Syllogism doesn't work.
LSU certainly found a soft spot in their schedule to now have apparently recovered to some extent, albeit with two close wins. Do they have any shot against Bama?
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Well I don't know if going into the Swamp and beating UF, even if only by 2 points, is "unimpressive".... but I'll take it.
Either way.... Aggies get a bye week, followed by 3 straight games at home. If we can find a way to beat Auburn the first weekend of November.... they'd be setup to be 9-2 going into the final weekend against LSU. Course we gotta take care of business.
Not terrible... considering how hot Sumlin's seat was before the season, and two freshman QB's.
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think i'd flip om and ut right now. ut is reeling bad. om at least has an ok blowout win vs vandy going for it.
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A&M's win probably feels impressive, after the ugly offensive performance in the first half. But Florida has a broken offense, its best 2 players suspended still and a bunch of injuries. I know, everyone has injuries, but not on top of 11 guys being out already. It becomes a numbers game - nearly a quarter of the squad isn't participating - that's a big deal.
But A&M did have to come back and they did what they had to do in order to win. They definitely earned it.
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a&m feels like they could be a pretty good team. their d line is pretty good, and offense, while not explosive, isn't terrible. after last few years, i'm gun shy to call them good, but they have a few games ahead of them to prove me wrong.
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A&M is finding success despite a true freshman QB thrown into the fire, who can at times barely hit the broadside of a barn. This is in no small part due to our rather pedestrian Oline.... and probably the weakest WR group we've had since Sumlin has been here.
Mond has some good mobility which certainly helps... and the RB's are good enough to demand attention.... which makes us just competent enough offensively to keep us in every game.
If Starkel comes back and/or Mond figures out this "passing" thing.... We'll be alright as a team.
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Christian Kirk is still the best player on the field in whatever game they find themselves in, so they've got that going for them.
Alabama is a clear #1. I guess Georgia is the clear #2. Because of the quality of the conference I still manage to have doubts. UGA's has dominated their SEC foes, but those foes are also a combined 1-13 in SEC games so far. It doesn't help that I'm biased against the East at this point, which has been a collective trainwreck since 2010. That's a long time now. 2009 Florida is the last east team I was confident in, although 2011 Georgia did wind up being pretty strong. At least UGA is doing what should be done to bad teams....I also can't penalize them for blowing out weaklings. That's basically all Alabama has done, with one win over what was probably an ok FSU team when they had their QB.
Auburn is still #3, I guess? It's murkier than last week. I think I'd still take them on a neutral field against the rest. A&M will have their chance shortly.
Missouri maybe moves out of last place this week, I guess Vandy can have their spot because Ole Miss kind of sucks.
The rest of the conference I can't even hazard a guess. LSU over AU means very little when Ole Miss is just as likely to beat LSU this week.
"Power" rankings is the wrong word for this, this year.
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week 1 on b1g board the misspelled it powder rankings. seems apropos here.
and uga of 11 and 12 were strong. in 12 they were 3 yards and 1 more play from beating bama in seccg and likely dismantling nd for bcs title similar to what bama did.
this year their sec opp have been weak, but they did go to nd and get a win. and nd is showing to be at least decent. that's probably the best ooc win for sec at this point. that or lsu's cuse win, lol.
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When two teams are undefeated, and the rest look mediocre at best, it stands to reason those wins are going to look like wins over bad teams. Alabama has the best looking conference win right now.
UGA doesn't play A&M of course, and both play Auburn very late. Any conference win over about anyone else is not going to look very good. A loss would of course look bad.
Anyone who manages 12-0 has done pretty well. You need to have some blow outs and manage to win your close game or two where you didn't play well.
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It occurred to me that Kentucky is getting no respect. They are 5-1 with their only loss being to Florida in a game they should have won.
Here's my rankings
1 - Bama
2 - Georgia
3 - Auburn
4 - A&M
5 - Kentucky
6 - Everybody else
I don't subscribe to the theory that the better team always wins.
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Each year, we see the better team losing to a lesser team. Nobody sane would claim Syracuse is better than Clemson. A bunch of unusual events conspired to have Clemson lose. Syracuse might win 1 time in 10, but this was that one.
I tend to view it as statistics and probability. Let's say Alabama has 10 games and for each they have a 90% chance of winning. They have only a 35% chance of winning them all. That 1 in 10 will come up often as not. Ole Miss beat them a few years back with a 5-0 turnover margin.
Stuff happens. A helmet hits the football just right and it pops into the arms of a defender. A pass is tipped by a WR and drops into the hands of a safety. A penalty is missed on a KO return.
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The better team doesn't always win, but the better team that day wins nearly 100% of the time, barring disastrous refereeing or something like that.
Syracuse certainly doesn't seem to be better than Clemson, but neither was that game fluky, either. I don't know why and I don't know how, but the Syracuse front 7 flat out whipped the Clemson front 5 most all game, to the point I found myself thinking I don't think it would've made much difference if Kelly Bryant had played the 2nd half. On the other side, the Syracuse O-line held their own well enough against the vaunted Clemson front 7. There were no crazy bounces of the ball, no 1-in-100 crazy plays and not an excessive amount of chunk plays. Just Syracuse outplaying Clemson, straight up. The trenches were the most unbelievable part of that game.
I know several who are major believers in Dino Babers....coaching accounts for a lot.
I think coaching decisions and plans are often overlooked in games. People tend to think the best team winning simply means the team with the most 4 and 5 stars. That will get you a long way, but if you're even in the ballpark, game management factors in hugely. I was a genuine X's and O's noob when I joined this board 11 years ago. I'm still not advanced, but the more I've studied the game over the years the more I've realized how much mental work goes into each play. And not just the players, the offensive and defensive play each coordinator calls is really big. If one coach is on fire that day and his opponent is not, look out.
In the first quarter when Auburn was blowing us out, they had a tunnel screen go 52 yards for a TD. Fantastic play-call by Malzahn--or Chip Lindsey, whatever--where they spread the field and motion a back out of the backfield. LSU's Tyler Taylor follows him, LSU still sends pressure, but Stidham spots it for the big screen. Perfect call for what DC Dave Aranda was sending. The LSU players didn't do anything "wrong" there, and they weren't suddenly slower, weaker, or less highly rated than Auburn. The coordinators were playing rock/paper/scissors and Auburn's guy read Aranda like a book.
A coach can get really dialed in like that, maybe for a few plays, maybe for a game, and suddenly a "lesser" team is the better team. That day, anyway. Talent is well worth paying attention to, but I think many people stop there when figuring out who the good teams are, and what that means. It doesn't just go up and down by the week, it's a constant variance from play to play. Coaching is HUGE.
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I disagree about a winning team always being better on the day of the game. If the better team always wins then it would be a stupid game devoid of interest and suspense. IMHO that Auburn was and is better than LSU even though LSU won. The reason Auburn lost was because of incredibly bad play calling. Auburn called 17 straight running plays on 1st down. It was like Auburn called LSU and told them what play they were running.
Syracuse beat Clemson because Clemson lost their qb early in the game.
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Wrong, on all accounts.
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But I am willing to concede your point about Clemson if you're willing to say Alabama beat Texas because UT lost Colt McCoy early in the game.
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It strikes me that a "power poll" means the higher ranked team would usually defeat the lower ranked team, right?
That "usually" turns into "almost always" when you have #14 visiting #1. We just had #13 visit #2 and #13 put up a tussle in the first half and with some breaks/errors could have stayed relevant into late in the game and possibly won. That data could mean #2 is too high or #13 is too low, or it could mean it was just one of those days.
I think we'd all agree that the Vols have virtually no chance of beating Bama at home, right? One chance in 200 maybe?
If we had say A&M playing UGA in CS, we might all think A&M had a pretty decent shot, like say 30-40%.
So, a question then is does anyone in the West remaining on Bama's schedule have much of a shot aside from Auburn? LSU? Are we talking 10% chance for LSU? Maybe 30% chance of Auburn? Or are these figures too high?
I'd note that Alabama has often lost a game in the recent past regular season. That becomes more probable because of multiple chances of course.
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I'm not sure exactly what you're asking about the polls. But I'll offer that power polls are as flawed and contradictory as resume polls. Football isn't as simple as "Team A > Team B, and Team B > Team C." That ignores specific strengths and weaknesses, and the matchups that result. Team A can be favored to beat Team B for good reason. Team B can be favored to beat Team C for good reason. But that doesn't mean Team A has to be favored to beat Team C, because maybe Team C is really good at something that Team A doesn't defend well and Team C is uniquely positioned to exploit that weakness in a way other teams can't.
I'm not sure what the percentages are, but Auburn and Georgia have the best chance to knock off Alabama. Probably less than 50%, but not so low that winning should stun anybody.
Maybe I'm still colored by Auburn's big wins over struggling teams and a close loss at Clemson. I'm not sure exactly why they didn't dominate LSU more on the lines, but I will say it is mostly demonstrably false to blame AU's loss to LSU on bad playcalling. I can really only point to a couple of things that I think AU did "wrong" in that game, and honestly that's not out of the ordinary for a team in a game. I don't watch many games where I think "Wow, that coach totally nailed everything in that game."
That said, play that game 10x and at this point I feel like AU should, in general, win the line of scrimmage, which they did not. It would help if Stidham was more mobile, but they've got the team to give Bama a fight, and possibly win. Same goes for UGA. I don't know that Fromm is much of a runner and that would greatly aid their cause, but UGA may be strong enough everywhere else to put themselves in position to pull the upset. Again, I don't know how to handicap odds, but LSU is not nearly in the position to upset Alabama that AU and UGA are. They are playing 3 true freshman on the OL at this point and the DL is still injured to hell and back, and to date they don't have an interior rushing threat. That's much more a recipe to lose by 50 to Alabama than to upset them.
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:'(.......no explanation for calling off the dogs against a team with the talent of LSU....no explanation.
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:'(.......no explanation for calling off the dogs against a team with the talent of LSU....no explanation.
I really don't think Auburn ever called off the dogs. In fact I'd say that's demonstrably false. I think it just seems that way because it didn't work out.
That's an example of what I'm talking about above. Right now Auburn is still the better team on the season so far. But LSU played a better game.
I keep seeing people say AU ran too much and that means they were sitting on a lead. That's just not true. Their passing plays were disastrous and LSU was balling way out of control in the pass defense after the 1st quarter. If anything, AU should have committed MORE to the run, which was the only success they had in the last 3 quarters.
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I’m so sick of these fake power rankings. TN should be immediately under Bama. Why? Because Butch says the Vols are champions of life so how could one champion not be ranked behind another champion?
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I'd rather be a champion in life than a champion in football anyway.
Maybe we could rank them by average GPA.
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Is Florida going to be able to field 11 players by the next game?
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They were down to something like just over 70 scholarship players for our game a couple weeks ago.
I still desire answers for why we had 5 O-linemen transfer out of the program this off-season.
I also wonder if karma demands that we lose to Ole Miss in exchange for beating Auburn.
Right now we're still on pace for what I hoped out of this team, just not the way I thought. Very unforeseen loss to Troy, but we traded that for an unforeseen win vs. AU. Will almost certainly lose to Alabama, that's still to come. Plus one game somewhere that I thought pre-season we probably "shouldn't" lose, but would, because those happen. I wouldn't have picked MSU, but that qualifies.
So we're still on track, so to speak, but Alabama needs to be the only remaining loss. Not sure I trust this team to beat Ole Miss, Tennessee, Arkansas, and A&M. We could be favored in all, but it smells like there's another loss sitting in there somewhere. We'll see if last week maybe had some sort of galvanizing effect. The D-line is slowly getting a little healthier, which did help against Auburn.
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Run the ball 17 straight first downs? : wde - reddit.com (https://www.reddit.com/r/wde/comments/76gxdj/run_the_ball_17_straight_first_downs/)
www.reddit.com/r/wde/comments/76gxdj/run_the...
I am sorry but running the ball 17 straight times on first down especially when you have a good passer at quarterback is just plain stupid. You could take somebody who has never seen a football game and they would come to the same conclusion. That is why Auburn lost.
I'm glad LSU won. Auburn was looking scary good. I'm still not going to deny reality.
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So a disillusioned Auburn fan on reddit is a credible game management source? Okay, I'm also a fan who has access to the internet, so I'll weigh in with my expert advice now too.
It's easy to see why Auburn didn't pass the ball more. LSU had ELEVEN PASS BREAKUPS, all after the first quarter. Stidham went 5/7 for 119 in the first quarter. Then in the second quarter he went 2/6 for 40, and then in the second half he was 2/13 for 6 YARDS. Did I mention the 11 PBU's? Only a couple of teams will register that many PBU's in a game all year, and we were one of them last Saturday. So Stidham went in the tank and/or LSU's secondary dominated the WRs, and the pass rush finally showed up pretty well. And some of those PBUs were dangerously close to INTs. Auburn didn't throw the ball more because their passing game was getting absolutely dominated.
Ask any Auburn fan 35 or over if they remember the infamous "Pass LSU Pass!" game. God knows I do. Nobody wants to be the coach who commits crimes like that. It's pretty easy to see why AU didn't throw the ball more. It wasn't getting them anything. Nothing.
There were a handful of drives AU ran on first down and got 4-5 yard gains. Then they would try a pass which never went well, and then they would try and cobble something together for 3rd down. I repeat: if anything, AU should have ran MORE. It's not like LSU's run defense is anything to write home about this year.
And it's not like Auburn put the offense in the shed and went into a shell. Sure, they got up 20-0, but the next time they touched the ball, it was back down to 20-7, and Auburn had a chance to slam the door. They wanted to score, obviously, because they did so. AU pushed the lead back up to 23-7. Then LSU got a TD before the half. So it was 23-14 the next time AU got the ball, now in the 3rd quarter and after a sustained LSU drive. It would be insane to believe the game was salted away at that point, so AU was definitely still trying to score. There was never a point they were in start-up-the-bus mode on offense.
What I would be more concerned about if I were an Auburn fan is
1) Why didn't LSU lose the line of scrimmage a lot more?
2) Gus saying after the game "they really broke our back with that punt return." What? LSU was still losing at that point!
3) The fact that Gus was right. AU looked dead in the water on their sidelines.
I can meet you halfway and reiterate that I do think some game management should be questioned. I think Auburn should've gone for 4th and 1 at the 50 late, and then very late they should have punted on 4th and 10 with all their timeouts. It was crazy to go for it there--even down 2 points--when the passing game had netted squat for 3 quarters. But this idea that the playcalling was bad is nothing more than your justifying that Auburn is a better team and yet lost the game. That happens. As I said earlier, LSU isn't the better team this season, but they were the better team last Saturday.
And for one moment I'll grant you for the sake of argument that AU's playcalling was bad. Okay.....so what? Playcalling is part of being the better team, and if AU didn't have it, then they weren't the better team that day.
Playcalling is a convenient scapegoat for the loss, but reality doesn't back it up, and that's not being delusional. That's the facts of the game, and I question your football knowledge if you watched that game and thought Auburn should've been throwing the ball more.
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Wow.
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I was on a roll.
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Because there's not a lot to hang my hat on this season, I wanna reiterate that 11 PBU's is crazy, even for us. If a team gets 5 or 6 PBUs in a game, that secondary has had itself a whale of a game. That's really good. 10+ is something you hardly ever see. LSU and Florida style themselves "DBU," and they're not usually going to get close to 11.
11 is either really, really dialed in or else the WRs and the QB is that bad. Or some combination. But that's not even misfires or bad balls. 11 PBUs is the difference in Stidham going 9/26 and 20/26 and setting some kind of record against us.
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Well, I'm glad you softened them up for us... oh wait....
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Because there's not a lot to hang my hat on this season, I wanna reiterate that 11 PBU's is crazy, even for us. If a team gets 5 or 6 PBUs in a game, that secondary has had itself a whale of a game. That's really good. 10+ is something you hardly ever see. LSU and Florida style themselves "DBU," and they're not usually going to get close to 11.
11 is either really, really dialed in or else the WRs and the QB is that bad. Or some combination. But that's not even misfires or bad balls. 11 PBUs is the difference in Stidham going 9/26 and 20/26 and setting some kind of record against us.
just did a quick glance at the top 15-20 or so in pbu on cfbstats.com. osu and lsu have both had 11 pbu games, and usf and au, of all teams, have had 12 pbu games. there was only a couple of 10's too, but can't remember them.
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Not unexpectedly, much of the "talk" about UGA in the media (and among some fans) is how they stack up against another SEC team that had enjoyed some recent success. I suppose it is the kind of hypothetical expected in an off week. It also is pretty high praise for that other team.
The undercurrent is "I fear not", as in "Probably not yet.", which also is high praise.
I surmise most hereabouts would agree with the "Not yet, but mebbe in a bit" thought.
If somehow Penn State loses to Michigan Saturday evening, those two SEC teams would be atop the rankings, to the extent that means anything.
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it might mean something should they both hold on to those 2 spots heading into seccg. a 1vs 2 seccg, if it's close, and if 2 other conf play themselves out (pac and bigxii most likely, imo, most parity in those leagues) then it could be first chance for 2 teams from same conf.
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I'm not even going to ask who might reach out and stun Bama with a win. Who might give them a game? What did A&M do to stay close? Can anyone else mimic that? Is it just Auburn, case closed?
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it might mean something should they both hold on to those 2 spots heading into seccg. a 1vs 2 seccg, if it's close, and if 2 other conf play themselves out (pac and bigxii most likely, imo, most parity in those leagues) then it could be first chance for 2 teams from same conf.
Unlikely of course, but possible. I can't see an Alabama at 12-1 being left out, but UGA at 12-1 might be left out. I read somewhere that Bama would be a 7 point favorite over UGA at this point, which perhaps is about right. That would mean about a 1 in 3 chance of an upset. Notre Dame is still lingering, we'll see how long they can linger today.
It would be "fun" if the SEC CG were two 12-0 teams ranked 1-2 though, in a dream.
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If a #2 Georgia beat a #1 Bama in ATL, no one on the committee could look at themselves in the mirror and honestly believe that 12-1 Bama wasn't one of the top 4 teams in the country.
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The committee IMHO does not simply look for the four best teams, but for the four best teams "for the playoff". They weight things like conference championships by their own admission. Granted last year they took an at large, but I see that as being rare and when other conference champs have more losses than an 11-1 at large.
If they have five teams at 12-1, I think they will USUALLY pick the four that are conference winners and leave out the CG loser, treating the CGs like something of Round One of an 8 team playoff.
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Uhhh, they better be picking the 4 best teams, that's their job. And no, 'best' doesn't just mean talent, it means team quality + resume.
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Here is the other side of the Auburn play-calling argument from a very good Auburn source (not me):
· Four offensive possessions into the LSU game, Auburn was up 20-0 with 232-yards in the book. Where did it go south?
· On the opening possession Auburn attempted passes on their first two 1st down plays of the game. From that point, Auburn would try only three more first down passes the remainder of the game.
· By possession four, Auburn attempted a first down pass to begin the possession. From that point, Auburn would call 17 consecutive run plays, which did not stop until after LSU took their initial lead of the game.
* With the threat of a passing game, Auburn averaged 5.2 yards per rush during the first-half. During the second-half, Auburn averaged 3.4 yards per rush, when it was more than obvious Auburn intended to run on every first down snap. Gus Malzahn admitted during his post-game press conference, LSU was rolling up a safety to stop the run during the second-half, yet allowed the continuation of all runs on first down. What happened to the philosophy of taking what the opponent gives you?
· Gus Malzahn said it himself during his post-game press conference. "We couldn’t hang on, and the punt return really broke our back,” he said of D.J. Chark’s 75-yard touchdown play in the fourth quarter. “We were in pretty good shape up until that point.” After building a 20-0 lead, Malzahn was content with watching the lead evaporate to 23-14 at halftime.
· Coming into the LSU game, Auburn had averaged 142.2 yards passing on first down during their previous four games. This included an average of 17.8 yards per attempt on first down and 19.6 yards per attempt. Not only was Auburn throwing more on first down, but they were also throwing vertically and having great success. This all changed against LSU when Auburn attempted five passes on first down for 10-yards.
· Auburn threw the ball deep against LSU, more so than any other game this season. The problem was the majority of the deep throws came on third down when LSU was expecting the pass. During the previous four games, Auburn was throwing deep on early downs when the defense was anticipating the run.
· What we witnessed in the passing game against LSU was nowhere close to what Auburn had accomplished during the proceeding four games. It appeared Gus Malzahn was content with the 17-0 lead and would rely heavily on the running game on early downs, sprinkled in with a few deep shots downfield on obvious passing downs.
· Jarrett Stidham started off on what looked to be a career outing, completing 6 of 8 passes for 146-yards and 1 TD. Once the offense went into a shell, Stidham completed only 3 of his next 18 passes for 19-yards.
· What happened Saturday in Baton-Rouge was mind-boggling, to say the least. Auburn's offensive staff elected to go away from what had been so successful during the four previous games. Compounding the problem was that Auburn had enormous success during the first quarter of the LSU game. It wasn't like the offense laid an egg from the opening kickoff. The Auburn offense had LSU on the brink of quitting, but the coaches decided to coast after building a 17-0 lead. It was a decision that cost Auburn the victory and could be even more detrimental down the road for those involved.
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Well, that's certainly a very...Auburn perspective. I'd define it more as LSU made adjustments (you just said so yourself) and AU failed to adapt adequately. I would not characterize it as you said, that AU had LSU ready to quit, and neither did AU decide to pack it in early, for all the reasons I outlined above. Out of all the things you can say about LSU in the first quarter, at least I can say that unlike earlier in the season (MSU), they never quit.
I think people tend to only look at their team and what they did and didn't do and it never truly registers that the other team has coaches and players too, and they have some say in the matter. One thing you'll notice if you watch LSU--maybe any team, I dunno--the opposing WRs may have some success early, but when the LSU secondary figures out what the plan for the day is, you start seeing much tighter coverage. We saw it again vs. Ole Miss, and we saw it last week vs. Auburn.
The biggest thing I wonder about Auburn's decisions in the second half is why they got away from Kerryon Johnson trying the wide runs. It worked in the first half, and indeed it was the only thing that worked for AU in the 2nd quarter. LSU never really stopped it, AU just quit showing it.
I can't believe we're still talking about this over a week later. Both teams have played an entire other game by now.
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just did a quick glance at the top 15-20 or so in pbu on cfbstats.com. osu and lsu have both had 11 pbu games, and usf and au, of all teams, have had 12 pbu games. there was only a couple of 10's too, but can't remember them.
This year?
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I'm not even going to ask who might reach out and stun Bama with a win. Who might give them a game? What did A&M do to stay close? Can anyone else mimic that? Is it just Auburn, case closed?
Did A&M really stay close? I'm actually asking, because I watched only the first 3 quarters of that game (or close to that), and Alabama was up by around 3ish TDs. I didn't get to finish it, but I do know the final score was close, and I assumed it was garbage time TDs from A&M.