The SEC Forum at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

My i s c & a aggie manual physical therapist specializing in orthopedics wife thinks he's hurt.  She wasn't paying much attention during the Ohio State game but watched some highlights as they came on and asked me, unprompted, "what have they said about Manning's injured shoulder?"

Further watching and she still thinks he's hurt.  Not injured exactly, but playing hurt, guarding and protecting that throwing shoulder by trying to deliver side-armed in some situations, and his wild inaccuracy both into the dirt, and ten yards over receivers' heads, all are consistent with a shoulder injury.

That he sometimes has zip on the ball doesn't mean it's not hurt, it just means he's able to play through it sometimes.

I mean, this is a team and a coaching staff that last year, didn't comment on Quinn Ewers season-long torn oblique muscle, until after the season.  It's entirely possible and even likely they'd act in the same manner with Arch.

LSU is playing the same cat and mouse game with Nussmeir's oblique.

And our coach is notorious for just bald face lying about injuries, so I wouldn't be surprised if Arch is laboring, and mum is the word.  Seems to be the new norm.

Arch believes in velocity. Whereas Quinn liked to put air under passes, Arch likes to rocket it Elway style and try to make it bore a hole in the receiver. As such, he's usually over-throwing when he gets excited (or panicked). 
Like a college pitcher trying to get too much on his fastball, Arch over-strides when he's gunning. It pulls his front foot way forward and messes with his release point. Fortunately, right now, he's releasing late. While I'm not liking any unforced incompletions, better to leave it short than sail it over the receiver's head into the defense. 
As the adrenaline dies down, his touch returns. He still needs to learn finesse and couple it with power, but that's an experience thing. 

Now, if someone has the manual on how to get a LG to simply occupy space and make a defender at least detour around him, I'd like a copy. We'll at least start there.

On a personal note, last night's Auburn-Georgia game marks the 100th college football game I’ve attended. On another personal note, last night’s Auburn-Georgia game will stand out as the most chaotically officiated game I’ve ever witnessed in person.

So much so the mainstream media is running articles on last night’s unexplainable officiating. But it wasn’t just the confounding goal line call that went wrong. There were missed calls on holding and targeting. There was a review for whether a receiver was in bounds and the result was the refs calling targeting away from the ball. There was Kirby Smart running up the sideline calling TO to stop the clock only for the refs to give back the TO after Smart claimed he was only clapping.

At halftime Auburn’s AD John Cohen went onto the field to confront the referees. Expect another apology letter addressed to Auburn from the SEC. All it takes is changing the date and opponent’s name (Oklahoma) of their previous apology letter to Auburn.


https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1977208933711323568

Iron sharpens iron.  

https://twitter.com/claytravis/status/1977396499400012068?s=61
Vandy favored over LSU. 

On a personal note, last night's Auburn-Georgia game marks the 100th college football game I’ve attended. On another personal note, last night’s Auburn-Georgia game will stand out as the most chaotically officiated game I’ve ever witnessed in person.

So much so the mainstream media is running articles on last night’s unexplainable officiating. But it wasn’t just the confounding goal line call that went wrong. There were missed calls on holding and targeting. There was a review for whether a receiver was in bounds and the result was the refs calling targeting away from the ball. There was Kirby Smart running up the sideline calling TO to stop the clock only for the refs to give back the TO after Smart claimed he was only clapping.

At halftime Auburn’s AD John Cohen went onto the field to confront the referees. Expect another apology letter addressed to Auburn from the SEC. All it takes is changing the date and opponent’s name (Oklahoma) of their previous apology letter to Auburn.


https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1977208933711323568

Eh, I can see how it would appear newsworthy to an interloper and the NYP, but honestly it's just a fall Saturday in the SEC.

South Carolina received their usual screwing in Baton Rouge, though it probably didn't cost them the game.  

Maybe, but I don't think it has to be anything as nefarious as that.

You can get a lot of the same results via bias based on dominant narratives.  

No one has complained more about Alabama's (lack of) holding calls over the years than me.  Could be super secret orders to refs from cigar-smoking men in shady back rooms of the SEC office, but it could also be Alabama's reputation for killer OL play clouding judgement.  

As supporting evidence, I've frequently offered a different phenomenon based on my own team, both to try and preclude my bias and also to point out the specificity I see, and also how it doesn't have to be Bama or UGA (major brands).  For a long time LSU had a sterling reputation for outstanding DB play, and rightfully so.  That said, there's many incidents to point to where it seemed obvious LSU dbs were allowed to get away with more/earlier contact than other units.  Some of these instances were very important to the games.  I don't think the refs were executing top secret orders on our behalf so much as the perpetual media drum of superlative Tiger DB play eventually had an effect.

I'm reminded of the British journalist from WW2 stationed in Germany--I forget his name at the moment.  He had access to London papers, American papers, news sources from all over the place, due to his profession and outsider status, and he was very well aware of the wider scope of information.  Yet he noted later that though he knew better than the average German citizen, he said he was shocked to find how much doubt the constant drip of Nazi propaganda created in him.  He would later write about the effectiveness of constant messaging, even on those who knew they were being gaslit.  

I posit something similar is often going on here.  If you live in a space where LSU DBs are always getting drafted in the 1st round for years and making genuinely great plays every game, there can come a point where you're not consciously trying to tip the scales in their favor, but you fail to side against them in close calls that you'd probably ding another DB group for, because, after all, these guys are widely known to be great, they routinely make those perfect plays where they get there at exactly the right time to break up the pass.  Or Alabama's OL is always so great without holding that it's harder to catch when they actually do it, because after all, those guys don't need to hold to play great.  Insert whatever applies to UGA here, you get the idea.

I offer nothing definitive, but I am hesitant to ascribe to malice what can be explained via incompetence and "popular thought ethos."