Today’s ACC: the soft bigotry of low expectations

I got an e-mail from Holly Anderson alerting me to this post about the unexpected rise of Georgia Tech by “Intern Parrish” (of whom we are assured that he’s not a Tech man) over at The Big Lead .

Holly pointed out the comment near the end of his post about Georgia struggling against the run, which may in fact be tongue in cheek, given that the Dawgs are currently ranked fourth nationally in rushing defense – although I hope they’re not using Intern Parrish to do any fact checking over at The Big Lead, since he was off by a mere 39 spots in describing Tech’s ranking in that same category – but that’s not the part of his post that got my attention.

Here’s what he had to say about the Jackets’ chances to appear in the ACCCG this season:

If Tech can get to eight wins, it could be good enough for a trip to Tampa…

Dayum!  Eight whole wins gets you to the championship game?  What is this, the MAC?

That’s one helluva conference you got there, fellahs.

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Let Tebow be Tebow.

This piece at Dr. Saturday neatly sums up why all that concern from the pundits about Florida needing a feature back to take some of the pressure off of the GPOOE™ missed the mark.

… Here’s the short answer: Urban Meyer needs to Free Tebow. Florida’s spread offense (like most semi-conventional offenses) consists of three major parts: running, passing, and run-action passing. You know the other parts of offenses, too: pass-action running (draws), pass-action passing (screens), and other constraint plays that keep defenses honest. In manageable down and distance situations, Urban Meyer wants to force the defense to simultaneously defend against a smash-mouth old-school (pre-Wishbone era) power running from a single-wing tailback and deep passing routes.

In other words, if you want to sell the offense, you have to sell Tebow as a running threat.

… Unfortunately, the extensive hand-wringing of a fan base and coaching staff handling of their prodigy at “quarterback” has caused them to limit the use of Tebow’s best formation and play package in a vain attempt to develop a “running threat besides Tim Tebow.” So you don’t see the “pure power” package very often, except on the goal line (see his short touchdown run in the above clips from ’06 LSU game, for example).

My guess is that in the wake of the loss to Ole Miss, Meyer is going to say screw it to the preseason wisdom and get back to what worked before.

The tao of spread

It sure didn’t take long for this shoe to drop.

The firing of Tony Franklin on Wednesday provided the exclamation point to two dramatically different approaches that Auburn and Alabama applied to their first-year offensive coordinators.

Nick Saban went with the pro-style, power-running game he often uses and has Alabama 6-0 and ranked No. 2 in the country. Tommy Tuberville changed his conservative style to adopt the popular spread offense, and now is out a coordinator before the leaves turn colors.

Even as the spread has evolved during the past decade from a gimmicky, pass-happy offense to a sophisticated scheme with running capabilities, it is unclear if the spread as we know it today is here to stay.

Sometimes I feel so… uninspired.

For some reason, I haven’t had a good feeling about tomorrow’s game.  There hasn’t been the usual sense of energy surrounding a rivalry game for this one.  Let’s face it – the only good story of the week has been the discovery that Arian Foster is multi-lingual.

What I’m afraid of is that we’re going to see more of what we saw in the Alabama game from the defense and that Stephens is going to have… well, it’s kind of silly to call it a career day when it’ll only be his second start… a successful day throwing the ball because the Georgia secondary will give him the short pass.  Martinez will issue a statement afterwards that the defense just needs to continue to “keep working”.

That being said, I don’t sense a rout in the first half by any means because (1) Tennessee simply isn’t as good on offense as ‘Bama has been this year and (2) Southerland’s return at fullback is a big boost for the Georgia offense.  Georgia should be able to run the ball more effectively than Tennessee, but absent some UT turnovers, I suspect that the Vols are going to be able to stay in the game by throwing.  I look at that 13 point spread and shake my head.  I hope I’m being unduly pessimistic.