Bobby Petrino can take that “Woo Pig Sooey” and…

I think it’s safe to say that Mike Zimmer, current Bengals DC and former Atlanta Falcons DC under Bobby Petrino, won’t be sending his former boss a card at Christmas.

… Pretty good stuff, but it gets even better in his appraisal of Petrino:  “He is a coward. Put that in quotes. He ruined a bunch of people’s lives, a bunch of people’s families, kids, because he didn’t have enough nuts to stay there and finish the job. That’s the truth.”

When asked if he had seen a two days like that before, where the Falcons lost on Monday Night Football, a coach resigns and then is doing “Woo Pig Sooey” 24 hours later in front of Arkansas boosters, Zimmer said: “No, most people in football have enough courage about them and enough fight to stick through something and not quit halfway through the year. It is cowardly.

“He came in and said he resigned, he would talk to us all at a later date, walked out of the office and no one has ever talked to him since. Not that anybody wanted to.

“He’s a gutless b—–d. Quote that. I don’t give a s—.”

When told that we might might not be able to use the B word, Zimmer went one better: “How about this, gutless MF. You can use that.”

Yowser.

(h/t David Hale)

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You don’t “solve” the triple option. You just try to beat it to a bloody pulp.

Today’s must read over at Shakin the Southland is about defending Georgia Tech’s triple option.  Skipping past the Kevin Steele rips, there are a couple of great passages.

First, this:

So then why did GT lose to a Kansas team that lost to a 1-AA squad? Why did they lose to Iowa or Miami and not us?

Because their OL got the hell beat out of them and they couldnt block worth a damn against them. That was the overriding factor in controlling Paul Johnson’s triple option in each of these games. I watched part of the Kansas game yesterday, and their OL play was atrocious. I vividly remember watching the Iowa game, and the DEs for Iowa were planting Nesbitt on his ass nearly every play and their DL as a whole completely overran Georgia Tech up front. That is why they couldn’t take over the clock and grind them into dust. The second factor, and similarly important, is that teams like Iowa or LSU jumped well ahead of Georgia Tech, and it took them out of their gameplan early.

Football is always going to be about blocking and tackling. If your Front whips them, you will stop them. If GT plays really well up front, they’re going to get yards. If they have good backs + that blocking, they’re going to get wins, so stop this BS that keeps getting posted on message boards about “GT will be stopped because people will figure out how to stop the option.” Thats nonsense. GT will be stopped through recruiting of their linemen and backs, or their defensive players, long before somebody “solves” the option. The option has been around since the beginning of football and its always going to be here. Florida runs an option-based system, Oregon is heavy on the option, and both run a version of a spread Midline attack and Veer that GT runs constantly and the basic differences are just the formation and who is doing the blocking.

Then,

So how do you slow down the option? You must make a choice as a coordinator whether to make them run inside or outside.

In my opinion, step 1: Stop the FB Dive. – Everything is set up from the dive play, midline and the veer option. We did that pretty well in both games. The actual dive play did not generate that many yards for GT. Later on, when the defense was clearly worn out, it did begin to pick up, but we did not do terribly against a “true” dive play. Not all of Dwyer’s carries are on actual dive plays however.

Step 2: Hammer that damn QB on every single play. If he’s not on his ass you need to sit your player’s on their’s, on the bench. We did not do that.

In other words, it’s all about penetration, baby.

Read the whole thing.

Better lucky than good

Matt Melton has taken a mid-season look at the SEC with his SDPI analysis.  I’ve cited him before, but as a refresher, here’s his methodology:

… SDPI is simply a measure of how a given team performed gaining and preventing opponents from gaining yardage versus the conference average. For my SDPI ratings I only look at conference games. I do this primarily because non-conference games vary greatly in strength among teams. In addition, conference games usually come after a team has played a few non-conference games and has had an opportunity to iron out the kinks and show themselves for what they really are…

Warning:  If you’re a Georgia fan, this is going to make you sick to your stomach.

Yep, that’s Georgia sitting there as the second best team in the conference, based on relative conference-derived yardage stats.  And it’s not a close second, either, as Georgia is only one of two SEC teams that measures above average on both sides of the ball.

All of which is consistent with Year2’s Pythagorean expectation analysis, based on scoring instead of yardage, of the SEC to date.  (Also, he looks at the entire schedule, not just conference games.)

The other thing that jumps out in Matt’s breakdown is LSU’s defense, which looks otherworldly there.  Malzahn versus Chavis should be a fascinating chess match this Saturday.

Wednesday morning buffet

Hope you like Gator, ’cause there’s lots of it.

• Randall Cobb has apologized to Kentucky fans.  The funny thing is, if you check out what Kentucky bloggers post about, Cobb’s rant had a point.
• Gary Danielson has an interesting example about why college football needs a playoff to keep the SEC East relevant:  “Georgia is a perfect example this year. What if they run the table? They basically could be SEC champion but nothing else.”
• This writer suggests that one reason Spurrier left Florida after the 2001 season is because Jeremy Foley slipped a note under Spurrier’s office door, telling him what changes to make on his coaching staff.
• Gary Crowton has to be grateful that there’s a more embattled offensive coordinator than he these days:  “Firesteveaddazio.com is heating up. Someone placed an ad on craigslist.org for a new offensive coordinator for the Florida Gators.”
• Here’s more learning curve talk about Georgia’s defensive improvement.
• The NCAA is looking into runners.  Good luck with that, fellas.
• Could we be looking at the first possibility of a coach being Richted?  “Addazio, meanwhile, is probably a goner if this year keeps going terribly. In fact, I’d wager that a loss to Georgia where UF scores 10 points or less would spell the end of his tenure.”
• And from there? “… Most discussion of possible replacements for Addazio will focus on the obvious shiny candidates: Dana Holgorsen at Oklahoma State or Mark Helfrich from Oregon, for example, will both command eyeballs from Gator fans desperate to flee the Addazio Disaster Area…” Hmmm… that almost sounds like an admission that Corch isn’t the offensive genius we’ve been led to believe he is.

Red zone rumbling (or bumbling)

Chris Low points to a chink in Kentucky’s armor:

… The Wildcats are 119^th nationally (out of 120 teams) in red zone defense. They’ve allowed 25 drives inside their 20-yard line this season, and teams have come away with points 24 times. That includes 19 touchdowns.

So in other words, when a team has the ball inside the Kentucky 20-yard line, it’s going to score a touchdown nearly 80 percent of the time.

Sounds promising for Saturday night… except that Georgia’s percentage on the season is actually worse.  What the Dawg defense has done a better job of than Kentucky’s is keeping opponents out of the red zone in the first place.

On the flip side, when these two teams get in the red zone, UK’s offense has been better at scoring touchdowns than has Georgia’s (and, no, that hasn’t changed much with A.J.’s return).

Anything’s possible.

Good Lord, people.

… UT’s players aren’t blind. When they went to bed Saturday night, they knew every team in the Southeastern Conference Eastern Division had at least two losses.

“How could you not know that?” senior middle linebacker Nick Reveiz said.

Junior quarterback Matt Simms watched games “all day” at his brother Chris’s home in Nashville.

“It was just a crazy day,” Simms said. “I was blown away. It was unbelievable.”

What’s equally unbelievable is that the Vols (2-4, 0-3), the league’s only winless team through three games, are just an upset win over seventh-ranked Alabama (6-1, 3-1) from thrusting themselves back in the race.

“It’s great to know you still have a chance,” senior strongside linebacker LaMarcus Thompson said. “Of course, it puts a little pep in your step.”

Here’s how you define “chance’ in Knoxville:

… So, technically, the Vols have a chance, but they’d have to beat Alabama and then upset 19th-ranked South Carolina next week in Columbia, and then top Ole Miss, Vanderbilt and Kentucky in November. Even then, they’d probably nee help from another Georgia and Florida loss: The Gators and Bulldogs haven’t played each other, and both have other tough tests along the way.

Sounds like something Hollywood would script.