Another Flash

Stetson Bennett’s passer rating:  183.48 (11th nationally)

Kent State’s defensive passer rating:  170.06 (126th nationally)

Talk about your irresistible force meeting a movable object…

Moar meteor game

Bill Connelly ($$):

Once Hendon Hooker and the Vols get that first first down in a given drive, their odds of scoring skyrocket; that’s a problem for Napier considering almost everyone gets that first first down against the Gators (Florida’s three-and-punt rate: 16%, 123rd in FBS).

So it’s going to be up to Gators quarterback Anthony Richardson to keep up.

That should work out well.

Flash time: first thoughts on Kent State

Let me preface this by saying I haven’t seen a single minute of Kent State football this season.  All I’ve got to go on is stats, schedule and others’ takes on the team, so take this post for what it’s worth.

• General impressions.  Steele, in his Preview, picked them to finish second in their MAC division.  That being said, he only lists two of their players on his preseason MAC team. Some of that is no doubt due to the fact that they only have ten returning starters.  One of the departing players, quarterback Dustin Crum, was the conference’s player of the year last season.
• Scheme.  The offense is much more run-heavy this season; their 221.33 rushing average ranks 21st nationally.  (They’re 20th in rushing attempts and 56th in yards per carry.)  Schlee, this year’s quarterback, has led them in rushing in two games and is the team’s second leading rusher on the season, with a respectable 7.38 yards per rush.  He will be Georgia’s first real test for defending a true running quarterback.  Defensively, Kent State runs a 3-3-5 scheme.
• Approach.  They apparently run a hurry up sort of offense.  They’re also pretty decent converting third downs.  That being said, they’ve run the same number of plays that Georgia has.
• Scheduling.  Saturday marks the end of a brutal run for these guys, having already traveled to Washington and Oklahoma.  At a minimum, they’re used to playing in front of large, hostile crowds.  And, to their credit, they led Oklahoma until the final minute of the first half.  (As you can probably imagine, though, turnovers were problems for them in those two games.  They were -2 in each of them.  Schlee threw four interceptions.)

Look, I don’t think there are many deep insights to take away here.  Kent State, contrary to what Kirby Smart says (a “really, really good football team” capable of knocking them off), is a relatively inexperienced MAC squad with the primary goal tomorrow of not getting beat up physically as they enter conference play.  In short, look for more of the same of what we’ve seen from the Dawgs in the first three games.

Time is a flat circle.

Seth Emerson ($$) writes about an evergreen topic.

You’re not imagining it: College football games are taking longer. And not a small amount longer.

But… there’s a new villain in town, boys.  Or so we’re told.

But the television networks and their annoying timeouts aren’t to blame. Nor are the long replay reviews. It’s not even the epic weather delays, because even if you take those out the average college football game has lengthened by four minutes since 2017, now up to an average of 3 hours, 22 minutes, even though the number of plays is going down.

“Four minutes is a lot,” said NCAA coordinator of officials Steve Shaw, who tracks the data. “The why is very complex.”

Perhaps, but there is one main, overriding reason why game times have gone up so much lately: passing.

Damn you, sophisticated offenses!  Shame on you for giving us more action.

There are a number of potential moves contemplated to shorten game times.  (I won’t insult your intelligence by calling any of them “solutions”.)  Here’s one:  more advertising while the game is on air, in exchange for fewer TV timeouts.  I think we all know how that story will end.

Besides, those complaints about commercials are just a smoke screen.  Things on that front are working just fine.  Just ask SEC associate commissioner Mark Womack.

“TV probably has the same elements to it then (in 2017) that it has now. Those aren’t changed dramatically,” Womack said. “As a matter of fact, we’ve probably tightened them up by using our timeout clock. The fan looks at it and says, ‘Guys this TV timeout is going on forever, they take five-minute breaks.’ Well no they don’t, and you can see it now.”

As we like to say here on occasion, “probably” is doing some heavy lifting there.

In other words, I look forward to Seth’s next piece on this topic next year.

Your Daily Gator re-calibrates.

An orange and blue haz a sad moment:

I give it another year or two, and they’ll start using Dan Mullen as the boogey man to scare their kids into behaving better.

Playing the respect card

They’re ranked number one.  They’re getting plenty of respect from the media, as two of today’s posts indicate.  Yet there’s still a need to squeeze out a little fake juice, apparently.

Nevertheless, an offense always starts with the quarterback. Bennett has come out of the gates firing in 2022, launching himself into the Heisman Trophy conversation – something many never would have expected from him.

“I honestly feel like he’s trying to earn his respect,” Jackson said. “I mean, he led us to a national championship last year, and people still don’t respect him and this team.”

Yeah, lack of respect.  That’s Georgia’s problem right now.  Hey, if that works for you, Kearis, more power to you.

I got ‘yer elite right here.

In asking if Clemson’s offensive woes (relatively speaking, that is) mean that the Tigers no longer rank among college football’s elite, Paul Myerberg writes,

But other FBS teams in the Tigers’ stratosphere are evolving on offense, including defending national champion Georgia, which in rolling through three easy wins has unveiled a scheme far more predicated on quarterback play than in the recent past.

And unlike these peers, Clemson has not invested in new offensive ideas. The Bulldogs hired former Oklahoma State and NFL coordinator Todd Monken in 2020.

Georgia cited as an example of an exemplar on offense?  Pinch me, I must be dreaming.

Not so clean, old-fashioned hate

One of the sadder byproducts of the current state of Georgia Tech football is the falloff in Georgia hate over at Stingtalk.  The posters there are either feeling too sorry for themselves, or too apathetic, to waste any energy on things red and black.

So I was pleased to see this alcohol-induced rant pop up in the wee hours of the morning.

I can’t figure out what that means exactly, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the point.

My advice to the Tech fan base is to start drinking heavily.

Gettin’ better all the time

Brian Fremeau’s FEI metric tracks efficiency, so this chart really shouldn’t be too much of a surprise:

Three teams with the most positive FEI rating change from preseason to Week 3: USC, Kansas, Georgia

Three teams with the most negative FEI rating change from preseason to Week 3: Hawaii, Colorado, Nebraska pic.twitter.com/OHBsvyfKag

— Brian Fremeau (@bcfremeau) September 23, 2022

Still, I don’t suppose anyone’s gonna complain about the graphic confirmation.

“… you tell the corny joke, you drink a few beers, everybody has a good laugh.”

Well, shit, here’s something I didn’t know:

Here’s a little open secret: Spurrier didn’t actually come up with all those savage one-liners he used to throw around like diamond-tipped darts. FSU standing for “Free Shoes University,” Auburn’s library burning down with unused coloring books still within … he’d crowdsource the insults, then deliver them with the punch and timing of a nightclub comic.

“Somebody in our group would give them to me,” Spurrier says. “Some guy from the booster club, the alumni, maybe an assistant coach. It wasn’t that big a deal.”

The Evil Genius had a ghostwriter?  Color me disappointed.

Hey, Frank Sinatra didn’t write his own songs, and Marlon Brando didn’t write “The Godfather.” It’s all about the performance, and the Head Ball Coach knew how to give the people what they wanted.

Steve Spurrier, ladies and gentlemen.  He’ll be here all week!  Try the veal and don’t forget to tip your server.