Football Weekend In Review

 Hello again, everybody. Did you enjoy the insane (once again) weekend of football? I know I did, even if my picks to win were an absolute disaster, more on that in a second. First off, I wanted to touch on one of the more incredible endings I have ever seen. For those of you who missed it, Appalachian State (fresh off an upset of Texas A&M the week prior) was facing (cowboy) Troy University in Boone. Late in the fourth quarter with Troy clinging to a four-point lead, App State faced a fourth and goal situation from just outside the two-yard line. The pass to the endzone fell incomplete, so Troy took over on downs. However, Appalachian had two timeouts left despite only 1:13 being on the clock. Fast forward to third and seven for Troy with only 1:09 left. They call a run up the middle that gains five yards which wound the clock down to 25 seconds, where they called time out. On fourth down, instead of punting from their endzone, Troy took an intentional safety, making it 28-26, and setting up a free kick at the 20 yard-line. Here's where I don't get what Troy tried to do next; they SQUIB KICKED the free kick instead of booting it deep. As a result, Appalachian was near midfield and had four opportunities to get some positive yardage. The second attempt could have been intercepted, sealing the Troy win. Instead, this happened:

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Crazy finish, huh? You can bet that after this weekend there wasn't any moonshine left in western North Carolina (College GameDay broadcast from there earlier on Saturday). Anyway, I had a rather mixed bag picking college games. I went 0-2 on Friday, but Saturday was much better:

W Virginia Tech over Wofford
W #4 Michigan over UConn
W #9 Kentucky over Youngstown State
W #6 Oklahoma over Nebraska
W Army over Villanova
W #1 Georgia over South Carolina
L Purdue over Syracuse
W Virginia over Old Dominion (barely)
W Notre Dame over California (barely)
W Appalachian State over Troy
W #25 Oregon over #12 BYU
L Auburn over #22 Penn State 
W #20 Ole Miss over Georgia Tech
W #19 Wake Forest over Libbity Bibbity (barely)
W East Carolina over Campbell
W Duke over NC A&T
W #15 Tennessee over Akron
L Texas Tech over #16 NC State (upset special)
W UCF over FAU
W #18 Florida over South Florida (barely, the fact they won by three over freaking USF in unacceptable)
W #21 Texas over UTSA

Among the games I didn't pick, Arizona State somehow lost to Eastern Michigan. A loss so humiliating that it cost Herman "you play to win the game" Edwards his job. So including Friday's games, I went 18-5 on the weekend to bring my total to 31-12 so far.

The pros were mental again this weekend, three blown leads (and nearly two more), fights, and a major beatdown Monday night. I want to turn my attention to the Cleveland-NY Jets game this weekend. First off, there were these rather ugly scenes outside FirstEnergy stadium before the game (which happened to be the Browns' home opener). Then the game, in which it appeared the Browns had in the bag when Nick Chubb scored a touchdown to make it 30-17. One problem in hindsight that tends to get overlooked when the score happened because football players have an instinct to score unless it's discussed by the head coach; the Jets were out of timeouts, but it was just before the 2:00 warning, and the line to gain was the one-yard line. So, theoretically, Chubb could have ran out of bounds after reaching the line to gain, the Browns could have kneeled down for the rest of the game and salted away the win. That wasn't quite what happened. A missed extra point, an egregious blown coverage that led to one Jets touchdown, and a recovered onside kick later, and the Jets somehow were back in the game, and they wound up scoring the touchdown and the winning extra point for a 31-30 win. Was it incompetence on the Browns part? Possibly, was it karma from what happened before the game that I mentioned earlier in this post? Probably. Anyway, Browns fans were bent after the game, so much so one fan attempted to recreate the 2001 Bottlegate scandal. However the fan wound up striking Browns owner Jimmy Haslem and was later arrested. Cleveland, when will you ever learn?

As for my picks, they stunk as bad as durian. Anyone ever try durian? Seriously I don't know how people find it a delicacy. Anyway, here's how I did:

L Pittsburgh over New England
L Baltimore over Miami
L Cleveland over NY Jets
L Indianapolis over Jacksonville
L New Orleans over TAMPA BAY (this one I was glad to get wrong)
W NY Giants over Carolina
W Detroit over Washington
W LA Rams over Atlanta
W San Francisco over Seattle
L Cincinnati over Dallas
L Las Vegas over Arizona
W Denver over Houston
W Green Bay over Chicago
W Buffalo over Tennessee
L Minnesota over Philadelphia (should have known that Kirk Cousins sucks out loud in primetime)

TNF 1-0
Sunday early: 2-5
Sunday late: 3-2
SNF: 1-0
MNF: 1-1
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Week 2: 8-8

Total: 15-16-1. Still under .500. I have to turn it around next week, which I hope to do unless I get sidetracked with family coming down from North Carolina. Anyway, have a good rest of your Tuesday!

CT


Oh, check out JaguarGator9 on youtube. Lots of informative stuff about college and pro football!