close
close

first Drop

Com TW NOw News 2024

    • Northern Illinois, Texas, Arkansas, Shedeur Sanders highlights week 2
    news

    Northern Illinois, Texas, Arkansas, Shedeur Sanders highlights week 2

    Vaseline Posted on

    Matt Hayes
    | USA TODAY Sports Network

    play

    First Down

    That’s the danger of overreacting, of casting favorites and unconsciously wandering the minefield of the regular American football season.

    A week ago, Notre Dame had a clear path to the College Football Playoff. Now, there is huge uncertainty under the Golden Dome after a 16-14 loss to Northern Illinois.

    A week ago, Irish quarterback Riley Leonard was coming off a big win at Texas A&M, battling a defense full of elite athletes and going head-to-head with Mike Elko, his former coach at Duke. Fast forward to an unseasonably cold September Saturday afternoon in South Bend, Indiana, with little Northern Illinois staring back from the other side of the ball.

    Leonard threw two interceptions, averaged one lousy yard per attempt, and the Irish looked like a team in disarray a week after acting like a playoff team.

    When will we ever learn?

    That’s the beauty of college football, and the perfectly imperfect fall Saturdays. Sometimes it’s not so much about blue chips and big NIL deals, but about wanting it. Who wants it more?

    A roster full of top players, with the handsome thirty-year-old coach Marcus Freeman who seems to be becoming a national powerhouse, or a bunch of MAC dropouts with the strict coach Thomas Hammock, who looks more like John Candy than John Heisman.

    He was sobbing on the field of Notre Dame Stadium as the sun set over Touchdown Jesus, yet he spoke so poignantly about players doing the right things, and listening, and taking coaching. Football is more than NIL deals, he said.

    You better trust it. Often it’s about who wants it most.

    Like the brave and courageous Northern Illinois quarterback Ethan Hampton, who threw for 198 yards and had a pair of key runs ― including converting a key fourth-down run on the game-winning drive. For the season, he had nine career passing touchdowns against eight interceptions.

    Or running back Antario Brown, who was 13 when his mother was shot and killed outside their Savannah apartment. After rushing for nearly 1,300 yards last season, he could have left NIU for a Power Four team and earned a sweet NIL deal.

    But he stayed with the school that first accepted him, just as he did when he left high school, despite an offer from South Carolina.

    HIGHLIGHTS AND LOWLIGHTS: Michigan mess and Texas triumph lead to winners and losers in Week 2

    Or Hammock, a star at NIU in the early 2000s who bounced around college football and the NFL as a running backs coach before his alma mater asked him to come home in 2019. And then stuck with him again and again, through some rough patches, including a three-win season in 2022.

    So yes, he wept during the biggest moment of his coaching career. And so did his players as they piled into the stands to celebrate with the few hundred who made the 150-mile drive east to witness history.

    This is college football. Not pontificating daily or overreacting weekly or looking ahead three months and declaring that nobody beats Notre Dame. Until Northern Illinois does.

    And receives a cool guaranteed check for $1.4 million, thank you.

    Second Down

    Of all the bad decisions college football executives make, there are a few defining decisions that are still made based on emotion in one way or another.

    Hiring a head coach shouldn’t be a matter of heart and mind, but here we are, and the strange scenario keeps playing out when it shouldn’t. From beloved assistant coach to head coach — to overwhelmed by the moment.

    It’s all because emotions clouded judgment during the hiring process, and the ‘players’ coach’ or ‘the importance of the transition’ or ‘you know what you’re getting’ were more important than finding the right coach.

    Speaking of a murky process, it might be time to invite Michigan coach Sherrone Moore to a seat in the waiting room of bad decisions.

    Because after Michigan’s 19-point home loss to Texas (it wasn’t that close), Moore looks a lot like Bobby Williams at Michigan State. Or Randy Shannon and Manny Diaz at Miami, Ron Prince at Kansas State and Matt Luke at Ole Miss.

    And that’s just a handful of assistant coaches who got their first power conference head coaching job when they were promoted at their respective schools — and then got swept up in the whole thing. They were “players’ coaches” hired in the heat of the moment and amid the fanfare of player support, after the previous coach had taken another job, retired or been fired.

    Williams followed Nick Saban (left for LSU), Shannon followed national championship coach Larry Coker (fired), Diaz followed Mark Richt (retired), Prince followed Bill Snyder (retired) and Luke followed Hugh Freeze (fired).

    Only Diaz, who now coaches Duke, got a second chance as head coach of the Power Five conference.

    And now here we are with Moore, who won four games as interim coach during Michigan’s national championship season last year while former coach Jim Harbaugh was suspended. But that was with a loaded team, built over the years by Harbaugh and specifically built to peak during the 2023 season.

    Moore took over and had to find a quarterback (he couldn’t get one through the free agent market, despite the large pool of candidates) and replace the entire offensive line and wide receiving corps.

    After an uninspiring season-opening win over Fresno State, the Wolverines looked outclassed and outplayed against Texas. Michigan had 284 yards — 78 on the game’s final drive against Texas reserves — converted just 3 of 12 third downs and committed three turnovers.

    Moore appeared rattled on the game’s first drive, when a questionable holding call negated a Texas touchdown. The Longhorns then missed a short field goal.

    Things got worse for Moore and Michigan after that, which saw the loss end four winning streaks: 16 straight overall wins, 23 straight home wins, 28 straight wins in August and September, and 23 straight non-conference home wins.

    The Wolverines were an operational mess on both sides of the ball. Quarterback Davis Warren was shaky in his second start and the play calling was uninspiring.

    The run game — the anchor of Harbaugh’s Michigan teams — rushed for 80 yards on 23 carries and has produced 228 yards in two games. The defense hasn’t been much better, giving up nearly 400 yards before the Longhorns closed it out in the fourth quarter to snatch the win.

    “I liked our composure and I liked our composure,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said after the game.

    A team and a coach who did not allow themselves to be distracted at crucial moments.

    Third down

    Here we go again. Another one-possession game, another loss for Arkansas.

    And yet another excuse to pile the pressure on beleaguered Hogs coach Sam Pittman.

    In case you’ve forgotten what the last two years of Arkansas football have been like, turn on the DVR and watch Arkansas blow out a big win at No. 16 Oklahoma State on Saturday. The Hogs led by 14 at halftime and eight in the fourth quarter, but couldn’t leave Boone Pickens Stadium with a meaningful non-conference victory.

    It ended in the second overtime, with Arkansas failing to convert a fourth-and-1 from the OSU 6. It also marked the 15th one-possession loss under Pittman since 2000. Fifteen.

    More: Biggest Non-Conference Games of the 2024 College Football Playoff Race

    They’ve finished in every conceivable way: from losing a yard on Saturday when the Hogs needed just one, to limiting Mississippi State to 205 total yards and losing 7-3 when Pittman admitted he “didn’t know what to do” when faced with a choice between a long field goal and a punt.

    And then there was the missed game-winning field goal against Texas A&M when the kick hit the top of the post. Yes, the top. In a streak last season that included three one-possession losses to Brigham Young, LSU and Ole Miss, Arkansas had a combined 35 penalties.

    The latest troubling loss to Oklahoma State, a game the Hogs controlled well into the second half, adds to the concern about one-possession losses. It also underscores Arkansas’s losses in nine of its last 10 games to teams from top conferences — the lone overtime win coming at Florida.

    “I’ve had success,” Pittman told me in July. “I don’t worry about, ‘Oh, he’s a failure.’ No, I’m not a failure. And I’m not going to do something else because I’m worried about a job.”

    Fourth down

    It’s time for Shedeur Sanders to hear the hard truth. And it has to come from his coach and father, Deion Sanders.

    It’s time to unplug. From the season.

    I’m kidding, but imagine being Colorado’s star quarterback Shedeur Sanders, a top prospect in the NFL draft and potentially one of the top five picks, knowing you’re getting punished every week while playing behind a terrible offensive line.

    Why stand up and take those blows and take that physical punishment for what looks like a three- or four-win team? What exactly is the point of this exercise?

    Colorado’s offensive line gave up 56 sacks last season – that’s right, 56 ― and after two games against North Dakota State and Nebraska, this year’s group looks worse. Why on earth would Deion (the coach or the father) throw his son behind this mess of an offensive line, knowing it could lead to the one thing that could keep his son from being one of the first players selected in the draft?

    Okay, so it’s too hard to pull out of the season. Let’s start with pulling out of games when you’re down four touchdowns.

    The bracket

    Bye matches first round:

    (1) Georgia, (2) Ohio State, (3) Miami, (4) Oklahoma State

    First round matches:

    (12) Freedom at (5) Texas

    (11) Penn State at (6) Alabama

    (10) Missouri at (7) Oregon

    (9) Southern California at (8) Ole Miss

    Vaseline
    View all posts

    You Might Also Like