Separate but related, we donāt talk enough about Sage Ennis. He was phenomenal. Really need to find someone like him. I like Rogers a lot but his blocking was really poor. Dak was great and if heās back and healthy, he can help fill that need, but we also want Dak to do more than what Sage did, given his abilities. Really would love to find a a Patrick Estes type TE.
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https://twitter.com/mzenitz/status/2001684939452891392
Of not, Mizzou fans are glad to see him go. 67% accuracy, 190 passing yards a game, 11 PaTD vs 9 INTs. 300 rushing yards on the year with 6 RuTD.
Bottom line, end of the day, Missouri offense is about its running backs anyways, headlined by All American Ahmad Hardy.
Lots of smoke this QB will end up at VT.
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I am praying that this happens lol. He is not good and would be hilarious to be their āsplashā QB after all the money theyāre claiming to have
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His numbers surprised me at how bad there were. Early in the season when Mizzu was humming I attributed a lot of their success to him, and when he got hurt I thought it was going to tank the Mizzu season. But like you said they are so run heavy and Pribulaās injury slowed them a bit but not really for the time he was out.
Heās a fine P4 starter if you can surround him with the right pieces, and have a team that can play from in front or you donāt ask a lot of him.
Did we know if heās playing next week?
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Also, Missouri was one of the most overrated teams in CFB. Iām not sure they had a single win against a team with a winning record, even including non-P4 opponents. Them being ranked for a significant period of time was optics and SEC-love.
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Why is their buzz around Beau? Seems to be a big story but his numbers are terrible. Was he a big time prospect or something?
Theyāre schedule is a tough one to understand. They came into the season highly ranked, that can be an SEC biased problem and also highlights the issue of having rankings in week 1 when no one knows anything.
Overall the Tigers season was solid through week 8. They were 6-2 with a 3pt loss to Bama and a 7pt loss to Vandy. Thatās respectable. The wheels came off the next week when A&M boat raced them and a few weeks later OU ground them into the ground.
To your point they failed every time they took on a ranked or above .500 team. Which is obviously glaring
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Wonāt play in the Gator Bowl.
https://twitter.com/petethamel/status/2001688652397842478?s=46&t=KRUvpbKQ9s5_3BPeM0gClg
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They gonna trot out first year Matt Zollers again? That could get rough. He was okay in relief against Vandy, and A&M destroyed him 7/22 77yrds but he didnāt turn it over!
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Oh I hadnāt considered VT.. I figured with the timing he was following his OC to WSU, but the Franklin connection is obviously there as well.
This would be incredible. Heās not that good. Not scared at all if they run out with him. Franklin used him as a wildcat guy behind Allar the year they were good.
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Missouriās best results are their 4 losses to playoff or near playoff teams, TAMU, Bama, OU and Vandy. Their 4 wins are against the bottom 4 teams in the SEC, Arkansas, Mississippi State, South Carolina and Auburn (who combined for 3 wins, I think all against each other). The 4 OOC wins were against Kansas (bottom 1/3 of the Big 12), Central Arkansas (bottom 3 of the UAA, a FCS conference that Iāve never heard of before), UMass (possibly the worst team in FBS) and Louisiana (a 6-6 bowl team who lost last night to Delaware in their 1st season in FCS).
So we know theyāre worse than the ranked teams in the SEC and better than the bottom 4 and other than that they havenāt proven much at all. Itās a bit hard with that kind of opponent stratification in your conference schedule I guess. They did themselves no favors with their non-con. I understand scheduling the Kansas border rival game, but no one thought theyād be good when the game was scheduled. The other 3 games are fit for a team of our stature needing wins, not a team of their stature trying to prove theyāre good.
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Thank you for concisely saying what I was trying to get at.
Had to bring that one back from what Iāve read because of the rivalry as you mentioned and the associated revenue.
I canāt defend the rest of the Non-Con. Iād be pissed if UVa scheduled that weak of a schedule.
They got hurt by South Carolina being nowhere near what they were supposed to be this year and maybe itās a similar situation with Auburn, but I donāt remember there being exceedingly high expectations for War Eagle this past year.
Typing this up does make me want to dive into an ongoing issue that I donāt feel like is talked about enough. Conference size, and the stratification, as you put it, that comes with that and on unbalanced scheduling. Essentially every gripe about the CFP, rankings and all of college football this past season can come back to conferences being too large and itās virtually impossible to get a clear understanding of how good one team is to another even within their own conference.
I donāt know an easy solution to it (Create a super league with divisions), but until that issue is addressed weāll have to keep shifting through random data points to make arguments about who is the best.
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In theory the SEC is trying to address this a bit with their set opponents. They used the last couple years of records to ensure some parity across schedules and have said they will revisit every couple of years to ensure it is still fair.
But yeah, unfortunately there isnāt really a way to address it completely in college sports. Too much year-to-year churn outside of the top echelon to use previous season results and the conferences have gotten too big to make sense. Good job everyone!
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I forgotten the SEC was attempting that format. Like you said, I think the problem with that is in the Transfer Portal Era a team can look completely different year to year making it harder to take into context what they accomplished in previous years.
Thereās no good fix to the situation if they want to maintain current leagues/conferences/and traditions.
Yeah, some people thought South Carolina was going to be genuinely good. ESPNās pre-season rankings had them 10th, but the SEC mediaās pre-season rankings had them 5th and if I paid attention to such things I probably would have put more weight on that than ESPN.
But Auburn, not so much. Iāve looked at a few places, and everyone had them between 10th and 12th in the SEC (reasonably close to the ātied for 13thā they ended up).
So, looking at their schedule, they had:
- 3 opponents everyone thought was going to be really good: Bama, A&M, and SC
- 2 opponents who were expected to be varying levels of ok: Oklahoma (predicted 8th-10th in the SEC) and Kansas (expected 9th in the B12)
- 7 opponents who were expected to be varying levels of bad: Auburn (predicted 10th-12th in the SEC) was expected to be easily the best team in this group. Vandy ended up WAAAAY better than everyone expected. Almost everyone had them in the bottom 3-4 of the SEC with Arkansas and MSU.
So, yeah, they 100% scheduled looking for wins where they could find them. Which, to be fair, wasnāt unreasonable. They werenāt expected to be good. Most folks had them 10th-12th in the SEC, basically at the same level as Auburn. Missouri just won all the games they were expected to win and that was good enough to get them ranked, by some miracle.
Auburn, on the other hand, had a tougher conference schedule (4 really tough conference games instead of 3) plus they dropped a game they should have won (vs Kentucky) and finally they lost the head to head vs Missouri.
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Their non-con was awful, but it isnāt like ours is much better. Kansas-NC State, Wolfpack are tougher, but not significantly. Central Arkansas-W&M, Tribe are better, but any FCS is pretty much the same. Louisiana-Coastal Carolina, eh whatever. Biggest deal is UMass-Washington State, the worst FBS vs one of the better G6.
But thatās been a pretty common OOC template for us recently, an in-state FCS (Richmond, W&M, Norfolk State, etcā¦), a (hopefully weak) P4, a G6 of some sort and ND or another G6 or P4. New template is probably a FCS, a G6 and a P4. Just pick a mid or good G6 and not fucking UMass.
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True, Iām generally disappointed with UVaās non-con most years as well. This yearās was acceptable mainly because of the WSU game. As a fan Iām willing to dip on quality of opponent in exchange for someone unique or someone we donāt see often. WSU fits that mold perfectly. A lower P4ish (Can I call WSU that).
If I had to defend the UVa schedule vs. the Mizzu one is at least UVa kept the crappy games semi-regional. Iāll take an instate FCS vs. whatever Central Ark is to Columbia Mizzu (I may be off on that).
And this ^^^^^ definitely this ^^^^^^
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Iād rather win games than play good teams tbhā¦ If we donāt have NC State on the schedule in favor of a buy game we would have been in the at large conversation. Wouldnāt have gotten in, but weād have been in the graphics!
I donāt think the current set up really rewards scheduling tough. Take the wins. Gimme 12 UMass games.
Those Tennessee games didnāt do anyone any good.
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Arkansas and Missouri border each other. Itās close enough to be regional. I didnāt look too hard, only scanned the FCs standings, but the only FCS team I saw in Missouri is Southeast Missouri State.
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I know Ark and Missouri boarder each other. In my mind thereās a cultural and regional link between UVa and W&M plus theyāre what 4hrs apart? Compared to Central Ark and Mizzu where I donāt think students often consider going to one vs. the other or have a lot of family crossover. I imagine itās closer to UVA playing Coastal which I said was regional but in a very loose sense I guess.