Back-to-back for MarylandTwerp in Week 3

“Football games aren’t played on paper…they’re played inside television sets.” — Kenny Mayne

Okay, let’s play a game called “Be Honest With Yourself”. How many people out there actually believed that Pittsburgh – two-touchdown loser to 1-AA Youngstown State and 24-point loser to Cincinnati – would go out and not only beat Virginia Tech, but win by 18? How many people saw Stanford handing USC a fourth straight loss against them? Who foresaw Notre Dame, who’d just squeaked by Purdue at home last week, going up to East Lansing and handling Michigan State with relative ease? (Some of you, according to your picks, can raise your hands on one or more of these – good job!) Most people didn’t, and that’s why they play the games.

Any other SEC teams want to play Sun Belt teams this year? (Alabama against Florida Atlantic this week aside.) Louisiana-Monroe came this close to pulling off their second straight SEC overtime shocker against Auburn, Troy took Mississippi State down to the wire before succumbing 30-24, and Western Kentucky pulled off a Boise State-esque OT win against their in-state rivals in Kentucky. That leaves the Sun Belt with a 2-5 record against SEC schools this year, but given the nature of the above games the record doesn’t tell the whole story at all. Does this mean a down year for the SEC as a whole, or is parity in college football increasing?

With the season one-quarter of the way done for most teams, there are now enough games to yield some interesting statistics. For instance:

• Florida State currently has the stingiest defense in the country (at 103.33 yards per game, although that perhaps should be expected given the overall level of competition they have played). But guess who’s second? Would you believe Texas Tech? The Red Raiders, long considered an offense-oriented team, have given up 160.33 yards per game in their first three contests. Incidentally, Texas Tech hasn’t exactly slacked off on the offensive side of the ball either; they’re averaging 597.67 yards per game on offense, good for 6th nationally.
• Oklahoma State has the highest-scoring offense in the country (62.33 points per game), but is only 2-1 due to a loss to Arizona.
• Oregon State has the second-lowest scoring offense in the country (10 points per game), but thanks to a quirky schedule and a 10-7 win over Wisconsin, they’re currently undefeated at 1-0.
• Alabama and Mississippi State lead the nation in turnover margin, at +3.67 per game. They’ve each caused 12 turnovers and given up only one.
• Sixteen teams still have red zone efficiency ratings of 100% (defined as scoring points when a drive reaches the red zone). Oklahoma State has reached the red zone on drives 20 times this year. Oregon State, once.
• Texas hasn’t had to punt very much this year (5 times), but when they do, it’s generally successful – their net yards per punt is 49.4, almost half the field!
• The new kickoff rules were supposed to discourage returning so many kicks, right? Thirteen different teams have kick returns for touchdowns. New Mexico has two!
• Louisiana-Monroe has gone for it on fourth down eleven times this year in two games – and has converted nine of them. The only team to try more often on fourth down? Southern California, with 14 attempts – and they’ve made eight of them.

For the second week in a row, MarylandTwerp takes the week! This time, it was in a tie-breaker over JustWinAWeek (sorry…so close), both finishing with 217 points. BEVO finished third with 216 points.

The overall standings after three weeks (keep in mind, this is “drop two lowest weeks”)…

Four top-25 matchups are part of this week’s games, so accurate picking will be important! The first game this week is BYU at Boise State, Thursday, September 20 @ 9:00 PM ET, so make sure to get your picks in by then!

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Brandon German
e-Systems.net, Inc.