In a world full of spread offenses, it’s fun to see teams like Georgia Tech doing things “the old-fashioned way”. The Yellow Jackets’ triple-option offense has always put up huge numbers, and this past weekend against Tulane was no exception, as they rushed 56 times for 439 yards in a 65-10 win. Over the first two games of the year, they are averaging 457.5 yards rushing per game, the top mark in the country. Things stand to get a little more difficult for them this week, however, as they face Notre Dame in South Bend. The Irish have allowed less than 100 yards per game on the ground in their wins over Texas and Virginia.
Speaking of incredible offensive numbers, what Ole Miss has done over two games is literally unprecedented. The Rebels have scored 76 and 73 points in their first two games, marking the first time in school history that the team has scored more than 70 points in two straight games. Their 74.5 points per game easily leads the nation after two games. Again, it will be tougher sledding for them this week, as they take a trip to Tuscaloosa to take on Alabama’s defense. My guess is that they will not score 70+ against Alabama; the Crimson Tide has only allowed over 70 points in a game once in their history, a 78-0 loss to Vanderbilt in 1906.
Okay, that’s enough about offense for now – but we’ll get back to it shortly. How about good defensive performances? So far, there are three teams in the country that have allowed a single field goal over two games: Boston College, Illinois, and Kansas State. All three have been extremely impressive statistically defensively, but special mention goes to Boston College, which is currently giving up just 51 yards per game and seven rushing yards per game. However, their six opponents thus far have been Maine, Howard, Kent State, Western Illinois, South Dakota, and Texas-San Antonio respectively, so take those defensive figures with six grains of salt. Again, sometimes it’s really easy to look impressive in the college football non-conference season. Boston College plays Florida State this weekend, Illinois plays North Carolina, and Kansas State plays a Louisiana Tech team currently averaging 50 points per game, so we’ll see if these three defenses can remain as stingy as they have been to this point.
In “small-school” news…well, it’s not college football, but I feel I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention a certain Pennsylvania high school game that occurred this past Friday. DuBois played Meadville. DuBois’ quarterback, Matt Miller, threw for 741 yards in the game (with 10 touchdown passes). That’s a Pennsylvania high school record, and 23 yards short of the national record for passing yards in a game. DuBois scored 90 points. Oh, by the way…they lost. Because Meadville scored 107 points. That’s right; a regulation high school football game ended with a final score of 107-90. Meadville’s running back, Journey Brown, ran for 722 yards (also a Pennsylvania high school record, and 32 yards away from the national record in a game), and scored ten touchdowns of his own. The teams finished just shy of 2,000 combined offensive yards. The scoreboard at the end read 90-07 because it didn’t have room for a third digit. I think that the fans got their $5 worth of entertainment from that game, don’t you? Incidentally, this means that in the past calendar year, we’ve had a high school football game with 197 points, and a high school basketball game that ended with a final score of 2-0 (and it happened in Alabama!). You can’t make this stuff up, folks.
We now have a resolution of the issue of the first week’s LSU-McNeese State game. As we asked, everyone will be credited with a win and the points that they placed on the game, so now that this has been cleared up, the first week’s winner can be announced: JagAL! JagAL scored 297 points and won in a tie-breaker over JagRag (good week for Jags in picking games, right?) JG Bama and pachyderm were one point behind, with 296 points. In week two, our winner is Jeff4Bama, who scored 243 points! In second place, there was a tie between rdl4bama and verntroyer, each with 242 points. Congratulations to all of our weekly winners thus far!
This year, we are dropping each player’s lowest two weekly scores in determining the overall winner. Therefore, there won’t be overall standings until next week, when we’ll have three weeks of picks.
Week three sees a step up in competition for several teams, as the conference season kicks off for many. There are twenty games, including four matchups between top-25 teams, so the going gets tougher for them and for us! The first game is Clemson at Louisville, Thursday, September 17 @ 7:30 PM ET, so make sure to get your picks in by then!