After the chaos of last week, you could forgive college football for regressing to the norm to a degree. And in our game, no major upsets meant no big point swings. But it’s extremely unusual to have multiple perfect pickers in a week, much less seven.\u00a0 In the time that I’ve kept statistics on the game (since 2009), week 4 in 2013 (in which there were a mind-boggling 14 perfect pickers) eclipses this week’s performance. The group as a whole picked 92.4% of the games correctly, and scored 97.4% of the possible points, both season-highs, and the best for the group as a whole in both categories since 2014’s week 1.\u00a0 Great job, everyone!<\/p>\n
It’s time we talk about Khalil Tate. The Arizona quarterback rushed seventeen times for 137 yards and a touchdown this week in a 45-44 overtime victory over California. Sounds like a good week, right? What if I told you that in the last three weeks, that’s his lowest-output performance? Tate, who was the backup and didn’t even play in the last two games in September for the Wildcats, burst onto the scene with a 14-carry, 327-yard, 4-touchdown game against Colorado after entering the game in the second offensive series after the starter was hurt. The 327 yards rushing is a new FBS record for rushing yards by a quarterback in a game. He followed that up with a win over UCLA in which he carried fifteen times for 230 yards and two touchdowns. Counting time in mop-up duty in the first couple of games, Tate’s 718 yards rushing puts him fourth in the country in rushing yards for a quarterback – behind two triple-option quarterbacks and Louisville’s Lamar Jackson, all of whom have played in at least seven games. It seems safe to say Tate’s not giving up that starting job anytime soon for the now 5-2 Wildcats.<\/p>\n
What TCU did defensively this past week borders on incomprehensible. In a 43-0 win over Kansas, the Horned Frogs turned in a defensive performance for the ages. Kansas was held to twenty-one total yards of offense. They had -25 yards rushing on thirty-one attempts. Kansas quarterbacks completed eight of eighteen passes for 46 yards. Five TCU offensive players had a single play gain more yards than Kansas picked up all game. TCU limited the Jayhawks to three yards of total offense in the first half, and -6 yards through three quarters. Kansas never had a drive of more than 17 yards – and that was their final drive of the game. It was the fewest yards allowed to an FBS opponent in a game in the past twenty seasons.<\/p>\n
North Carolina State’s season is about to be defined. Coming off of a bye, the Wolfpack stand at 6-1, with only an opening-game loss against South Carolina blemishing their schedule. They’ve knocked off Florida State and Louisville, but the next two games will determine if Dave Doeren’s squad becomes a dark-horse playoff candidate or not. It starts this weekend with a big road test at Notre Dame, also 6-1 and fresh off their biggest win over USC since 1966. After that, NC State comes home and face once-beaten Clemson in a game that has all appearances of deciding the ACC’s Atlantic Division. If the Wolfpack can beat the Tigers in the “Textile Bowl”, they have a great chance of playing for their first ACC Championship since 1979…<\/p>\n
In small-school news, maybe Montana State University – Northern shouldn’t play Montana Tech again for a while. In the second matchup between the teams this year, the Montana Tech Orediggers set new school records by gaining 932 yards of total offense and 93 points in a 93-19 win over the Lights (Northern Lights – get it?). The Orediggers raced out to a 66-0 lead at the half, gained 519 yards on the ground and 413 through the air, and scored on their first play of a drive three times. I mentioned that this was the second time the teams had played this year. The result of the first game? 70-20 Orediggers, which marked the old single-game scoring record by Montana Tech in a game. Like I was saying, if your last two games against a team result in them setting new school records for scoring, maybe it’s time to take a break…<\/p>\n
As I mentioned before, we had seven perfect pickers this week with 153 points, so it fell to the tie-breaker to decide the winner, and so Bamarock<\/strong> takes week 8! This is Bamarock<\/strong>‘s second weekly win! The other six perfect weeks were scored by Paul Herron<\/strong>, G8rBamaLvr<\/strong>, Ralphie<\/strong>, Jeff4Bama<\/strong>, Crimson Gator<\/strong>, and pachyderm<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Standings after eight weeks:<\/p>\n Twenty big games comprise our slate this week, as conference races heat up and potential national playoff berths are at stake. The first game this weekend is Stanford at Oregon State, Thursday, October 23rd<\/sup> @ 9 PM ET<\/strong>, so make sure to\u00a0 get your picks in by then!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After the chaos of last week, you could forgive college football for regressing to the norm to a degree. And in our game, no major upsets meant no big point swings. But it’s extremely unusual to have multiple perfect pickers in a week, much less seven.\u00a0 In the time that I’ve kept statistics on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":380,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions\/380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n\n
\n 1st<\/sup><\/td>\n Bamarock <\/strong><\/td>\n 1618<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 2nd<\/sup><\/td>\n Paul Herron <\/strong><\/td>\n 1617<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 3rd<\/sup><\/td>\n AllySun <\/strong><\/td>\n 1611<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n T-4th<\/sup><\/td>\n Ralphie <\/strong><\/td>\n 1609<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n T-4th<\/sup><\/td>\n AUBrian <\/strong><\/td>\n 1609<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n T-4th<\/sup><\/td>\n JagRag <\/strong><\/td>\n 1609<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 7th<\/sup><\/td>\n Crimson Gator <\/strong><\/td>\n 1608<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 8th<\/sup><\/td>\n JagAL <\/strong><\/td>\n 1606<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 9th<\/sup><\/td>\n pachyderm <\/strong><\/td>\n 1595<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 10th<\/sup><\/td>\n Jeff4Bama <\/strong><\/td>\n 1594<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n