9/20/2019 – Stop It!

Well now that the first three weeks are over let’s see how I did… Michigan wins but the fan base is still BPONEd* -checkish more on that later. Illinois lost eliminating a bunch of people, check. MSU… we’ll get to that. The #TeamChaos prediction was wrong for 2 reasons.. A. Ohio State changed which week they decided to get drunk and not show up just to spite me… and 2. We have a new #TeamChaos! So… Let’s get after it!

First, Michigan… (Bye Matt! See you in the next paragraph!). Now that half my audience is gone: Hi the one that isn’t Matt! Sorry you got eliminated last week… Anyway, Michigan: Dear seemingly everyone who has said, posted, or internet commented on Michigan over the last two weeks: Stop It! I’m supposed to be the pessimistic (realistic) fan that points out the flaws in early wins. You’re supposed to be the idiots who take a 70 point win over Rutgers as an instant ticket to Indy. Here’s the deal: Yes there are things to worry about… They’re probably not the things everyone is worrying about… The play calling got conservative and maybe even dumb at times but that was mostly after multiple turnovers against bad teams and an injured QB… I can especially understand this against MTSU since that game, while not impressive, was never a contest… Michigan only has a chance to lose if they turn the ball over 16 more times. Army is not relevant to any other football game on the schedule and should be ignored** FINE… Ok so yeah, we went back to a less creative version of last years offense… And yes, Shea had a couple of walk-to-the-sideline first downs if he had pulled the ball… But my assumption/hope is that the early f ups by Christian Turner that lead to the fumbles plus the fact that he was injured caused Patterson to 1. Not want to keep and risk another fumble/further injury to his oblique and B. Turn into John O’Korne and panic after 2.4 seconds even when the pocket is perfectly fine… Yes they’re things I’m worried about but I’ll talk about those in another post because this is getting too long… Also that way I can only include the things that turned out to be correct! For now, I’m optimistic.. Runyan is back and the O-Line should be excellent. Charbonnet looks great (I’m assuming surgery rumors are false). Wisconsin could be good… Hopefully we see some keeps from Patterson, some Arm Punts to Nico Collins, and some crazy Boston College Don Brown Defensive stuff… In summary: Shut up everyone else… Stop making me the hopeful optimist… it just feels weird…

Ok so that sections over…(Oh hey, Matt’s back!) So MSU… (There he goes again…) I mean… on the plus side the offense has gained many yards the last two weeks… On the other hand… One touchdown? Look, I get that probably should have been a penalty and you probably should have had a chip shot retry… but it’s hard to feel sorry for you when A. you score 1 TD on 400 yards. B. You get the benefit of a pretty bad PI call to keep you in the game. C. you can’t figure out if you want to run another play so you wait awhile and then instead of spiking it you run rush to get a field goal unit on and D. can’t count to 12. On the plus side, that’s not the dumbest sh*t that happened last Saturday…

So you all remember Pat Narduzzi? He was MSU’s Defensive coordinator from 2007-2014. For Michigan fans, he helped turn them from “LOLz John L Smith!” to “If they’re little brother then, like, we’re 45 and they’re 38 and they’ve been able to kick our ass for the last 10 years” Well… Pat Narduzzi is now the had coach at Pitt. And since Wisconsin doesn’t play Penn State this year, Pat Narduzzi thought: “Hey! without Paul Chryst in the way I’ve got a shot at the “Who’s gonna out-dumb James Franklin” award this year*** Well he definitely stepped up to claim that trophy… Pitt is down by 7 with 5 min to go. They have the ball first and goal on the 1 yard line. They throw the ball incomplete, run the ball for no gain, throw the ball incomplete again… I mean, not the plays I would have called but whatever… Now here’s the fun part… It’s 4th and goal on the 1. 4:54 left in the game and you’re down 7… Pat Narduzzi elects to kick a field goal… I’m going to pause and let you think about that for a moment… I’m going to pause some more and let you think about whether there is any possible decision that is dumber than this one… Let’s eliminate the correct decision first. GO FOR THE TD! You need 7 points.. That’s exactly 1 touchdown (with extra point). This is statistically the best chance you have at getting the 7 points you need to tie and later win the game. Even if you don’t score the defense gets the ball on their own 1 yard line. You’ve still got 4:40 left and a decent shot at a safety and/or the ball back with good field position and 2-3 min left in the game. Hell, statistically you are probably better off taking a knee than Making a field goal… 4:40 left, Down 7 opponent’s ball on their own 1 vs down 4 opponent’s ball on their own 25+? I’d take the former especially in a low scoring game. Idk… I guess maybe punting would have been dumber… Maybe James will try that next week. The best part is that Narduzzi (obviously) doubled down on this decision in his press conference… Go read that, it’s hilarious… The other best part is they missed the field goal anyway so… is there such thing as stupidity karma?

So Maryland is the new teamChaos… Actually it’s probably still Indiana but they’re chaoticism (trademark pending****) has reached power level 9000 and can temporarily infect other schools… Maryland put up, like a eleventy billion pointyards in weeks one and two and then couldn’t score on like six different 4th and goal possessions in the 4th quarter to beat Temple… I bet that girl who shotgunned a beer with her face could score on 4th and goal from the 1 yard line.

See you next week!

*BPONE is a term invented by MGOBLOG.COM which stands for The Black Pit of Negative Expectations. This is me citing them so it’s not plagiarism.

**Except… you need 2 yards for a first down and the CBs are giving Nico Collins AND Tarik Black 10 yards of cushion??? I mean… you’re punter is smart enough to make this check and call and audible… wtf are you doing?

***If you’re new here or haven’t been keeping up: James Franklin is the head coach at Penn State. Paul Chryst is the head coach at Wisconsin. Over the last 2-3 years they’ve demonstrated the ability to have very talented and highly successful programs despite making some of the dumbest decisions in college football.

**** Shut Up! I’ve got a better shot than AN Ohio State