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Thursday November 13th, 2008
10:33pmAg Football Preview: Baylor
Guy "Hyperbole" Morriss is gone, which is a shame. I really couldn't stand that guy and I loved beating him. It's kind of weird having Baylor come up on the schedule and not hear him spouting off years later about how badly they kicked our ass in '04.
In his place is former University of Houston head coach, Art Briles. I promise he looks a little scarier with a hat and sunglasses. That ferocious paw makes anyone look a bit silly.
BU Offense A&M Defense =========== =========== 185 (30) Rushing 215 (112) 184 (92) Passing 235 (87) 369 (57) Total 450 (109) 26.7 (54) Scoring 35.9 (109)
With Briles comes a potent offensive attack and a true freshman QB commit who followed him from Cullen Blvd. That true freshman, Robert Griffin, is likely going to be the Big 12 Freshman of the Year. The 6'3", 200 lb kid from Copperas Cove is the team's leading passer and rusher. He has 143 carries for 688 yards and 11 TDs (avg of 69 ypg) and he has completed 59% of his passes (135/229) with 12 TDs and only 2 INTs. He is 7th overall in the conference in rushing but 11th in passing. Essentially, he is a freak of an athlete and is at QB because it guarantees that he will touch the ball on every snap. The Bears have scored 36 TDs on the season and he has accounted for 23 of them.
Besides Griffin, Jay Finley is second in rushing with 111 carries and 6 TDs on the season (5.8 ypc/64 ypg). Their #1 go-to-guy through the air is another true freshman, Kendall Wright, who's 43 receptions are 15 more than the next player. Wright also has a team high of 4 TDs. His bio says that he "Selected Baylor over Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Arkansas and Clemson". That kind of sounds like a half-truth. Their number two receiver, Thomas White, is a walk-on.
A&M Offense BU Defense =========== =========== 102 (108) Rushing 154 (75) 252 (26) Passing 251 (102) 354 (69) Total 405 (96) 27.0 (50) Scoring 29.6 (90)Defensively the Bears are led by linebacker Joe Pawelek (Jr/114 tkl/4 INT/6 PBU/1 FF/2 FR) and safety Jordan Lake (Jr/86/2/6/2/0). Other than that, you can look at those numbers and tell that this isn't a very salty D.
This season Baylor is 3-7 overall and 1-5 in Big 12 play. Their victories are over Washington State, Northwestern State, and Iowa State. According to Sagarin Rankings, Washington State and Iowa State are the two worst teams that play for BCS conferences and Northwestern State is a 1-AA school.
All that said, for the first time since I've been following Aggie football, there is a part of me that is telling me, "It would not be unreasonable for us to lose this game." We open as a 7 point underdog. To Baylor.
In 2004 we were completely blindsided by the loss. Crap, that was our only loss to a team that wasn't EXCELLENT (OU, Utah, & t.u. finished #3, #4, & #5 in the final AP Poll and Tennessee was #13). Even in 2005, when we were atrocious, we were 2-1 at the time we squared off with them (with our loss being a 1 point, last second FG, on the road at Death Valley) and we didn't know how bad we actually were. We won 16-13 in OT at Kyle Field.
This year it should actually be a good game. And because of that, Ags across the state will feel like it's a bad game.
Simply, we have to contain Griffin or else we're going to lose.
Trent Hunter left early in the OU game and is most likely going to miss this week's game with a high ankle sprain.
I didn't quite realize it at the time but Terrence McCoy didn't play last Saturday either, which meant that two of our starting WRs were out. That could explain why JJ had such a rough day with Tannehill and Jamie McCoy getting the entire focus of the Sooner's defense, and why Pierre Brown and Howard Morrow each had a career high in receptions. Hopefully, Fuller will be back from his quad injury and McCoy's foot has healed up. We're going to need to take advantage of their lack of pass defense.
I will be making it up to Waco for my third trip in the last 4 chances. My brother Sean and my good friend Michael will be joining me. The odds are pretty good that we'll be stopping in College Station for some Wing'N'More for lunch on the way up.
One of the things I remember from my last trip to Waco (besides Mike Goodson's breakout run, Tellus going all Superman on the Bears, and the horrific Jack in the Box) was that when they were on defense on third down their loudspeaker system continued to play well after we were at the line of scrimmage and a couple of times it was still going even after we snapped the ball. That irritates the crap out of me. Awww, we didn't get enough of our own fans in here so we're going to just bend the rules to see if that'll compensate for it.
Maybe since Morriss is gone all the jackassery will be over.
We'll find out on Saturday!
Gig'em & BTHO Baylor! WHOOP!
Sunday November 9th, 2008
12:01amSooners Roll Ags, 66-28
That got ugly quickly. OU started the game with a 4 play 90 yard drive and went up 28-0 by the beginning of the second quarter.
We brought the score back to 28-14 with just over 5 minutes to play in the half and I kind of thought, "Hey if we can get out of the half down by 2 TDs we are going to start with the ball in the second half and we'll still be in the ballgame." OU answered our second TD with their 5th and tacked on a FG just before the half.
OU's 66 points was the most points we've ever given up at Kyle Field and the 5th home loss is a school record. It was the second most points we've ever allowed (behind the '03 OU game). I really think that they could have easily scored 100 points on us if they wanted to, however, this game was no way even remotely close to that '03 game.
Sam Bradford was great completing 22-of-33 for 320 yards and 4 TDs. The Sooners had 653 yards of total offense and were extremely balanced (325 passing & 328 rushing).
The running backs were both great as well. Chris Brown ran for 117 yards and 3 TDs while DeMarco Murray ran for 124 yards (on only 7 carries - 17.6 ypc) and had a 63 more yards on 7 receptions, including a TD.
The Sooners started with the ball at their own 40 yard line or better 8 times, not including their fumble recovery with a couple of seconds left in the game. You flat out cannot give an offense that is that good such a short field to play with.
Jerrod Johnson had his worst start of the season and threw two interceptions before being replaced by senior Stephen McGee in the middle of the third quarter. His streak ended at 213 passing attempts between INTs, which tied the Big 12 record (with Reggie and Todd Reesing) Before that happened, however, JJ tied the school record for passing TDs in a season (with 19) and for total TDs in a season (22) both held by Reggie in 2004.
With Jeff Fuller absent with a leg injury, Howard Morrow had a career day with 6 receptions for 78 yards and Pierre Brown tacked on 5 receptions for 49 yards. Tannehill had 83 yards on 4 receptions to bump his season total to 746, only 139 yards shy of Robert Ferguson's school record of 885 receiving yards in a season.
Cyrus Gray ran a kick-off back 97 yards for a TD. I couldn't think of another KO return for a TD since I started school but later was reminded of Kerry Frank's return in '06 against tech. In the last 2 or 3 games, Cyrus has started to look much more comfortable with the ball in his hands and we're starting to see flashes of what is to come.
The two big exciting plays of the game were of no significance to the score. There was one play where McGee started to scramble towards the left sideline and J-Train completely decleated the OU defender who was chasing McGee. It was vicious. The other play was in the 4th quarter where Mike Bennett crushed the tailback as he flew at him like a bullet. They'll both probably make some highlight reel someday down the line.
Sean pulled us some incredible seats on row 2 right at the north 35 yard line. After OU scored their TD that put them over 40 points the people in front of us left and we moved down to row 1. I've been to 57 games at Kyle Field, every single one of them in the student section, and that was the first time I've ever stepped foot on row 1. It was kind of weird. It almost seemed as we were floating, because we were cantilevered over the crowd below us and there wasn't anyone else's head below our line of vision. When Gray scored on his kick-off return I could actually feel Kyle Field shaking, which was cool and concerning at the same time.
We've got two games left and in order to make it three we've got to win both of them. We're up in Waco next weekend for a 3pm kick-off in what has all of a sudden become an important game for us. That really hurts me to say that.