Andy & Ari On3 - Coach Prime and Colorado survive double OT | Florida SWAMPS Tennessee | Alabama can't find a QB

Episode Date: September 17, 2023

Coach Prime and Colorado survive double OT | Florida SWAMPS Tennessee | Alabama can't find a QBSubscribe to On3! ⬇️ youtube.com/on3sports/Welcome to On3 | The best of college football and recruiting https://www.on3.com/Listen to Andy Staples On3 on podcast! Spotify 🎧 : https://open.spotify.com/show/5AhQ4d2m5TQu5Q2vkwtxjt?si=uLK1rMW7QOmLHcZK9URbOwApple🍎: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/andy-staples-on3/id1695325427Follow Andy Staples on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Andy_StaplesFollow Andy Staples on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andy_staplesFollow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/on3sportsFollow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/on3/?hl=en Like/Follow us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/On3Sports/ Shop On3 https://shop.outsider.com/Colorado trailed by as many as 11 in the fourth quarter, but the Buffaloes kicked a field goal and then drove 98 yards for a touchdown (with two-point conversion to tie).A weekend that featured Lil' Wayne and The Rock ended with a crazy game that no one saw coming.Plus, Andy discusses some of the other night games. Texas was tied with Wyoming in the fourth quarter and then exploded for three quick TDs. Plus, Neal Brown got a win he absolutely needed when West Virginia beat Pittsburgh in the Backyard Brawl.Andy and Zach Abolverdi of Florida notched the biggest win of the Billy Napier era with a 29-16 victory against Tennessee. The Gators ran the ball effectively and QB Graham Mertz completed 19 of 24 passes. Meanwhile, Tennessee struggled to block Florida's defensive front and the Volunteers had the second-lowest scoring output of the Josh Heupel era. Alabama beat USF, but that won't make anyone feel any better about the Crimson Tide's future this season after watching Tyler Buchner and then Ty Simpson attempt to play quarterback.How did Alabama's QB situation get this bad after an epic run of QBs? Can it get better with SEC play starting next week?Meanwhile, Georgia looked anything but invincible against South Carolina. The Bulldogs fell behind early and didn't take control until the second half. Is Georgia's going to start this slowly in every game? (Because that seems to be the pattern.)One team that should feel pretty good after Saturday is North Carolina, which bounced back from barely surviving Appalachian State with a 31-13 win against Minnesota. The Tar Heels will head into ACC play undefeated and confident.Missouri kicker Harrison Mevis drilled an SEC-record 61-yard field goal to help Missouri to a walk-off win against Kansas State. The kick erased one of the worst coaching decisions you'll ever see.LSU thoroughly dominated Mississippi State in Starkville behind a historically good day from QB Jayden Daniels.Boston College gave Florida State all it can handle in the Red Bandana game honoring Welles Crowther, but the Seminoles remained undefeated ahead of a trip to Clemson next week.Penn State looked sluggish early but ultimately pulled away from Illinois.

Hey, it's Andy, and welcome to your Sunday morning show. Hopefully, everybody's making some breakfast. I'm thinking some bacon. You know, eggs Benedict today. I don't know. I'm not feeling the hollandaise. Maybe we just go some pancakes or some waffles. Whatever you choose, however you choose to enjoy this show,

there's so much to talk about. We went live four times on Saturday because you had a crazy walk-off in the first window. You had the Alabama quarterback situation and Georgia looking very mortal in window number two. You then had Florida and Tennessee playing a game that the Swamp was in all its majesty. And it was a pretty surprising result. And at the end of the night, Colorado and Colorado State,

a game that we figured would not live up to the pregame hype that included The Rock and Lil Wayne and Big Noon Kickoff and College Game Day and Lee Corso putting on his 400th mascot hit. We didn't think the game itself would live up to it. Oh, but it absolutely did. So we'll start there and we'll work back. Colorado and Colorado State. We didn't think the game was going to be much. Oh no.

Double overtime classic. Let's talk about it. Welcome to Andy Staples on three. It is your instant reaction, and this reaction took a while because it is 30 in the morning Eastern time. We just watched Colorado and Colorado State in double overtime. Colorado survives. The Buffaloes were down as many as 11. They kick a field goal to get within eight.

They then have to go 98 yards and get a two-point conversion to force overtime, which they do. It was incredible. It was a game where they were pretty thoroughly dominated early on. Their offense was shut down. Travis Hunter had to go to the hospital after a cheap shot hit he got thrown a pass got clobbered they he came back in the game but then ended up at the hospital so uh it was just an absolutely wild night and it started this whole weekend was was just a celebration of Deion Sanders in Colorado and Coach Prime and the whole.

All of the other stuff, the sunglasses, the rock, Lil Wayne. It was all of that stuff. And then once the game started, it was like, oh, we maybe didn't take Colorado State very seriously. And Colorado State kept control in the Colorado State kept controlling the game and controlling the game. It was 21-14 going into the fourth quarter, and then Colorado State scores again. They make it 28-17, and you think, okay, they're not going to make it out of this.

Colorado is going to find a way to lose this because they couldn't get anything going really. I don't know if it was not having Travis Hunter. Cause obviously that's that you're losing your best defensive player and one of your best offensive players. And it was crazy. James Jamison jr. In the chat,

Colorado state DC calls were late, late were ridiculous. And the difference in my mind, I, there were a few things. It felt like there was a fourth down in the fourth quarter that if they had gone for and gotten it, they would have won the game. It was – a lot had to happen for this to happen. Michael Harrison, the tight end, they just – I mean, they forgot about him.

He caught the two-point conversion. He then caught two more touchdown passes. It was, it was amazing. And, you know, Colorado, I will say tackled better as the game went on. Basically Jay Norvell, the Colorado state coach and Matt mummy, their OC were really happy to take the shallow crosses and just let the receivers run. And Colorado's tacklers were not that great a lot of the time, and so they were getting a lot out of that. Also, Colorado State's defensive line was controlling things. It really was Shador Sanders there at the end just hanging in

and delivering while getting clobbered a couple of times that really won the game for Colorado. They were out of it, and he was not having the best night. So I think it was pretty amazing that they could come back like this. They're going to have, you know, every team has a clunker. And we saw that on Saturday. We saw Florida State have a clunker where they ended up winning at Boston College. And it's one of those that if they'd lost, it would have been a disaster. But if they go and beat Clemson next week, then, oh, well, it was a bad game, but they still won.

And Colorado, same thing. This felt like a bad game, but they still won. And Colorado, same thing. This felt like a trap game. It's a look ahead to Oregon. College game day was there. Big noon Saturday was there. So what happened was, and the reason Colorado was the epicenter of the college football world

at the beginning of Saturday was because there weren't a lot of marquee matchups, you know, Florida, Tennessee might've been that, except Florida had lost to Utah, but there weren't, you know, Georgia, South Carolina, wasn't going to be that after North Carolina beat South Carolina. There weren't those. So it was a chance for, for everybody to go pay their respects to Deion, to engage and enjoy the spectacle that is Deion Sanders Colorado.

And then they can all go to Notre Dame and Ohio State next week. That game's in South Bend. It's Ohio State. It's Notre Dame. It's two of the biggest brands. So that way they don't have to go to Colorado, Oregon, and Eugene next week. Also, there's the fear that once Colorado has to play a team as talented as Oregon, that it all falls apart.

I don't necessarily think that's what would happen. I think Colorado will probably play a lot better next week than they played this week. That might not result in a win, but I think they were definitely looking ahead to Oregon and also enjoying all the trappings of this past weekend. SPTO in the chat, it'll be interesting to see how close Colorado can keep it against Oregon. If Oregon plays like they should, it could get a little ugly. It could, but I'm not sure that's how it's going to go. Because Colorado players are going to be much more up for this game.

They're going to be ready to play. They were not ready to play Saturday night. They got punched in the mouth, and it took them quite some time to get back. And it's a credit to them that they did because especially after Travis Hunter went out, they could have said, you know what? It's not our night. We're done. We're not going to make it. We're not going to win this game. Oh, well, we had fun this weekend. Lil Wayne was in town, but they didn't do it. They won. They got through through it and this will be one that at the end of the season they'll look back on and say hey we persevered through that one we won it's it was

not pretty but the crowd stormed the field at the end of the game one in double overtime is very exciting so Deion delivered again I don't think he wanted to deliver in this way, but he absolutely delivered. T-Boomer, they should drop from 18. Okay. Who are we going to put in there? So I've been thinking about this. I've got to do that resume ranking. Remember I did that last week for the Dear Andy show. We're adding that to the Sunday night show from now on. And by the way, if you like these instant reaction shows, we do this all week. We are all over these YouTubes. So Sunday night through Thursday night,

8 p.m. Eastern time on the On3Sports YouTube channel. But it's also on demand anytime you want it after that. Also on every podcast platform. So you can have me any way you want me and we'll be there for you. But so I've got to do this resume ranking thing. And it's basically we rank based only on what the teams have done this year.

No preseason speculation allowed. Just who have you beaten? Who have those teams beaten, and my God, is it going to be hard. Because last week I had Texas number one because they went into Tuscaloosa and beat Alabama. But Alabama on Saturday looked awful. Alabama's quarterback situation

is so much worse than we thought. We thought it was bad watching the spring game, but we figured they'll figure it out. They did not. It was ugly at USF, but they won. Colorado, ugly against Colorado State, but they won. And TCU, the team that Colorado beat in week one, got its first Big 12 win.

They welcomed Houston to the Big 12 by clobbering Houston in the Big 12. And so it's going to be an almost impossible task. I did a top five last week. I was thinking about doing a top 10 this week. I'm going to try to get out of it, but I don't think I can. I don't think it's possible. I promised everybody, and I'm going to try to get out of it, but I don't think I can. I don't think it's possible. I promise everybody, and I'm going to get it. So Hilton Carroll, that was the best game of the season so far.

Wow. It is amazing how the stars have aligned seemingly for Deion, and it's not an accident completely. Obviously, the Fox situation, they've got the Pac-12 contract. They knew Deion was going to be a big draw. So they went with him week one. They went with him week two because they were playing Nebraska, which has a new coach and everybody was excited. And Nebraska is a big draw too. This one was different. This one was everybody coming in and saying, okay, we're riding the Colorado train until it stops. And it almost stopped during the game.

It's interesting because I wonder how many people watched college game day or big noon kickoff and said, well, too bad. I'm not going to watch the game tonight because I'll be asleep. I'm looking at the numbers right now. You're a bunch of you are awake. And based on who I was talking to on Twitter, a bunch of you are awake. And that was a wild game. I really wish Mark Jones and Louis Riddick

had helped us out a little bit in that game because Colorado did this very weird thing that will, I guess, probably Dion will be explaining it in his press conference. And we'll break that down. We always break down all the press conferences on the Sunday night show. So Sunday, 8 p.m. Eastern time on the On3Sports YouTube channel. But it sounded, at least at first, because they turned the referee's mic down while they were in the middle of discussing what was going to happen in overtime and i don't know i don't know why they

did that but it sounded like shadur sanders asked for a certain side of the field after winning a toss which so that is your options if you win the toss in overtime are you can play offense you can play defense or you can choose which side of the field you'd like to defend. And so they chose side of field, which meant that Colorado State chose defense because everybody chooses defense. The only people who don't choose defense, who choose offense, Houston did it last year. They did it because they'd done a study and they couldn't figure out that if there was any sort of actual advantage to playing defense first, everybody just plays defense first because you think, okay, we know what we have to do when we get the ball. But what this did by picking a side and picking a side actually is an interesting one, depending on the stadium you're in. Like

for example, Penn state at home playing in overtime, picking a side might be advantageous because if you send the opponent into the student section, which fills an entire end zone, that's a very difficult place to play. That's a much more difficult side of the field to play on. And it might be worth not knowing what you've got to do when you have the ball. It might be worth it to force their offense to play into the student section. Colorado, Folsom Field doesn't feel that way. You've got the one end zone that has the berm there. But I'm not sure what the choice.

So they didn't, Hilton Carroll says they're both choosing offense first. As my old coworker, Stuart Mandell, corrected me, they didn't choose offense first. They chose side of field. And I remember when Stuart mentioned that on Twitter, I remembered Shadur saying that. He chose the side of the field. And so what happened was Colorado had the ball first in overtime number one.

Colorado State then got choice of offense, defense, or side of field and chose to play defense first, which gave Colorado the ball first again in overtime number two. So there's the explanation for it. But we didn't get that from the broadcast we also didn't get a great broadcast explanation of a penalty against colorado state on its last possession i believe it was an illegal blindside block that they called it looked like they were trying to call offensive pass interference for a pick play except it was supposed to be a pick, but they didn't run it as a pick play because they never threw. Quarterback scrambled, but they ended up calling an illegal blindside block. So

it was a little bit confusing there at the end of the game, but holy crap, what drama. When the punter, okay, well, first of all, Colorado's kicker is 31 and married, I mean, Colorado State, excuse me, Colorado Colorado's kicker is 31 and married, I mean, Colorado State, excuse me. Colorado State's kicker is 31 married with three kids. That's astounding. I don't know how you would do all that. We didn't even go to three. We stopped at two.

And I can imagine when I was 31, we didn't have, I don't think we had two yet when I was 31, but when I was 32 and we had two, I would have been struggling trying to kick footballs and do all this stuff. So you had that, you have their Aussie punter who kicks these worm burners, but they're perfect. Like the punt to pin Colorado on the two yard line was amazing because it's rolling. It's rolling. And you're like, oh, I think they can get to that and down it before it gets to the end zone. But then it takes a right turn and goes over the sideline. And you're like, Colorado has been struggling offensively all night. They're not possibly going to go 98 yards. They went 98 yards.

And then they got a two-point conversion. It was so good. It was absolutely phenomenal drama. And it's funny because at some point there will be a day, a game, a situation where we are not so thoroughly entertained by Dion's team but that hasn't happened yet it's like they get more entertaining as they go like I can't even wait for the press conferences and this particular situation where you had Jay Norvell and I I still I'm not going to say even calling out Deion.

Jay Norvell was on his coach's show playing to his crowd, and he made a funny where he said, my mom taught me to take my hat off and take my glasses off when I talk to grown folks. And of course, Deion hits on that. He made it personal. Dion gave a pair of sunglasses to pretty much everybody in Boulder, Colorado over the weekend, and by the way, those sunglasses are for sale, and actually, let's talk about this. Blenders doesn't sponsor this show, but I've been wearing blenders for a couple years now. I got a whole bucket of blenders because they're great. They're not very expensive, high quality. Those are the sunglasses he's wearing.

I went to their website and they had the prime sunglasses like front and center. They were everywhere. So blenders, if you'd like to sponsor this show, I ain't hard to find, just like Dion. But all of that probably did distract everybody I mean they had a Lil Wayne concert at Deion's vibing out Saturday morning all of that had to be a distraction for sure and they probably thought they'd just walk through this game because you know if you watch the Colorado State Washington State game Colorado State-Washington State game, Colorado State didn't look very good, but they had a bye week. They had an extra week to prepare for this

while Colorado was playing Nebraska, and they came out ready. They had a great offensive plan. They had a very good defensive plan. It's unfortunate that that hit, which looked like a dirty hit, knocked Travis Hunter out of the game. I would have liked to have seen this in full strength. But it's going to be something. The Oregon game, I know everybody's assuming Oregon's going to smoke them. I'm not assuming that. I can't assume that now.

I think they were distracted this week. This was the look ahead. I look at it very, I mentioned earlier, I look at it very much like I look at the Florida State situation on Saturday, where you had a game away in conference, and it was the red bandana game at Boston College, where Boston College's team always plays very hard and very well in the red bandana game and then Clemson's next week for Colorado you have everybody there it's a complete zoo Friday and Saturday Colorado State is highly motivated they want to they know this is their only chance probably all year to be in the spotlight. And they were going to take advantage of that. Oregon is a different animal. Oregon is the team that is supposed to smoke Colorado. Oregon's the team that remember when Colorado went to the big

12, Dan Lanning, the Oregon coach said, well, I don't remember them winning much of anything in the PAC 12. And it was an offhand. We laughed and we're like, it doesn't matter because it's going to be like 50 point game. I don't know about that now. I don't know about that because they will prepare differently for this one than they prepared for Colorado State. I don't think they're going to let it be a zoo. First of all, the game's in Eugene, but my guess is it'll be different. Mark, so are you making excuses for the buff? No, you're not supposed to get distracted.

It's a bad thing. You're supposed to handle your business. They got distracted, but they also won the game. And that matters too. It helps if you win the game. So I don't, I don't think they're going to come out and lay an egg against Oregon. I think there'll be a little better prepared, but I, if they don't have Travis Hunter, that's a huge loss. So we'll find out what happens there, but what a game, what a weekend. And we got to talk about some other games, by the way, that we haven't been able to even get to today.

Let's talk about the backyard brawl. Backyard brawl. West Virginia 17, Pitt 6. This is a game that Neil Brown needed badly. It wasn't going to work for Neil Brown if they didn't win this game. It was going to get ugly, and he still may get fired. Look, it's not going to be easy.

It's certainly not going to be easy in the new Big 12, but they have a chance now to put together a season that certainly not going to be easy in the new Big 12, but they have a chance now to put together a season that might be able to save his job. So we'll see what happens. But that was a just wild and ugly game. Offense was pretty limited. West Virginia finally breaks in the end zone basically because they fumbled the ball in the red zone when they were going in. Pitt throws a pick almost immediately, and West Virginia punches it in. The stats from this game are hideous. Phil Zirkovic for Pittsburgh, 8 of 20 for 81 yards.

This is the last two Pittsburgh quarterbacks. And remember, they had Kenny Pickett, first round draft pick. Great offense. They win the ACC with Kenny Pickett. And Pat Narduzzi kind of got scared of how Kenny Pickett was used by Mark Whipple, the OC at the time. Because they were just, they were throwing it all over the place. And Pat's a defensive guy, and he didn't necessarily want to play that way where you're playing high-scoring games.

You're just choosing to play high-scoring games. So they tried to do it differently the past two years, and it's not worked out. Keaton Slovis was there last year. He looked great for BYU against Arkansas tonight. He didn't look like that at Pitt. And Phil Zerkovic, who had the COVID year at Boston College, he was all right. It didn't go so well for him at Boston College the rest of the way.

And he just, I don't know that that's going to work out at Pitt for him. So they may have to figure something else out. Meanwhile, West Virginia threw the ball 11 times. Nico Marchio, six of nine for 60 yards in a TD. The rest of it was on the ground. CJ Donaldson. Like that is ugly, ugly, ugly, but it's a win. And here's what happened in the locker room after the game. 2011 that our state, our fan base, all right, has experienced it. And I told you. Probably some other stuff going on in Morgantown too but a big win for them I mentioned BYU Arkansas big win for the Cougars this was a back and forth game

BYU took a lead Arkansas tied it they kept going high scoring affair 38-31 BYU wins that was another fun one. Tennessee, Florida, and Colorado, Colorado State kind of sucked all the air out of everything else. And we mentioned earlier that TCU played Houston in Houston's first Big 12 game. That game was close for a little while, and TCU blew it open and won 36-13. Another one that was very close. I haven't gotten a chance to talk about Texas and Wyoming. Remember Wyoming beat Texas Tech in week one?

Texas comes off that Alabama win. They're riding high. They look great. They didn't look great for most of that game against Wyoming. It was 10-10 in the fourth quarter. And then Texas hit the gas. Three quick touchdowns. Suddenly it's a 31-10 game. That was a wake-up call, I think, for the Longhorns. Very similar to the one we're talking about with Colorado, where if you can say,

hey, we did not play our best. We did not handle the prep for this game as well as we could have. But we did win. We actually won going away. And that's okay. So it's going to be a wild season, everybody. That's the takeaway, I think, from all of this. Is that, and we should remember this more often, but it feels even more poignant this season. Because it feels like the talent is distributed

more evenly than it has been. What we saw week one does not dictate what we see in week three and won't dictate what we see down the road. These guys are young, they're evolving, and their teams and performances will change over the season. And so we don't know who the best teams in the country are. I'm going to do this resume ranking on Sunday night. It's going to be ugly. It's not going to look anything like it's going to look in about four weeks probably.

But that's part of the fun. And I'm telling you, this is setting up for a lot of fun because we don't know all the answers yet. And that's the best part. Colorado wasn't supposed to have any trouble with Colorado State. They had a lot of trouble. They played a classic. Colorado isn't supposed to be any trouble with Colorado State. They had a lot of trouble. They played a classic. Colorado isn't supposed to be able to beat Oregon next week.

That doesn't mean they won't. Florida wasn't supposed to beat Tennessee on Saturday. They did. There are no dud weekends in college football. Remember I told you all week last week. This isn't any stinker of a weekend. there are no dud weekends in college football. Remember I told you all week last week, this isn't any stinker of a weekend. This is going to be fun.

And sure was. I was home to watch the end of the Colorado-Colorado State game. But I was at a game on Saturday. I was at the Florida-Tennessee game, and it sounded like some of those Florida-Tennessee games of old, even if these two particular teams may not be national title contenders. The Swamp was absolutely rocking, and this game was not at all what we expected. was a possibility that that Florida would win we thought

going into the game but it had to happen a certain way there needed to be a certain set of circumstances that's not the case at all Florida played probably its best game under Billy Napier and so Zach Albaverde from Gators Online and I discussed how that went down and just how big a win it is for the Gators and how tough a loss it is again for Tennessee, which still has not won in Gainesville since 2003. And this is not the result that I think everybody – I think Florida winning this game against Tennessee, I don't know that would have surprised that many people.

But the way Florida won it, where they jumped all over Tennessee and then kind of hung on and really dominated defensively. Yeah, it was not, I think, the result people expected. If Florida pulled this out, maybe it was going to be a one-point game or one-score game. Or Tennessee would have a ton of turnovers or mistakes or something like that. Yeah, no, it wasn't. And honestly, man, they got some momentum in the second half.

Billy said he kind of played conservatively before it did enough. You know, they dominated the ground game. They dominated time of possession. They got their first turnover of the season. All things that they had to do to win this game, and they did it. Yeah, because I kept going to the game saying, if Joe Milton's spraying it all over the place and he's not having a good game. And he had one of those, uh-oh, oh, oh god what are you doing throws they throws up this all but now

he was he had 600 pounds of humans on top of him when he did it that so Florida pretty much created that play but that wasn't really the story of the first half they did cash that in but they also had three touchdown drives that they just did themselves yeah they did and they also took a punch from Tennessee early in the game. I mean, they went right down the field, and you went, uh-oh. Oh, Rommel catches that touchdown pass. He does the go-to-sleep thing in the stands, and you're like, oh, maybe they will. Maybe they will go to – they did not. This was as loud as I've heard the Swamp in a long time.

It was loud for Utah last year. But really, you've got to go back to kind of some of those other Tennessee games where yeah the the Will Greer to Antonio Callaway or or or the Felipe Franks to Tyree Cleveland that sort of thing to but this was consistently loud and definitely affected them Tennessee had to burn two timeouts in the first three minutes of the first of the second half and so it was this this was as complete a game as I can think of Florida playing under Billy Napier. And they had to have it.

There was no way that they weren't going to win this game if they didn't. And they weren't going to win this game if they didn't run the ball. Trevor Etienne, as Billy said, that guy was on fire tonight. Career high, rushing, most rushing attempts he's ever had, most rushing yards he's ever had. That 62-yarder set this place on fire and that swung the momentum in ford's favor and they never lost but it also allowed them to bleed the clock in the second half ramerts talked about how much they used the clock rules to their advantage that

they felt like they could be conservative and they could sit on that lead and you know i never felt like the lead was any day in any danger even when jo Even when Joe Milton hit Brew McCoy on the long touchdown, it didn't feel like Florida had anything to worry about. And then the next play, oh, my gosh, a guy in there wearing number one, playing the edge, set the edge, and ran Joe Milton out of bounds right here. That was one of the plays of the game. Prince Leo man me on. Yeah, man.

I mean, that was a huge play from him. A ton of guys stepped up on defense. Cam Jackson had a great game. Jordan Castell, 10 total tackles. And Austin Armstrong, man, how animated was that guy throughout this game? He was pumped up at the end. And this was kind of his coming out party. Well, and that was the question is what was he going to be able to do against this offense? And this is the second lowest point output of the josh hypel era at tennessee so

pretty good job by austin armstrong and a very good job by by floors defenders who i thought might get worn out by that tempo there were some moments where it looked like they might they did get a little bit lucky when the official kicked the ball and then had to respot it but but what happened what's interesting about that is like you noticed josh heupel noticed that they could just run the play they weren't like florida decided to sub but tennessee could have just run the play and they would have gotten too many men on the field on florida had they just done it so it was i think that's the the interesting tennessee had those moments where they weren't clean florida was like that when they were Utah. Florida had a ton of those moments against Utah,

and it looked like, okay, if you could correct some of this, you might be competitive, but I don't know. But other than some stuff early, Florida did operate pretty cleanly. Yeah, I was going to say, there was some stuff early. This crowd got their own offensive line to fall. Yeah, first play, first play. And then special teams, once again, they show up, but Billy. First play. And then special teams once again. They show up, but Billy makes a change.

He brings out Trey Smack, who has the best name for a kicker. No, he doesn't. Trey Smack. UCF's Colton Boomer. Oh, that is good. Same high school as Florida Longsnapper Rocco Underwood. That is good. And Trey took over, and I think one of the biggest cheers of the night

was when he made that PAT. Yeah. It was a bronx cheer but yes because it was the the first field goal attempt the first pat attempt you're thinking oh god here it is again and really that that's it you know in the in the writer brain you're like well i've already got this thing going i got that false start in the first play i got the and and let's let explain. This town was a nervous place all week. Man. Because the sense was the fans were going to come to the Swamp and they were going to give it their best shot. And if it didn't work, they might not be back this year.

They might have said, we'll wait until next year. I think they're all in on this year now. And I think Billy, throughout the week and even after the game, he alluded to the noise in the system and the pressure. I think he felt personally. I think his staff felt this was a must-win game for them. I think everybody in the athletic department was feeling that pressure. It was very interesting. It was a weird vibe going around town Friday,

weird vibe going around town pregame. And they needed this. As a program, they needed this as a program they need us now it's interesting nick delatory who you work with has been saying all summer they'll beat tennessee and then they'll lose to kentucky this is entirely possible yeah it is uh now they got to build on this because if you go out and lose next week which would be three in a row they're not gonna lose to sharp i don't think they're gonna to lose. In two weeks. Actually, well, hey, no assumptions. We just watched Alabama almost lose to USF. So anything can happen.

But can you imagine the crowd next week for Charlotte? They'd have lost this game. It would have been dead. Yeah. And I think the way they won it, too, is probably even more helpful. This was nothing fluky. They did it the way that Billy Napier has been promising his teams will win it's just you've never seen it like that yeah yeah and and really i think there was questions about could they do this after as sloppy as they looked in utah

they're facing another top 10 team are they going to show up and now i mean this is this could be a turning point in his tenure well and it's interesting because part of this is we don't know how good tennessee is yes we is we don't know how good Tennessee is. Yes. We don't yet know how good Utah is, though we suspect they're pretty good. It's weird because we look around the SEC now, and lots of non-conference losses, including Florida to Utah, LSU to Florida State, Alabama to Texas.

And you wonder, okay, are any of these teams any good? Really? Yeah, there's going to be a lot of beating up on each other, I think, in the SEC. And, look, now Florida's got to reel off some wins. They got to build on this because it's not going to get any easier once they get to the second half of the season. It doesn't feel impossible, though.

And I think if Tennessee had come in and blown their doors off, the future would have felt pretty dark. Yeah. And now you look at it, and I believe they got a commitment tonight from another recruit. So that's the part that as long as he could keep that 24 class together, nobody was expecting huge things out of this season. Sure.

But if they get the players in that they feel like and and i think you know you look at what happened tonight trevor etn that's one of the the guys that billy napier got in the boat after he got hired you know that's a guy who's not here if the old staff is still here and you think uh florida fans are finally behind graham mertz i think they they like Graham Mertz a lot. They were so down on the guy. I think the pump fake was what sold them. The pump fake when he's way down the field. He's not going to throw the ball.

Yeah. But the defender bought it anyway. And then Mertz points at him to point out, hey, you bought that. There was no way I was throwing the ball. He's fired up tonight, man. After that touchdown pass to Montrell johnson he got after it and uh look he outperformed uh joe milton which i don't i didn't think that he i mean they have more yards in him well he did he did it in the way that he needed to do it yeah he was extremely efficient in the first half second half

and i saw some florida fans tweeting at me like this this play calling is terrible he only attempted four passes extremely deliberate was extremely deliberate. Yes. And guess what? That is how they will salt away leads or wins if they have leads. That's just how they're going to do it, especially in this era of these clock rules. But, yeah, I was very impressed with the way they jumped on Tennessee

because I just didn't know they had that in them. I didn't expect that. I didn't think that was going to happen. We haven't mentioned it yet, Andy, but we alluded to the pressure that was kind of in town. Billy's first win over a rival. Yes. That cannot be understood.

Yeah, and that's what Nick and I talked about last week was this felt like the most winnable of the rivalry games. Now, if you saw Florida State play today, maybe, again, all of this even Georgia didn't look great. Exactly. All of this other stuff seems more possible now. And it's not just because of what happened on that field out there. It's also because of what happened everywhere else. But if what happens on that field is different, if Tennessee comes in here and wins.

Nobody's talking about it like that. Nobody has that optimism. So it does feel like everything's out in here and wins. Nobody's talking about it like that. Nobody has that optimism. So it does feel like everything's out in front of it. And for Tennessee, you know, I don't think this means the season's over for Tennessee. You saw the bones of what they could be. Their center, Cooper Mays, was supposed to come back. He didn't.

Florida center, Kingsley, how do you pronounce this? Guacan. Guacan. Kingsley Guacan. He came back tonight. And he was ready to come back. He didn't. Florida center Kingsley – how do you pronounce his last name? Guacan. Guacan. Kingsley Guacan. He came back tonight. And he was ready to. A huge difference. Oh, my gosh.

A huge difference in Florida's offensive line play with the guy who has started two seasons' worth of games. Well, nobody would blame that after the Utah game and say that was a factor, but it was. Yeah. I mean, you don't give up five sacks and have all the offensive line penalties and the sloppiness if he's in the starting lineup. Now, they probably still don't win, but they don't look as bad as they've

looked in the first two games. And you saw the difference when you get a veteran in there like that. Yeah. And Tennessee saw the difference when they don't have that guy. And once they get that guy back, they may look like a completely different offense. And the Swamp, too. I tell you what, we said it before we started.

I think Tennessee fans might be hoping that the SEC scheduling format sticks to eight games and only one permanent rival so that they can stop coming to Gainesville it is it is amazing it is is a curse at this point because it's not even even when they're allegedly better they just things happen this this time wasn't fluky. No. They just got beat. Like this was a very different situation. Which is weird because on paper I didn't think Florida was better than them.

Yeah, and we'll have to see as the season goes on. Ultimately, are they better? But when it mattered, when they're playing each other, Florida was a lot better. And I think that can give these guys some confidence going forward. But like we were talking about, they play Kentucky in two weeks in Lexington. They're going to be loud. That place is going to be – it doesn't get as loud as this place,

but when they're happy and excited at Kentucky, it gets loud. And they're going for three in a row against Florida, which is unheard of. Yes, that's crazy. They're going to be jacked up for that game if Florida's got to play and have a lot better showing than they did at Utah. Yeah. Well, we'll be talking about that game and all the other games. So if you like these instant reaction videos and you like what we're doing on Saturday nights, Sunday through Thursday, 8 p.m.

Eastern time on the on three YouTube channel. Also on demand anytime after that. And also on every podcast platform. So if you don't want to look at me, if you just want to listen, you can do that. But we do it every night, and we have so much to talk about this week. It is incredible. We can talk about Alabama not having a quarterback.

That's right. Ohio State's going to play Notre Dame next week. That's going to be a good one. We don't yet know what's going to happen with Colorado and Colorado state. That game is still being played. You will hear me talking about it in podcast form when we put all these videos together, but it is,

I just, I'm just told the Colorado state's winning right now. So gosh, I am going to go watch the rest of that. I am as well. And we are going to talk about all of this all week. There's this is remember i said all week there are no bad college football weekends the slate didn't look great

but look at how much we have to talk about good so good and then i was you know i was trying to watch lsu mississippi state was so ready for it and that game was a blowout and then i ended up getting three other great games but here's the thing about that game. It's interesting because I was at the Florida State LSU game and I thought, okay, LSU is next. And this is what you've got to remember. We forget this during the long offseason. We need to remember this every

year. Remind ourselves. What you see week one may not be what you see week three. May not be what you see week five. It's 18 to 22 year olds. May not be what you see. It's 18- to 22-year-olds. They're a very unpredictable lot. So they change. They evolve.

They grow. And what we saw on the field tonight may not represent what these two teams are. But for Florida, they had to have this one, and they got it. Yeah, they did. And now they're back home at the Swamp. It's crazy man they only got three more home games after that after so charlotte yeah well they needed this one and uh then yeah go on the road and and see if you can replicate it somewhere else and then you

got to go to south carolina i mean they they got like i said they got to stack them because once that second half starts and they got ge Georgia and LSU and Florida State, those wins are going to be harder to come by. They've got to build on this momentum now. Well, now's their chance. The nerves are over in this town. It's going to party for at least a day or two and maybe a week or so. Where would you guys go after big wins, after rivalry wins?

Ah, shoot. Well, the Grog House was always the best place to go. Now, the coaching staff, Steve Spurrier. Nappies. Nappies. All right. Cold Coors at Nappies. All right, guys. We'll see you up there.

As interesting as all these games were, I think the most interesting game on Saturday, at least in terms of story that spins forward and becomes a story that we follow all season, was the Alabama-USF game. Alabama's quarterback situation is dire right now. They started Tyler Buckner. He got pulled.

They put in Ty Simpson. They end up winning 17-3. Ty Simpson throws one really nice pass, but isn't exactly dominant and does not handle the blitz very well. And you wonder, what in the world is Alabama going to do going into SEC play? I spun through a lot of those possibilities, and also we talked a little bit about Georgia

and how slow they started again in that game against South Carolina. They've started slow offensively in every game so far this year. This time they're playing a little bit better team, and it looked like Georgia was going to be in for a game that could last into the fourth quarter. Now Georgia pulled away in the second half, but a more talented SEC team can take Georgia to the wire if Georgia's going to start slow like that now Georgia got the vertical passing game going later

in the game but I kind of wonder if this means maybe there's not a super team this year maybe there's a few teams that really can legitimately compete for the national title because Georgia didn't look invincible for for sure so what does that mean going forward oh and if you hear some loud noises cheering while I'm talking it's because I am at the Florida Tennessee game while recording this. So that is going on while we're talking Bama quarterbacks and Georgia's possible mortality. I'm telling you, it's a hell of a day. You just watched what I just watched. Alabama's quarterbacks are bad. I don't think there's any other way to describe it I we could be nice we could be polite but I don't really think there's any other way to say it the Alabama

quarterback situation is bad bad bad and I don't know how it gets any better anytime soon because SEC play starts next week what we saw today was not up to their standard not anywhere near their standard not anything resembling what we've gotten used to as Alabama offensive football. And a lot of it is being spoiled by just an epic run of quarterbacks where they go from Jalen Hurts to Tuatunga-Vailoa to Mack Jones to Bryce Young. But this is – I don't know how this happens. I really don't understand it.

That dude says, nah, don't be nice. They've had, Anonymous says I'm drunk. And Brian also says I'm drunk. Now, Brian's an Oklahoma fan, so he's drunk on touchdowns. But, oh, here's the most insulting one from that dude. They look like the last few years of Auburn quarterbacks. And it is, it's truly amazing because you just don't understand how they got into this situation. These are highly recruited quarterbacks. Jalen Milrow, Ty Simpson, both highly recruited

quarterbacks. Tyler Buckner, Notreame scholarship quarterback so you know pretty pretty highly recruited as well but there's nothing resembling good qb play from alabama didn't you know some of it the blocking's not great but what we saw out there against usf it's going to get demolished in the SEC if they don't do something different, if they don't figure something out. So what can they do? I mean, maybe Ty Simpson's the guy. Maybe Ty Simpson with a full week under his belt is the solution.

But it didn't look like the solution. It looked like USF was just running blitzers at him, and he wasn't handling it well. He had one very good throw to C.J. Diffrey, the tight end. That was pretty much it. And so I get in comments like the offensive line looks horrible. The offensive line doesn't look great, but here's the thing. When they send six, somebody's open.

But the problem is the quarterbacks aren't processing quickly enough to find that open guy. And so what you get is there were plays where basically the quarterback's just freaking out right at the snap. And Tyler Buckner clearly wasn't the answer. They tried him. They go to Simpson. I don't know with Simpson. That one

throw to Diffrey gives you some hope. But Buckner was 5 of 14 for 34 yards. They pulled him. They just were not moving the ball at all. And Ty Simpson, 5 of 9 for 73 yards. Because they were playing USF, they won this game. Because they averaged five yards a carry, they won this game. That's the only reason they won this game. Because they averaged five yards a carry, they won this game. That's the only reason they won this game. If they've been playing Ole Miss this week, they would have lost. If they've been playing Mississippi State this week, I don't know. Mississippi State didn't look very good against LSU.

But they probably would have lost. If they've been playing Arkansas this week, they probably would have lost. They have to get that part fixed. If they don't, I just don't know. I don't know what else they can do. I guess you've got to try Simpson this week, given the first team reps, if you don't feel Jalen Milrow's the guy. But I'm not going to beat the drum here too much, but I'm sort of kidding about the Dylan Lonergan thing where I saw one series in the spring game and thought, that's your guy. But I kind of wonder if maybe they shouldn't give him a shot because what

they're doing is not working because if they're not comfortable playing either with a freshman Lonergan or Eli Holstein, they need to figure out what they're, what they're doing here. Because if they can't get Simpson to run the offense effectively, then you probably need to retool things and run a very different offense around Jalen Milrow. That one, they can do. So I just, this is, it's so unusual to see this from a Nick Saban team I just I think that's

why I'm most flabbergasted because we don't see Nick Saban teams do this very often we don't see them look this bad I can't remember a time like even the Alabama team that lost the lease in a row in Saban's first season I can't remember looking this this bad offensively so it's just it's baffling it really is so the Milrow thing I think of the three we've seen so far, he gives them the best chance to win games. But that only is if you run an offense that's suited for him. There needs to be designed quarterback runs. There need to be ways to take advantage of his athleticism and not try to run the same offense you'd run with Ty Simpson. That might work.

That might be effective if that's what you want to do. Against Texas, it didn't look like that to do against Texas it didn't look like that was their plan that didn't look like they were going all in on that so I just I mean you watch Jaden Daniels today for LSU and then you watch what Alabama put on the field who's winning that game Alabama's gonna have to look very very different by the time they see LSU in November, or this is going to go very poorly. So the stats, if you want to hear them, 10 of 23 passing total, 107 yards. And again, it's against USF. USF is not very good. If they were playing a better team, they would have lost. And I don't mean a much, much better team. That's a scary thought. That's a scary thing. So Byron Brown for USF, their quarterback,

he threw for 87 yards. He ran for 92. Very little semblance of an offense, but they did what they could. Alabama has a lot of work to do. They got Ole Miss next week. If I'm the Rebels, I am licking my chops to get a chance to play Alabama. If I am Pete Golding, former Alabama defensive coordinator, very hated by the Alabama fan base, I am dreaming up every blitz imaginable and praying that Ty Simpson starts because I am going to throw the kitchen sink at him because USF did that and it was very effective. So if you're Nick Saban, I'm curious, what do you do? Do you

give the freshmen a chance? Do you open that up in practice? Do you say Dylan Lonergan and Eli Holstein, let's see what you can do in practice. Do you say, Ty Simpson, you finished this game. We won this game. We're going to leave you there at number one and you take the number one reps this week. The thing about that is if you get the same performance out of him against an SEC team, you're going to lose badly. So I'm not sure you can take that risk. And that's the question. What, if you're Nick Saban, if you're Tommy Reese, what do you do? Do you try one of the freshmen? The safest thing right now seems to be to build the run first read option.

Who has the ball? Is it the running back, the quarterback offense around Jalen Milrow because Alabama can run the ball they have the backs to pull this off the line it can open holes so do you try that with Jalen Milrow because that seems to be the safest option right now or do you take a chance that Ty Simpson with a week of first team reps looks completely different? Or do you take a chance that maybe one of the freshmen can do this? I'm not sure what the answer is to that, but it is a tough question. It is not an easy decision for Nick Saban and for Tommy Reese because this is a, I just, I, I'm dumbfounded.

Absolutely dumbfounded. I'm just not used to seeing anything like this from a Nick Saban team. They're so buttoned up. They're so put together. The idea that they've not been able to find a quarterback. You kind of wonder how did this, how did this happen? Was it Bill O'Brien developing or recruiting? You know, some of these guys, their recruitment stayed back to when Sark worked there.

And then Bill O'Brien took over. And then, obviously, Tommy Reese just showed up and inherited these guys. But he also did recruit Tyler Buckner and had him at Notre Dame. But, you know, I mean, the rumor is they tried to get Drake May, that they would have liked to have had Drake May come in the offseason. Drake May stayed at North Carolina. Lots of people wanted Drake May. Lots of NFL teams will want Drake May, but he wasn't leaving North Carolina. So it doesn't sound like they tried to go after Sam Hartman when he was out there. And now Tommy Reese was the offensive coordinator on the to go after Sam Hartman when he was out there. And now Tommy Reese was,

was the offensive coordinator on the team that got Sam Hartman when Sam Hartman transferred. So that's the thing. If that transfer of power had happened earlier, remember they waited until Bill O'Brien took the Patriots job. Bill O'Brien didn't take the Patriots job till after the Patriots season ended. Remember the Patriots had Matt Patricia, who's not an offensive coach, calling plays last year, and they had to fix that. So they went and got Bill O'Brien. But by the time they did, and by the time Alabama then hired Tommy Reese, the quarterback transfer market was pretty much dried up.

There wasn't anybody there who could just walk in and be the starter. So that's where they're at. And I will be fascinated to watch what they do. A week that was chock full of must-see games. Add another one. Add Ole Miss Alabama to that list because it's going to be an absolute just must-see TV. Because, I mean, the Pete Golding aspect of it, think about that. Think about the subplot there, where Pete Golding gets to call the defense against an Alabama offense that doesn't know what it is. After years of being told, you're the problem,

he can now just unleash hell on that offense if he wants to. It's a crazy thing. It really does make that game even more interesting. So there's more to Saturday, though. More to that afternoon slate on Saturday because Georgia didn't look like in a relentless killing machine against South Carolina. Georgia looked like a team that can be beaten. And I think that's probably a good thing for all of us who are just rooting for

a year where there's not one just dominant team or two dominant teams. I don't see a lot of dominance out there. Ohio State could be good. Michigan could be good. We saw Penn State kind of mess around against Illinois. We saw LSU get beat by Florida State. We saw Florida State get pushed by Boston College. We've seen USC look very good, but they haven't really played anybody yet. So I don't know that there's a dominant team out there. Notre Dame and Ohio State, we're going to see them play each other next week. But watching Georgia against South Carolina, again, another slow offensive start for the Bulldogs. And that's not something that we're used to seeing. They were very

efficient last year. They moved the ball. They didn't do anything to try to wow you because their defense was so good. But they were a very explosive offense that I don't know if people realized how explosive they were because they were too busy watching the defense dominate. That's not the case this year with Georgia. They start very slow. They can get going. But I don't know if they play the wrong team, they could have a problem. Because South Carolina, with some injuries, you know, Juice Wells got hurt again. Full strength, very good opponent is going to give Georgia problems.

And also, because of their schedule, they may not be seasoned when they play that team. So they may get jumped on and not know what to do. So that's the other part. Although, I guess the South Carolina game was kind of a teachable moment for them because they were down, and they did come back, and they did take control. So that's the best you can hope for when you have a start like that, when you're that slow starting. But I do think that bodes well for the competitiveness in college football this season because it doesn't look like there's one team that's just going to go out there and blow everybody else off the field.

And I think that makes the sport a lot more interesting. You know, I'll go back to earlier today. The Florida State team that crushed LSU struggled with Boston College while LSU annihilated Mississippi State. That's the other thing to remember is, you know, these are groups of 18 to 22-year-olds. They're very unpredictable bunches. We can have wildly variable results throughout the year,

and I think that's what we're going to have. But this is an absolutely interesting development because with Georgia know, with Georgia, they brought back so much. Beck had been waiting his turn. The offense seemed to be, you know, Bobo had worked with Todd Munkin last year, and Bobo was actually a very effective offensive coordinator the first time around at Georgia and had been good offensively throughout the years.

But I'm getting – it's funny because the complaints seem to be different about Bobo this year. Now he needs to take more shots down the years. It's funny because the complaints seem to be different about Bobo this year. Now he needs to take more shots down the field. It used to be run the damn ball, Bobo. Now it takes some shots down the field. But it doesn't feel like it clicks right away. And that's where it is. So right now, if we're looking at the national title picture, which we shouldn't be looking at in week three,

but does anybody think Georgia would just go whip everybody? Would they whip LSU? Would they whip Florida State? Would they whip USC? Would they whip Notre Dame? Would they whip Ohio State? I don't think so. And all of those teams, if we throw them in a bucket,

Michigan, let's put them in there too. Penn State, let's put them in a bucket, Michigan, let's put them in there too. Penn State, let's put them in there too. Texas, let's put them in there. Oklahoma, which looks very good, again, against Tulsa. Throw them all in a bucket. You match them all up. I have a hard time picking winners in most of those games. I feel like they're fairly evenly matched based on what we've seen so far. And I think that's a great sign. So we'll talk more about this later tonight, but I just wanted to give everybody a chance to have a nice therapy session, especially those Alabama fans.

We will talk more about the Alabama quarterback situation later tonight as well because we'll have the whole day to process and we can compare it to to everybody else's situation but that is a strange deal oh before we go i do i do want to mention one more game because this one a team that maybe we can throw into this bucket as well i i don't know if they're are we quite ready to do that. But North Carolina, North Carolina crushes South Carolina, that same South Carolina team that was challenging Georgia and Athens today.

They barely survived Appalachian State last week. Well, they looked very good in a 31-13 win against Minnesota on Saturday. And you had Drake May looking smooth, looking like the quarterback everybody wants in the NFL draft after Caleb Williams, I think this is going to be an absolutely fun season. And I love that we can't handicap it in week three. We can't say this is going to be your national champ or these two teams are going to play for the national championship. We just can't do it yet. And I hope we can't do it till november december but man that alabama quarterback situation to me the story of the week in a loaded week think about this you're gonna have colorado playing oregon you're gonna have ohio state playing notre dame

and the most interesting story might be Alabama can't find a quarterback. Now we get back to the noon window, which, looking back, might have been the tamest of all the windows on Saturday, but it didn't feel that way when it was happening. We had a really fun game between Kansas State and Missouri that I thought Kansas State would come in and control that game pretty well. That's not what happened. Missouri played very well and thought Eli Drinkwitz had a good game plan. They executed it. Brady Cook fighting through what looked like a kind of a nagging injury. It was pretty impressive. Then came one of the dumbest things that i've ever seen followed by one of the most amazing kicks i've ever seen harrison mevis money mevis the thicker kicker with an

sec record field goal to walk it off here's me and jesse simonton talking about that we just watched the thicker kicker walk it off from 61 yards jesse bailing out his coach bailing out his coach i mean just colossal mismanagement missouri taking the delay of game there then they go and send the offense back out on the field the ball's almost tipped for an interception uh at the line of scrimmage and and then the thick king, man, just drills it. 61 yards. It looked like it might have been good from 65, 70. The officials were confused on the field.

They didn't know if one of their own guys threw a flag. Half the people in the crowd are wearing yellow shirts, and somebody must have just dropped their shirt as they were running onto the field or threw their shirt from the stands or something. Oh, incredible. It was a fun game. It really was a fun game.

Brady cook was cooking. That's the best I've seen him play quarterback. Missouri's got some dudes at receiver. I mean, Luther burden, obviously being the best one, but Mookie Cooper and some of those other guys are really good to feel. We from Oklahoma made some big plays today.

Big, big win. It was, I thought when Cook got dinged up around the end of the first half that they were going to have problems for the rest of the game. That K-State was probably going to just control it. But they hung in there and just an incredible job by Missouri getting the ball down the field.

And I still, we'll have to hear what Eli Drinkwitz has to say about that situation. But it sure looked to me like after they clocked the ball, he's got everybody gathered over on the side of the field like it's a timeout. Didn't realize when you clock the ball and you don't have timeouts, 40 seconds, that's all you got. It's got to be like the Baylor-TCU game last year where you run them onto the field. Fire drill. It's a you got. It's got to be like the Baylor-TCU game last year where you run them onto the field. Fire drill.

It's a fire drill. Now, at least the clock had stopped, unlike the fire drill that TCU executed. But, I mean, it was strange because, you know, Eli had actually outcoached Chris Kleiman, I thought, for a lot of this game. You know, offensively, the Tigers were pushing the ball vertically. Defensively, they were pressuring Will Howard a lot. Now, they seem to be on their heels at times when the five-star freshman came in,

didn't realize he was going to just run it every single time. And for a while there, he was getting six, seven, eight yards. They adjusted finally in the second half. I'm assuming Avery Johnson also can throw he was a five-star recruit he's really fast and I get you got a good quarterback in Will Howard but I'm kind of excited to see what Avery Johnson can do when he's throwing the ball yeah agreed agreed so this was for Harrison Mevis vindication here remember Remember last year, they're playing Auburn. They have a chip shot, 26-yarder at the end of regulation to win the game.

He misses that. Then you have that weird deal where the guy fumbles. Fumbles up the pylon. He drops the ball and fumbles it through the end zone, and that's the end of the game. They were going to win, and then they lost. And if Mivas had kicked the chip shot, they would have won anyway. So this erases that.

And Eli Drinkwitz owes. I mean, when Harrison Mivas is not playing anymore and is eligible to receive money from Eli Drinkwitz, I'm thinking there's a commission to be paid annually as long as Eli Drinkwitz has the Missouri job. I think Mivas already has a pretty good NIL Thickberger deal. I think I saw that trending on Twitter. He may get some more shekels for that after you nail a 61-yarder to be the top 15 team. He's got

money Meebus t-shirts. He's got it all. You're right. He is going to be the guy. This window, there was not a lot of intrigue. This is this was the best game and like it was a field storming and i don't think it was a field storming necessarily because all we beat kansas state kansas that was just a i can't believe that just happened that was an sec record that's the longest field goal in sec history sec back andy non-conference win SEC back uh let's not go that far let's not go crazy overblown probably but you know let everybody have that for a little while they spent a lot of years pretending that the SEC is not good so it's you know now they can actually revel in it for a

minute so we'll let them revel in that for a minute but it was just a bizarre bizarre sequence like i am yelling at the tv like what are you doing why are you not sitting the field goal team out and then you know it i couldn't figure out if they could didn't know what they wanted to do because that what that would have been a 56 yarder so still would have been a long field goal. Do you want to try it or not? And since the offense back – it nearly gets picked, as you mentioned. It could have gone so badly.

Again, Eli had done so well coaching in this game up to that point, whereas earlier this season he was the guy that was getting killed on Twitter because Missouri kept punting the ball on fourth and one or fourth and two on their, on their opponents, 45 yard line. And so to mismanage this situation in a game you really needed, uh, thankfully worked out for him. Thick, thick man comes through. I'll tell you who else looked good though today,. LSU. Woo! Jayden Daniels. That is as good as I have seen him play. He was so accurate. Malik Neighbors.

Mississippi State just kept single covering Malik Neighbors and getting destroyed on that. And maybe there wasn't anything else they could have done. Maybe they felt like they had to send a lot of guys at Jayden Daniels. And if he beats them on single coverage and finds the open man, God bless him. Well, he sure did. He was incredible. So 30 of 34 for 361 yards and two touchdowns.

He was 21 of 22, Andy, in the first half. And the lone incompletion was a throwaway. Yeah. Like he had pressure around his feet and he just made the smart move. I'm just going to get rid of it and throw it away. I mean, it was sensational performance. Malik neighbors cooking his old team. I mean, he went Klanga on, you know,

he was a former Mississippi state receiver for a year, then transferred to LSU. I ranked him as the number one receiver on the sec and, and earlier this summer and got some guff from some folks. But, I mean, like, he's a dude. Yeah, he had an incredible game. You know who else looked great was Harold Perkins.

And they were using him differently. Now, obviously, Will Rogers does not require a spy. They were using Harold Perkins as the spy on Jordan Travis in the Florida State game, and it felt like they were wasting him. And in this case, they were not rushing him as frequently as they rushed him last year. They were basically sending him after the quarterback on third and longs, on obvious passing downs.

But it felt like even when he was kind of an off-ball linebacker, that he was finding the ball, that he was in the mix on almost every play. And this felt like a better use of him. Specifically, I think to your point, you know, Matt House was basically, because Jesse Palmer and those guys were even talking about on the broadcast, LSU was playing kind of an old school 4-3 defense with Harold Perkins. The interesting element and dynamic that comes with that is that because he's such a good rusher,

they can basically line him up sort of on the edge of the line of scrimmage and not necessarily send the house or send a bunch of pressure. There was one receiver in the end zone. Exactly. You just don't know which four or five guys are going to come then. Makai Wingo gets a sack because perkins runs an inside stunt wingo just walks into the quarterback for a sec for a big sack yeah and that's what that's what i thought was going to happen when they said they're moving

harold perkins to an off-ball linebacker slot that that's and and what you can do because he is so fast and so athletic you can kind of use him in a Derwin James type role, almost as a hybrid linebacker safety kind of guy because he is fast. And so I think you do that against most teams. You're going to find a lot more success than, than doing what you did against Florida state. But this is now it may be that Mississippi state just does not have the personnel to hang with LSU, even though LSU secondary is not that great.

I don't not real sold on Mississippi State's receiving core right now. So that may be the problem. But that was a great bounce back game for LSU. And now they get Arkansas. That's a game I was worried about. I'm less worried about that game now. Yeah. And you know, Arkansas, we'll see how they look against BYU later today. They were not overly impressive at all against a completely depleted Kent state team a week ago. So if you, if it seems like if you can kind of stop the run with KJ and rocket, you have a

good, you know, keep them one dimensional. I think LSU, this was the response. I think a lot of us wanted to see their talent was evident all across the field. They were able to run the ball, you know, on standard downs more effectively in the second half, which is another concern along with the secondary. I think we're all kind of interested in. So impressive, impressive performance. You know, you go on the road, you make a statement. Let us take a question from KLW Griffiths. What's up with BC almost always giving Florida State fits? If BC had cut down on the penalties, they would have won that game. That's exactly right. They do do now usually when florida state plays up there it is the red bandana game it is the the game where they honor wells crowther who's the former

boston state boston college athlete who gave his life saving other people's lives in 9-11 he's a He really, I mean, that game, they always come out just really ready to play. They bring his mom in. She talks to the team. I'm sorry. And so they get going, and they're usually very tough in that game, even if they're not the better team by any stretch. And I think you had that plus FSU completely looking ahead to Clemson. And they were in control for a lot of the game.

A lot of the second half, it felt like they were in control. And then BC came back at the end. They got the scooping score, and that really kind of changed the tone. But this is one that you could have kind of guessed. If FSU was going to have a clunker, this was going to be it. And then you had the Jordan Travis scare in the late first half. You know, everyone starts playing Twitter doctor. Whether, oh, it's a torn labrum or it's an ankle or, you know,

you have that whole situation. I'll tell you, my first thought about that game was when I turned it on I I thought that I thought Florida State was in Boston College's uniforms and Boston College was in Florida I was completely confused on right because Boston College wore their road uniforms but with the paisley for the the red bandana game right yeah. And I'm telling you, we've seen that over and over again in that game. They just come out completely jacked up and ready to go. And I mean, it's such a good, a good cause. And Wells Crowther was a volunteer firefighter. He was an equities trader, worked in one of the towers and saved 18 people on 9-11, but lost his life. And so you get inspired by that, and you come out and you play really hard. And that is, it seems to be the case year after year. And that's what they did.

And I tell you what, Florida State needed to survive something like that. They needed to get through that. Because that's, you know, Jesse, I think back to last year, like that NC State game. That's a game Florida State should have won. Right. And this feels like a game that last year's Florida State team would have lost. Finds a way to lose.

Yeah, finds a way to lose. I agree. And Florida State, you know, to our questioner's point, Florida State certainly was the beneficiary of Boston College. Yeah, just playing complete – you know, they certainly played spirited, and it was an inspiring performance, but it wasn't the cleanest performance. And they commit that face mask at the end, but Boston College was going to get the ball back.

Florida State's defense was going to have to get a stop when all it would have taken was a field goal to win that game, and Boston College commits an unnecessary face mask that extends the drive. FSU runs out the clock. Yeah, there are going to be games like this, and we told you going into the weekend, don't just assume because there's no marquee matchups

that there won't be crazy results. Because this is what happens. You get these kind of sleepy games, and all of a sudden everybody's like, oh, wait, it's not a sleepy game. This team's in it to play. And I thought going to another game where the final score is maybe not indicative of how close it was played for most of the game, Penn State, Illinois. Penn State did not look crisp on offense in this game. They were very good defensively, forced turnovers. Luke Altmyer, I thought he played fairly well, but he got hurt there

at the really kind of right around halftime, right around the middle of the game, And he was kind of on one leg for a lot of it, which really kept him from being as mobile as he could be. So that's – He only averaged four yards a carry. I think that's interesting. Drew Aller was not smooth. I mean, he was 16 of 33.

Yeah, and that – his first road start, okay. But the fact that Illinois got completely grounded into the dust against Kansas, you know, a week ago. Yeah, that's what's so weird. Jayhawks rushed for almost 300 yards. You know, Penn State's got Katron Allen, Singleton, and they struggled really to get anything going on the ground. So they did cover the hook for us at least. So we both get that

dub for the best bets, but it wasn't, you know, as you said, the cleanest performance. No, it wasn't. And interesting question from Jeremy. Do you think today's LSU team beats today's Florida State team yes but unfortunately you have to beat them when you play them and maybe they'll play again but we all know different teams get up for different games in different situations and you know if Florida State was going to be sleepy on one then yeah at Boston College was going to be it so especially with Clemson on deck next week so I it doesn't matter that they played and and Florida State dominated them when they played but yeah back to Penn State I don't know I don't know what this means because I said I want to see

if they can cruise and and if if Drew Aller is really that different than Sean Clifford. He threw some beautiful passes that only he would be able to throw. But also there were some there were some stuff that looked not not clean. Just, you know, sloppy decision making. I don't know. I don't know. And I don't know if it was Illinois' defense was just much better than it was against Kansas because we knew Johnny Newton was good. It was a little surprising to see Johnny Newton and Keith Randolph

not having very good games against Kansas. Johnny Newton was awesome against Penn State. He was a lot of the best. The law firm showed up today, that's for sure. Yeah, Johnny was great, Keith was good. He was a lot of the law firm. The law firm showed up today. Yeah. Yeah. He was Johnny was great. Keith was good. So, I mean, it might have just been same same thing.

Illinois at home first conference game. We're going to show out. And so they got Illinois best shot and still won by 17 points. So I'm not going to be hypercritical of Penn State in this situation because they did still pretty much win going away. But to your point, we've been waiting on this team to kind of step on somebody's throat. If you're going to be in the same conversation with Michigan

and Ohio State as a you know national title contender uh it's at some point you have to kind of assert your dominance and and I would say that's still TBD for the Nittany Lions yeah and and Penn State gets Iowa next week like if if they play the way they did offensively today it's a wideout game right They're not going to score much on Iowa. That defense will have to be almost perfect, which Iowa gives you a chance to be almost perfect on defense. But, you know, they've got to be better than they were today. We'll see.

It was a pretty interesting start to a day that That's not supposed to have a lot of, of crazy matchups in Ohio, Ohio plus three, man. I nailed it. There you go. Winner, winner,

winner, winner, winner over Iowa state. That's it for the show. Thank you so much for listening. We will be back Sunday night, 8 PM. Eastern time on the,

on three sports, YouTube channel. Got to do that resume ranking. Oh, man. I don't know how I'm going to do that. I don't know who's number one. I don't know who belongs in the top five. I hate it when people do this, but I feel like I'm in the all stink mode, even though they don't all stink. But it's going to be tough. We'll also break down press conferences from all over the country because there's a lot of news that will be generated out of Saturday. And I can't wait to chew on it because we got to figure out what these teams are going to look like going into next week, which is a blockbuster studded week. I cannot wait.

We'll talk to you again Sunday night.