College Football Live - Tasks for Texas

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

Victoria Arlen, Trevor Matich and Sam Acho are back with another episode of College Football Live! The crew continues to discuss the opening round of the playoffs as the 1st game of the postseason is now only 1 day away. Today we highlight the 1st round battle between Texas and Clemson and the different obstacles both sides have to face in order to reach Round 2. Trevor also provides a breakdown on Texas and what they'll have to avoid in order to bounce back from a SEC Championship loss. All that and more here on CFB Live! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

to take the nectar. The microphone is right now. I don't know what will, honestly. Welcome into college football live. I'm Victoria Arlen alongside Sam Ocho and Trevor Maddage. And it feels like Christmas is coming early because we are just one sleep away from the start of the college football playoff first round of games. And it all kicks off on Friday.

But before that, let's take a look at the 12 teams out of the 133 FPF playoff eligible teams that made it here. So we're going to take one more look at the college football playoff 12 team bracket. Indiana takes on its in-state foe Notre Dame tomorrow while SMU and Tennessee both make the trip up north to take on Penn State and Ohio State. Then Texas looks to bounce back from their SEC championship loss when they take on ACC champs Clemson. And one thing's for sure, this bracket is about to get shaken up folks. Now it's also going to be a bit cold because with these expanded playoffs, we get the opportunity for some warm-blooded teams to head up north and face some

cold weather. Three of the four matchups this weekend are projected to be below freezing with SMU and Ohio State kicking off right at a warm 27 degrees. I'm being sarcastic here. While the balls are also heading up north to take on the Buckeyes with an estimated kickoff of 28 degrees. So get your hand warmers ready among very warm jackets. Now let's bring in ESPN College football reporter Adam Rittenberg who will be in South Bend tomorrow. Adam, what final preparations are these teams making before tomorrow night's game? Well, Victoria, speaking of the weather, Indiana coach Kurt Signetti says he hopes for a foot and a half of snow. He has a Canadian quarterback in Curtis Rourke. Now, Rourke said he's actually never played in the snow, but he has experienced some cold. And he's a bit cold-blooded, too. He was asked about this being possibly his final college game.

And he says, quote, we'll talk about my last college game in four games, meaning after he wins the national championship. So certainly some confidence in Curtis Rourke. On the other side of the ball, Riley Leonard has been really good lately. for Notre Dame at quarterback, the Duke transfer, 721 rushing yards, 14 touchdowns. I asked Indiana defensive coordinator Brian Haynes about slowing him down. He said it's not necessarily about stopping the run. It's about making the quarterback pay a toll every time he decides to decide. He wants to run the ball.

So if he wants to run it 20 times, we're going to hit him 20 times. And Indiana locked in to face that Notre Dame run game. It's not supposed to snow, but it's going to be a good one. Thank you, Adam, and stay warm out there. All right, well, it is not going to be a warm one. It's supposed to be a wind chill of about like 17 degrees out there. So weather aside, Trevor, what is it going to take for Indiana to stop Notre Dame and win this one? Protects quarterback Curtis Rourke.

This is a NFL style precision passing attack when work has time to throw, especially with things like the back shoulder throw, which takes tremendous accuracy in order to make work, tremendous communication between their quarterback and receiver. But they've got it. And when he's got time, those throws are borderline unstoppable. It broke down against Ohio State because at Columbus, the noise was so loud, Coach Signetti said after the game, that they weren't able to handle pass protection duties because they couldn't hear the snap count. If they improve that at Notre Dame, then that precision passing game will be key.

Yeah, the precision passing game definitely matters. But I think one that Notre Dame does a great job of, well, multiple things, number one on special teams, but number two on interceptions. They have 17 picks on the year that's tied for four. But they're also number one in interception return yards. So let me show you why some of that precision passing may not matter. You go against guys like Christian Gray in the backfield. Let's turn on the tape.

Christian Gray, top of your screen. I'll put a highlighter on him so you can see him. He's matched up on a receiver. We always talk about the back shoulder throw. That means this quarterback is going to throw the ball right around the eight yard line. And they're going to expect Gray not to be able to be ready for it. But watch him the entire play. Watch his eyes and then watch his feet.

They go back to the eyes. Back shoulder fade, right? Whose eyes are on the ball and whose aren't? Right here. Christian Gray's are on the ball. And not only is going to get the interception, he's going to stay up and run it back 97 yards with his buddies helping him. Some of these are corners, DBs, the furthest guys away, helping him for a big time interception return. I'm going to go back real quick to show you something.

We talk about that back shoulder fade. The reason it's important, we talk about that area right here. We think that ball is going to be about 12 to 15 yards. The DB is not supposed to know. But if the DB has his eyes back around, all of a sudden, he's going to be ready and quarterbacks will not be. And so plays like this. Let me fast forward through this return. plays like this are why Notre Dame could be different, be more special.

Curtis Rourke in this Indiana office, they love that back shoulder fade. They think it's unstoppable. Christian Gray says, you know what, it is stoppable because I've watched the tape. I know where that ball is going to be. I'll be ready for it. And I'll take it to the end zone. And here's part of the fun of that, though, because Indiana sees that tape. And if they play the back shoulder fade that expressly, then all the receiver has to do is stop and then go.

And then while that defender hangs on the back shoulder and then tries to turn around, It's a fade into the end zone. So it'll be interesting to see how they handle the back and forth between those two things. But even the time that you said stop and then go about like half a second, that's time for defensive ends of passers to get to the quarterback. And Indiana isn't great when it comes to one-on-run coverage. So you want to stop and go. I'll let you do that.

But as soon as you pat that ball once, sack. This is the fun, man. This is fun. Well, the one thing I love about Indiana, they're the most improved team in the FBS this season with eight more wins than last season. There have been a team that's been so much fun to watch. Let's hope and see if they can keep that. momentum going. It's going to be a great game and you know what's making it even greater.

It's a double dose of college game day this weekend and the crew is going to start out in South Bend Friday at 3.30 and then they're going to head to Columbus on Saturday where you can catch them at their normal time at 9 a.m. on ESPN. And we're going to take a look at another first round matchup that also happens to be a first time matchup ever between these two teams. The Texas Longhorns will be hosting the Clemson Tigers in Austin and this will mark the Longhorn's second straight of in the college football playoff while the Clemson Tigers returned to the CFP for the first time since 2020, but it's their seventh time overall and both coaches spoke this week. You know, it's awesome, you know, to have the opportunity to be a part of the the first expanded playoff. It's that's exciting to, you know, have this chance and unique opportunity to, you know, go on the road and, you know, play at a great venue against, you know, a great football team. Being in a playoff, true playoff format is one that I don't think we have to speak too much to it because we've been talking this way for two years. Again, it's going to take a great effort.

We're going to have to play really well and all that. But I feel comfortable that we've put ourselves in position to do that. I don't, I don't know, favored or not. I mean, this is going to be a war Saturday. That's how I look at it. Oh, it is going to be a war indeed. Now, Trevor, we saw what Georgia was able to do not once, but twice against Texas. Texas, how can Clemson replicate what Georgia did to shut down Texas?

Make Queen Ewers, the quarterback for Texas, hold the ball by taking away short routes. What Georgia did was came up to the line of scrimmage and took away the quick throws and made Ewers hold the ball longer. So Georgia set the template for Clemson in doing that. Texas is very much a short passing offense. Here you've got 10 guys within six yards of the line of scrimmage. And Texas throws the bubble screen. They threw it short.

Georgia knew they'd do it. There are 10 guys between offensive and defensive players in that scrum right there because everybody knew they were going to throw short. Now, a regular pass pattern. They're going to send three receivers deep, Texas will, but two short outlets, because that's what they like to do. Georgia jumps both of those outlets. They make Hewers hold the ball.

Now look at this again for the perspective of the quarterback. He'll be stopped. Doesn't want to throw it deep, doesn't have anywhere to throw short and six seconds later he gets sacked. Sometimes he was though just gets short-circuited. He doesn't see this blitzer coming from his blind side. But when we look at it again, we'll see that he had the opportunity to get rid of this ball and make a positive play instead of a negative one. Right side of the screen. He has a slant wide open. Just throw the ball before the blitzer gets there. He also has the corner route wide open. Just let it go out to the sideline.

Now watch the quarterback's head. He'll pull the ball back down. and turn back to the left. What's he looking for? He doesn't know the blitzers coming. He doesn't like those two routes, and so he decided to wait and do something else. That's just him short-circuiting, the defense getting inside his head.

Now, they didn't score more than 20 points in either game against Georgia. Clemson has the ability to do some of these things. Clemson has six different defenders with at least two sacks, so they can get after the quarterback from different angles in different directions with different guys.

Texas will have to throw that ball deep, that ball deep and protect the quarterback better in order for that Georgia experience to not be replicated. Now it seems to be the theme is the U-Rewers concern and the short-circuiting here. So with that U-Rewers concern, Sam is Arch Manning the answer? He's not the answer, but he does need a package. What do I mean by that? Archmanning versus Georgia the first time got a chance to get into that game and we thought he was going to be the answer.

But he got sacked, fumble the ball. They went back to Quinn Ewers. But you still need Arch Manning packages so you can use his legs. when you resist this season has negative 62 rushing yards. Now a lot of that is because of sacks, but it's also because of injury, not able to move. Arch Manning does have a cannon of an arm,

but what makes him even better is his ability to escape. If things break down, he can move in the pocket, throw on the run, and then he has, I would argue, a lead level speed for a quarterback to move around when things break down. And so I think you need to have Archmanning packages if you want to get success in this game. It's going to be an interesting one for sure.

So we shall see how it all All plays out. Now these two teams are part of the 12 teams looking to claim the national title. And inside the CFP presented by Capital One is an ESPN original series that gives you behind the scenes look into all the action. So be sure to check it out streaming now on ESPN Plus. But here's a little preview. The goal in the playoff is always to crown a worthy champion. This is why you do what you do. Right now, 12 teams have an opportunity to win a championship. We triple the size of the playoffs. It's huge.

This is a new era of college football. You will see the best on display. After the break, we go deeper into these CFP first round matchups, highlighting the plays and players to keep our eyes on this weekend. And who could make a big impact? Plus, he's back, folks. Our favorite betting analyst, Joe Fortinbaugh is back. And you don't want to miss what he has to say.

And yes, that's him. Get your applause is ready. Yep, it's you. Yep. The 12 team college football player first round kicks off Friday with Notre I'm hosting Indiana at eight on ESPN and ABC, then TNT has the first two games Saturdays, starting with Penn State hosting SMU and Happy Valley and Clemson at Texas. And we wrap things up with Ohio State hosting Tennessee at the shoe in Columbus on ESPN and ABC.

Q the applause. Our favorite betting analyst, Joe Fortinbaugh. He is here and he's judging us. He's taking notes as to who around here is not cheering right now. It'll all be going in my report. Okay. Well. Great to see everyone.

Happy holidays. No Grinch attitude. Happy holidays. Happy holidays. Great to have you. Everyone's suit game is on point. All right, Joe. Let's just get right to it.

We're going to get to the Penn State SMU game. Where are you leaning to in this one? A lot of ways to bet these games, as we've been talking about for a few weeks now. On ESPN bet, you have an option of betting which of the four playoff games is the highest scoring, which is the lowest scoring. I bet this to be the lowest scoring. Plus 360, which is a surprise because it's considered the biggest long shot to be the lowest scoring game. It's got the highest total on the board. But hear me out here.

SMU, average temperature of games played in this season, 72 degrees. This is going to be a lot colder than that. On top of it, we saw SMU play one top 20 defense this year. It was the BYU game. They scored 15 points and rolled up 261 yards of offense. They struggled in that game. Penn State's going to run. Penn State lacks explosives on the outside.

I think the only game that challenges us here is Tennessee, Ohio State, because that's going to be low scoring. Texas is going to score. I think Indiana can score. Plus 360, I like the price that this is the lowest scoring game. If I could hop in real quick, you talk about that BYW. you game, which is a good point, top 20 defense. But the better point is there was a different quarterback in that game.

Very true. Preston was a quarterback. And they actually switched to Kevin Jennings because of the way, how he elusive he is as a quarterback. And so I think this game would be a lot higher scoring than you anticipate. And we're going to get to that other game in a minute. We're going to get to that game in another minute. But Sam, as far as that SMU game, you have a whole different take on that. What makes them so elite? Well, it's the name that we just heard. It's Kevin Jennings. Yeah, exactly. The quarterback who was, was given the starting spot, better get earned the starting spot, Yes.

From Preston Stone. And what makes him so great is that he can attack you at all levels of the field, down the field, laterally, vertically, with his legs, with his arm. Head coach Red Ashley made a decision, a tough decision, a bench a quarterback in Preston Stone, who had led that team last year to an AAC championship before an injury and put in a young red shirt freshman quarterback. Well, that decision paid off, and now this team being in the playoff.

And where Jennings is best is throwing the mid-level throws. Air yards 11 to 20. He's got a QBR quarterback rating of 95 or so out of 100 there. I went back and looked at the Penn State defense against Oregon in the Big Ten championship game where Dylan Gabriel threw a lot of passes in that range. And Dylan Gabriel's QBR was 99.9 out of 100 on throws 11 to 20 yards. That's what Jennings does best. Penn State has to stop that first.

Now let's get to another high pressure matchup. We got Ohio State Tennessee. Trevor, what intrigues you in this matchup? It intrigues me that the wide receivers of Ohio State are going to have to step up like they haven't in their last couple of games. Yeah. Especially Jeremiah Smith, the freshman. He's fantastic, but he got banged up against Northwestern. The following two games, the last two of the season, he only had 34 yards against Indiana and 35 receiving yards against Michigan in the loss.

And what's worse, in the second half of Michigan, he only had two targets and three yards. That's it. Whether that was injury or something else, I don't know. But Smith will have to rise up and be his usual dominant self in this game. And having a couple of weeks to deal will help. Well, it's not just Smith that's going to have to rise up. It's also the quarterback for the other team and Nico Iemi Aaliyava that will have to rise up. He had a stretch in the middle of the season where he struggled mightily.

You saw interceptions. You saw sacks. Then the numbers got better. But I would argue that there were still some bad decisions or poor throws later in the game and later in the season that Nico was making. Going to that Vanderbilt game. Yeah, the stats might look good. But some of those were because of slants that went 50, 60, 70, 80 yards.

Some of those were wide open passes. But other times, there were things that were open downfield that were like this play, underthrown and intercepted. So Nico's going to have to be on his A game if they want to upset Ohio State. That's a great name for a band, underthrone. And over. Yeah, there you go. We're starting a band.

We're starting a band. A lot of under money coming in on this game. Not a lot of faith and a lot of scoring here. I think one way to isolate it right now to take advantage would be Tennessee's team total. You're betting how many points Tennessee's. scores. Ohio State doesn't factor in. Over under 17 and a half, I'd go under 17 and a half. I think you're going to have problems. First of all, the quarterback, where is he from? Long Beach, California. Don't really get this type of weather in Long Beach, California. But more importantly,

when you assess Tennessee's offense outside the SEC this year, 60 points per game, they were blowing everyone up. We keep that in our mind about how explosive they were early in the season. But against SEC competition, it was 25 points per game. It was fewer than 400 yards per game. I think Jim Knowles' defense going against this Tennessee offensive line is one of the key I think Tennessee is going to struggle to move the ball in this game. I think what's also going to be hard for Tennessee, too, it's going to be cold. At kickoff, it's going to be about 26 degrees or so. So that's also could potentially play a factor as well.

But let's go bowling, fellas, shall we? And let's take a look at our Capital One Bowl Mania preview. The first game will take place today with Georgia Southern taking on Sam Houston, who are playing in their very first bowl game. Then we get to Florida taking on Tulane in the Union Home Mortgage Gasper. Bowl tomorrow at 3.30 Eastern and take a look at all the bowl games on ESPN.com forward slash bowl mania. So Joe, any game here catching your eyes. Florida without question, minus 10 and a half over Tulane. Bull season is all about motivation. Who has it, who doesn't?

I think these are two teams with very different motivation. Florida closed very strong. They beat LSU. They beat O Miss. They beat Florida State. They're coming in hot. Napier's got the team rallying. Meanwhile, if you're Tulane, you had a chance to make the playoff. You lost that game to Memphis. this, then you played Army in the conference championship game and got completely rolled. I wonder if you show up here, knowing your starting quarterback is transferring to Duke, knowing one of your backups is in the transfer portal, and another backups in the transfer portal, but he's going to start this game. I don't know about Tulane's motivation.

I think Florida rolls him here. What I do know is that tonight's game will have great entertainment value. You've got a Sam Houston rushing attack against a suspect rush defense for Georgia Southern, and a Georgia Southern passing attack that has a lot of variety. J.C. French, the quarterback, has five different receivers with at least 250 receiving yards against a struggling San Houston defense. I think there'll be a lot of fireworks in this game. There's nothing like a good old bowl games. They'll be fun to see this weekend for sure.

All right, coming up, it's time for tailgate tips with a very special guest. We are here with our college football facts to help you stay in the know and sound smarter for this playoff weekend. Have you ever gone to a tailgate and realize you don't have any? anything to contribute to the discussion? Well, we here on college football live have something for you, and we call it tailgate tips, where we give you some necessary tips of knowledge to sound smarter and impress your friends every Saturday.

You can think. We do our best. We're trying to sound smarter. We also got Joe here to help us sound even smarter, but we're gonna start things off with Trevor. What's your tailgate tip? Clemson lives by the deep past the big play. What about Clay Cade Clubnick,

He's third in the nation in completions of balls that go at least 20 yards in the air. And that's part of the reason why he's top three in touchdowns accounted for. Only three players have 40 plus touchdowns. Clubnick is one of them because of deep plays. All right. What about you, Sam? So my tailgate tip is, and I'm going to pass a toss a ball so I can talk. My tip is this.

So we're all talking about the playoffs, right? Well, there's an FCS playoff game you know about North Dakota State play South Dakota State. Now, of the last 13 years, these two teams have won 11 of the FCS champion. championships nine of 11 for North Dakota State. The last two have been South Dakota State quarterback Cam Miller, quarterback Mark Bernowski, two great quarterbacks, really big robbery. Let's call on that game this weekend. Oh, I am.

11 a.m. ABC. All right. All right. You're sitting around. You're yucking it up. You're looking for some action. Here's something you can consider the last game of the playoff is going to be the Ohio State Tennessee game.

Trayvion Henderson running back. Ohio State Buckeyes over 25 receiving yards plus 200. Cheap price for us to buy into because he's only hit this mark twice this But the key, the Tennessee line backing unit, average at best and decimated by injury. If Chip Kelly recognizes this and lines him up in the slot, he's going to get a coverage, favorable matchup, and he's going to be able to take advantage of this going over 25 yards. All right, mine's going to be, it's been a couple of weeks since the playoff. These playoff teams have played meaningful football, but they say rest is a weapon.

And these coaches have proven that. We got Kirby Smart, Marcus Freeman, and Dan Lenning are amongst the best head coaches coming off of seven days rest. Smart has a 17 and one record, while Freeman and Lending both. have a seven and one record. So we shall see. But it's our last show of the year. Don't worry.

We'll be back on January 2nd. But in honor of that, we thought we'd take a look back to the best of our Thursday shows from this year. And shout out to Indy and Jeremy for this edit. Enjoy. Welcome to college football live. Happy Thursday. Texas A&M wants to make this the hairless cat of college football game.

The Aggie offense can do what they need to do, which is pound, pound, pound, you know, pound. You don't have the. T-shirts, but we do have, we do have the real, the real deal sign. Johnny, what do you have to see? Do the applause. Can we hear it? Yep, yeah.

And in real life. And in real life. Let's go. It's going to be, let's go. I'll give you a couple. That's in the contract. You got to do it. Why?

They're amazing. I love all. Coming out feisty today. Very fistic. It's the red suit. Why would you, do you want to finish that? I'm close to, I'm close to, I'm close to walking off. I did not really want to go back next week.

Have you ever gone to a tailgate and, realize you don't have anything to contribute to the discussion. Well, we here on college football live have something for you. Two tailgate tips. One is draft Victoria as receiver on your fantasy team. It's a really good stat. I'll toss that back to you. Still going with South Carolina, my three and a half.

You know, I want to see how you made that catch. Let me see your hand. It's like stick on. I can't.