Daily Blog - Sunday September 6th

Welcome to my Sunday Blog. During the offseason I had just one weekend blog but each week during the season I will take a look at the Top 25 performances from the just completed week with a little analysis as well as a quick review of the past weekend. On Monday I will give you my News & Notes where I delve deeper into every game that was played this past weekend, breaking down individual drives and giving you misleading finals and other interesting tidbits. USC had the best performance of any team this week taking on a bowl caliber San Jose St and outgaining them by 499 yards. That rated a 117.98 from my computer. Tennessee was even more dominant but took on weaker competition, outgaining WKU by 574 yards in their 63-7 win which was their 2nd best performance. Interestingly, in the Top 10 Alabama only won by 10 but outgained VT by 345 yards while BYU was only +92 in yards, their opponent was Oklahoma and the same thing with Oklahoma St who only outgained Georgia by 15 yards but UGA is a quality squad and they beat them by 14. Interestingly Washington lost to LSU but rated a higher game performance as they outgained the Tigers by 157 yards and of course took on the tougher foe. While Arizona only won 19-6 the computer notes that they allowed just 182 yards to a high octane offense.

A couple other notes about week one not involving my computer’s Top 25 of the week. First of all, don’t overreact to last year’s results. Remember last year Virginia opened the season 1-3 and had just been blown out by Duke 31-3 while Duke opened the season 3-1, it was off that blowout win. At the end of the season, UVA was almost in a bowl and finished 2 games ahead of Duke in the ACC standings! What appears crystal clear one week in college football, can turn fuzzy in a hurry. It was a rough week for the ACC as they were the only two losses to FCS schools with William & Mary upsetting Virginia and Richmond beating Duke. Of course, Richmond is one of the top FCS teams so that game was not much of a surprise.

It was a tough start to the season for my Top 2 Most Improved Teams as I expected Illinois and Ohio to both emerge victorious. UI was dominated by Missouri and in fact, Missouri had my computer’s #7 best performance of the week. Juice Williams did lose his star WR Arrelious Benn at the start of the game but I’m surprised at how poorly they played.
Out of the Top 25 games, Oklahoma’s loss of QB Sam Bradford had something to do with their loss to BYU and once again OU could have put it away a couple of different times but the Cougars played well and actually outgained the Sooners and it was just 7-7 when Bradford went out with injury. Alabama dominated Virg Tech much more than the final would indicate with 268 yards rushing and 230 passing while the Hokies had just 155 total yards offense. The yards were similar when VT was waxed by LSU but the game was close late in the 4Q. Boise St dominated Oregon much more than the final score would indicate but blew numerous opportunities and only won by 10. Iowa needed a blocked FG (twice!) to survive vs Northern Iowa. When the first block was recovered behind the line of scrimmage and NI had another shot at the upset, Iowa blocked it again. Navy scored the possible tying TD but their 2 pt conversion was int’d and ret’d for 2 and Ohio St won by 4.

Not a bad week for the Top 25 picks as they went 18-3 (with 2 playing today) including 3 upset picks with Baylor and Idaho both pulling upsets and Ohio losing to Connecticut.