Weekend winners
Lamar Jackson and Bobby Petrino. Jackson, the mercurial quarterback who has lit up the first three weeks, and Petrino, the legacy-stained-turn-it-all-around coach, are the clear frontrunners for who won the weekend. Jackson has accounted for 18 TDs in three weeks, including five in an overwhelming 63-20 win over FSU that was actually worse than that. Petrine's work in Louisville has turned him from a pariah into arguably the hottest name on the biggest college job opening in three months. That was amazingly impressive and impressively amazing.
Local NFL teams. The Titans and the Falcons grabbed impressive road wins. If pressed, we'll give the helmet sticker to the Titans for the following reasons. The Titans rallied from a 12-point fourth quarter deficit and did it with a late drive for a TD and a defensive stand. It's the kind of win that a young team starving for confidence desperately needs. The Falcons offensively were awesome. As for the Atlanta pass rush, well, man, Vic Beasley, your team needs you.
North Dakota State. The five-time defending FCS champs went to Iowa and beat a top-15 on a late field goal. Hey, now that they are talking about taking some football-only members in the Big 12, who other than Houston has a better resume to be bouncing around with the big boys than NDSU?
Jimmy Garoppolo. Dude threw for almost 300 yards in the first half of the Patriots 31-24 win. Yes, he hurt his shoulder, but leaving the Patriots with the real possibility of starting Jacoby Brissett for the next two weeks. But this is not about the Patriots, this is about Garoppolo. The Patriots back-up behind Tom Brady played six quarters so far in Brady's suspension-related absence, and he's been brilliant. He's 42-of-60 (70 percent) for 498 yards and four TDs with no picks. Now if Garoppolo can't make it back before Brady comes back for the first game, he has put enough on the resume to be a very coveted player heading into the offseason.
Fab 4 (times 2) picks. Now that's more like it. After a middle of the road start, we offered eight picks and hit six of them. We missed Georgia, because we underestimated Missouri's wideouts, and TCU-Iowa State. We had TCU minus-24, and the Horned Frogs led 41-10 midway through the fourth. ISU scored ten points in the final six minutes for a backdoor cover. The crazy thing, is trimming the list, we cut the following three picks - over in Texas-Cal, Georgia Tech minus-6.5 over Vandy and Ohio plus-28.5. Now that's entertainment as we moved to 11-6 on the season against the spread.
FILE - In this July 29, 2016, file photo, Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson is shown during the first day of the NFL teams training camp at Mankato State University in Mankato, Minn. A federal appeals court has ruled that the NFL was within its rights when it suspended Vikings star Adrian Peterson in 2014 after he was charged with child abuse. A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Thursday, Aug. 4, 2016, that an arbitrator acted appropriately by upholding Commissioner Roger Goodell’s suspension of Peterson for six games. (AP Photo/Andy Clayton-King, File) Weekend losers
Title hopes of Oklahoma, Florida State, Notre Dame. Three of the top 10 in the preseason AP poll are now out. Oklahoma (preseason No. 3) and Notre Dame (preseason No. 10) have two losses, including painful and one-sided home losses Saturday. FSU (preseason No. 4) took the brunt of the Jackson/Petrino old-school tent revival, and there's no way a team with a 63-20 loss on the resume can advance. Because, either they are going to be staring at Louisville's tailpipe all year, or even worse, if Louisville losses a couple, that 43-point loss looks even worse.
Ball carriers who drop the ball heading into the end zone. How hard is this? It happened twice in the 50-43 Cal over Texas shootout last weekend, and amazingly, according to this story, it has happened 27 times at the college and NFL levels since 1971. Just don't do it.
Football officiating. We watched some less than effective calls at every level of every day of this weekend. Here are a couple of the worst: First, the refs in the Cal-Texas game - and the replay guys - missed multiple calls, including the two dropped balls heading into the end zone referenced above; the NFL officials who called Terrell Pryor for a taunting call when the ball slipped out of his hand that cost the Browns a shot at a comeback. Man, it seems like the NFL is either 'let them play' and they don't call anything unless blood is drawn or it's 'lock it down' and there are 30 penalties in a game like the Titans-Lions. It's hard to watch.
My fantasy team. It was not all roses this weekend. Yes, the picks delivered some high-quality entertainment, but a very underwhelming week highlighted by a potential season-ending injury to Adrian Peterson. Gross.
Georgia quarterback Jacob Eason (10) looks to the sideline in the second half of an NCAA college football game against Nicholls, Saturday, Sept. 10, 2016, in Athens, Ga. Georgia won 26-24. (AP Photo/Brett Davis)SEC turns and twists
Alabama coach Nick Saban seemed downright charming. LSU coach Les Miles seemed downright desperate. Tennessee coach Butch Jones seemed downright Butchy.
So it goes in a crazy weekend of SEC football in which the conference schedule opened for a chunk of the league, as some finished eating cupcakes and the bottom feeders proved why they are just that.
Here are five takeaways:
Alabama is simply better and deeper and more talented than everyone else. Need more proof than beating the best quarterback in the conference on the road when you don't really play well. No wonder Saban is smiling.
The gap between Alabama and the rest of the league is bigger now than any time since Bear Bryant was involved. And maybe that's the greatest trick Keyser Saban has ever pulled.
Tennessee-Florida is still ever-important, especially to all the long-suffering Tennessee fans. But the two teams on the field will be shells of the teams we expected even three weeks ago. The injuries on each side are pretty overwhelming. Something tells us that Butch may remind us about that once or 3,000 times this week. On the serious side, and we'll break this down more this week: If Butch and the Vols can't deliver a win over this Florida team, it may be fair to ask if the Vols are ever going to beat the Gators.
Good Morning, and welcome to the Jacob Eason era. After a lackluster showing against Nicholls State, the ballyhooed freshman delivered the type of money drive and money throw on fourth down that changes confidence, expectation, perception and reality. Ah, to be a Georgia fan this morning and know that your ascension is coming and the next three years are quarterback-handled. Good times.
And on the opposite end of the coin, it's fair to ask whether Gus Malzahn is an offensive-minded coach or an absent-minded coach. That was a bad loss to a good but not great Texas A&M team, and it's completely fair to question why the first play of the game was a play-action pass that required some guard name Robert Leff to out-athlete and out-perform the outstanding Aggies defensive end Myles Garrett. It's also fair to ask why Auburn ran that play a second time, and each ended with a Garrett sack that all-but ended drives. That offense is hard to watch, even for the Auburn masochists among us.
Thoughts?
FILE - In this Aug. 26, 2016, file photo, Washington Redskins defensive back Josh Norman reacts during the first half of an NFL preseason football game against the Buffalo Bills, in Landover, Md. Pittsburgh’s ground game can still keep Washington honest, but the matchup to watch is Steelers' Antonio Brown vs. All-Pro cornerback Josh Norman. (AP Photo/Nick Wass, File) This and that
- Among the potential winners this weekend was "Game of Thrones" which now has a record 38 Emmys. It passed "Frazier" for the most ever. And yes, if pressed to guess which show had the most Emmys, we would have guessed several other options before we got to Frazier. (Cheers, Dowtown Abbey, M*A*S*H are three that come quickly to mind.)
- How's this for a statistical anomaly? Clemson scored 14 points with no time off the clock. An offensive score then the South Carolina State kick returner tossing the ball to the ref without taking a knee became a fumble-score for the Tigers at exactly the same official time.
- How's this for ineptitude? Kansas now has lost 39 consecutive road games after a 43-7 whipping at Memphis. Not good. (And yes, Kansas, we know that you are always in contention for the worst team in the country. We have our eye on you.)
- For the Mocs fans among us, thoughts from Saturday's road win at Furman. We have a few: First, defensively, these Mocs are salty. Thirty-two carries by the Paladins got less than 90 yards in a 21-14 win. A 21-0 lead into the fourth quarter before letting the air out of it. Just an all-around strong, physical road win.
- Josh Norman was not happy about a 'surprise' postgame drug test Sunday. Well, someone please explain the word random to the players, because if the time and location of said tests are know, that's the opposite of random. Personally, we don't care if the warriors of the NFL are loaded up 12 kinds of painkillers and a rhino tranquilizer. But the rules are clear.
- Also, if Norman needs some details on why the NFL may have switched to some postgame tests, it could be because of this story in which former NFL offensive lineman Eben Britton told Yahoo Sports that he played his best baked on marijuana. Two things: First, that's an awful looks for an NFL which has a real image issue right now; and secondly, we're pretty sure the cock roach theory applies here in that if we know of one, then there are certainly dozens more.
- In a crazy week of football, here may be the single craziest image of the weekend. After three Charlotte personal foul penalties after an Eastern Michigan touchdown, EMU kicked off from the Charlotte Odd look for sure. And yes, they tried the onside kick.
- Heading into the final golf tournament of the PGA season, Golf Channel breaks down the ways various PGA players can win the $10 million season-ending prize. There are five golfers - Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed, Adam Scott, Jason Day and Paul Casey - who have the luxury of knowing if they win this weekend at East Lake, they win the whole thing.
Today's question
Tons of weekend winners and losers. And we'll talk about all of that and more on today's Press Row.
We'll also talk about this, and we're looking for some early feedback: What's your reaction from week three of the college football season?
Would you take Lamar Jackson or the field in the Heisman race?
Finish the sentence, next season Bobby Petrino will be coaching (blank)?
Feel free to pitch in some other questions as you see fit. Go, and practice some random acts of kindness.