Locker has been billed as Tebow-West: his combination of size/strength, cannon arm, and mobility make for a fairly easy comparison with the Golden Child. After watching Locker in action, though, I'd sooner compare him to Matt Groethe than Tim Tebow. Locker, like Groethe, is at his best on the move, improvising and salvaging busted plays with a dazzling command and artistry. There were moments where I could swear I saw Locker give the camera a coy wink and mouth "Yeah, I meant to do that." But, like Groethe, so Locker giveth, so Locker taketh away. Faced with a 3 and 17 he can duck a sack, scramble out of the pocket, and throw a dart off his back foot as he's being dragged to the ground by three defenders for an "effortless" conversion...but on the next play he'll set his feet in the pocket and calmly throw the same dart into triple coverage for an easy pick.
On to some of the week's observations.
Alabama playing down to their competition- Saban's bunch, coming fresh off a blowout win over, then, number 9 Clemson, plummeted back to Earth against Tulane in Tuscaloosa. What was a ruthlessly efficient and powerful offense a week before became a sputtering and inconsistent mess against a CLEARLY inferior team. Bama was handily out-gained 318-172 and tallied only one offensive touchdown and it only gets worse from there. Looking at the drive chart, Bama had a single drive that went for more than 30 yards; their offense notched drives of 1, 27, 19, 1, -5, -1, 3, 23, 77, 17, 9. Jesus that's ugly.
This most recent performance seemed to fall in line w/ Bama's preseason expectations much better than their domination of Clemson, leading me to believe that, while unlikely to look that hideous, this is more the "real" Alabama.
Penn State's Spread HD- Penn State looked many things against Oregon State that it never could have dreamt of resembling during the Anthony Morelli (disaster) era; namely efficient, explosive, completed more than half of its passes. Darryl Clark's mobility has brought the PSU offense an element it lacked since Michael Robinson was busy finishing third in the Heisman voting. Although Clark, much like Robinson, is a mediocre passer his mobility and knack for improvisation make one bitch of a Chimera-back.
Clark, though, is not the whole story. Evan Royster ran for 141 for an 8.3 ypc in essentially three quarters of work. The Lions spent all of last season searching desperately for a back who could do what Royster has done thus far this season, Austin Scott was booted from the team for his well documented sexual assault charges and Rodney Kinlaw kind of sucked. State looks like a legitimate B10 contender with the emergence of Royster as a top back and the departure of the aforementioned Morelli (lets face it: anyone would be a step up from Morelli, god-dammit he was awful).
The win itself bears little water, what with Oregon State losing to Stanford in week 1 and Stanford getting their head kicked in by Arizona State this past week. We'll find out in a hurry whether or not PSU is for real or merely a product of a cheap win as they, after devouring back-to-back sacrificial lambs 'Cuse and Temple, dive headfirst into the thick of the conference slate: Illinois, at Wisconsin, at OSU, and at Iowa in a six week span.
Locker's Celebration Call- This has been beaten to all hell by now so I will touch upon it only briefly. The call itself was garbage. The NCAA's edict against "celebration" is garbage. Pac-10 officiating, on the whole, is garbage. And most importantly: UDub's PAT team is garbage.
Fifteen yard penalty or not, there is still no excuse for getting a PAT blocked in such a pivotal moment. Ty Willingham, I hope you like daytime television.
West Virginia, DOA- I liked the Jeff Mullen hire. I figured that Mullen would make an effort to replicate his offense from Wake Forest. While he was never Dan Mullen prolific at Wake Forest, Jeff's misdirection based offense was extremely successful given both the athletes he had at hand and the general state of offense in the ACC. Mullen's game was based heavily upon counters, traps, moving pockets, screens, and the quick passing game; in short it should have been readily applicable to the talent on hand at WVU.
...yeah. About that. 3 points: the worst output by a WVU team since 2001 against Miami. That Miami team had 5 players drafted in the first round, amongst those drafted such stars as Ed Reed and Jeremy Shockey and Clinton Portis. That 2001 Miami was excellent and while ECU may well be the cream of this year's mid-major crop it is by no means on par with that Miami team.
More disheartening than the final score is the drive chart. WVU mounted a mere three drives that went for more than 3o yards, and even then those drives ended in a fumble, a FG, and a punt. Only once (once. Take a deep breath with me and count to three. 1...2...3...ONCE!) did WVU find itself in the red zone. Note my word choice, dear read, "find itself." By no stretch of the imagine did the Mountaineers "put themselves" or "drive into" or otherwise "assert themselves" deep into ECU territory, they were a confused and listless bunch and looked wholly lost whenever they had the ball.
West Virginia did not lose because of some flukey statistical anomaly; they did not lose because of some freak turnovers or marvelous trickery on ECU's part. They did not lose gracefully, they got curb stomped. WVU was out played and they knew it. As poorly as they played the first half, they were even worse in the second. If they imploded in the first half, the second half was like the Death Star exploding. The team came out flat, dull, utterly lifeless; and that, more so than the 386-251 yard advantage by ECU or the 4 yards per attempt by White, is the blackest omen for Bill Stewart's bunch.
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