<p>The only undefeated B1G team - Ohio State Buckeyes!! lol</p>
<p>Looks like the ACC just lost their only national title contender</p>
<p>Yes, Florida State’s loss to a truly mediocre NC State team i. ends the ridiculous banter that the ACC could produce a national championship contender this year.</p>
<p>And in the ACC’s big “statement game,” Miami’s 41-3 loss to an overrated Notre Dame team speaks volumes to the conference’s mediocrity. </p>
<p>Back in the Big Ten, Ohio State’s domination of Nebraska was impressive. But so was Michigan’s 44-13 dismantling of a Purdue team that had been averaging over 42 points per game. Michigan dominated in the trenches on both side of the ball. I see both Michigan and Ohio State to win out through the remainder of their conference schedules, until their traditional end-of-season showdown. The sheriff is back in town. But which one will it be?</p>
<p>bclintonk, Notre Dame isn’t an overrated team. They beat your Wolverines recently just in case you forgot and they made a solid Miami team look mediocre. They are a legitimate top 10 team who could play against Alabama for the National Championship this year.</p>
<p>Notre Dame has beaten both MSU and UM I wouldn’t be calling them overrated if I’m a B1G fan</p>
<p>Yup, much like Michigan, and OSU, ND was just having the right coach away from being a force again. I am more impressed what PSU has done with so little and so much turmoil.</p>
<p>Notre Dame is considered “weak sauce” in the eyes of the mighty Buckeyes! :p</p>
<p>Last meetings between the two schools since 1936 (last time ND had beaten tOSU)
TOSU vs ND 3-0
1995 tOSU vs ND 45-26 (Home)
1996 tOSU vs ND 29-16 (Away)
2006 tOSU vs ND 34-20 (Neutral Site)</p>
<p>And for whatever is worth, tOSU also dominated Brian Kelly’s successful tenure at Cincy which led to his current job at ND. :)</p>
<p>No, I still say Notre Dame is overrated. They were quite unimpressive against Michigan, mustering only 239 yards of total offense. Michigan marched up and down the field against them but squandered numerous opportunities in the red zone with 6 unforced turnovers, mostly INTs on errant passes. Michigan was the dominant team in that game but they handed it to Notre Dame on a silver platter. You’re not going to win with 6 turnovers; in fact, 6 turnovers is almost always a blowout loss. Yet Notre Dame’s offense was so ineffective that they barely hung on for a close 13-6 win.</p>
<p>Notre Dame was also unimpressive in just squeaking by a so-so Purdue team that Michigan totally throttled on the road yesterday, 44-13. ND’s victory over Michigan State looked impressive at the time, but that’s an MSU team that almost lost to Indiana yesterday, which tells me the ND result was more about Sparty’s weaknesses than Notre Dame’s strength.</p>
<p>Looking at Notre Dame’s upcoming schedule, I see a 3-loss team by season’s end. Better than where they’ve been lately, but nowhere near a title contender, and in my book not a legitimate top 10 team.</p>
<p>The beauty is that the discussions will be settled by the results in the next weeks, starting with a ND game against a weaker Stanford team. From a distance, the discussions about who beat Michigan, MSU, Purdue, et all seem hollow as they all appear so-so to mediocre teams. The Big 10 is a very average conference. One comparison stems from the way Cal almost necked tOsu. Your front leader had big issues with a team that is not too hot in the PAC 12. Ask UCB.</p>
<p>In the meantime, it is good to see the impact of the ridiculous preseason rankings to erode a bit with the losses in the SEC. How anyone could slot a team such as Georgia this high is a testament to the desire to keep the Alabama and LSU combo as close as possible to a National Championship. The game was barely over that the media already started a campaign for LSU loss not discounting its chances. I guess that they are preparing the terrain for Alabama losing to LSU and still sailing through as a result of a rigged competition.</p>
<p>Good for playoff games.</p>
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<p>Not quiet understand your logic, Xiggi. That was way back early in the season, third game for the Buckeyes adjusting new coaching style back in Sep. Also, last I checked, the Bruins also beat the Huskers earlier, and the Golden Bears just dropped 43 on the Bruins yestersday while TOSU dropped “63 points” on the Huskers last night. As season progresses, tOSU simply finds its rhythm and got much better (especially on offense) under Meyer, and is now a consensus solid Top-10 football program once again. Go Bucks! :)</p>
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Riddle me this bclintonk, do you think Notre Dame’s great pass rush had no bearing on Denard’s arm at all and played no role in him throwing so many picks? You’ve got to credit the Domer defense which has a Heisman candidate in contention in Manti Te’o. Note Dame’s defense made the plays when it matters. You won’t see Denard throwing 5 picks against Purdue or Wisconsin or pretty much any other B1G; it takes a truly great defense to impact a special quarterback to that extent.</p>
<p>At any rate, ND’s offense showed up against Miami. We’ll see how ND does against Stanford; I predict a comfortable victory.</p>
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<p>What is hard to understand? Buckeyes are by far the bet team in a mediocre conference. UCLA and Cal are not very good and they do well against the Big 10. Nebraska and Wisconsin are shadows of what they were. The point is that with the exception of perhaps tOsu there is close to nothing in the entire Big 10 making the earlier discussion about how good Notre Dame futile. If you want more proof, just look how PSU is not looking at ridiculous as one would have expected with the turmoil. That they look decent is a testament to how bad their conference is.</p>
<p>^ On the other hand, Cal completely throttled UCLA last night, and many people thought UCLA was having a comeback season.</p>
<p>Who’s good and who’s not is a highly fluid thing in college football. Remember, these are college kids still learning the game, learning their coaches’ system, and learning to play with each other, and the learning curve can be steep, especially on a team that’s playing a lot of underclassmen or had lots of starting positions to fill with less experienced players. A few games in, offenses start to click, defenses start to gel–or they don’t. Other teams with a lot of returning starters are going to be pretty much the same team on week 12 as they were on week 1. Yes, all the wins and all the losses count, but the deeper you go into a season the less relevant the early season wins and losses become to evaluating a team’s strength.</p>
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<p>1st, it’s difficult to properly gauge teams so early in the conf. and 2nd, all the B1G teams traveled west for the games this year.</p>
<p>Based on this premise, the 2008 and 2009 Oregon teams and the 2010 and 2011 USC teams weren’t impressive since they struggled against the bottom feeders of the B1G, Minny and Purdue.</p>
<p>In 2010, USC had a tough time w/ an awful Minny team (3-9/2-6), 32-21, and in 2011, USC escaped w/ a victory at HOME (19-17) against another crappy Minny team (3-9/2-6).</p>
<p>And the Ducks were overrated since a bad Purdue (4-8/2-6) team played Oregon tough in 2009 (32-26) and even tougher in 2010, losing 38-36 at Oregon, due to too many turnovers (PU really should have won that game).</p>
<p>bclintonk is spot on about ND and how things are fluid in CFB. </p>
<p>Early in the season, players are still getting used to new coaches/systems and coaching staffs are still trying to figure out who should play/be in the 2-deep.</p>
<p>Early in the season, Iowa was floundering since they didn’t have a running game (due to 6 backs having gone down w/ injury) and their QB is so-so, but now Iowa has found an O with the converted fullback/walk-on Weisman; and Iowa is notorious for starting slow and picking up steam.</p>
<p>Same w/ PSU, the team is playing much better now w/ confidence in O’Brien’s system. But for a few plays and an unreliable kicker (due to the transfer of its All-American kicker) PSU could easily be undefeated.</p>
<p>If PSU played UVA today, PSU would win handily, esp. if the game were to be played at State College.</p>
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<p>ND’s D is improved, but hardly dominant.</p>
<p>The Wolverines losing that game was on the UM coaching staff for horrible game plan. UM’s OC tried to turn DRob into a pocket passing QB in that game which he is not.</p>
<p>They totally went away from DRob’s strength as a QB.</p>
<p>It’s the same thing as NU coaches got sucked into PSU’s game plan and played its passing QB, Siemian, for pretty much all of the game, instead of giving its running QB, Colter snaps under center.</p>
<p>But that’s part of the game.</p>
<p>There is however, no excuse in getting blown out at this stage of the season if one is to be considered a pretty good team, esp. if it’s against a good, but not great team like ND.</p>
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<p>Are you really sure you want to keep making predictions?</p>
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<p>Yup, I am reminded of the #7 Ducks got smoked by the #8 Buckeyes in the Rose Bowl back in 2010. :p</p>
<p>I agree that time will tell, but one can draw some early conclusions after five or six weeks. Fluid or not, the Big Whatever is at best an average conference.</p>
<p>And, by the way, early victories against overrated and overanked teams tend to play a role in the final BCS rankings. Teams maintain high rankings until they accumulate two or more losses. Examples have been teams like Florida, Georgia, and aRkansas since 2008. </p>
<p>But there is good news in Indiana and Michigan. Tigers and Colts had good games. The comeback by Luck and Wayne against the Packers was sweet. </p>
<p>So all is not as bleak as college football and leadership in your area.</p>
<p>PS Some around here wish PSU should have kept that kicker as the renegade bum cost the Longhorns the game. \smile</p>
<p>sparkeye, I know you love your Buckeyes, but man, they truly are an SEC team in the B1G.</p>
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<p>Not the game I saw. Denard Robinson threw 4 INTs, not 5; the 5th was by tailback Vincent Smith on a tailback option pass into the end zone. Smith tried to zip it into double coverage on his intended target and it went right into the hands of a Notre Dame DB. It looked like Smith had a lane into the end zone if he had kept it on the ground, but he just made a bad decision and made a pass he had no business making, trying to be the hero. He played QB in HS and probably thought this was his moment. </p>
<p>One of Denard’s 4 was on a high but catchable pass that bounced off the hands of his receiver and into the arms of a Notre Dame LB standing about 5 feet away. That one’s on the receiver, not Denard. The other 3 were just off-target passes–Denard has a bad habit of throwing off his back foot, which affects his accuracy, something they’ve been trying to drill out of him–or poor decisions by the QB to throw into coverage when he should have either checked down or thrown it away. Or a combination of both; I recall one play where the DB had inside coverage with the receiver running a sideline route, and Denard could have thrown to the sideline where either his receiver is going to catch it or it goes safely out-of-bounds, but instead he tried to go over the top, hoping his receiver could win a jump ball, and the DB came away with it. I don’t recall any of those passes being affected very much by ND’s pass rush; he had plenty of time to throw, but it was just poor QB play. Those are correctable errors that Denard’s been making his entire college career; at times this season he’s looked like he’s gotten on top of them, but the Notre Dame game was a major relapse.</p>
<p>I’ll give ND’s defense some credit. They played pretty well. They did have 3 sacks, though I don’t recall any of them killing a Michigan drive as Michigan only punted once the entire game, and that was on their first possession. And they were close enough in coverage to pick off 5 passes, all of them either poorly thrown or passes that should never have been made. And yes, Manti Te’o is a great player who made some big plays. But the outcome was not the product of great defense by Notre Dame. It was just a horrendously bad day by Denard Robinson, who manned up and apologized to his teammates and coaches in the locker room after the game for what he called “the worst game of my life,” then went out before the media and apologized to Michigan fans in much the same terms.</p>
<p>I love Denard Robinson. He’s a great kid and a great player, a truly special talent. He plays the game with a lot of emotion, which is usually a positive. But sometimes his emotion gets in his way, like when he gets too amped up and forgets to plant his feet before he passes, or tries to play Superman and zip a pass through defenders. He’s right. He just played poorly against Notre Dame. Apart from the unforced turnovers, Michigan outplayed Notre Dame on both offense and defense and should have won, but they gave that game away, with DRob doing most of the giving. I don’t think we’ll see another game like that out of him the rest of this season. And if that’s the case, Michigan’s going to do a lot of damage from here on out.</p>
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<p>If there is one unpredictable game, this ought to be it. There is no way to predict which team will show up. I am happy you polished your crystall ball well.</p>
<p>Regarding ND Versus Michigan, how did last game compare to last year? Do I recall correctly that the poor QB play of Kenard this year was different from the miracles he needed and doled out last year?</p>
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<p>Perhaps…? :P</p>
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