The Top Whatever: Atlanta first and last
This week's ranking of things that need to be ranked begins and ends with Georgian sports misery.
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1. Clemson finding new ways to disrespect overmatched ACC foes in garbage time, by Alex
Dabo Swinney likes to empty the bench. In 2019, Clemson used 76 players per game, 11 more than anyone else in the Power 5. It is a great recruiting tool, ensures young players are ready, keeps stars fresh, and doesn’t affect outcomes because the Tigers are always winning by dozens.
So I don’t think disrespect is the intent when Clemson starts throwing passes to its holder (who happens to be Swinney’s son), lets defensive linemen score offensive touchdowns, or gives its #3 QB two-minute-drill reps. It’s fun, and sports should be fun.
Anyway, Clemson visited Georgia Tech on Saturday. The Tigers pulled Trevor Lawrence early while he sat on exactly as many passing yards as Atlanta’s area code, then tweeted this:
Later, leading 73-7, they let their punter play QB for a whole series. The punter was two-for-three passing and completed a pass for a first down to Swinney's other son, a 5’8” walk-on receiver. Combined, Clemson’s head coach’s offspring had three catches. Georgia Tech’s whole team had six.
2. Grant Morgan only needs one arm to whip your ass, by Spencer
Any 2020 rankings should have a spot reserved for Bumper Pool, the Arkansas linebacker named after a popular British indoor recreational game. When healthy, he is capable of tallying 30 tackles in a game.
Pool missed this week due to injury. So the Bumper Pool Spot for Manic Defensive Excellence goes to his teammate, the likewise injured Grant Morgan. Why, how could that be, you ask, being a savvy observer of football. Morgan has a left arm injury, and surely couldn’t play with one arm, especially at a position so dependent on sure tackling?
Well:
That’s Morgan effectively ending Ole Miss-Arkansas with a pick six off Matt Corral. There is indeed body armor encasing his barely functional left arm, an arm that would follow the rest of his body into the end zone.
Morgan — playing with one arm, and without the support of Arkansas’s most productive defender next to him — had 19 tackles, a sack, and the pick six to scuttle the Lane Train’s bid to get to .500. The Hogs defense had a frenzied day, forcing seven turnovers off an Ole Miss offense fresh from bombarding Alabama into a ‘90s WAC game.
Everyone at Arkansas is playing like their asses are ablaze. This makes little sense, as there was no reason to suspect their asses, blazing or otherwise, could be remotely competitive with the rest of the SEC, much less in the daunting SEC West. The only explanations are that Sam Pittman is a boxy genius, and that we’ve all been using exactly one too many arms to play linebacker all along.
3. The Tennessee passing game, by Richard
Tennessee pick sixes on Saturday: Two.
Beers it took to get a Tennessee fan pissed off enough to throw a beer bottle through a window: Two.
The gentleman in question claims he does not really drink, so we can assume two cold ones plus the blinding rage caused by Tennessee’s play was enough to push him over the edge. Kentucky beat Tennessee 34-7. Apparently this gentleman’s wife also left him, and not just in the meme way.
He summed it up best when offering an excuse for the self-inflicted vandalism: “Honey, Tennessee football’s done that, I didn’t do it.” Truer words have never been spoken.
4. HOT WEEKNIGHT ACTION, by Alex
This season’s been light on weeknight games so far. But this time around, we got four excellent games between Wednesday and Friday:
On Wednesday, Coastal Carolina moved to 4-0 (and into the top 25 for the first time ever) by beating UL-Lafayette* in Lafayette, 30-27 on a buzzer-beating field goal. New podcast Split Zone Duo discussed why Coastal needed to join the rankings.
On Thursday, Arkansas State beat Georgia State 59-52 and then became quite possibly the first team ever to fire two defensive coordinators the day after a win.
On Friday, the television gods provided two barnburners. SMU beat Tulane on a field goal in overtime to cap a fun back-and-forth. In the nightcap, BYU reeled off 29 unanswered after falling down 12 to Houston in the third quarter, winning 43-26 and moving to 5-0.
BYU is having a special season. Take seriously the possibility the Cougars will deserve the fourth Playoff spot. This might even be a bizarre enough year that they could get it, particularly if this win over Houston appreciates with time and things break right with eventual opponent Boise State. Upset losses by teams like former #5 North Carolina don’t hurt, because they seem to lessen chances of one conference getting two teams into the field.
*Moon Crew policy is that this team is Louisiana after a win but ULL after a loss. The loss of more than three games in a season results in permanent ULL-ing until the following fall.
5. This man impregnated the night, and it gave birth to a Memphis victory, by Spencer
Before this weekend, Memphis had never beaten UCF in conference play. That streak extended back to 1990. It included outright humiliations (the 41-0 flattening of the Tigers in 2011), naked cruelties (two AAC championship losses, each preceded by an additional loss in conference play), and outright foolishness (Memphis scoring zero points in the second half after leading 30-17).
Then, this man made love to the night, and the night gave birth to a baby called victory.
There were other factors. Brady White played his most timely great game in a string of great games, leading the Tigers on a game-winning drive late in the fourth quarter. The Memphis defense had exactly one stop in them, and wisely saved it for UCF’s final possession.
But Memphis snapping a decades-plus losing streak to an outlet mall’s distance learning program? That only happens when two people really love each other and decide to commemorate that love by bringing new life into the world. Or when a guy in the Memphis band air-humps so ferociously that it destroys UCF’s will to win. Either one counts.
6. Arkansas, re-fire Chad Morris, by Alex
Last year, Arkansas lost at home to Western Kentucky, a team quarterbacked by a former Arkansas QB who might or might not have been run out of the program by Morris’ staff.
“This is not an overnight fix,” Morris said then.
Without Morris, Arkansas is now 2-2, likely 3-1 if not for an officiating adventure, and seems to be pretty decent. As bad of a job as we thought Morris was doing in Fayetteville, it was apparently even worse.
The Hogs are not the worst team in the SEC West. The three candidates for that post are two teams from Mississippi that have now lost to the Hogs and one team that’s not from Mississippi, but does have a tie to the Hogs.
7. Auburn, fire Chad Morris, by Alex
After Arkansas cut Morris loose less than two years into his tenure, old friend Gus Malzahn hired him to run the Tigers’ offense and oversee Bo Nix’s development. Nix was intriguing but had been uneven as a true freshman.
2020 Auburn is now 2-2, likely 1-3 if not for an officiating adventure, after Nix threw three interceptions at South Carolina. He had a chance to force overtime, but Nix repeatedly declined to throw and took off running, despite having neither the time nor the space to reach the end zone.
The game ended with Nix tackled short of the sticks on fourth down while the clock already read 0:00, the play after a timeout. Whoever allowed Nix to do that should face consequences.
Speaking of common threads:
8. Florida State? by Richard
Guess who might be trending toward being … back? If not exactly back to 2013 levels, then maybe at least 2017 or so, for now.
The good special teams: Two blocked punts in the first quarter.
The not-so-good special teams: Two missed field goals that could have salted the game away, leading to immense drama after FSU nearly blew a 31-7 halftime lead.
But these Noles played complementary football, and they might just have something with QB Jordan Travis.
What’s been so wrong in seasons past (the offensive line) was really good, paving the way for Travis’ 107 yards in a counter-based attack. Mike Norvell and new line coach Alex Atkins deserve kudos for getting this offense tweaked in the right direction.
On a different night, maybe FSU blows this. On this night, they did not. And for as sorry a state as the program has fallen to in the last couple years, it’s not condescension to say that that’s a small step in the right direction.
9. Update: they KNOW they’re doing unanimous predictions, by Jason
This space has offered a humble service: If you’re going to do a sports preview show that involves predicting games as a panel, please hire us to go against your unanimous picks, so that no one gets memed when these picks go wrong.
Has our service been accepted? No!
(One of those is Ole Miss over Arkansas, but I won’t be taking the time to edit it. Just imagine looking at five Ole Miss logos.)
Not only was that four memeably incorrect unanimous picks in one 15-minute burst, Kirk Herbstreit has even called out the social media-friendly nature of this unanimity in two straight episodes of this show, causing them to backfire all the harder. Be not deceived! Memes are not mocked!
However, progress is being made. Lone voice Tony Dungy proved himself selfless, with the happy bonus of gaining on all his friends in the standings, as the 49ers upset the Rams:
10. Anything Notre Dame? by Spencer
Nah.
11. But really, any Notre Dame? by Richard
Seconded.
12. Air raid Georgia, by Spencer
Georgia entered Tuscaloosa with the pleasant surprise of Stetson Bennett at quarterback. Bennett is a walk-on capable of managing a game, making a few nice throws, and generally not making mistakes. Those things make him better than most college quarterbacks, so that is not damning with faint praise.
Georgia had to use Bennett after Jamie Newman, their star transfer for the 2020 season, opted out halfway through fall camp to focus on prepping for the NFL Draft. The next guy, D’wan Mathis, struggled against Arkansas. And USC transfer JT Daniels has yet to see the field, partly due to injury. This is how we got here.
[this is the part where we start to say the bad things, Georgia]
Bennett’s been a fine part of a good, efficient, and balanced offense more dependent on a powerful run game than dazzling technical passing. In facing Alabama on the road, Georgia decided to be something else, and rely mainly on Bennett — a quarterback making just his third start — to get the job done against one of the best three teams in the country.
The cracked thing is how much it almost worked. Bennett threw 25 times in the first half, helped UGA to a 24-20 lead, and then should have been given the green light to hand off to any of Georgia’s three or four unearthly running backs. Instead, Bennett — clearly riding a hot streak that was about to end, and throwing into the teeth of an Alabama suddenly capable of pass defense — threw his first pick of the second half.
From 24-20, Georgia went on to call exactly three run plays for people not named Bennett. This is why you lose, Georgia, when you play Alabama. You try to be something you’re not.
There’s another chance at the end of the season. Be yourselves when you get there.
Last by design: UMass, college football’s Washington Generals, by Alex
The Minutemen canceled their season in the summer, then reinstated it once that became the trendy thing to do. But unlike almost everybody else, UMass lacked a critical piece of infrastructure: Opponents.
So they decided to declare themselves open for business and schedule anyone who needed an easy game and would give them a call.
So far, that has meant a one-game schedule: A trip to Georgia Southern. UMass lost 41-0, meaning the Minutemen will finish 2020 as the lowest-scoring team in the history of sports unless someone else calls them in need of someone to beat by 30 to 60 points on short notice.
For UMass’ trouble, Georgia Southern agreed to pay $60,000. That amounts to “roughly half the travel expenses,” per UMass’ AD. In related news, the football program is not financially self-sufficient, and UMass has a budget hole of more than $160 million.
Last, but only after briefly being first: The state of Georgia, by Jason
I posted this after Georgia Tech suffered its worst loss since 1894:
It all happened, and not just that: Atlanta United lost as well. That meant the recent MLS champs, the state’s only major-level champs in the recent memory of most Georgians, remain likely to miss not only the regular playoffs, but the expanded 2020 playoffs. I forgot to include the United in this tweet because I forgot the MLS season is ongoing, which was in turn because the United are so bad.
The only team on this list I actively root for is the Falcons, and “rooting for the Falcons” is more like “a comedy show in which I agree to be pelted with objects from the stage as a test of my will against the will of the performers,” rather than a situation in which I sit around hoping my team “wins games.”
But the Falcons have only been the Falcons — as in, a team capable of reaching any stage, then capable of blanketing that stage in any amount of vomit — for a decade or so, with the odd year once every quarter-century before then. Before that, they were usually just the Detroit Lions South, a team uninvited to any stages whatsoever, and that wasn’t so bad, in hindsight.
That’s not the case for the state’s other biggest names. The Braves and Dawgs have been supremely talented for almost my entire life, with so little to show for it. I do not know how my neighbors do it, this thing where they also root for the Braves, who have been the Falcons since 1990, or the Dawgs, who’ve been the Falcons since 1980. (The Hawks have been elite for exactly one year, a year in which they too became the Falcons.)
“The future is bright,” the weary Georgian says, beholding the latest disappointment. “Our players are so young. So pure. So unruined by the world. They’ll get to go through this again, many times, and surely one of those times will be different from the others.”
You don’t have to do this. There is no law requiring you to continue with all three of these Falcon-like teams. If all your hobbies resemble the Atlanta Falcons, I urge you to take up anything else, anything reliable and kind of boring, maybe astronomy or one of those chill religions that doesn’t ask you to do much or the Iowa Hawkeyes. There is no reason to support three or more teams that all do the same thing every time.
Congrats to Georgia Southern on defeating UMass.