Formula for OSU upset
In the pages of The Oklahoman today, I went on the record saying Texas Tech will win Saturday.
It’s a big game in Lubbock, as everyone knows. Both Tech and Oklahoma State are going after a conference crown and perhaps even a national title, and frankly, the teams are pretty evenly matched.
Why do I give Tech the edge?
Location, location, location. Playing this game in Lubbock will put the Red Raiders over the top.
But still, I think there’s a way for the Cowboys to win. I even believe there’s a tell-tale stat that could spell victory — Kendall Hunter’s rushing yards.
The Cowboy running back has been spectacular this season. He’s already run for over 1,200 yards, and he averages 6.7 yards per touch. Even more impressive is the fact that he went over 150 yards in OSU’s two biggest games of the season. Hunter had 154 yards at Missouri and 161 yards at Texas.
If Hunter runs for 150 yards or more against Tech, I think OSU will win.
The Red Raiders, after all, have one of the stingiest rush defenses in the country. They’re allowing less than a 100 yards rushing a game. That hurts opponents not only offensively but also defensively. Them not being able to rush the ball much means that Tech’s high-powered offense gets back on the field a lot more.
A big day from Hunter would change that and give the Cowboys a great chance of proving yours truly absolutely wrong.
Could Bradford leave? You betcha
When word broke last week that Sam Bradford might be the top prospect in the next NFL Draft, plenty of folks waved a dismissive hand.
“Not Sam,” they said. “He just doesn’t seem like a guy who’d leave school early.”
I tend to think the same thing about the Oklahoma quarterback. Then again, I thought that last fall about another Sooner.
Check out my latest video commentary or continue reading below:
Last winter a couple days after OU won the Big 12 championship game, Curtis Lofton sat at a table with several media types. Talk of the NFL came up.
My first thought — Curtis leaving early for the NFL? No way.
Sure, he’d just had an amazing junior season. He’s shown himself the best defensive player around. But the NFL?
Lofton seemed as unbelieving as I did. He admitted that he’d thought about playing in the league, but still, as reporters asked about submitting video to be evaluated by NFL draft types, Lofton had this bemused look on his face. It was a look that said, “Me leaving early for the NFL? Whodathunk it?”
I surely didn’t think it would happen.
Then within a month, Lofton had decided he was leaving for the NFL. His choice stunned many, and yet, Lofton is now starting for the Atlanta Falcons.
Could Bradford be starting for the Lions or Bengals or Chiefs next season?
My gut says no, but it said the same thing about Lofton. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that these are local guys, Lofton from Kingfisher, Bradford from Oklahoma City. Maybe when you’ve seen them playing Berryhill and PC West in the not so distant past, it’s hard to think about them facing the Minnesota Vikings or the New York Giants.
Listen, I’m not saying Bradford will leave OU after this season. But to think there’s absolutely no way it could happen, well, I’m going to wave a dismissive hand at that.
Ryan Reynolds, hockey star?
Sometimes, reporters start working on a story and discover an unexpected tale along the way.
So it was this week for me while working on a story about Ryan Reynolds.
You’ve likely heard his story — the Oklahoma linebacker recovered from two major knee surgeries and was having an amazing season for the Sooners when he suffered another knee injury. He tore his anterior cruciate ligament in the Texas game and will miss the rest of the season.
You can read the story about Reynolds and his continuing role on this OU team in today’s Oklahoman or on NewsOK.com
In talking to his father, Craig, I discovered that Reynolds was quite the hockey player. He was a member of several Arizona state championship teams in roller hockey as a kid, then around the age of 7, he decided to give ice hockey a try.
Trouble was, the family lived in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., which had no ice rinks.
More trouble was, the closest ice rink was either in Phoenix or Las Vegas. Both cities were a three-hour drive from Lake Havasu City.
Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday after Reynolds finished school, his parents would make the three-hour drive to Phoenix for an hour and a half practice, then drive three hours back. Reynolds would do his homework in the car.
“And we did that for five years,” Craig Reynolds said.
The younger Reynolds praised his parents for making the sacrifice, but he made it pay off. He played on the under-12 national team, even traveling to Canada for an international tournament.
Reynolds eventually gave up hockey; he disliked the drive not the sport.
“If he lived in an area where there were closer rinks and he didn’t burn out on the drive,” his father said, “he would’ve been playing ice hockey and not football.”
Texas on top again
A crazy day of college football brought upheaval in the polls.
Ditto for the Heisman polls.
My ballot for the HeismanPundit.com/Orlando Sentinel straw poll changed as much this week as it has all season. Chase Daniel, who had moved to the top for a couple weeks, fell like a rock. Colt McCoy, who wasn’t even on my ballot until a week ago, zoomed to the top.
The Texas quarterback took over the top spot in the overall balloting, too, receiving nine of the 10 first-place votes.
Four of the top five spots are held by Big 12 players, including Sam Bradford at No. 2, and eight of the dozen players who received votes are from the conference, too. That includes Oklahoma State running back Kendall Hunter and wide receiver Dez Bryant.
You can see all of the poll at www.HeismanPundit.com.
Here’s a look at my ballot:
1. McCoy: He had a huge game on an even bigger stage, going 28 of 35 for 277 yards against Oklahoma. He looks like the real McCoy.
2. Bradford: Can’t pin the Sooners’ loss on him. He threw five touchdown passes against the Longhorns. If the Sooners can get back on the winning track, his Heisman hopes will remain alive and well.
3. Graham Harrell: I can’t ignore the Texas Tech quarterback anymore. He threw for two touchdowns and ran for a third against Nebraska. He also hit a big pass in overtime that moved the Red Raiders to the 1-yard line, where they punched it in and scored the game-winner.
4. Hunter: The OSU tailback had a big game against No. 3 Missouri. With 154 yards, he put himself square in the Heisman cross-hairs. Have another big game next week at Texas, and who knows how high the little man could climb.
5. Daniel: Can’t ignore his three interceptions against the Cowboys. A couple of them looked like poor decisions, and Heisman Trophies are won and lost by what you do at crunch time.
OSU victory gets better with time
More than 24 hours have passed since Oklahoma State’s stunning upset of Missouri, and frankly, it’s still pretty stunning.
Not that the Cowboys won. That part has definitely sunk in. No, the thing that gets me is how they won.
Watch my latest video commentary or continue reading below:
If you’d have asked anyone before the game for an upset formula, just about everyone would’ve said that the offense needed to have a big day. And even more than that, one of the Cowboy stars would’ve needed to have a career day. Surely, Dez Bryant or Kendall Hunter or Zac Robinson needed to do something spectacular. Maybe Bryant needed 200 yards receiving or Hunter needed 300 yards rushing. Perhaps Robinson needed to throw for 300 or rush for 100 or both. Or maybe another Cowboy needed to do something out of this world. Maybe it would be Keith Toston or Damian Davis.
But in the end, OSU didn’t have anyone do anything super special. Sure, Hunter had 154 yards rushing and Robinson threw for 215 yards. Yes, Davis had a couple touchdown catches.
Plenty of guys had nice days, but no one had an eye-popping, jaw-dropping day. And still, the Cowboys beat the Tigers.
OSU didn’t need that career day from someone to pull the Saturday shocker.
The reason? The Cowboys are stout.
They could’ve gone to Missouri and won because they used a bunch of trickery or because the Tigers made a bunch of unforced errors, but that isn’t what happened. OSU won by simply doing what it does. It ran its offense and played its defense.
No more.
No less.
That makes what the Cowboys did Saturday all the more telling. They didn’t need to do something spectacular to beat the No. 3 team in the country. They just needed to do what they do.
And right now, what they can do is pretty darn impressive.
Is that really Les Miles?
Just saw the strangest thing — Les Miles in a low hat.
Everyone in these parts knows the former Oklahoma State coach’s signature look. Whether in his old job with the Cowboys or his new gig at LSU, he always seemed to wear those ball caps with extremely flat, high fronts.
Around headquarters, those lids spawned a nickname for Miles.
The High Hat.
In any event, I happened to catch some footage of Miles’ post-practice interview Thursday, and I did a double take. Seeing Miles in the more, um, well, normal hat made him look a bit like a football coach from the 50s. He looked a little bit what I imagine Bo Schembechler looked like in his early days at Michigan.
I almost expected the camera to pan down and catch of glimpse of old-school canvas Chuck Taylor’s or something.
You can check out video of Miles here.
He happened to be talking , by the way, about some comments that stirred controversy earlier this week. LSU defensive tackle Ricky Jean-Francois said the Tigers would be going after Florida quarterback Tim Tebow, trying to knock the Gator gunslinger out of the game in their big showdown Saturday.
“The idea that he would hit him and hit him hard is something that every quarterback in this league, including ours, is going to have to deal with when it comes to Saturday,” Miles said.
He continued, “We want to get to the quarterback, but we want to get to the quarterback every week. It doesn’t make a difference if it’s Florida’s quarterback or Auburn’s quarterback or whoever we play.”
Listen, I didn’t have a problem with Jean-Francois’s comments. Of course the Tigers want to get to Tebow. Every defensive player wants that every week, every play. Most just don’t say it.
Jean-Francois was being honest, saying what every defensive player is thinking.
Hard to criticize a guy for that.
Shadows of the 2000 Sooners
There’s been lots of talk lately about this Oklahoma football team resembling the Sooners of yesteryear.
The 2003 and 2004 teams are the most popular comparisons. Thing is, there’s a team looking a lot like the 2000 Sooners. And it’s not OU.
Watch my latest video commentary or continue reading below:
Alabama has many of the same ear-markings of the 2000 team that won the national championship. Some of the similarities, frankly, are so close that they’re eerie.
In 2000, the Sooners had a hot coach in his second season in Bob Stoops. Now, the Crimson Tide has Nick Saban, a hot coach in his second season.
In 2000, the Sooners relied heavily a bunch of youngsters, guys like Derrick Strait and Brandon Everage among them. Now, the Crimson Tide are doing the same. It has a bunch of first- and second-year guys leading the charge.
In 2000, the Sooners scored a big-time beatdown of their hated rival. OU throttled Texas that season, a defining win that resonates even now. Last weekend, the Crimson Tide notched a defining victory of its own, going to Georgia and smacking around the Bulldogs. At one point, the Crimson Tide rolled up a huge lead in the first half.
Told you the similarities were striking.
Nate Hybl saw them for himself last weekend. Earlier this week, I had a chance to talk to the former OU quarterback who now lives in Atlanta, and he told me he was actually at the Alabama-Georgia game. He had the same feeling then as he did in 2000 at the Texas game. Hybl said there was a moment in that game eight years ago where everyone looked around and said, “Wow, how good could we be?”
Hybl felt like Alabama types had a similar moment against Georgia, that realization that they might be even better than they thought.
Now, I’m here to tell you that Alabama has a tougher row to hoe than OU did in 2000. The SEC is deeper now than the Big 12 was then. But the Sooners did have perhaps the toughest three-game stretch college football has ever seen. Top five Texas. No. 1 Kansas State. No. 1 Nebraska.
Having to maneuver through a rough road isn’t the only thing that the 2008 Crimson Tide and the 2000 Sooners have in common.
Only time will tell, though, how far the similarities will go.
Big 12 quarterbacks rule!
As if having three undefeated football teams in the state weren’t enough fun, we find ourselves front and center in the Heisman Trophy chase, too.
Sam Bradford is a dark horse no more. The Oklahoma quarterback continues to impress. Continues to climb the Heisman straw polls, too. He moved to No. 2 on my ballot in the HeismanPundit.com/Orlando Sentinel poll, the same spot he held after all the pollsters voters were tallied.
Slingin’ Sam trails Missouri quarterback Chase Daniel by the slimmest of margins, 46 points to 44, six first-place votes to four.
These two guys have the inside track to the little bronze statue. That’s because both of their teams have a chance to run the table, going undefeated in the regular season and setting up a showdown between their teams in the Big 12 title game. Heisman voters like great quarterbacks who lead successful teams, and Daniel and Bradford definitely both fit that mold.
Truth be told, these next few weeks could determine who wins the Heisman. After going to Baylor, Oklahoma faces Texas in Dallas. That same week, Missouri hosts Oklahoma State, then faces Texas the following week. We’ll have a chance to stack up how these two quarterbacks perform against the same team in consecutive weeks. That will be a great indicator in the Heisman race.
And then there’s this — if Texas would somehow manage to pull a pair of major upsets, Longhorn quarterback Colt McCoy could skyrocket to the top of the Heisman heap.
What if the Heisman ceremony is an all-Big 12 affair?
It could happen.
Here’s a look at my ballot for the HeismanPundit.com/Orlando Sentinel poll this week:
1. Daniel: Missouri was off last week, but he was almost flawless in non-conference play.
2. Bradford: Four TDs and 400-plus yards against TCU. Slingin’ Sam is makin’ this look easy.
3. Tim Tebow, Florida: Gator quarterback had his best game of the year against Mississippi, throwing for 319 yards and accounting for three touchdowns. If only he could kick extra points, too.
4. Max Hall, BYU: Cougar quarterback also had the week off, but he needed it to cool off his smokin’ arm. He’s thrown for 15 TDs and almost 1,300 yards already.
5. Jeremy Maclin, Missouri: Will the Tiger utility player take Heisman votes from Daniel? Doubtful, but with the likes of Mark Sanchez, Knowshon Moreno and others dropping like flies, Maclin might still get a trip to New York as a nice consolation prize. That could set him up nicely for a run at the 2009 Heisman.
Heisman “Chase” is on
First things first — Missouri has yet to play a quality opponent.
Still, it’s impossible to ignore what Chase Daniel has done in the first four weeks of the season. The Missouri quarterback has been stellar.
Passing percentage: 75.9 percent.
Passing yards: 1,412 yards.
Passing touchdowns: 12.
Interceptions: 1.
Even if you’re playing against ghost players in the backyard, those are amazing numbers. And right now, no one else comes close to what Daniel has done.
That’s why he tops my vote in this week’s HeismanPundit.com/Orlando Sentinel Heisman Trophy straw poll.
Against Buffalo this weekend — and no, it wasn’t the NFL team that calls upstate New York its home – Daniel complete 20 consecutive passes at one point. No other quarterback in the history of the Big 12 has ever had a stretch when he’s been so hot.
Daniel could really assert himself in his next two games. After an off week, Missouri plays at Nebraska and at Texas. Those games could put him in the Heisman driver’s seat.
Here’s a look at my ballot this week:
1. Daniel: In a word, impressive.
2. Tim Tebow, Florida: The Gators scored a solid win against Tennessee, but the junior quarterback was fairly pedestrian. He had only 96 yards passing with two touchdowns. Frankly, the Gators didn’t need him to do any more. That speaks well of the strength of their team, but doesn’t do much to boost a Heisman campaign.
3. Sam Bradford, Oklahoma: The Sooners were off this week, so the sophomore quarterback held fast at No. 3.
4. Mark Sanchez, Southern Cal: The Trojans were off this week, so the junior quarterback held fast at No. 4.
5. Max Hall, BYU: A newcomer to my ballot. The junior quarterback has already thrown for almost 1,300 yards with 15 touchdowns and two interceptions. Right now, those type of numbers trump anything that Knowshon Moreno, Jeremy Maclin, Michael Crabtree or any other Heisman candidate has done.
Heisman headin’ toward a quarterback?
Two weeks into the college football season, and already Heisman Trophy favorites are starting to emerge.
And quarterbacks are the ones rising to the top.
Tim Tebow and Chase Daniel look like the class of the bunch right now, which I’ve reflected in my latest vote for the heismanpundit.com/Orlando Sentinel poll. Tebow had another big week, this time in Florida’s beat down of Miami. He threw for 256 yards and two touchdowns and ran for 55 yards. I know Miami is no great shakes, but that’s still a solid day.
Daniel was darn good, too. Granted, Missouri was playing a foe even worse that Miami — Southeast Missouri State — but Daniel completed 14 consecutive passes during one stretch. That’s stout no matter who you’re playing against. He finished the day with 245 yards passing and three touchdowns.
Three other quarterbacks are likely to figure seriously into the Heisman discussion before the year’s over.
Pat White dropped a bit this week because of West Virginia’s loss to East Carolina and because of his so-so performance. He had 72 yards passing and 97 yards rushing, and the Mountaineers managed only three points. Thing is, White is too good to fall off the Heisman radar forever.
The other two quarterbacks likely to factor in are USC’s Mark Sanchez and Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford.
Sanchez could make a big-time statement this week against Ohio State. He threw for a career best 338 yards this past weekend, and if he has another day like that against the Buckeyes, he’ll be in the mix.
Bradford is also stacking up great outings. After a nearly flawless opening week against hapless Tennessee-Chattanooga, he was stellar once again in the second week of the season. He threw for 395 yards and five touchdowns against Cincinnati. It was a performance that caught the attention of the Davey O’Brien Award voters, who chose Bradford as the quarterback of the week, and if he keeps up these kind of numbers, it won’t be long before lots of people take notice.
Here’s a look at my vote for the Heisman after Week 2:
1. Tebow: The Gators have a bye this week, but a big game looms at Tennessee in a couple weeks.
2. Daniel: The big numbers should continue with Nevada up next.
3. Beanie Wells, Ohio State: The Buckeye running back didn’t play against Ohio, and we saw how much Ohio State missed him. Ohio nearly scored a big upset. A big day against USC this week might vault him to the top of my ballot, where he was before being injured.
4. Knowshon Moreno, Georgia: The Bulldog running back is being overlooked a little. He shouldn’t be. He’s averaging 8.7 yards a carry; he’s just not getting many carries against the likes of Georgia Southern and Central Michigan. The next three weeks will be telling — at South Carolina, at Arizona State and vs. Alabama.
5. White: Even though he had 169 yards of offense against East Carolina, quarterbacks are judged on wins. Losing to the Pirates doesn’t kill his Heisman chances but it sure hurts them.
