Happy Labor Day, everyone.
Tough injury news for a number of teams over the weekend, including Clemson and Notre Dame.
The Irish lose starting running back Tarean Folston to a torn ACL, writes the AP.
Coach Brian Kelly said Folston tore the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) on his third carry of the game. The injury to the 5-foot-9, 214-pound junior leaves the Irish without an experienced running back.
Folston ran for 889 yards on 175 carries a year ago, and was expected to take on a heavier load this season.
Greg Bryant, the second-leading rusher from 2014, left school after being ruled academically ineligible. That leaves former wide receiver C.J. Prosise and freshman Josh Adams as the top running backs.
The 6-0, 220-pound Prosise ran for 98 yards on 20 carries against Texas while Adams had five carries for 49 yards, including touchdown runs of 14 and 25 yards.
Prosise has impressed Kelly with his running style after catching the ball. On a second-and-11 in the second quarter against the Longhorns, he took a handoff, broke a tackle at the line of scrimmage, spun out of a tackle 4 yards later, and carried a Texas tackler 2 more yards before going down.
"My experience told me that if a guy naturally, instinctively wants to run inside, you can teach him the other things," Kelly said.
A few more Labor Day links:
-- Dan Wolken of USA Today unveils his first Misery Index of the season.
Dang, George O'Leary:
5. Central Florida: When you’re trying to hang onto the cachet of that Fiesta Bowl win against Baylor long enough to score an invitation to the Big 12, losing a season opener to Florida International probably isn’t the best idea.
Not that the power conference end game is everything for UCF — heck, they can’t control whether the conference of One True Champion expands any more than Oklahoma President David Boren can — but it is something of a back burner issue for fans of every program trying to get in that derby (we’re looking at you, Cincinnati, Memphis, Connecticut and Brigham Young). And the appearance of having a football program on the way up rather than the opposite does have some intrinsic value.
This never figured to be a memorable season for the Knights one way or the other, but the season-opening loss does set off some alarm bells as head coach George O’Leary approaches age 70. O’Leary, as USA TODAY Sports reported last week, has his sights set on becoming the full-time athletics director at UCF and stepping down as football coach after this season.
The plan would then be to hand the reins to offensive coordinator Brent Key, a longtime O’Leary assistant and former player at Georgia Tech. That arrangement might work well in theory, but what does it mean for UCF in reality, particularly at such a sensitive time? If it doesn’t go well, Knights fans will have much more to worry about than losing to Ron Turner.
Dang, Mike Leach:
6. Washington State: Despite his feel-good second season in which he beat Southern California and took the Cougars to a bowl game, Mike Leach’s record at Washington State is 12-26 after Saturday’s loss to FCS member Portland State.
But here’s the really scary thing for Washington State fans: If he can’t fix it, who can? Bottom line: The Cougars don’t have any real excuse for losing to an FCS team in Leach’s fourth season.
It’s not their facilities, which are marvelous. It’s not their head coach, who is accomplished. It’s not their schedule, which has been manageable. And given the way Leach talked about his team in the preseason, it shouldn’t be the talent level. But something is missing, and the Misery Index grants Washington State fans free reign to freak out over the state of this program now that 2015 is already on track to be a disappointment.
-- Andy Staples leads his weekly Punt, Pass and Pork with some first-hand observations on Jake Coker and Alabama.
Jake Coker was entrusted late last week with the most sought-after information in the state of Alabama. Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban told the fifth-year senior quarterback to plan to take the first snaps against Wisconsin on Saturday night. Saban made clear that he wasn't naming Coker the starting quarterback for the season—sophomore Cooper Bateman would also get into the game—but Coker would get the first crack.
"He told me, and that was the only person he told," Coker said after helping No. 3 Alabama to a 35-17 win over No. 20 Wisconsin at AT&T Stadium. "So nobody else knew." Well, that's not entirely true. "My parents knew, but they weren't telling anybody," the Mobile, Ala., native said.
Coker passed his first test by keeping his lips (mostly) sealed, and he passed the second by completing 15 of 21 passes for 213 yards with a touchdown against the Badgers. There wasn't a throw that stood out as spectacular, and that was fine with Saban. There weren't any glaring mistakes that stood out, either. After the game, someone asked Saban if it pleased the coach that Coker completed passes to six different teammates. Saban's answer might have sounded like a rebuttal, but on Saban's team it constituted some of the highest praise a player can receive.
-- In Oklahoma, they're trying to figure out how they rushed for 3 yards a carry against Akron.
Perine became the FBS single-game rushing record holder with 427 yards last season against Kansas. He bench presses 440 pounds (“Is that a lot?” Perine kidded during last week’s luncheon) and benches 225 pounds 100 times per session (10 sets of 10). In addition, he has trimmed from 250 pounds last season down to 231.
Perine is, in every sense of the word, a beast. Yet he managed minus-5 net yards on four carries in the first quarter, had two 4-yard losses and wound up averaging 3.0 yards per (33 yards on 11 rushes). Given all his aforementioned attributes, how is this physically possible?
Mixon averaged a more acceptable 5.4 yards per with 27 yards on five rushes in his college debut, but as a team the Sooners averaged just 3.0 yards on the ground with 100 yards on 33 attempts.
Against frickin’ Akron.
Sooners coach Bob Stoops grudgingly admitted his team's running game fell short.
“Would've liked to run it a little bit better, but they were in a front that we didn't see much out of them a year ago,” Stoops said. “No excuses, we needed to run it better than we did.”
Senior center Ty Darlington saw the shortcomings. “Obviously, we have to get a lot better,” Darlington said. “I know we did some good things, but I know we have to get a lot better.”
New OU offensive coordinator Lincoln Riley said afterward: "Akron's defensive line was good. Those guys aren't slouches. There's a lot of Power-5 (Conference) teams we're going to play that don't have a D-line like those guys.”
-- Mark Bradley of the AJC says Bobby Petrino erred, but not egregiously.
1. Mea culpa. I didn’t know the rule. I’m guessing you didn’t, either. I tweeted that Louisville coach Bobby Petrino made a “terrible mistake” by calling his last timeout with 52 seconds and the clock stopped. Reaction on Twitter and even the CBS broadcast was similarly incredulous. But I was going by the NFL rule, which is different. (Ask the Falcons. Their whole Wembley undoing was a function of James Stone holding Ndamukong Suh and the clock stopping until the next snap.) In college, the clock restarts after a penalty. Bobby Petrino said he asked the refs and was told it would restart, which he also said forced him to call time at 0:52.
2. Though that wasn’t quite true. He didn’t have to call time at 0:52. Clay Travis ofFox Sports explains it well in this video. The clock would have restarted at 0:52, but Auburn couldn’t have run off 40 seconds off the clock. Owing to the penalty and the resulting stoppage, the Tigers would have gotten a 25-second play clock. Assuming Auburn ran the ball on third-and-12, Petrino could have used his final timeout at roughly 0:20, which would have forced the Tigers to punt. As it happened, Auburn’s fourth-down snap came at 0:03, when quarterback Jeremy Johnson rolled out and threw the ball far downfield. (Though not, weirdly enough, out of bounds. What if it had been intercepted?) As much fun as it is, especially for us Atlantans, to lambaste Petrino, I would — after further review — describe this as a mild error, not the grievous one it seemed.
-- Paul Myerberg writes on the disaster at Texas.
The defense — Strong’s area of expertise — allowed 30 first downs and 527 total yards in a 38-3 loss to No. 11 Notre Dame, ushering Fighting Irish skill players into the end zone with a troubling degree of frequency; the Irish scored touchdowns on three possessions in a row during the second half, sending Texas to its worst opening-game defeat since 1988.
The Longhorns’ special teams uncorked two punts of 28 yards, with the first leading to a Notre Dame touchdown and the second a field goal. At least the punter earned his place through sheer volume: Mike Dickson punted 10 times, getting enough opportunities to eventual bring his per-try average into respectable territory.
Yet no question is as troubling — or so bereft of likely solutions — as the riddle of Texas’ offense, which was described as having undergone a drastic offseason overhaul yet seems strangely familiar to those aware of the program’s Strong-era offensive malaise.
-- And finally, some really cool sounds from a band called Thundercat:
LW
