First of all, it was October, a rare month of boys; full of cold winds, long nights, dark promises.
- Narrator, Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)
Hello pigs, welcome back. First of all, sincerest apologies for missing last week’s article. Things were unexpectedly hectic on my end, and no, I’m not just talking about what happened in the Marshall vs Louisiana Lafayette overtime thriller (though I will talk about this some more a bit later). Before getting into the story, here are a few stats I found interesting:
Some Interesting Stats
Virginia Tech RB Terion Stewart has 16 forced missed tackles on only 26 carries.
The first three RBs to hit the 100 carry threshold are Missouri’s Ahmad Hardy, JSU’s Cam Cook, and Ole Miss’ Kewan Lacy. All three are top 15 in rushing yardage, and top 10 in rushing scores.
Cam Cook currently leads the FBS with 111 carries in five games. Hardy leads the FBS with 730 yards on 103 carries, and is tied for the lead with nine scores along with RU’s Antwan Raymond and UW’s Jonah Coleman.
Arkansas’ Taylen Green is the only QB in the top 30 of rushers thus far, with 441 rushing yards, ranking 15th currently.
There are three QBs in the top 10 of rushing scores currently, and they included Georgia Tech’s Haynes King, Tulane’s Jake Retzlaff, and the one we all suspected: Iowa’s Mark Gronowski.
Of the top 10 WRs in terms of receptions currently, by my estimation, nine of them are slot receivers, or are equal to/shorter than six feet tall. UConn’s Skyler Bell is the leader with 42. ASU’s Jordan Tyson is the only one that I am fairly certain is not a slot receiver in his offence.
UCLA is the only FBS team to not have a lead at any point so far this season.
Why There Was No Article Last Week
It was a seemingly nondescript Tuesday. Everything started more or less normally, except that I found myself later that afternoon around 4:30 booking a flight set to leave a few hours later at 7:30. I won’t go into the details of the circumstances that led to this, but if you’ve ever booked a last minute travel arrangement via flight, you can relate to the feeling.
Thankfully, there is a small airport located 15 minutes from my building, and it doesn’t take long to go through security. I left my place at 6:20, arrived at the port around 6:35, and was in the lounge waiting to board my flight by 6:50. During this period I had some time to kill.
There was a brief moment of contemplation about whether I should begin writing what would have been last week’s newsletter, but ultimately decided I would instead 1) go get some orange juice at a shop, and 2) book a session with my boy Oleg, a massage therapist located at my destination, for later that week.
The flight arrives at my destination at 8:30 on the dot, and I’m where I need to be by 9pm— all in all, a very efficient process in the end. My brain and body had not yet caught up with each other, which left me feeling disoriented, sort of like how I felt watching that wanker Greg Desrosiers run for 200 yards and three scores later that Saturday vs. FAU (again, more on this in a bit).
Wednesday and Thursday don’t provide many opportunities for writing, and then on Thursday evening I’m scheduled for some much needed R&R.
Oleg, a man born in the Ural Mountains of Russia, defected in the 90s shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He’s a hard man from a hard upbringing, but blessed with incredibly soft hands. And he always applies just the right amount of pressure.
He always has some cool stories to share, and offers an interesting perspective coming from the gateway between Eastern and Western Russia. On one side of the Ural region lies Siberia, an infamously rough and rural landscape, on the other, the developed and more European segments. This location was originally a strategic centerpiece of Nazi Germany’s plan to conquer the Soviet Union, though they soon discovered that the difficult terrain rendered their plan folly.
Oleg clarifies to me that the majority of the Ural Mountains are really more like hills. I tell him that’s OK, there’s a conference in college football called the Atlantic Coast Conference, which is another place where east meets west; yet despite the name, there are schools literally located on the Pacific.
He doesn’t really understand my analogy, and to be fair, I probably could have delivered it more concisely when it happened, but we carry on our conversation nonetheless.
Penn State, Georgia, & Patterns That National Media Continue to Ignore
Now, speaking of pressure, it seems (unsurprisingly) that it got to Kirby Smart, current UGA head football coach, once again this year. WHO could have predicted this?! Well, a few weeks back in one of these articles, I did basically declare that it was a foregone conclusion the Tide would win this one. It’s one of CFB’s strangest oddities—Kirby Smart’s record vs. Alabama.
I will say, in his defense, for a large portion of that 1-7 record or whatever it is, the Alabama teams he saw were much more talented than the Georgia teams he had. I mean, he literally played Nick Saban’s mid-dynasty Alabama in his second year of coaching Georgia in the 2017 national championship game. Then again in the 2018 SEC championship game, without even having three full recruiting cycles yet (the generally agreed-upon threshold to establish a new regime).
And the only Alabama teams he was seeing, since they weren’t usually scheduled on the regular season docket, were very good, often national championship winning Alabama teams. So, it’s probably fair to say that everyone else was losing those games too. It just so happened that Kirby and his Georgia program were next up right behind Alabama for many of those years, and thus had the unfortunate pleasure of matching up with them in title games.
However, 2023 and onward is inexcusable in my mind. These Alabama teams are nowhere near the standard of the 2010s versions, and in every meeting going back to the 2023 SEC championship game, it is my opinion that Georgia was the better team. Certainly that was the case in 2023 and 2024, it remains to be seen whether that will be the case this season.
Even more alarming than the fact that many of the national media cognoscenti picked Georgia to beat Alabama last weekend, was that many of them also picked PSU to win a game vs. a top ten ranked team! In equally disturbing fashion, many of these media types continue to rank the Lions in the top ten of the AP Poll!
I don’t know how any sane individual can look at what has transpired in college football over the last decade and EVER give the benefit of the doubt to PSU when it comes to games involving four and five star players on both sidelines.
In essence, PSU is a CFB speculator’s dream school—they are perfectly predictable. When they play a team comprised of mostly three stars and below (I.e., a team that they are more talented than), they win (usually by a large amount); when they play a team comprised of mostly four and five star players (i.e. a team they are either as talented as, or less talented than), they lose.
They and the current iteration of Indiana are two peas in a pod in my opinion. They blow their collective loads against overmatched opponents, but then lose like clockwork to ‘real’ teams.
And of course, PSU remained in the top 10 of the AP Poll this week. Why wouldn’t they? They’ve taken all of FIU, Villanova (FCS) and Nevada to the woodshed.
It actually makes sense to me why coaches like James Franklin and Curt Cignetti go out of their way to eviscerate overmatched opponents when other coaches use these games as opportunities to improve areas of weakness and provide experience to the second and third string units; when the selling points of your resume consistently come down to “close loss vs. Ohio State, Oregon, Michigan etc…” you need not only win every other game, but probably win by a lot to be taken seriously.
Then there’s someone like Kirby Smart, who seemingly expects to win big games not involving Alabama, and his Georgia program looks like shit whenever they play Austin Peay, Marshall, (insert FCS/G5 program here). This is forgiven because he then beats teams like Ohio State, Texas, Tennessee etc.
It’s just interesting to observe the two ends of the spectrum. Equally interesting (and disappointing) is that the national media that cover college football seemingly do not have very long memories, forgetting the lessons they learn each college football campaign during the course of the next offseason, then making the same mistakes and curating lazy narratives year after year. How PSU continues to get the benefit of the doubt—particularly amongst the “results on the field have to matter” crowd—boggles my mind.
Big Victory in the Golden Pig This Week
Anyways, on Friday morning I head back to Toronto. I arrive at my building just after noon, and decided to hit the pool. During this session, I developed the contingency plans at each position for my squad in the Golden Pig Invitational league. I do this in advance because I don’t want to scramble on Saturday during the action if a need arrises to bring in another player (or two) at a position group that is struggling. This league is bestball scoring format, you see, so all the players are eligible to count towards the point total.
This exercise is sort of an art and a science; by that point in the week there aren’t any players still on my roster that I want to drop. In fact, as evidenced that these players are still rostered, that means I really want to roster each of them, otherwise I would have dropped them earlier. You also have to pay careful attention to when the games are happening on Saturday, to ensure how much time you have during the day to pick up the various contingency players.
I suspected a need could arise at WR, so I spent particular attention on this group going into the weekend. As I laid sprawled out over the pool—enjoying the place to myself—a few names stood out: FAU’s WR Jayshon Platt, and BYU’s WR Chase Roberts.
For context, my matchup luck in the Golden this year has been tough, as my squad currently has the second most points scored against, despite playing most of the lower scoring teams on average thus far (i.e. these teams are scoring some of their highest totals by chance when they match up with my squad). Despite this, the roster sits at a respectable 5th place, with a 6-4 record (third highest in points), but could easily have been 7-3 or 8-2 and in a higher standing with a different league mate’s schedule.
We play one opponent and the league median per week. Only one of my opponents has scored below the league median through five weeks, and that team missed the cut by less than ONE point.
So, despite being matched up against the league’s lowest scoring team thus far this past weekend, I had a feeling that it was going to be another tough week. For one, some players were returning from injury, which would bolster my opponent’s output. What I did not expect, however, was that he would have multiple players score more points this week than they had during the entire season leading up to week five.
Two separate skill players went over 200 yards and scored 38+ points. Another, FSU’s Duce Robinson, channelled his inner Calvin Johnson and was a hair away from his own 40 point game.
And I particularly appreciated Arkansas State’s Corey Rucker almost literally scoring more points vs. ULM then he had in the FOUR games previous combined.
The aforementioned Greg D not only killed me with 38 points scored, but did so at a direct cost to Sutton Smith, who, along with myself and many others, could have run wild through the holes Memphis’ line was opening through that FAU front seven. Apparently this was some sort of weird homecoming for Greg D where he had a bunch of family in attendance? For fuck’s sake… 🤦♂️
I decided to hold on a little longer, letting Jayshon Platt’s availability slip away when the Owls kicked off at 7:30. He ended up scoring 26 points, which would have helped me. Instead, I decided that I’d roll with BYU’s Chase Roberts.
Thanks to Marshall and Louisiana going to OT, one of my QBs, Carlos Del Rio Wilson, acquired another passing TD, which counts for five points in this league, bringing my deficit to my opponent to within about seven points; but because of how scoring operates in this league, what I actually need at WR is around 15 points, because the lowest total counting toward my score is Pofele Ashlock’s nine point score (who, along with one of my QBs Jacob Clark and RBs Gemari Sands, got injured during the game and did not return).
Roberts had scored just shy of that in the two weeks leading up to their week five matchup vs. CU, but this felt like a good game to have a piece of BYU’s passing attack.
I make the transaction in the late hours of Saturday evening and then decide to hit the pool. I don’t usually like to swim late, but when I went for my bike ride earlier that morning, upon my return I found that two of my building’s elevators were not functioning, making the wait times to traverse floors very lengthy, and thus decided to skip the pre-noon kick off swim.
By the time I return, Roberts has secured the first of BYU’s TDs. He’s now at around nine points, matching Ashlock’s total, and needs six-ish more to secure victory for my squad. For a player who had a total of one TD coming into that game, I assumed he would acquire the remaining points with a few catches downfield. I was wrong—his very next touch is a slant TD—BOOM, victory secured nice and neatly just like that. Not only did my program pull through, it actually ended up being the highest scoring output of any of the 12 teams in this league, which was the second time in three weeks that had happened.
While I have to acknowledge the role of sheer luck in this game of ours—certainly there was a lot involved in one of my players going to OT, and another catching more TDs in one game than they had all year—I felt redeemed knowing that either of the two options I had decided on would have achieved the necessary points to secure victory. In that sense, the decision I had been grappling with during Friday’s pool sesh, and then again on Saturday, really wasn’t a decision at all.
Following Up On A Few Things I Wrote About Two Weeks Ago
In the last article of this series, I wrote about four things I was interested in learning more about as we entered week four.
To refresh your memories, these items included:
UNC’s RB Demon June, and whether Belichick was going to #PIG him for the rest of the year
The emergence of OU freshman Tory Blaylock
CFF implications of UCLA and VT openings
The new workhorse in Minnesota: Fame Ijeboi
Starting with the first item, while the answer to the question was “yes”, it may not mean much in the grand scheme of things. UNC is a poor football team. Their offensive line is not good, and they have a hard time running their offence against other P4 programs.
Tory Blaylock had a hard time vs. Auburn, which seems to be a theme for RBs this year, but much like UNC, OU’s offensive line is going to be a problem for the production of their RBs. At least this week Blaylock gets an easy appetizer (Kent St.) before the full conference slate kicks off.
VT has actually been better, in my opinion, from a CFF standpoint since the firing of Brent Pry. The QB, Kyron Drones, has been better, and now a RB, Terion Stewart, appears to be emerging.
UCLA remains a dumpster fire; even the OC, Tino Sunseri, has stepped down. Sunseri was the primary driver for my optimism regarding Nico Iamleava’s prospects this season, and so I’d say it’s safe to declare that situation is DOA.
Ijeboi is the new workhorse for the Gophers, but they had a hard time running the football vs. Rutgers this past Saturdays. It won’t get easier vs. OSU this weekend, but they do get Purdue after that. Injury updates are hard to come by out of PJ Fleck’s camp, so I imagine it’ll be a guessing game right up to the two hours before kick off whether Darius Taylor will be back. If not, that’s a good opportunity to plug in Ijeboi into your lineups if in need of a RB.
I’ve watched all of PJ Fleck’s press conferences this year, and I can tell he’s a big fan of Fame.
New Updates
More firings
A big one, that you’ve probably heard about, was Oklahoma State firing long time head coach Mike Gundy last week. This was big news in the CFF world in particular, because that program has been a CFF stud factory since the beginning of Gundy’s tenure.
A development that will be worth tracking for the next few weeks is whether Trent “The Howler” Howland retains his workhorse role from this past Saturday (which was the first Poke game without Gundy). After Kalib Hicks led the backfield to start the year, Rodney Fields took over vs. Tulsa, only to then be replaced by Howland as the primary ball carrier vs. Baylor. Fields remained heavily involved with receiving work, but clearly took a backseat to Howland as a runner.
Perhaps this will be a true hot hand approach for the Pokes this year, but given how rare it is to discover a bonafide workhorse RB this late in the season, it’s worth keeping a close eye on Howland’s usage. They play Arizona this week with a very low implied team total according to Vegas, so the OKST RB output may not be outstanding, but it’s the usage you want to monitor for future opponents.
Arkansas parted ways with head coach Sam Pittman this week, clearing the way for OC Bobby Petrino to kick off his second era of coaching the Hogs. Petrino clearly loves Arkansas and I do think he is a good fit. Unfortunately, as we’ve seen the past two weeks, once the competition gets harder, their players, particularly Taylen Green, begin to fade regardless. Petrino will serve as an interim coach while Arkansas search progresses. SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee is reportedly a name the Hogs are interested in.
A new QB for Rich Rod at WVU?
I mentioned in this week’s waiver article to keep an eye on the QB situation at WVU. Khalil Wilkins eventually stepped in vs. Utah this past weekend, and he fits the dual threat mold that has been enormously successful under coach Rodriguez in the past.
It’ll probably take a year of development, but there’s a future where Wilkins is a very productive CFF QB. The game one starter, Nicco Marchiol, will medically redshirt the rest of the year.
The grass isn’t always greener
Oregon RB and former Tulane workhorse announced he’ll redshirt the rest of the year this week. It seems likely he will transfer in December, hopefully back to a G5 program (hey, maybe somewhere like… Tulane?), that would be perfect.
Final Words
I’ve been publishing two articles a week so far this season, and I do like the reduced workload. However, I plan to incorporate a third weekly product soon, which will be some version of a weekly plays/rankings article.
I can only do one of the two above options each week. The first option would likely be a list of players at QB and RB, with a few notes attached wherever I deemed necessary.
The second would be more like five or so players per position (more at RB/WR vs. QB/TE)—mainly focused on players that are not widely rostered—that I like that week, and would include some rational for why I like them.
I’ve found that the chat has become a useful tool for me to address questions that subscribers have on specific players each week, and I will continue to use that to supplement the third weekly articles. ◾
If you enjoyed this content and would like to read more, I recommend joining the Pigpen, a community of thousands of degenerate college football fans:
The Cig/Indiana inclusion feels really harsh on a guy that took over the team one year ago, no? Franklin has proven it time after time, season after season. And at a university with football heritage. Cignetti led Indiana to just their 3rd winning season in the 2000s. If Cignetti had won those games year one it would have been MASSIVE and unprecedented upsets imo. I could see them becoming that kinda team but definitely is premature imo.
Great work/read as always tho! Love a good James Franklin roast haha
Hey, VP. Are you comfortable starting/streaming NCST DST vs FCS Campbell even though they’ve not been a great DST this year? In their defense they’ve played all P4 ACC games with the exception of G5 ECU week 1 — where they also were not great. Or would you prefer ODU vs Coastal Carolina instead? Higher floor? Implied score of 36-18 with ODU pretty heavily favored