Mike Felder, my friend from stadium, felt the same way as that ball was going through, and Tennessee was ending a 15-year losing streak to Alabama.
We are going to talk about Carolina and Duke, but I want to start with the game of the day, maybe the game of the year so far, and that was Tennessee's 52-49 win over the Crimson Tide. Mr. Felder, how are you? I'm doing fantastic, man. Getting my office set up. I'm back in Charlotte. I'm living life. Oh, you have re-relocated? Re-relocated. We back, baby. Oh, man. Good for you.
I know you're excited to be back, so good for you. Yes, I am. So how did that football rotate in that manner and still travel 40 yards between two uprights and over the crossbar? I have no idea.
Listen, I'm not going to pretend. You know what? You know who you need to call is Dan Orner. Dan Orner might be the guy for you to call to figure out the actual physics of that because Dan's one of these guys. He's teaching kicking.
He's got the bomb squad mounting up, and I don't know. He's the only person in my mind that has an answer to that question because for me, it was like a knuckleball, but it didn't come off the foot like a knuckleball. It didn't come off the foot like an onside kick.
It came off the foot like it was going to go normal, and then it just kind of reversed course, but with that helicopter spin instead of the up and down spin. Hey, the point is they won, and that was a heck of a football game. It was a great football game, and I don't even care that there were bad calls, really, really bad calls on both sides. They could have been game-changing calls because ultimately, with 34 seconds left, Alabama had a first and 10 at like the Tennessee 30.
They should have won the game or at least not lost it in regulation, and yet they lost it in regulation. Nick Saban has to be, and I know he was mad at his defense, but I wonder how much of Nick Saban's ride back to Tuscaloosa was self-reflective on how they allowed that to happen. I think there's a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B. I think it, look, here's what I will say about Nick Saban, and this is something that I've always, I've said about him for years.
I mean, I guess, good grief, we're talking about decades now, huh? This is a guy, he knows where he's weak. He understands like, let's go back through these Alshon Jeffries. Remember the game that he had when they beat Alabama? You're vulnerable out there on the edge.
You're always going to be vulnerable out there. You think about, goodness, he didn't pan out. Laquan Treadwell didn't pan out in the NFL, but certainly ate Bama's lunch. You look at Johnny Manziel and Mike Evans, and it's the ability to push the ball wide and vertical. And so this is one of my things.
I'm getting ready to throw the bulletin up here in a little bit after I go deal with spectrum. Just goodness gracious. But, um, literally I, I was doing college sports and I said, there are three things that have to happen. One, they cannot match protect. You have to get the running back into the pattern so that a linebacker gets taken out of the play. And if he did that, um, you have to push the ball vertical so that balance safeties can back off. They did that. And then hooker has to be a threat on the move.
And he did that as well. So ultimately the way that I looked at this is in saving, this is the thing that Saban understands as well. This is why I love him as a coach, because he understands where he's weak. You have 11 players on defense. If you force five players to commit to playing in the past game with four wide receivers. Now you only have six players on defense. If you move that running back outside or that tight end outside, now you only have five guys playing defense. You got five guys playing defense against a running quarterback. Now you only got four guys that can rush the quarterback because that guy's got to pay attention to wherever Henry hooker goes.
Yep. You got four guys, four guys that can be blocked by five. Plus hooker can take care of that guy by himself and make a play. It was great football.
Hypo did a great job. And it's, it's an irrefutable point that I'm making with how you can control a defense with an offense and save and understand that. And his fear is what do I do? So we saw when they brought pressure, they didn't get there. Tennessee got the ball to where they needed to get the ball to, so they can make a play. That's how they built that lead. And now savings on his heels and he doesn't like to play on his heels.
He can't dictate. And that's the problem. The rock, the good thing for Alabama is there's only one other team on their schedule that can do that. And that's all mixed. So we'll see what happens in that game in a couple of weeks.
Yeah. There's a few more things I want to get to about the, uh, about Alabama situation and Tennessee situation, Mike Felder at in the bleachers on Twitter from stadium. So which team has, which, or is, which team is in better playoff position right now, Alabama or Tennessee? Oh, that's a good one because Tennessee got to play Georgia here and that's going to be a rough one. I think Tennessee's in better player position because if you go down the list, right. And you look at that schedule, here's the reality that cross divisional win.
It looks good. It feels good. You like yourself, you love yourself, but they got to play Kentucky. They got to play Georgia. And I think those two games are still usable.
Oh yeah. And those are teams that don't want to score the way that Tennessee scored, but they're also going to work harder on defense to make sure they don't have to score. And that's the mentality of those ball clubs. So I think Tennessee is probably, I think Tennessee's in a better position though, because if they can win those games, they still can lose the Georgia. Here's where I've done a better position because they can lose one of those two games.
And then they'll be sitting at home the first week of December at 11 and one, right. With the win over Alabama and Alabama. I don't know what, I don't know what it's going to look like when they play Georgia.
Here's the way I look at it. Let's just say Tennessee does lose to Georgia, right? And Alabama beats all miss wins out. Alabama wins the wins the West. They're going to the SCC championship game and they play Georgia and then Alabama, and then Alabama beats Georgia. You've got Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee, not only all with just one loss, but wins over each other, sort of like in that the transitive property, it's a tie. Yeah.
So you know, you know, who's in the, you know, who's in the worst position? The Pac-12. That's the answer. The Pac-12 is the answer.
I could see all three, all three SCC teams making it to the playoff. Yeah. With Ohio State.
Yep. So it's basically who's in bad position right now. TCU and the rest of the entire Pac-12. And Clemson. And Clemson. Oh, Clemson. Well, here's the thing.
Oh yeah. Clemson's in a bad spot too. So somebody got it.
So maybe they're rooting for losses from somebody, from everybody. It's going to be really interesting. It's just going to be, it's, it's listen, we got, they got UT Martin this coming up week. That's not a big deal. We're not worried about that, but Kentucky and Georgia are the two games that I would struggle if I'm a Tennessee fan for Alabama.
I think the rest of their schedule is very get through with the step, with the Ole miss exception, because I want to see what they look like against Ole miss. Did they learn from their mistakes? Did they change some things up?
Is there anything to change that? Because at the end of the day, I don't think that Kool-Aid McKistrey played a bad football game. But when you're out on an Island by yourself, sometimes you get beaten. You know what I'm saying? Like got beat the real Reavis got beat.
It happened. It's gotta be hard for you since you made your bones on the defensive side of the ball. It's gotta be hard to watch defenses, no matter how good you are be at the mercy of offenses in the college game. And for whatever reason that is, but that's what it is. If you have a good offense, I don't care how good your defense is. You're at their mercy.
Yeah. And again, you're at the mercy of their officials as well, which is something that I think everybody is realizing. People keep talking about ACC officials are bad or PAC 12 officials are all bad. It's just all bad.
It's the same everywhere. Just cause you only want ACC football. You don't realize that they're making me same bad calls and other reasons. I mean, we, there's something that needs to be done about passion appearance because it is rampant to the point where, and this is what's scaring me about targeting is we're seeing players treat targeting the way that they treat passion appearance where they get, they, they, they milk it. And then they get up calling for the penalty. And to me, that's just that, that violates the spirit of what, what, what, what the rules should be doing. Yeah. All sports violate the spirit of the rules. Everybody's trying to sell penalties and when they do, and I'll just use Brad Davison, the guard at Wisconsin for years who used to fall down and they would celebrate him by calling a charge. Nevermind.
That's a personal thing for me, Mike Felder from stadium at in the bleachers on Twitter. All right. So Carolina wins at Duke and I saw you tweeting about this.
So I wanted to get into this game. I think Carolina was the better team, but Duke should have iced that game. Then we had the, um, the illegal shift and then the, the chop block. I don't know if that was a chop block or not.
Maybe it was about doesn't matter. Uh, they didn't pick up the first down after the illegal shift anyway. So it's like Duke should have won the game, but I kind of think that was a just result because I think Carolina is better.
I think you would think a little better, a little bit high. And I'm not going to, I'm not talking about like Alabama versus Vanderbilt, but there, I think there's a little bit higher count level, but he's going to dial in on that. And the key for me walking a football game was, uh, one, usually found a way to, to, to, to try and run the football. Granted, it was through Drake May for the most part, but they found a way to try to run the football. And at the end of the day, this is a team that between downs, uh, was an insulin green.
They have this, they have this dynamic ability down the field. Like I guess the scariest part is, or the problem for me is Duke didn't find a way to make this game small. Like they played it on UNC terms and Duke's a team that if this is a game that's playing into the twenties, I feel more comfortable for them. But as it plays into the, the, the, gets to the thirties, close to the forties, now we got a problem because that's the world view. And I mean, we saw them with the 60, what is it?
50 something, 60 something. I guess they like that. That's the world they want to live in because it does take in oddly enough, even as the other team scores, it does take pressure off their defense because they're like, Oh, we know our guys are going to go out there and score again. So it's not a big deal, but when you play in a game, that's a nail bite or a game that is, you know, 10, 10 at half or seven, seven at half, all of a sudden the defense has to start to, they feel like they have to make a play, which gets them overextended. And instead of just, you know, basically jogging next to receivers while they score so that you can get the ball back to your, your office.
Yeah. I mean, 35 31 is really how the game should have ended. If you're, if you're Duke, um, they added, they actually picked up the first down, which would have been, I think to the five yard line and they would have had, uh, four downs. Carolina was down to just two timeouts. They probably would have called one there, um, to hope to hold Duke to a field goal and get the ball back down seven with maybe a minute or so left.
Uh, but that's not what happened because of the illegal shift. So they were in that range where it was more manageable for Duke. Uh, frankly, I'm surprised that Carolina didn't score in the forties, but they got pretty close to it with, uh, with 38, 38.
Yeah. I, I think, uh, I don't, I think there's maybe two more losses on Carolina's schedule, but I don't think they'll lose both of those games. Uh, I think the, uh, the game against wake is a problem because I think wake is legitimately good. And the game against state, that's the game they want to be in though.
And that's the, that's the part that to me as a defensive guy is scared playing wake. That's the game that both of those teams want to play. They want to play that game. They want to play a game where what do you get? You get 63.
I got 65. We're good. Let's go.
This is fine. Take the over. They can't set the over high enough for me to not want the over in that game. All right, Mike Felder, Michigan gets a lot of flack for not doing the start to finish domination.
And they sort of did that. I think it was more just after halftime when they really put their foot on the gas against Penn state, but they had issues with Maryland who might just be good and Iowa, which always plays games that nobody wants to watch. Um, what do you make of the Wolverines? I don't think they're good.
Like plain and simple. I do not think that they are good. I got an issue of whether I like to watch them or not. It's more an issue of they can't do anything.
And that's the part that I find to be remarkably frustrating. Now, is there anyone on their schedule that's going to provide resistance? No. With the exception of Ohio state.
Absolutely not. I mean, they got a Michigan state in what, two weeks? Yeah. Yeah.
They got to buy this. We've got Michigan state in two weeks. And guess what? If your state is booty, they're bad. Like, and listen, I'd say this. I might need to lower my voice because my wife went to Michigan state, but really bad, terrible, so bad. Um, but no, I think the big thing for me watching Michigan play, I think Blake Coram is very good. I like watching him play. I think their offense is uninvented.
It's remarkably predictable, but if you can do, if you can have your way with the opponent all the time, then just do that. The problem for me, and this is something you and I have talked about this before we talked about this when Alabama back in like 2014, right? When this was what Alabama is, we talked about it two years ago, a year ago with how George is doing what you want and getting by doesn't mean that you're living up to your full potential. What do you, what's the point of going out and recruiting all these wide receivers, all these guys that can make plays down the field. If you only throw the ball to, to what's a Ronnie bell and the school maker kid, what's the point of having these other talents on your team. If you're never going to give them the football, what's the point of having angel Anthony, if you're not going to give them the football.
So that maximizing what they can be, they're doing what works for them and what makes them feel safe, what makes them feel comfortable. Right. I think that's why I love Nick Saban so much is he realized that their man's L even Garcia, um, this, I watched it.
He realized I got to do something different. I can do something that's not, that makes me a little uncomfortable so that I can compete with these teams. And I don't think that, um, I don't think Michigan's living in that world.
Yeah. The, um, Alabama took it to another level when they realized you had to be dynamic offensively. Michigan hasn't gotten to that point yet. Uh, Ohio state is at that point.
Let me ask you this question real quick. Um, who's the best quarterback, uh, in terms of being an NFL prospect, is it Stroud? Is it Levis from Kentucky?
Who is it? I think there are a lot of NFL guys that are going to fall in love with Levis because of the measure, the way he looks right. Like he's a six foot four guy that weighs 225 pounds. I can throw the ball wherever he wants to do it. People are going to like that, but I think CJ shroud is the answer. Watching him go through a full field read is amazing. Like slow the games down folks and get a chance to watch this kid. Look one, look two, look three, come back to four and then go to five on the other side, because this is running back, leaking out him going one, two, three, four, five, one, two, three, four, five is awesome. Cause he knows that the one is immediate. That's your slant. The two is the post.
It's going to take a little longer to develop. The three is that big coming from the backside. And then the four is going back is another guy coming back across from the five is his running back, leaking out to the weak side. And he has all those. He has those tools. I think Bryce Young also has a lot of those tools and I was surprised at how, how, how well he played honestly coming off an injury. But I just, I think those are my two, my top two.
I'm very curious where people put Levis as we get into kind of the driving industrial complex, but certainly for me, I go Stroud young and then Levis in that group. And then I'll tell you what next year is going to be really interesting because we're going to have, Oh yeah. We're going to have Caleb Williams.
It's going to be really interesting to see what, what this all looks like. Drake, Drake, Drake, man. He's really good.
There is no question about that. All right, Mike, I will talk to you soon. Good luck with spectrum and welcome back to the state of North Carolina. Thank you, man.
I'll be in Raleigh soon. I'll get, I'll get a chance to see you, man. Cool. I like the beard, man. You have amazing beard game. I'm working on it every day. All right, dude. I'll talk to you later. That's Michael Felder from stadium. Follow him on Twitter at in the bleachers.
Whisper: medium.en / 2022-12-03 10:23:25 / 2022-12-03 10:31:27 / 8
