Virginia

Just a different night at Doak. Our team has slept walked though much of the season, and the fans followed suit on this gorgeous Fall night in Tallahassee. The two loudest cheers resonating across North Florida this evening were for a punter and a horse. Renegade finally began to show off his four star ranking and got airborne for the spear toss, and much maligned Cason Beatty unleashed a heretofore unseen cannon shot in the second quarter that literally kickstarted a 21point outburst that sealed it for the home team. Our students however, were either so bored with the game or spoiled with weather not above 70 degrees that they decided en masse to depart at halftime. Is the night life on Tennessee St so spectacular that getting there at 8:30 rather than 10 was a must?  This was a one possession game in the 4th quarter and that end of the field was half empty.

Let the scribe digress for a moment… It's 1995 and the 2nd ranked Noles traveled to Chapel Hill to take on Mack Brown's 5th ranked Heels. National TV greeted a contest full of future NFL stars and the biggest (football) game in that college town in 50 years. The game was still close at halftime when about 75% of the student body decided to leave the stadium and not return. Where did they go? Well, the annual Blue & White basketball scrimmage was starting, and they did not want to miss a moment of that crucial contest. The juice of the evening left with the students. I was there and just like all the Noles in attendance, we had no earthly idea where the kids went, but the game was over at that moment. Mack Brown said that when he came into the stadium in the second half and looked up into the crowd, he knew he could never win in North Carolina. Unlike us, he knew exactly why they left.  A big Longhorn hug to the legacy of Dean Smith…well FSU certainly does not have a hoops team to take our wonderful young'uns attention away, but we are a consistent top 5 resident on the US party school list. Hey kids, sneak in your booze like we did, and you never have to leave.

I know many of you were upset at our quarterback in the first half, but you may want to dig a little deeper. Two Bobo bobbles basically botched two drives. And a rookie named Rudolph ruined a rocketshot TD toss that resulted in a leaping linebacker lasso of an interception. If Travis has run the right route, that Hoo never would have been in the middle of the field, and the throw would have hit Ermon Lane in stride for a 70 yard walk in score. He did force the ball to Nick (again), but #5 took more direct shots than any game in his career. The pros have to love the fact that he stands tall in there and takes a beating like Vladimir Putin's sparring partner before letting a laser go, but Bobby Hart and Ryan Hoefeld need to be buying him daily swedish massages all week. On second thought, blondes alone in a room with him might be a bad idea…

Speaking of the big uglies, one of my favorite hidden moments in this game was when the best of the bunch - Tre Jackson - took his Cavalier buddy straight back Blind Side style for 8 yards and then the poor bastard - tiring of being shoved- just collapsed backwards and Tre off balance and not expecting the sudden capitulation fell on top of him. The back judge just figured what he saw simply had to be illegal and threw a flag for holding. Tre looked up and just laughed. Coach Trickett was not as amused. I have said it a few times, but the biggest tragedy of this team playing four quarter games every week is the lack of experience our backup lineman are getting. Our next QB better be mobile, or TMH better be on call. It has become clear that Karlos plays as hard as anyone ever has at RB, but he is truly a between the tackles runner who has some occasional issues with extra paint on the yardlines grabbing his Nikes. I am looking forward to a healthy early home run punch of Pender and Cook, yielding to a 4th quarter Los pounding. Let's hope we can get there this year…

I get the feeling that Jimbo has been gambling that none of these teams we have played this season with the exception of maybe the Irish could beat us. I think the offensive scripts for Miami and Florida might be a little more robust that the Jameis and Rashad show that we enjoyed again this week. About half of our opponents have taken Saint Nick out of the game with two levels of coverage, but now that the fabulous freshman duo are starting to emerge, the playbook might just blossom. And if the aforementioned center can just slow down the A-gap blitzes a smidgeon and not get Jameis murdered, the swing passes to the backs could be the antidote to every opponent poison. I think we unleash the bubbles to Travis, screens to the backs, and then when the safeties cheat up, we go second level with Ermon and Rashad. We have proven that with our current issues in the middle of the offense, we can not play like Bama and LSU, and that is ok. Because the best player on the field is 5 yards behind that weakness and it is time to turn him loose in a hurry-up 1992 GT / FSU style for four quarters.

I do want to give some credit to a UVa team that played really well Saturday night. In my eyes, that was the most talented defense we had actually played this year. Their two safeties are both going to play in the League and their secondary as a whole was very good. The great exception may have been the Rashad TD where a downfield juke literally had the corner sprinting the wrong way. You wonder why he was so wide open, well he is damn good. 

Mario Edwards Jr. is also a pretty fair football player. The former #1 HS player in the land is finally thin enough to dominate from the opening whistle to the Chiefs play the Hymn. First play from scrimmage for our defense, he blows up his blocker sees the play and destroys the runner two gaps over causing a fumble. The poor sap that had to block him on passing downs held so often and egregiously, I think the officials simply were so lulled by the normality of it all, they could not throw a flag. I am not sure a single run to his side went for more than 2 yards. But let's not get cocky, we have more issues than the ISIS air force. PJ Williams turns around less than a gay man at an SI swimsuit shoot. Ronald Darby has worse hands than Roberto Duran and our linebackers have the coverage ability of Linus' blanket on a California King bed. When your base defense is a nickel, how in the World can we not cover short crosses and check downs on extended down & distance. I am still flummoxed as to why on 3rd and 5 or less, we have either Tyler Hunter or Jalen Ramsey 25 yards off the line and then backing up on the snap. These boys run faster than some breezes and we need to give 100 feet of cushion to wideouts? We got three sacks from PJ, Tyler and Jalen this game, and although that is nice, there were also a dozen 3rd down conversions where DB's sprinting fruitlessly at the QB resulted in wide open Cavaliers. Maybe we will grow up and all this Kelly defensive skullduggery will become clear, but until then I will continue to root for an implosion 2 hours South and a beach condo shared by a Head Coach and his DC. Looks less and less likely though…

Well, all the true fans head South and leave the country this weekend to attend the every other year joyfest that is the Miami game. I am not one of those fans. As many of you know I was a personal 0-8 watching this contest in person, when Coach Bowden learning of this fact at an offseason function, made of point of uninviting me. I took this advice seriously. So, for the first time in 2014, team Sickmon will be sitting on an English speaking couch instead of a bilingual bench.

Go Noles!