Syracuse

Well that was fun! Homecoming brought back a bunch of folks who remembered watching games just like that in Doak. The 1999 Championship team returned (20 years...gulp!) and it all looked oh so familiar to them as well. ACC doormat comes to town and the score balloons to 35-3 before the smattering of students that showed up left for early parties. They also invited the Nole starters, and thus garbage time was a little ugly for the home folks. I am guessing MadSo must have re-introduced nickel beer night at 7:30.  Kudos to the hotels in Tallahassee who woke up this week, saw more available than sold rooms and dropped their drawers like an orphan grabbing a switch for the nasty nun. Two night minimums disappeared and rates dropped to near normal numbers. The best thing that may come out of the Willie era may be the ability for folks to afford to come back to Tally for games. Hope it is not too late...

If there were any doubters left as to which signal caller is a better fit for Kendall Briles offense, they are gone - is is clearly Cam Akers. What a game for the man from Mississippi. He has more yards after contact than anyone in the country, which is not shocking since he often gets contacted as soon as he gets the ball. No, he does not have Dalvin breakaway speed or Dunn make em miss, but he is a terrific college back and you can just see him willing this offense down the field. He is like a spin class instructor screaming at the rest of the class to up their level. When he and Laborn came in the game together in the Cam Cat as Gene termed it, I found myself standing and excited as a kid this Thursday when I get a king size snickers. Syracuse was completely overmatched in this formation. It worked so damn well, especially inside the 5, that we wonder what took so long to uncork it. It certainly gave the crack Hurricane coaching staff something to ponder in between late night boliche and cruise ship hooker runs.

Back to my premise before I took myself off the rails on a Cam rant, there is no comparison to who runs this offense better. Alex might have less natural talent than any QB I can recall since Eric Thomas in 1984, but he simply gets it done. The chains move because he finds the TE for 4 when we need 3. He is much more effective runner than James, and although it looks like he can only throw it about 40 yards - and these balls are painfully slow to arrive at their destination - they are at least catchable. That in itself is a revelation. What we saw were incredible grabs by DJ, Tre'Shawn and Jordan Young. Yes, they were open and had to fight back for a less than perfect toss, but the pigskin was in the zip code, which is a marked improvement. The entire offense just runs faster with the open guy actually getting the ball, even when it is the 3rd read. Taggart made the decision to play Alex because he knew that without playing him, two very bad scenarios were looming. He finally heard enough rumblings that he might actually lose this lovely five million dollar gig, and his offensive coordinator was about out of patience. Regardless, he made the move, and unleashed Cam. Now, a bowl is possible, and the recruiting class has stopped blocking calls from the 850 area code. All this offensive wonderfulness happened despite what was another mess of an effort from the fat guys up front.

When the best slab of beef we have in freshman Donte Lucas got hurt, the next six plays were all negative. In fact, we lost 27 yards on the next two series with Lucas on the bench. That is really hard to do without penalties, but that is how special we are up front. Somehow, we were still able to get to 500 yards of offense. Miami has the best set of linebackers we will see all season, so this group will have to graduate from fingerpainting to algebra in a hurry. There is some hope for the future here. With Washington getting a start as a true frosh tackle with Lucas and two other youngsters coming back next season, maybe just maybe we will not be awful forever in front of the QB of the future.

Let me first point out that the Cuse offense is...well...offensive. Their line is looking up to ours like a politico to a fundraiser. Their wideouts are about as quick as rush hour in the Villages. However, it was nice to see a bad team absolutely obliterated by our defense for once. They earned their initial first down without officiating assistance in the middle of the second period. if their quarterback was not drenched in Crisco, we may have had a dozen sacks, and all this again without a single yellow marker for a hold. Because ACC offensive lines playing FSU simply do not hold - ever. I loved seeing the young linebackers continue to improve under the tutelage of the completely non-coaching, on the sideline, headset wearing Jim Leavitt. Amari Gainer was having so much fun that he performed a solo dance number to the Burt Reynolds "East Bound and Down". Asante Samuel will get a pick at some point this season. He is playing great football, and forcing teams to look to the other side. That part of the field is manned by the constantly chirping Stanford who tells the receiver and the entire bench whenever he is in Leon county when an incompletion occurs. Thank goodness for the supremely talented Hamseh who covers up all kinds of trouble in front of him with ShadeTree alacrity.

This was clearly a game circled by the coaching staff as the one to get all the true freshman possible some playing time. The new rule where you can play up to 4 games without burning a redshirt allows this, and we got a treat seeing all these kids get some meaningful snaps. If you pencil in Alabama St as the second game to have the kids play, then you have options for either BC or Florida if either gets out of hand. One of the forgotten reasons that great teams stay great is that when you blow out opponents, you get to play backups. These kids get better exponentially faster with the reps and the cycle continues. They get to the point they can substitute in ever more important situations, and year over year there is little to no drop-off with graduation. Well, we have obviously been in a four year run where we don't ever have a game put away until the final gun sounds, so the treadmill of starter exhaustion, and dread with graduation (see #Cam, #BigMarv) is the result.

Raise your hand if you thought that a season with two senior kickers would have us throwing two walk-ons out there and looking this anemic on special teams. Extra points are an adventure. Having 11 people on the field is a higher math exam, one that we failed repeatedly on Saturday. The good news is that the Miami game rarely comes down to special teams. Enjoy your week. For once, we sure will!