.vresize.36.36.medium.0.png){kind=small}
.vresize.36.36.medium.0.png){kind=small}
Circle of Life
It’ s rather ironic that on the same day that the Red River Rivarly game is going on down in Dallas, the ABC/ESPN primetime game of the night will feature two former Texas high school star quarterbacks squaring off in…Eugene, Ore.
Though Oregon’s Darron Thomas and Stanford’s golden-armed Andrew Luck have yet to meet in a Pac-10 contest, they’re quite familiar with each other. Having both played high school ball in the Houston area, they were often discussed in the same conversations, despite playing the quarterback position in entirely different ways.
Luck got the better of Thomas the two times they squared off head-to-head as starting quarterbacks, with the latter of the two games being one of those classic Friday Night Lights-style showdowns between two star-studded Texas high school gunslingers. In that 2007 game, Luck’s Stratford Spartans edged Thomas’s Aldine Mustangs, 34-24. Luck, the nation’s No. 1 quarterback prospect at the time, completed 13 of 25 yards for 149 yards in the win, while Thomas -- listed as the nation’s sixth-ranked “dual threat” quarterback by one service -- threw and ran for a combined 269 yards in defeat.
Though competitors in game, they’ve kept in touch over the years. Thomas still speaks to both Andrew Luck, and his father Oliver Luck, a former professional player with the Houston Oilers.
Thomas’s journey to a Pac-10 starting quarterback gig didn’t have the same direct path as Luck’s, though. The fleet-footed Ducks signal caller originally committed to Les Miles and LSU, where he envisioned himself being the eventual successor to JaMarcus Russell, Ryan Perrilloux, and Matt Flynn.
With two other quarterbacks in the Tigers’ loaded recruiting class already, discussion of the LSU coaching staff moving him to wide receiver began clouding the Internet and influencing Thomas’s decision late in the fall of that year. Then Oregon coach Mike Bellotti, fresh off a successful regular season with dual-threat quarterback Dennis Dixon at the helm, flew down and visited Thomas in Houston on a Friday. Thomas committed to Oregon the next day.
Since becoming a Duck, Thomas has had to bide his time, maximize opportunities when they’ve been presented, and beat out a fifth-year senior for the starting job this summer. Luck, on the other hand, was the anointed future of Stanford football the second he walked on his Palo Alto campus.
His high school’s valedictorian, an honors student planning to major in architectural design, and a 6-foot-4 beast with Heisman buzz behind every throw he makes -- things have gone as planned, if not better, for the sophomore. But Luck’s Heisman dreams can come to a nightmarish end if his old high-school rival gets the better of him on Saturday.
"There have been some very good quarterbacks to come out of Houston and Darron Thomas is definitely one of them," Luck said this week.”We played three years against each other on varsity. We'd see each other at Houston recruiting functions and things like that. He's a great guy, a great competitor and a heck of a quarterback. He's definitely exceeded expectations in the first four games with Oregon."
Thomas, meanwhile, referred to Luck as “a good friend” and told reporters boldly, “Oh yeah, I was always No. 1 and he was No. 2 in the Houston area.’’
A little confidence never hurts. Especially when you’re up against an old pal with a potential Pac-10 title on the line.
Coincidentally, “The Circle of Life”, the Elton John song from the Lion King soundtrack, was blasting from Oregon’s Moshofsky Center practice facility earlier this week. The Ducks practiced with the tune blaring in the background on loop.
For two guys who took entirely different paths to their respective starting gigs out west, I couldn’t think of a more appropriate song for Saturday night's matchup.
The Battle Within the War
When Florida lost Joe Haden and Major Wright early to the NFL Draft last January and defensive coordinator Charlie Strong to Louisville, there were fears in Gainesville about the Gators’ defensive backfield. There’d be new faces calling the plays, new faces in the secondary, and a need for a trio of upperclassmen to emerge as leaders. In a conference that featured some of the nation’s top quarterbacks and receivers, there was genuine reason for concern.
Sure enough, a month into the 2010 season, Florida leads the nation with 12 interceptions and is sixth in pass efficiency defense. The defensive backfield has taken three of those 12 interceptions back for touchdowns. And though senior safety Ahmad Black and junior Will Hill have stepped their games up tremendously, it’s been junior cornerback Janoris Jenkins that has everyone talking.
Jenkins has joined LSU’s Patrick Peterson and Nebraska’s Prince Amakura in a Thorpe Award conversation that was supposed to be limited to just two horses all along. He has been an absolute demon. The junior standout has returned punts, sacked quarterbacks, and recorded three interceptions, returning one for a score.
Against South Florida earlier this year, Jenkins returned a punt 30 yards, setting up a crucial 4-yard score when the Gators offense was struggling. A few plays later in the fourth quarter, he sacked sophomore quarterback B.J. Daniels for a 16-yard loss. On the very next play, he intercepted the South Florida gunslinger, all but sealing the victory. Kentucky quarterback Mike Hartline avoided him last Saturday -- only two balls were thrown in Jenkins’ direction.
Florida defensive coordinator and cornerbacks coach Teryl Austin, a former NFL assistant coach at Seattle and Arizona, has been impressed with his junior cornerback’s play.
"Trust me. I've seen a lot of good corners. He's really good,'' Austin said.
But Jenkins will get his biggest test on Saturday when he matches up with Alabama’s All-World junior wideout Julio Jones. In the past two meetings, both in SEC Championship Games, the All-American Haden was given the task of covering Jones. In 2008, the Tide receiver dominated the sophomore corner, catching five balls for 128 yards. Last season, Haden won the battle over an injured Jones, limiting him to just two grabs for 28 yards. At just 5-11, Jenkins will be outsized by the 6-4 Jones.
This is a meeting that’s been years in the making. As high school seniors, Jenkins and Jones went at it head to head for a week of practice prior to the Under Armour All-America game in Orlando.
“I’ve got to play my technique, but I know I have the ability to stay with him,” said Jenkins this week.
One of the top-rated college cornerbacks by the NFL draftniks, all eyes will be on Jenkins on Saturday. With the Florida defense likely stacking the box to limit Alabama’s 1-2 rushing attack, Jenkins could find himself on an island with his fellow top draft prospect 1-on-1 all evening.
Jenkins is having an All-American season thus far. It just might take a Saturday date with another All-American to see how good he really is.
The ACC’s top quarterback
ACC quarterbacks Christian Ponder, Jacory Harris, and Tyrod Taylor received most of the media love this summer. Josh Nesbitt, Georgia Tech’s option-running quarterback, was a preseason Heisman hopeful, too. Somewhere buried under those names was North Carolina State dual-threat three-year starting quarterback Russell Wilson.
Naturally, through four games, it’s Wilson, and not his fellow big name conference quarterback brethren, manning the conference’s only 4-0 squad. Wilson leads the conference in with an average of 299 yards per game and has the No. 23 Wolfpack ranked in the top 25 for the first time since Philip Rivers was under center and Chuck Amato and his sunglasses were on the sidelines.
It’s not like Wilson’s some overnight success -- he was an All-ACC selection at quarterback in 2008 and an honorable mention selection in 2009 -- but nobody saw this coming. A gunslinger that scored 31 touchdowns last season, the N.C. State athletic department didn’t put much effort into developing a summer time marketing blitz behind Wilson’s Heisman candidacy. There were no snazzy bumper stickers sent out to voters. No DVDs. No billboards in Times Square.
They’re hardly to blame for such prudence. With Wilson under center and many of the same players around him last year, the Wolfpack went 5-7 overall and just 2-6 in the ACC.
Sure enough, one month into the 2010 season, N.C. State is 4-0 for the first time since 2002 and has a winning record in the ACC (granted, it’s just 1-0) for the first time since the team opened its conference schedule 2-0 in 2006. As North Carolina’s football program finds itself in the headlines every week for some violation, distraction, or new ugly discovery -- the Wolfpack are one of the more pleasant surprises in all of college football.
The N.C. State athletic department is now in hustle mode, scrambling to put together a Russell Wilson postseason awards campaign, titled “A Man For All Seasons”, around Wilson’s excellence on the football field, the baseball diamond, and in the classroom. The three-year starter is an all-conference quarterback, a recent fourth-round draft pick of the Colorado Rockies, and an All-Academic selection in both sports. He’s also already graduated with solid grades and is engaged to be married to his longtime girlfriend.
And he’ll walk your dog and tutor your kid if you ask him nicely.
O.K., so maybe he won’t do those last two, but he’s capable of doing just about everything else. Despite missing spring practices to play baseball for the Rockies Single-A ball squad, the charismatic Wilson was selected as the Wolfpack team captain in August. “He's a great leader and he's always doing the right thing, always leading us in drills, always being the first at everything," lineman R.J. Mattes said this week. "So Russell's one of those guys you'd love to be your captain, because he knows what to do and he knows the right thing."
Of course, Wilson’s not buying into any of the Heisman hype yet. It’s not even on his radar. Not when Virginia Tech -- a team he’s never beaten -- is up ahead on Saturday. Coach Tom O’Brien said the Hokies were “by far, the best team we've played this year. It's not even close."
It’s worth noting that the very same 2006 Wolfpack squad that started the season 2-0 finished the year with a 2-6 conference record. N.C. State’s veteran players are aware of that.
“Don’t drink the Kool-Aid,” Wolf Pack offensive lineman R.J. Mattes said Monday. “Everybody’s going to be coming over to you saying, ‘Hey, y’all are great, y’all are good.’ … We’re not a bad team, but we’re not as good as people are telling us we are.”
With a win over Virginia Tech on Saturday, it will be awfully hard for N.C. State to argue with all those pumping them up. In a wide open ACC this year, anything’s possible.
The Big Least
For as much criticism as the ACC received after the first two weeks of the college football season, no BCS conference had a worse September than the wretched Big East. Long considered the sixth notch on the six- notch BCS conference ladder, the Big East has been subterranean awful this season.
Consider this: In the 11 games Big East teams played against teams from other BCS conferences in September, the conference went 1-10. That has to be a new low for out-of-conference play. In the conference’s three biggest nationally televised games — Connecticut at Michigan on ABC on opening Saturday, Pittsburgh hosting Miami on a Thursday night on ESPN, and Cincinnati taking on N.C. State on a similar Thursday night ESPN special — the Big East lost by a combined score of 90-26.
The most disappointing Big East team has undoubtedly been Pittsburgh. Ranked in the AP and Coaches Polls to start the season, Pitt returned Big East Freshman of the Year Dion Lewis, two potential NFL first-round picks in defensive end Greg Romeus and Jonathan Baldwin, and a competent quarterback in Tino Sunseri. They were a 10-win team last year.
Well, the FBI and the CIA are currently on an all out manhunt for Lewis, as he’s been missing since the summer preview magazines with his face gracing them were published. Romeus and Baldwin hardly look like first-round picks. The 6-foot-4 Baldwin, a guy who’s received absurd comparisons to fellow former Pitt Panther Larry Fitzgerald, had an underwhelming three catches for 26 yards against Miami. Sunseri’s struggled mightily in both of Pittsburgh’s losses. To make matters worse, four Panthers have been arrested in the past two months.
The crazy part? Pitt can still end up playing in a BCS bowl game in January. West Virginia, the one Big East team that’s looked worthy of BCS play at times this season, needed a miracle to squeak by Marshall. The Rutgers offense has somehow taken a step back in Tom Savage’s sophomore season. Though Cincinnati gave Oklahoma everything they had, their losses to N.C. State and Fresno State did nothing to inspire much hope from the masses. South Florida, UConn, Syracuse, and Louisville are still at least a year away from challenging for the conference crown.
There were rumors coming from New York this week that TCU is being discussed as a possible option for the Big East in their expansion talks.
The Big East big wigs would have rolled their eyes at a TCU a decade ago. Now? I’m sure they’re wondering if they can they bring a few of their Mountain West friends with them.
Schrager BCS Bowl Projections through Week 4:
BCS National Championship Game: Oregon vs. Alabama
Rose Bowl: Iowa vs. Boise State
Fiesta Bowl: Nebraska vs. Ohio State
Orange Bowl: West Virginia vs. Virginia Tech
Sugar Bowl: Florida vs. Oklahoma
Schrager’s Heisman Ballot Through Week 4:
1. Denard Robinson, QB, Michigan
2. Andrew Luck, QB, Stanford
3. Mark Ingram, RB, Alabama
