I didn't think the Huskies had a real chance of beating Stanford on the road. I have so much faith in Andrew Luck that I knew he wouldn't let them lose. I figured he would throw for 400 yards and 5 td's. I figured the Huskies only had a shot to win if the game was somewhere in the range of 55-51. I figured the Huskies defense would give up a lot of yards, but wow, that was painful. The Cardinal ran for 440+ yards and the Huskies lost 65-21. It was so bad that Stanford punted once in the game, were 8-12 on 3rd down conversions and averaged 9.3 yards per play. Let me write that again - 9.3 yards per play. That is unthinkable.
I know it's only one game, but it certainly feels like no progress has been made. It is certainly reactionary for me to say that, but since Sarkisian took over we haven't had too mamny days like this. Our offense is really really solid, but as long as our defense is playing this way, we won't be taken seriously. I think we can still finish 8-4, but that would be a bit of a disappointment considering how well Price, Polk and the rest of the offense is playing. Here's hoping the Dawgs rebound at home next week against an Arizona squad that picked up their first conference win of the season this past Thursday.
The other big story to me is the injury to Mauro Rosales. I have to say that the whole situation just pisses me off. I know that Sounders fans are feeling a bit entitled these days, but their is good reason for that: the Sounders are a damn good team. I mean, damn good - multiple trophies good. You don't have to be a rocket scientist however, to realize that they are not as good without Mauro on the field. When he got hurt a few weeks ago, I wasn't overly concerned because I knew there was enough time left in the season for him to get healthy. When I realized who their final opponent was I knew what was going to happen. Sigi had to play Mauro because he needed to regain his fitness and because he wanted the team to get back some of the chemistry they had as little as a few weeks ago. It was the correct move, I just knew it had the potential to blow up. In my book, Chivas is the dirtiest team in MLS and have been so for a few years. I just knew someone would get hurt in the meaningless game and unfortunately it was Mauro. I really hate those effers (maybe even more than Portland) and pray that this one game doesn't ultimately hurt our playoff chances.
Aside from those two stories, here are some other observations:
- I think it is totally apparent who the worst two teams in the NFL are - the Colts and the Dolphins. Shame on the Dolphins for letting Tebow work his magic. Shame on you for adding fuel to the Tebow fire. Shame on you for allowing his legend to grow. Ughhhhh. One the final two drives of regulation, with Denver trailing 15-0, Tebow went 9-13 for 121 yards and 2 td. According to my calculation, up to that point, he was 4-14 for 40 yards. Shame on you, Miami. AND shame on you for going for 2 early in the 4th quarter. Maybe it seemed like the correct move at the time since the score was 12-0, but up to that point, the defense had not given up any points. Have a little confidence in your squad and kick the extra point
Shame on the Colts for just sucking. It is clearly evident how good Peyton Manning is and how much he means to this team. You obviously can't blame Curtis Painter for giving up 62 points, but I just think the team doesn't know how to respond to him. What a huge dropoff between the two....and we are moving closer and closer to the point where the Colts have to choose whether to pick Luck or continue with Manning. - Sorry Mike, but this bullet is all about your teams. I don't know which is worse - giving up 6 goals in soccer and losing to your cross town rivals, or giving up 6 points on the road to a bad team in the NFL and losing. Neither feels good. (Since I am shaming people, shame on the refs for the phantom block in the back call on Leon Washington's return. I'm no Seahawks homer, but that was just bad)
- Somehow my Uncle Greg has made me hate Aaron Rodgers. Seriously, he could just struggle the one week I have to go against him in fantasy. Yuck.
- I was getting all ready for the two biggest games of the year - LSU/Alabama and Oklahoma/OSU and then something happened. Oklahoma lost to Texas Tech. I know the game will still be a damn good one, but it won't mean as much if they are both not undefeated (of course, this is assuming that OSU gets past undefeated Kansas St next week).
- The World Series is tied at 2. Did I get that right? Seriously, I have no idea
- In some news that no one cares about, last week my men's soccer team played the Kitsap Pumas reserve team. The Pumas as a pro team based out of Bremerton, WA and recently won the USL PDL title. The guys were really good, but somehow we held them to 2 goals. This week we played 2 men down for 25 minutes until another player showed up. We were down 3-1 at halftime and then our goalie broke his knee brace and had to leave. I went in goal (now down to 9 players) and somehow my boys scored 3 goals and we walked out with a 4-4 tie.
- I don't think Carson Palmer and the Raiders are that bad, but I do know they passed up a golden opportunity to move to 5-2 before their bye week. The bye comes at the perfect time, however, as it will give Palmer an additional week to get ready and hopefully give Run DMF a week to recover.
- Are the Lions being exposed as frauds? Well, I think they are a good team, but they are not a quality team as you can run on them AND they can't run on you. It will be interesting how the next 5 weeks play out.
- Finally, who the hell is DeMarco Murray and why did he run for 253 yards yesterday? (AND how crazy are fantasy players going to be to pick him up?)
That's it for now -I'll be back later this week with a Sounders regular season review.
On the United City loss, it was embarrassing but the last 3 goals came in bullshit time at the end of the game when United were still throwing guys forward with one of their defenders sent off. Should have accepted the result and played out time instead of letting City play fast break to run the score up. Silly stuff but the real damage was Johnny Evans, he had an atrocious game anyway but how he did not expect a red card was beyond me. Hey, it happens once in a blue moon (no pun intended) but City are for real this year, there squad is crazy talented and I think United might need a few signings in the Jan window.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the Seahawks, it was a game they had to win to stay with the 49ers fast start. Yes we had some terrible calls against us, and that phantom block was a disgrace to the officials, but really with such good WRs, 97 yards of passing offence was a joke. This is now officially a rebuilding year for the Hawks. No suck for luck as I think they will win 6 games, but they need a better QB option and look to improve the offensive line for a running game to emerge. Frustrating but I think Carroll should be given one more year to get this one right, otherwise he needs to head back to college ball.
It sucked about Rosales, he is such an important player for us. Very clumsy tackle from the Chivas player, deserved yellow but what can you do, his knee is not 100% but needed match fitness. Terrible bad luck and hopefully he can get back for some part of the playoffs. I don't feel any more anger to Chivas really, I feel the standard of a lot of player's tackling in the MLS is a reflection of the standard of the league (and to clarify I am not bashing it): the referees (like Salazar) are not skilled enough to stamp that stuff out, and many of the squad players are just not that good at tackling without taking guys out, which means skill players like Montero and Rosales will get cleaned every now and again. Rosales doesn't know how to play any other way, it just sucked that it happened again so soon after his injury. Montero is younger and more flexible, he can take punishment a little more, and also he flops at the first sign of a leg in his direction.
BTW, here is an example of a filthy tackle not getting punished at all: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGMNn8gfPC8
ReplyDeleteNo yellow, nothing.
What disgusts me about this one is that the player out is Shane Long, Republic of Ireland striker, and is out for 6 weeks and will miss the Euro playoff with Estonia. I think there was way more intent on this one than the Chivas guy.
Well, obviously there are tons of tackles that are done with more malice than what Zemanski did. I'm just pissed because I knew this was going to happen and that we had to be in the position to put him out there in the first place. My dislike of Chivas stems from repeated offenses in years past of them simply beating the crap out of us physically.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I am just disappointed in Chivas because I think they have the potential to be so much more...
I hear you, I was a gutted too because we all saw a week ago how important Mauro can be for getting our offense going. I guess I didn't feel the same level of anger for Chivas, just frustration that it happened. Chivas are a weird experiment in the USA, I don't know if they can every have the level of support needed to be successful, they should head to San Diego and re-brand themselves. One way of looking at it is that we need people like Fredy and Flaco to stand up and fill the gap of Mauro (which they are capable of doing), and I really hope Sigi sticks with Sammy Ochoa, I like the balance of the team when he plays.
ReplyDeleteThe Hutton tackle hurt so many ways as Long is probably our best striker at the moment (scoring regularly in the premiership for West Brom) and with Keane's injury and Doyle's suspension, we are looking less dangerous in the striker department (Simon Cox and Jon Walters are not regulars for their clubs) for the playoffs :-(
Curtis Painter reminds me of Randy Quaid from the movie Kingpin.
ReplyDelete-EastCoast JWill
I was pretty shocked by the result on Sunday. And Mike is spot on saying that ManU shoulda just taken the loss and limited the damage. Two quick points: 1) It looked like ManU just gave up, which is pretty shocking! I would hate to face Sir Alex this week in practice. 2) I'm still not convinced that Man City is for real, but if they are there in the end, then last Sunday is a huge boost for their gol differential.
ReplyDeleteTwo more points (just to procrastinate work a little more): 1) No comment on the Badger "loss"? 2) I'd be interested to hear reactions to an idea of soccer adopting hockey's use of the penalty box. Yeah, Evans should have been kicked off. But what about situations where a player gets a yellow for arguing, and then another for a hard tackle. What if that player just had to sit on the bench for X minutes (with X determined by the ref) and then was allowed to re-enter the game? And straight reds would keep their meaning.
Is the penalty box idea something actually being discussed or something your crazy Badger brain came up with?
ReplyDeleteI have always thought it would be interesting to do something like this, but I think the penalties would have to be much longer than 2 minutes. In hockey, a one man advantage for 2 minutes is a huge deal mainly because of the size of the rink and the speed at which the game is going. In soccer, you often don't see any impact until much later in the game, once the team has been playing down for 30 so minutes. So if there were to do it, it would have to be an extended absence otherwise it wouldn't do anything.
Now I must say that is something almost as crazy as getting rid of relegation. Luckily I think MLS is done with the crazy on the pitch rules (shootouts) and is just working on maintaining their crazy off the pitch rules.
Tough loss for the Badgers. Was really hoping for Wisconsin, Clemson, Cincinnati, Houston and then a team from the SEC, Pac-12 and Big 12 to finish undefeated...
No serious people considering it, but it would be nice if refs had a way of bailing themselves out after a lame first yellow.
ReplyDeleteThe time duration does complicate it. Any time would hurt the offending team (given that the players who remained on the field would most likely get more tired than normal), but anything less than 10 minutes would be kinda pointless.
So Rugby Union has a similar concept, except a yellow card means 10 minutes in the sin bin (team plays a man short) and a red card means ejection with no replacement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_union#Officials_and_offences
ReplyDeleteThen again, Rugby has a video referee which helps in the right calls being made in these scenarios, doubt national associations would ever propose this for soccer until we had a video ref first.