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Sunday, September 02, 2007

Deep Thoughts From the Shallow End of the Gene Pool

Hello to all of Johnny's loyal readers. John has given me the rare invitation to post on his site. I'm pretty sure that its because he gets tired of me running him down to talk about sports and the like.

This is all a little weird to me, you see I'm a virgin blogger. Yes I know, I know, but its true. I was planning on saving myself for that right gal, you know one I could really build something with, but when I got this invite from Johnny I just couldn't wait any longer.

So what really goes into a blog? Johnny does such a nice job of putting things people might want to read in his posts and to be honest it is a little intimidating. I convinced myself when I was in college that I would write a couple of books, so I guess this is my chance to practice. I knew the title to my first one would be "Deep Thoughts from the Shallow End of the Gene Pool". I mean to me that just sells the book right there.

Well, I should try to apply some intelligence to this, but a quick oversight on who I am. I mean I can't just come in here and start spewing crap out without a quick intro. Its a good thing this is a sports journal as that is my passion. Baseball is numero uno. My team is and always will be the St. Louis Cardinals. I read the Post-Dispatch every morning before I go to work (part of the reason I can't get there on time). Check out the website at www.stltoday.com/sports/cards. I grew up in a family of Royals fans so I follow them in a secondary manner. College sports in general would be my next passion.

Speaking of college sports, is Labor Weekend about one of the top sports weekends or what? College football kicking off, pennant chases, pro football is right around the corner as well. And as most of you did, I watched the NU and Nevada game yesterday, and surely now that we have had a chance to see NU against a mighty foe from the WAC conference we can all pass judgement on this coming season. In all seriousness, it is so hard to judge after one game. Clearly Nevada was out manned, however I can't remember over the past few years our offensive line being as good as they were yesterday. Coach Osborne would have to have been proud of the big fellas. Yes Lucky had 200 yards blah blah blah, but only on a couple of plays did we finally see him break tackles. The Castille kid or now commonly known as "Q" was very impressive. He should be very fun to watch run over the next couple of years.

Keller really didn't have to do much yesterday but manage the game. Its really too early to even begin to evaluate him. If you look purely at the stats and see he completed over 56% of his passes and had just shy of 200 yards with a pic and TD you would think he did just fine. People talk about this offense being a rhythm offense and you could tell he just wasn't completely in rhythm in the first half. Yes there were some dropped passes but on the interception he looked like Jamaal Lord in the way that he used to stare down his receivers before the ball was even snapped. Bottom line, I really don't think we saw nearly enough of the guy to begin to tell us what he is going to be like in a more competitive game.

On the defensive side of the ball, the first thing that you notice is that we continue to put more speed on the field. You have to be kind of curious as to how we will do against a team that has the offensive line to line up and run between the tackles. Wake Forest probably won't give us that test, but USC will definitely try it out.

I saw a few of the other Big 12 games yesterday and once again the league got off to a little bit of a rough start. Texas almost became the night version of Michigan. OU wasn't tested and neither was KU. Missouri tried numerous times to give the game to Illinois but they didn't seem to want it either. If not for an interception at the goal line Illinois would have won the game. Missouri was up 17 at one point in that game. The two most intriguing games were Ok State and K State and their road trips to the SEC. Ok State is going to once again score a bunch of points this year but when you give up 35 to Georgia it could be a long defensive year. I saw part of the Colorado game; they are better and probably will beat a few teams this year that people won't think they will (hopefully that isn't on the 23rd of November). For those of you that didn't see the K State game and only saw the score, K State had the game won with less than four minutes to go. For those that watch the games and not just look at the scoreboard, K State should have won that game. What ever happen to them opening w/ Fort Hayes State? Not to worry K State fans, you have San Jose St and Missouri State at home in the next two weeks.

Well, there you have it, I'm tired and we didn't even get to talk about Royals baseball yet. Johnny, you can send my check to my personal residence. I guess I'm no Tom Shatel but those are just a few thoughts from the shallow end of the gene pool.

1 comment:

Johnny Boehler said...

Great article. The offensive line was opening holes like they used to. Lucky has great speed on the outside and is great receiving passes but still can't break many tackles between the tackles. (As you stated). Keller looked pretty good for his first time out. He had protection that Jammal Lord, Joe Dailey, and Zac Taylor never had. He threw behind receivers early. As the game continued he was more accurate. The receivers were average with some dropped passes. We need Purify. Castille, Cody, and Helu look real good. We have to have backs that can break tackles and they did. Don't get me wrong, Lucky is very important to the team.

On defense, Octavian was all over the place. Dillard played well. Suh was a force and showed he is the best interior lineman we have had in quite a few years.

What about our kickers. Adi Kunalic is the real deal on kickoffs. That is so big when the opposing team starts at the 20 vs the 45. He can kick. Henery did well also with the place kicks. Nebraska only punted twice but Titchener avg. 44.5 yards.

The special teams were great yesterday but Andre Jones showed he is the best punt returner we have. We don't know if he can catch the punts consistently but if you want a big return, he is our man. We needs him on the field.

Next week we truly have a test with Wake Forest.