[MUSIC] Hey, what's going on? This is the Saturday on South podcast. I am Connor Giro. Will, the playoff is back better than ever. That's what some are saying. We're gonna preview Texas' Arizona State. You're gonna be there, by the way, for the Peach Bowl on Wednesday. That's gonna be awesome. I'm only slightly jealous that you will be there instead of me. But excited for you. Because have you been to a playoff game before? This is gonna be your first. >> A playoff game. I went to, I've been to this championship game, and I went to LSU's Natty, but I actually have never been to a playoff game. >> Well, I was using Natty counts as a playoff game. That counts, okay, so you've already experienced all that and whatnot. So that's still going to be an awesome experience for you. And I'm very much looking forward to, I can't call it this weekend, but this week of football that we have, because also, the 845 game that night, Georgia and Notre Dame, we're gonna preview that, of course. And then we've got five SEC Bowls to recap. A little bit of a lot of the week that's going to, I'll just say it now, it's Jimmy Carter. >> Yeah. >> You know, you already know, it's Jimmy Carter. We'll get to some Jimmy Carter thoughts later on as well to close. And we're doing this while Mizzou and Iowa is happening, by the way. So Mizzou fans, if you're wondering why we're not talking about Mizzou. Even though you're listening to this after the bowl game, it's not because we hate your team. It's because this is literally happening right just now. In fact, let's update the people. Let's look at a score that will be old by the time people listen. Okay, Mizzou is driving in the red zone. Iowa's up 14 to seven. >> Stay here for updates. >> Stay here too. >> And you're gonna feel like a Nostradamus listener. You're gonna be like, wow, I know what happened there. It was funny, I initially thought this podcast was during the LSU game because I got the days confused and I was like, I don't know what you think I'm gonna be doing. It's podcast, but yeah, it's a ball season is fun. And like I said, dude, I've been so much more locked than the bowl season. I fulfilled my promise there. There have been goofy games, there have been fun games, there have been stupid games. But yeah, it's been really entertaining and the playoff games, honestly, so far have been kind of at least entertaining once. >> Exactly. I think that'll change. I think that'll change. I'm hopeful that we won't get four blowouts in the quarterfinals. And I'll just say this now so we don't have to let results dictate how we feel about certain things like people did with the first round when they just talked about their specific narratives. But even if Boise State and Arizona State end up putting up really good fights, which I do think is possible, we'll get to my prediction for Texas Arizona State here. But even if those two teams end up putting up really good fights, I would still rather see the actual seating and not the highest ranked conference champs getting the four top seats because, gosh, even when you just look at it and look at the possibilities, you very quickly realize that we probably could have done this a little bit differently. Brett McMurphy reported that there is going to be, there are already discussions about potentially making that change to the seating, it'll take all parties involved to sign off on that. Do you know that all parties involved will sign off on it? What did I say? This is just like being the commissioner of a fancy football league. You change one thing and then everybody comes to your door, will you change this for him? Now you got to change this for me. Yeah, exactly. And look, if you're wondering, like, all right, how much better would that have actually been? Here's what this first round would have been. I saw Adam Luckett tweet this out, shout out my guy at KSR, but the teams that would have had the buys. If we had just done normal seating, you could still have the highest ranked conference champs, the five highest ranked conference champs, get an automatic spot in the college while playoff, but then just see them based on resume, it would have looked like this. The four teams with buys, Oregon at the one seed, Georgia at the two, Texas three, Penn State at the four. And then your 12 five matchup in the first round would have been Clemson at Notre Dame. You would have had Arizona State at Ohio State. You would have had SMU at Tennessee, Tennessee fans who would have gotten your home playoff game. And then here's the kicker. Boise State at number eight, Indiana, we would have had IU hosting a college football playoff game. Yeah. It just seems to be better off across the board. I actually, you know what? They might be right about this one. Yeah, I wouldn't hate that change. It's just going to be a matter of, and I don't think the advertising partners or anything like that, like ESPN would nix that change. I think it's more so. How does the big 12 feel? How does the ACC feel about that? Because it's very obvious that we shouldn't have Arizona State and Boise State both getting first round bys. And I say that with a lot of great respect for them, I picked Boise State to beat Penn State. Don't feel as good about that. And I think Arizona State's a really good football team. Let's talk about them. Yeah. Let's talk about this match. I will say too really quick on that note, I feel like once again Boise State has been, you know, volunteered to attribute to, you know, advocate for themselves because it really got what they asked for for 20 years one time and it's this year. And of course, you know, people have reacted to this stuff, you know, we're already looking at the change in the format because the first round of games people are saying, you know, teams didn't belong. So Boise State comes in there and that is like a, you know, a festival redo from like '07. Maybe people will start going, hold on, you know, so funny, they just end up in these situations over and over and over again, where it's like, well, you got to play, you know, TCU for the right to be in the dance later on. So I mean, credit to them, they've made their, the best of their luck when they've had it. It would lose a little bit of weight to, to my argument, if Boise State went out and beat Penn State. It'd be a little bit tougher to come on. They just smack James Franklin. You know, like that would be the funniest, most honestly logical outcome. And then like the proposal's already on ESPN's desk to go and change it, get them out of there. And they're like, Oh, I know I've talked a lot about people pushing narratives too much. I'd have a really tough time biting my tongue with James Franklin if that happened. And if he fell to three and 20 against AP top 10 teams with a loss to a Boise State team, that's a double digit underdog. And I probably, if I had to guess, I would say Penn State beating Boise State is the safest bet of the weekend. And maybe you could make the case Texas beating Arizona State is the safer bet, but I feel like I'm seeing nobody picking Boise State to beat Penn State. Actually, I'm not seeing anybody to pick Arizona State to beat Texas either. So one of those two, but still, that'd be a really tough look. And now we've previewed, we're going to preview the three games you guys are going to enjoy watching. There you go. That's what we need to do. Not going to do an in-depth breakdown of Ohio State, Oregon, everybody else and their mother is. I do have a lot of thoughts on that that we could get into. I'm sure we'll recap some of the stuff with that as well, and that's another reason for the receding thing that I feel would be justified of not necessarily defaulting to four highest ranked conference champs, getting the automatic buys, but realizing Oregon in this path probably shouldn't have to face Ohio State with his first round game and how unfortunate that is. But yeah, nonetheless, Oregon has a difficult matchup. I picked Ohio State to win that before the Tennessee game. Now, I feel a lot better about that pick, but watch, watch Oregon, just come out and just drop the hammer on them. Well, huge play, huge brain play by day and Chip Kelly to lose to Michigan, you know, so they didn't have to see Oregon a third time, you know, they kept all the good players close to the vest. They used some of them against Tennessee, now they got a chance to beat Oregon. Would they have, I would have changed the seating probably to have to have the loss in the victim championship? I've been trying to keep teams apart to our point about Texas and Georgia as well. Yeah, exactly. All right. Let's talk about Texas. Number five, see Texas, 12 and a half point favorites against number four seed Arizona State. The over-under, that just tells you how messed up that is right there. See the over-under I have is one and a half references to Sam Levitt saying that he's going to prove that he's a better quarterback than coin-uers. How about that? New friend of the program, coin-uers. If you missed what the Arizona State quarterback said, here was the quote from Blake Neiman that made the rounds. And by made the rounds, I mean, on like every Texas message board in existence. The quote was, I've watched him for a fair amount of time now. That's Levitt talking about coin-uers. I'm just excited for the opportunity. People keep counting me out since day one, and I'm going to go prove why I'm the better quarterback. Did you hear a Quinn-uers response to that, by the way? They played it off pretty well. That would be pretty well. You know, there have been all these rumors about yours. I hope he stays in the South. He fits in really well because they had a great season. It's some real bless your heart level stuff right there. I love the response of they had a great season. Quinn has learned over the years to choose his words very carefully, and that I thought was a good example of that. And Sam Levitt, I don't think chose his words carefully in this instance. And look, I love the confidence of the quarterback. You got to have a confident quarterback, okay? He's been awesome for Arizona State. He's 11-1 as the starter, as Kenny Dillingham likes to remind us, is a big reason why people aren't necessarily talking about Arizona State's offense in the same way that we're talking about Boise State's offense, because Levitt is probably a better compliment for Camp Skadaboo than Maddox Madsen. Yeah, that's right. Boise State quarterback Maddox Madsen, a name that just sounds like it's in college football 25. Sounds very made up. He is not quite as good of a compliment for Ash and Jensen. So in the last six games, Levitt averaged 10 yards per pass, Arizona State had 17 touchdown passes in that stretch. It's good. It's a really solid player. He's going to be one of the five or 10 best returning quarterbacks in the country. I feel pretty confident in saying that about the redshirt freshman, okay? Remember, if he's not really good, Jayden Rashada is still there. So make of that what you will. Obviously he impressed enough people, and he has taken advantage of the opportunity that he's been given so far. He feels good about himself, but that's some bulletin board material for Texas that I'm not sure Texas needed, okay? Texas might have had a rough day at the office against Kate Clubnick in the first round. I think it's fair to say that by Texas is high standard. They would count that as a rough day at the office. It is still as good of a pass defense as any and all of college football. Also the thing to remember, I don't know that we're going to get this total indication that one quarterback is definitively better than the other because I think Levitt's challenge is far greater than the challenge that yours is facing. It's just not the poking the bear type of move that I'd like to see. This Arizona State team though, they've been playing kind of like this all year. They're playing like a team with nothing to lose. I love that they embrace Kenny Dillingham's confidence and a comment like that certainly reflects it. I also wonder if Sam Levitt is trying to do the thing where he takes the attention off Camps Gadaboo. Make Texas focus on shutting him down instead of the guy who in my opinion should have been in New York. Yeah, maybe, maybe not. Gadaboo is actually ASU's leading receiver now that Jordan Tyson is out. That's probably another reason why the task that Levitt is facing is super daunting. Call me crazy. I think Texas is going to trust its corners to be able to win in single coverage and get as many guys as possible around Camps Gadaboo. That seems like a lock. I don't know that that's going to work, but you need to because Camps Gadaboo had 1,085 rushing yards after first contact. After first contact. Force 92 missed after. Are you skating or is tackling getting worse because I feel like there's an even more ridiculous jinty stance like he got these couple of guys that's also in there where it's like he's this guy's attackable like literally statistically attackable. Jenty had over well over a hundred force miss tackles this year and that's according to PFF. Again I don't want to do the thing where I talk about Mountain West defenses compared to others. It's not like we'll see. That's the best part. We're about to learn. Yeah. I mean and we have learned in a certain to a certain extent because obviously Jenty had the success he had against Oregon. So not to go down that road again, but you're right. I mean there does seem to be more of these miss tackles, but I wanted to look up Dylan Sampson's end of year number for that and he had 70 force miss tackles. So make of that what you will. Skadaboo's a monster. Like he's unbelievably good. Texas's top defensive priority is containing him. It's making sure that he's not dragging five defenders across the line again and your job as Texas's defense is just preventing him from getting those chunk plays, which he is obviously done no shortage of times this year. The good news for Texas floor is the only team to average four yards per carry against this defense in a 14 game season. Collins brought in those two guys have been phenomenal in the interior of that defensive line. We had all these questions coming into the year. How are they going to look without sweat? How are they going to look without Murphy? Bo Davis is off. Tell us you what's this defensive line going to look like? It's been a strength. It has been a lights out unit and you know, I think that to sit here and go, well there are 11th in the country in yards per rush allowed, rushing yards per game allowed. That's a testament to PK and scheme and all these different things that they have working in their favor. And it definitely is Anthony Hill Jr. a big part of that as well. All the different things he can cover up for a defense. But I do think that this is not a perfect unit. It's not. If it were a perfect unit, it would have had answers for Trevor E. T. N. in the second half of that ICC championship or Trevor E. T. N. and the entire first game that Georgia and Texas played at the same time. It's also a Texas defense that allowed just four runs of 20 yards in 14 games. That's tied for Ole Miss for best in FBS. Strength on strength matchup. That's what camp's cataboo against the Texas run defense is and clearly any world in which Arizona State is looking up advancing to the final four is going to be because camp's cataboo went off. Probably also involves ASU getting some key turnovers of viewers. Anybody that's lined up across from Texas this year, unless they were facing archmaning, they probably said that'd be a really nice thing to have working in our favor. I think yours is going to be asked to do more in this matchup than he was against Clemson. ASU is better against the run than Clemson was. That's not saying a whole lot, but that's the area that I think Sark would like to be able to win is trusting those receivers on the outside. You're getting Isaiah Bond back. How healthy does he look after he was out for the Clemson game? He got rolled up on in that SEC Championship, but I think it's going to be big to have him back. As much as you and I have both become, I think it's fair to say we both become big Matthew Golden fans, respect his game a lot. I still, I watched that Clemson game and I thought to myself, he had the one nice long pass play where yours fits it into that tight window on a ball that just gets there between the two converging Clemson defenders. But outside of that, he was really quiet. I think he kind of needs that compliment. Even though I'm not as high on Isaiah Bond as a lot of people are, when I see him in these mock drafts in the first run, I'm like, "Guys, I don't think he's that dude." I think he's a number two in the NFL. Isaiah Bond from Texas? They got him going on a version? Yeah. Like some dude, he's not a Texas Tech creative. This is Isaiah Bond from Texas again? Nope. The one and only Isaiah Bond from Texas. Maybe he's like a third down specialist, like the way they got pass pressures. Maybe they just take Isaiah Bond, like do what you did with no row. He's a good player. He's a good player. How much is Gravedigger impacting some of that though? That's what I'm saying. A few moments. This guy's one of the best players I've seen. Yeah. But outside of those key moments. Yeah. Yeah. That's why you like him in this game. And we've talked about Texas' unwillingness to want to attack downfield. They've kind of played to maybe some of the health stuff that yours has been working through. A lot of passes behind the line of scrimmage or within nine yards. Bond is the leader on that team and average depth of target, 13.9, average depth of target for him. So like you need big time plays I think from the passing game still, you'd like to be able to hit on some of those chunk plays. But I think that it's going to be really beneficial for you to have close to a full arsenal against an Arizona State pass defense that's bottom half in the country against the pass. But it's been much better down the stretch. Only five passing touchdowns allowed in the last eight games rank fifth in FBS in 30 yard passes allowed. So they've been better probably than what the raw numbers indicate. I can't wait to see how Sark plays this. I've spoken ad nauseam about my respect for him as an offensive mind, especially with extra time to be able to prep because I think if you're Sark, you're looking at it like this. On one hand, you've got a ground attack with Weisner and Blue that just got every blade of grass that they wanted in that football game against Clemson. Looked as good as it's looked all year, really rounding in a form. On the other hand, you might be kind of banged up on the offensive line, even if majors and came Williams the right tackle, even if both of those guys are a go or if Goodby is able to step in at right tackle like he did in the second half of that game against Clemson. Even if those things are kind of not as good as they were in the regular season, what do you do? That could indicate the type of offense that you want to run. That's kind of a boring thing to say, but it could indicate where you feel like you can actually take advantage of this Arizona State defense. So what plays out? I'm a little surprised Texas is double digit favorites still because they just haven't been that team that's going to beat you 35 to seven. I know the Michigan game was really impressive, how much that felt like a statement. But they haven't had a lot of games like that since then, you know, even against some of the lesser competition. I don't think Skataboo is just totally stymied because 150 on the ground is not going to surprise me. That would be a bad day at the office for him. I just, I think that this ends up being a 60 minute game. I do. I don't think Weisner and Blue go off like they did against Clemson, but the question is, do we think Arizona State is about to knock off Texas and play in a semi final? I can't get there. Maybe that's too much local bias, but I've tried to look at this in a variety of different ways because I do think Arizona State's being slept on a little bit. So I'll pick up a cover, a double digit spread, but I'm going to go Texas to win 20, 24 long horns. Hang on with a pick of Levitt on a potential last minute drive with Arizona State trying to fight back and get to go ahead, touchdown. I think it's a really good point about, you know, they haven't been that team is funny because in these big moments, you know, when it's Alabama last year against Michigan this year when, quote, unquote, the nation was tuning in, they had a couple of those games. And so I'm sure a lot of people would think that. And I think that to your point, that's why the line comes in kind of in the middle where it's like, you know, there's this reality where they, they have been kind of this number one, like one through five team all year that has all this talent. They got arch manning. They got Queen yours. And I say them in that order because everybody knows arch manning like like there's the press cupping version of Texas, I will say this, I think that, you know, these games, they both been against Georgia, you know, that are inexplicably close like that and they ended up losing it. And I think you got to kind of control for that. I think we're kind of creating a chain of screaming here where like Georgia can't beat Alabama, but Texas can't beat Georgia. So therefore Georgia is just fine, you know, and so, so point being, you know, we talked, we talked about talent, health location, say this every time, all right, because I got a, I got so wrong about Ohio State, they had all of those things that gets to the sea. And I just put my glasses on. So I've now given myself this rule. I think that for the location, right, Texas has just been there, right, this is kind of a newer environment for Arizona State, I think for talent, Texas solid advantage there. You know, I think that when it comes to health, you could certainly make the case that Texas, where Arizona State has more of an advantage than Texas. Although to your point, they're reading received by not running back. Pretty big loss there. Right. And the thing about Quinn yours is say what you will about his gifts, you know, arm punts, but they've been consistent all year. It's not like he's now getting more hurt. It's not like he's, you know, he's probably, you know, playing with something as it often is in football. I mean, Joe burrow after the championship game, so he like crapped a, or cracked a rib on like an all out blitz out of his own end zone and just kept playing. So it'll probably be something like that in the off season, but point being I think that Texas from where they started has probably sunk lower than Arizona State, you know, from where they started, but they started in such a better place talent wise that I think that overall losing one receiver could impact the team like Arizona State more. That being said, I think they will be kind of playing with this line. I think comes and played as well as you can in one of these games while just getting cooked on both lines of scrimmage. Like, that's the one kind of weird thing that's happened to every playoff game is almost the same where the team, the ones on the scrimmage is just belt to butt, knocking you out. You can't get up like Tennessee had the good series against Ohio State, but after that, they couldn't get up. You know, they were just getting punched in the mouth. And the fact that Clemson was able to do that, it says something about K club Nick says something about, you know, the culture, unfortunately, they didn't give up, I get that. But I think that exactly the point, you know, where you started with Levitt, where it's like, I don't see him being K club Nick in this game. This is what it's going to take, you know, if Clemson's attack was, we are going to hand the ball off a ton of times. And that's what they were known for doing probably would have been in trouble. And in fact, like they were running back was a little bit banged up too. So they pretty early on were like, we got to go with club Nick and that's the key. They didn't go into the game going. We're going to pound the air out of the football and adjust. They knew from all the mentions of Austin with K club Nick that it was going to be his show. And therefore they had a game playing that worked. I think, you know, given the circumstances, you can't fix the run defense on the fly. You can't fix, you know, the other line of scrimmage. And that being said, this becomes such an issue where it seemed like Arizona State because again, we get the press clippings. I get, I think you're right on the money there where it's like, we don't want the conversation to be about scatter who we want to take it off. But unfortunately, that's who needs to play well to win this game because I don't see a player like scatter who running for 250 and three studies on Texas. You know, they can't win that way. That's how they won a lot of the year. I think that if that's happening, we're seeing Starfire somebody on the sideline this game, you know, like that is, that is horrible for them because in that situation, you know, when you're definitely in danger of losing the game, the number two against Oregon and Ohio State, you're in trouble. And I don't think that's what Texas has shown all year. You know, I think that when the defense has struggled, it has been weird circumstances. Like we've talked about, it's been weird, like, okay, well, our goal today was to control the line of scrimmage. We did that. And their second option worked. We don't really care enough to take that away because now we start to play this cat and now it's game. We're controlling this game. And that's, that's my take on the Clemson thing. Again, maybe I'm doing it from rose colored glasses, but it felt like Texas was pretty dominant. Just imposing their will when they needed to have something, you know, they could have it. I've said it before, but I think that Texas's health ends up catching up with them likely in this next game. I don't think Arizona State has the horses or the game plan, you know, maybe if you had a quarterback like we've seen in previous years, I don't know why I keep thinking of Jordan Lynch, maybe because then I use really big this year, but let's just say you're playing, you know, a team that has a cool story, but it's about their quarterback, you know, that might be a little bit different where you could, you could move the offense around. You can, you could account for all the pressure. You could do that type of stuff. But I mean, now knowing that sky to blue is also the waiting receiver, it's like, look, if you have three dudes there and then when every play, you're probably playing good defense. June is taking guess. Well, I looked at stuff because I was curious of like, yeah, he's probably, he gets a lot of dump offs, yeah, his yards after his, what is it? It's his average yards after contact on catches. Mm hmm. Just take it. Yes. What do you think that is? Catch it. It's going to be smart. I'm after contact. I'm going to say you're acting like it's going to be high. So I'm going to say it's like eight like 14, good. My bad guest was 10 like 14 is so, wow, that is an Isaiah Bond after catch. Yeah. Basically, he's basically getting, getting these passes at the line of scrimmage and still the average 14 yards is just insane. Like, let me, it's, it's, it's unbelievable. And so like you're going to see a player that is extremely difficult to be able to bring down. Like there's, there's no doubt about it. The, the, the job that taxes that, that Texas does from a tackling standpoint is, is going to be obviously really, really important and you just can't be one of those teams that's, that's struggling and giving, you know, broken tackles on the sideline. If you have defensive backs that aren't willing to break down in a game like this, obviously that is going to come back to bite you. But where it gets really interesting is thinking about, all right, what does it look like? I'm third and 10. How much confidence does Sam Levitt have to be able to step into some of these big time throws is going to be willing to test some of those Texas corners on the outside that have been so unbelievably good in coverage. Yeah. I just don't have the confidence that they'll be able to do that. But at the same time, it's kind of doing him is kind of a wild card. I mean, it really is not kidding that do best offensive minds in the sport. If you look at what Denny telling him is done with what he's done, man, it's, it's kind of hard to argue against that. I mean, he's in coach of the year, like that's the thing is like, if you're going to put him in those talks, you got to put him up there with a star because look at the talent sarcasm, could he does, and it's about, you know, going with what you got and he looked at the roster and determined exactly what you need to do and when maybe if you give him five stars, it'd be different, but he doesn't have five stars. Let me clarify. I messed up that stat. I knew I was going to mess up that stat with campscatter boob before. Okay. So this is, this is yards, this is yards after the catch or catch. That is an average of 14. That's still insane. Okay. Good. Cause I messed it up too. It ended up being right. That is, that felt more natural. Hold on. The average depth of target is 0.3 yards. That is, that is at the live screen show. That's all you guys say. This man is now their leading receiver and his average depth of target is 0.3. Yes. So it's a very unique matchup again. I, I want to just throw away so many of the Clemson things that we saw because it is entirely different than preparing for a Clemson team that I mean, even with film off, it didn't have a particularly good rushing attack and this is just obviously going to be a different piece, but should be a great matchup. Go figure like Texas is a chance to get into the semi final and there will be so many people, if they win this game with a script like that, where it's only a four point win or something like that, tech, people will still be kind of underwhelmed by Texas and they'll be sitting there potentially in the semi final. That's just, that, that to me is exactly what you could help for. If you're a head coach, this is the greatest four raising season. Really. I mean, talking about Josh Hyple and 22 or two, we've seen, I mean, which teams have come back, you know, since we've been doing this podcast, very few Texas has done that. And now you look at the season going, if everything goes wrong. And again, a little bit of a favorable matchup, Clemson sure wasn't. I mean, again, like, that's a, that's a two time champion. Say what you all about Dabo, but yeah, it's a little bit of a favorite draw. But at the end of the day, it's like, Hey, you know, play Georgia twice lost to him twice. If you're worse than Georgia, congratulations. Welcome to college football. Yeah. I'd love to know if Arizona State, if you could have let these teams, like if you could, if Texas had its choice of who it would face in this round, like you could pick, you know, of those, like a pick of any team that's left in the field, would it pick, and it let's just say in this hypothetical world that had first pick, would it pick Arizona State? Would pick probably pick Boise State? Just because they don't have the depth of, you know, around gente, although they do get after the passer again, in a way that I think people are discounting, but would they pick Arizona State? Hmm. Maybe they would. And you know, I don't want to do a whole tangent on this because we've talked about this before, but that is one thing that could make the playoff funds. If you do that basketball tournament style draft, where you let the teams pick. I don't want to see that. I'd love it. There's a part of me that goes, Kirby Smart just goes, Oh, I'm Penn State. I'm better than James Frank. I'd be so here for that. No one gets such crazy ratings to you. You think these ranking shows people are into those, buddy, draft all-star game style. Let those teams sort of through with a visor, go ahead, give the draft the coaches. Oh, buddy. Let those teams with the first round by pick who they get to play. And I promise you, you will have that pot stirring. That would be fantastic for college football. I would love to see that. All right. Speaking of Kirby sugar bowl, number two seat, Georgia, one and a half point favorites against number seven, number seven seed Notre Dame, I should say. The over-under is six references to how well liked Gunnar Stockton is. Man, everywhere you look. Wait, we didn't talk about this one here. Sorry. Bevo, not going to be there. Yes. A friend of the program, Gary Stokan, unfortunately did not confirm on these airwaves because your boy messed up and forgot to ask Gary Stokan about Bevo. But yes, Gary Stokan did say that Bevo will not be there just as we saw in the SEC Championship when he was not there. Look, we got our assets everywhere. You know what I'm saying? If you come for a hug or justice, we'll find you. It might take a couple of years, okay, but it'll find you. Will is going to be on the sidelines, but Bevo won't. Exactly. Now, look, they've replaced him with one cajun. How about that, all right, sugar bowl, um, yes, Georgia, everywhere you look. If you've been consuming the coverage leading up to this one, Gunnar Stockton so well liked. Everybody loves him. You're seeing how much respect Gunnar Stockton has in that Georgia locker room and even Kirby, he had a very noteworthy quote. He said, all the players play harder for him. That is significant for a team that just lost the preseason Heisman Trophy favorite to a season ending injury. That's, that's more than just, uh, this dude drives a 1984 F one 50 and he loves cows. By the way, great piece by Marshley bought ESPN.com, uh, go read about Gunnar Stockton if you want to get more coverage about how well liked he is. He's very well liked. Even he, Marshley about could not resist comparing the F one 50 with over 300,000 miles on it to Carson Beck and his Lamborghini. That's worth like $300,000. It just doesn't, now that we're past the Carson Beck era and he's already told it was going pro, which good luck, man, that guy didn't seem fun to play with. Uh, like it's one thing where your quarterback is like super good and confident, you know, we've seen that, but if he's not good and he's confident and he's yellow, that's you. Cause you're, can he's throwing picks? Oof. It's, uh, I get the sense that he became a bit of an outsider there. Mm hmm. And I usually don't want to connect too many dots, but I think we have enough with what's been said about Gunnar Stockton as it relates to Carson Beck to make us feel like that's a, a, that's a fair assumption to make. And maybe some of that is, you know, what he's a fifth year guy, he's older than everybody that's been around. It's kind of like, you know, the guy who does the victory lap in college and you look around and you go to, go to the bars and you're like, wow, I'm the oldest one here. And it certainly feels like it. And maybe there's some of that, that, that's going on with Carson Beck. I mean, think of the great players that came through in his recruiting class. Those guys are gone. Those guys are in the NFL, you know, like guys don't sit around for five years at Georgia. They hit the portal or they go to the NFL. So I wouldn't be surprised if some of that was impacting him. I don't want to say like he was a pariah in the locker room and all and everybody wanted him gone or anything like that, but this is noteworthy. And look, it's not even just Georgia players and coaches that have been getting this stuff out there. I heard a story about, about Gunnar Stockton from somebody who was at a team building event last year and there was a noteworthy Georgia player, a guy who ended up going in the first round. He's a year older than Gunnar Stockton and they're about to split everyone up into groups for this team building activity that they're doing. And this future first rounder goes up to the instructor and he's like, hey, I'm in for this, but I've got to be with Gunnar Stockton. Like that's my guy. And he was like, taking a back by, he's kind of like, because like third string, what do you, what do you talk? That's your guy. And if you would know like the prestige of the person who said this, he'd be like, that's okay. Interesting. And just, that's the type of stuff you file away and you hear more and more stuff about him like this. So that's not going to be a question whether or not Gunnar Stockton has the support of that team. How much does that matter? We'll see. You know, we'll see. I want to see how Gunnar Stockton handles what Notre Dame is going to throw at him. I took up the numbers of the four times that the IRS defense had extra time to prepare for a quarterback this season. So we're talking obviously season opener against A&M, you know, by week and even, you know, college well playoff. The best performance will Curtis Roark was completely ineffective for the first 55 minutes of that game. Okay. I mean, but also yeah, I think about the teams too. And that's the whole Notre Dame conversation. You're facing rookie head coach today and you know, you're facing the data. So who's actually the pilot? They had, they had new Auburn quarterback and former Stanford quarterback, Ashton Daniels. And then they had Brock Len, the highly regarded FSU true freshman. And then Roark who Roark came in, you know, was one of considered to be one of the 10 to 15 best quarterbacks in the country this year. And yeah, Connor Wigman, I, you know, I'm certainly higher on him than most, but they did a lot of things to make Connor Wigman like look like the absolute worst version of himself. I think we could say that. And when you see the numbers, you're like, wait a minute. So Roark is the only guy among those four who threw through for more than a hundred yards. He's the only one of those guys who threw a touchdown pass is the only one of those guys who finished with a quarterback rating better than 109.4. Yep. And that's, to me, that stands alone. Like that's, he had a great season, you know what I'm saying? Like that is a better player, that is a better like performance. So yeah, I'm, I'm definitely with you there like that's, it isn't recently biased. It's a trend that, that defense is playing with your hair on fire and not to bring up the old, wow, look at the rules reversed here. But I mean, watching that game, again, they came to play that the defensive line looked like they were mobsters. Like, so I think that game could help them kind of scheme for what they could do here. You're right. Yeah. I mean, Signeti went from saying, you know, we kick the, you know, what out of top 25 teams to being like, oh, we've got a fourth down. We've got a punt because our quarterback can't do anything in this game. So that's, that was the Notre Dame defense on a sure rest. Obviously Gunnar Stockton is a different type of test. Is he the toughest quarterback of that group? We'll see. We'll see. Anybody around Georgia right now, they'd certainly say, yes, absolutely without a doubt. Uh, I fully expect him to be used as a runner. That's going to be the biggest difference between Stockton and those guys. He's going to be used as a runner a lot. And he's going to probably call his own number on these RPOs, which that matters. If you actually are trying to run those, those RPOs and have a quarterback, you know, hold it at the mesh point and you can have a quarterback that could just take off and run 15 yards. As I always say, Jake from could have had 500 rushing yards if he had just decided, oh, I'm actually just going to do this three times a game. Instead, he would never do this and defense is just eventually we're like, you're not going to do it. What's the point? We're going to sell out software. You know what? Now we're having this conversation. I started to bring this up against Arizona State. Who do you think is the best complimentary quarterback? You see, not a game manager, right? Like, because you could make an argument, like some of the bamboo quarterbacks were game managers because they played with like, you know, first round receivers or stuff. I'm talking about a guy who is like, we're going to run the football. Don't mess it up of the best quarter. Give me a that you've seen, like, because we talked about, you know, Sam, love it. That's kind of what Gunnar Stockton needs to do. Is there a guy that sticks out to you? It's like, well, this was a great running back. You know, Coker is like fine, you know, but there's a guy that like really does that could be emulated that you could think of that, that like you think Gunnar Stockton could play like essentially in a game like this. It's a good question. I think some of the more like college focused guys and not necessarily these big time prospects make a little bit more sense because, gosh, I'm trying not to. It's hard because when you throw out game manager, I think someone like Connor Cook at Michigan State was perfect for what they tried to do. He's up there. That's a good one. I thought he was so effective in that role and what they tried to be. I thought early on, Trace McSorley was the perfect compliment for what Penn State was trying to do. And these 30 seconds they'd take on from was that to be clear. Like from, you know, they had other objectives, but he played really well. I think that that's the, the end of the story kind of colors the rest of it is a guy that, you know, took Georgia to a championship game. The real example circling around this, I sure brought it up, it's 2016 Jalen Hertz. That's, that's kind of the guy. Wow. Yeah. There's a pool. Yep. Before, you know, before we were like, Oh, hey, he's about to win a Heisman Trophy going in a 2017 season. And obviously he loses national championship on, on the last play might have been a pick play, might not have been, but that's the guy where, yeah, I would say he fit into that role as just the perfect compliment for what they were trying to do and it wasn't going to be unbelievably spectacular, but he had Calvin Ridley for those big time plays. They still had enough guys in the past and, you know, among those past catchers where you just felt like he was going to be in control the entire time. That's probably the best example that I can come up with. So, yeah, limit the turnovers, make some things happen with your legs. Like, I can't, you know, we've had such a limited, limited sample, sample size of Gunnar Stockton, who I got to shout out this nickname really quick. Our guy, uh, Trippy D writes, who's a listener said that he's coming up with stunna glockden. Love that. That's pretty fire. My guy Perry has the milkman because he likes cow so much, which you talk about, complimentary. That would perfectly compliment the mailman. The most clutch of Georgia quarterback that's ever lived, Stetson Bennett. Yeah. Yeah. The milkman, it's not bad. Techno, because Stetson evolved that second year, but like your one Stetson was also that. You know what I'm saying, where it's like, okay, you didn't, like the turnovers were down. Anyway, so point being, yeah, I think. You have so, so few reps for Gunnar Stockton that the one pick is going to stand out a lot more, but just don't throw that ball ever, you know, and you'll be fine. Like if you take that play out because we should, and you look at how we manage that game and took care of the football and decisions he made, I don't feel awesome because you never feel awesome when you lose your starting quarterback, but I think there's something to the guy's got a good head on his shoulders, people in the building really like are high on him. Yeah. Definitely. It's better than the alternative. Who's this guy been, he's transferring from a school where he didn't necessarily fit in and there's a lot of people that are like, yeah, that guy was bad news. We didn't really like him. Hopefully he kind of works, but you know, let's also call a spade a spade. Kirby Smart wanted to get Gunnar Stockton more reps. And because of the way Georgia season played out, that wasn't in the cards. It wasn't in the cards for them to all of a sudden bench their first, their first stringers in these games that were closer than expected. And they didn't get lopsided until very late in some of those instances. And so, you know, you're looking at it from that standpoint going, wow, why is he going to have moments where he's really football young? Yeah, he could. And he's like facing a Notre Dame defense. I think he's going to put a ton of guys into the line of scrimmage. Why wouldn't they trust that your all world secondary can win those match ups on the outside with Georgia's past catchers and try and force a guy in his first career start to quickly identify pressure and figure out where are your protections and where can you get rid of the football? You don't want to play the guessing game against this Notre Dame secondary. They can make you pay. Will he get some help? Will he get some help with a Georgia pass catcher that says, I got you. Don't worry. Just throw it up. Let me go make a play because they haven't had that all year. If Stockton really gets all the players to play harder for him, as Kirby says, Georgia's receiver is going to stop dropping passes. They're going to focus a little bit more and be able to haul in the football because I don't, I don't know that that's just the byproduct of who your quarterback is and what an IL deals. He has. All right. That would be the funniest thing ever if Georgia receivers just came out. There were dogs and Bobo was sitting there going, I told you all about these guys. Maybe he just has too much zip on the ball and it's like breaking their hands. They're making these George Pickens catches in a game. They're like, what, what, Oscar Delft is his verticals, 45 inches. What? This happened. They said during the ICC championship, Georgia leads FBS and drops, PFF has Georgia for 30 drops. I've heard 33 elsewhere. Think of for what it is. Georgia's dropped a lot of passes. Too many drops. Way too many. Way too many. Aaron Smith, he knows that he's owned up to it this week. Every Georgia media member I saw was right in that story, you know, and good for Aaron Smith throwing it. PFF has them for 10 drops this year. His drop percentage is 17.5% like one out of every five times you're throwing his way. Not only is it incomplete, but he's dropping the football as a guy that's been there for five years and he's made some big time plays. He of course made the 76 yard touchdown catch when the Ohio State corner fell down and Georgia comes back into that game two years ago in the beach bowl. It's like you would hope that a guy is experienced who's seemingly been around forever is going to step up and make some big time plays. But can you trust him? I don't know. And I don't know how much these Georgia receivers are really going to get separation. I think that's going to be the difficult thing. You know, like Notre Dame has allowed 270 passing yards once all year. It was Jade Mayava who as we'll get to later with A&M maybe as Tom Brady, maybe as Pat my homes combined, I don't know, he could be. The most surprising thing will would be if a Georgia receiver takes over this game. Since that Bama game, when Smith and Bell were both awesome in the second half, when Georgia's like, yeah, we're just going to throw it all over the yard. We're going to just start chuckling it deep. Both of those guys hit the century mark that game. Since then, the only instance of a Georgia receiver having 65 receiving yards against power conference competition was when Ari and Smith had 134 receiving yards against Mississippi State. It was two and 10 bottom 10 and FBS and opposing quarterback rating. So they're just Cain Womack merchants, Tim. Yeah. Look, I'm going to make you apologize. If Bama pitches a shutout against Michigan, I am definitely going to make you apologize Cain Womack. Okay. Well, just bring up all these ridiculous stats that'll make me go, was he really as good as he should have been? Probably not. I'll call Marla. That's what I'll do. I'm sure we'll have 10 stats for you. I'll just walk out of it convinced exactly. And look, George fans, I know what you might be thinking as you hear that, Hey, stop talking about the passing game. Okay. This is going to be a ground heavy approach. I get it. You might not have to throw 300 passing yards to win this football game. But even if you get a healthy Trevor Etienne, which I believe he will be was great off off of the month long absence coming off the rib injury. We are talking about what he did against Texas. By the way, kind of a revenge game for him against the dome Caesar super dome. We call it the Caesar super dome. Please that. Okay. The super dome ETN's the ETN's are 0 and 4 in that building. Yeah. Mm. Trevor, 0 and 1, Travis, 0 and 3, it's a revenge game for the ETN's against the against the dome. Okay. So if you see a little bit of extra behind some of his runs, he's taking out on the dome. All right. That's your name. Anything like that. But look, George is trying to do a significant offensive pivot here. George only had one game all year in which it ran for 175 yards. And that was the UMass game. Okay. Can that group embrace what will likely be a late season identity shift on our gun or socket? I think it can to an extent. I was really tempted to pick Notre Dame, especially when Georgia fans got my mentions about like, Oh my God, how could you say this is going to be an extremely difficult matchup? How could that be your takeaway watching Notre Dame against Indiana? Wow. You went to Indiana, you must be just trying to give Notre Dame all the respect in the world. No, we're not doing that. I think the Irish could present problems. Okay. That three head of rushing attack is legit. As I've said, it's sort of a better version of Georgia Tech. I think Riley Leonard can frustrate Georgia. I think. I was one percent better. Right would have ended it in regulation, not needed eight over times for Georgia to win that game. I think it's going to be difficult. Okay. Like Notre Dame is third in the country and yards per rush. This is a game plan that if you weren't looking at low costs, you'd probably go, why is it Notre Dame favored by 10 points? Yep. How much do logos matter? How much do they matter? I question that. Well, I have this weird feeling that Notre Dame gets out to a lead and a line up for a field goal to make it a two score game. And then it's going to miss a kick, something that I struggled with during the regular season. It was much better in the first round of the playoff, healthy kicker, but that's going to open the window for Georgia. I'll say that Georgia gets enough run defense stops late, even though that's been an issue this year in a group that allowed less than two yards per carry and four games against playoff teams this year. I think that unit flexes late, as does the very well liked Gunner Stockton leads a go-ahead touchdown drive late touchdown past Oscar Delp 45 inch vertical on full display. Dogs win it 21 to 20. Then I default to the logo too much. So here's the thing. You know, I think that defensively Georgia is going to play well in this game because they've shown me nothing, you know, that says they won't do that in terms of, you know, the big games in terms of these moments in terms of, I guess Notre Dame with Kirby Smart in terms of, you know, what we've seen here. I think this comes down to, okay, let me do my 1000 foot again. Talent. It's close. It's really close. And honestly, it's their name, I mean, because here's the deal because the injuries thing is related, right, where Georgia probably started off the year with more talent than Notre Dame because Carson Beck was seen as a preseason All-American watch list type of shoulder back. True. You know, the receivers were supposed to get accepted. Delp was going to be 75 or 80% he was going to take a step up for when he filled in for Brock Bowers last year. Georgia has not played up to the talent level on the offensive side of the ball for sure. On defense, I think those guys have brought the wood a lot this year, you know, I say this to say. I'm not trying to trivialize this and I want to be so clear about this. If this does not happen, I am not blaming anyone or getting but hurt. This is all going to come down to our good friend Mike Bobo because at the end of the day, there really is no logical reason this Georgia offense should play well against this Notre Dame defense. If you use logic and you say, what is Notre Dame good at? They have these swamp monsters and they're not swamp monsters. They're from Indiana. They're not a size swap, they have literally from Indiana, you know, well, no, but they're up there. It's not the swamp. It's like ice mother yetis. There we go. There we go. There we go. And so point being like they have these people up front. They have this, you know, the past events has been solid. Okay. If Georgia wants to win this game, it is going to be on the fact and again, 18 is not Derek Henry, you know, we can compare him to different back. We can compare God or Stockton and talk about what he needs to do. But at the end of the day, we need to see a lot more drives like that one, you know, in the second half of the SC Championship game, where it was kind of a little bit of that trickeration, you know, it would be such a poetic thing that Mike Bobo was known for, you know, a little bit of the power pitch, screen pass, why are you guys doing this, you know, back in the day. Now that's exactly kind of what this offense needs because they again do not have a factor back, you can give 30, 45, 30, 40 touches to like Alvin, Alvin, I turned him in Alvin Camara. Aston Ginti, you know, they don't have that Georgia running back and ETN has been awesome in big games, but he's a player as we've discussed that you want to save him a little bit for these big moments for the kill shot drive. You don't want to just waste ETN carries because he's not built that way, you know, even his brother was a little bit bigger than them and he might be a little bit better of a player, but that's what he adds as a runner, you know, in the past game and all that. So point being I think that if you want to use logic, there's no reason why this Notre Dame's defense should struggle with a backup quarterback, okay, but I look at how Mike Bobo made adjustments in that as a championship game with no Carson Beck and it just makes me think that if they could stick to that, if we can avoid the bad pick that we talked about, which is just as bad as any pick as Carson Beck has thrown, but guess what, it was just one of them. That's the difference. Carson Beck would just go out there and do it again like he did to get Florida. I mean, there was no reason why that Florida game was close other than Carson Beck was just like, I think I'm Joe Barrow, you know, and at the end of the day, like I have been trying to figure out the Georgia offense all year. I'm sure Georgia fans have been there with me. Maybe it was simpler than I thought it was. I tried to blame Bobo or tried to blame all these different things, but I think Carson Beck is just a little bit. Let me use a an old Southern word here, a little bit of a goober, you know, he's a little bit of a guy that to your point, I want what they needed, you know, say what you will. But he was not a guy that made the receivers play better. He was not a guy that said, Hey, put it on me when things went bad. It was a little bit of the blame game. It was a little bit of lack of leadership, whereas having a guy like Stockton, who I'm not talking about off the field stuff, I'm talking about knowing that you have that because it felt like every game Georgia was walking into this year, they're like, we got Aaron Murray, we're gonna be good. And it's like, that guy never really showed up, you know, whoa, is that a shot fired at Aaron? No, everyone's really good. That was my point. My question back was here in Murray, they thought he was going to be that guy who was going to, you know, I mean, very still, I think has all the records over there. Like he was going to be that franchise quarterback for Georgia, go to the NFL, have this like long career under Kirby. And I just think, you know, you regress this year and they couldn't really plan for it. And so I think that made the offense and made Bobo look worse than he actually was because when you see a backup quarterback come in and again, make a decision that Bobo had nothing to do with on that pick, the parts that were within the flow of the scheme, it was about the little bit of the end around a little bit of the move sideline to sideline because you can't push the tackles forward and you're not going to be able to consider a name. If you come up, say, we are going to do three yards in a cloud of dust, we are going to run the ball up the middle 30 times, it's not a good game plan against this team. You got to find a way to be a little, uh, Todd Monk and Esq in that way to find those holes in the zone to get guys in, in non-traditional roles to line some guys out up split wide. You know, so point being, I think it's, I hate to trivialize it, but I think it's going to, it's going to come down to that because I know the Georgia defense is going to play well in this game. I, I, that's one thing that I can guarantee you with Kirby smart, either they're going to play well for the whole game, or they're going to play poorly for the first half and Kirby smart is going to have them all outside the stadium and he's going to find some guys the kid in the second half and I've seen that too. Here's where I'll push back. Okay. I don't care if Carson back is taking a Lamborghini is private jet deal. I don't care what he's doing off the field, whatever, all that stuff. I don't care if he doesn't speak to a single teammate, all that stuff, when it comes to between the lines and catching the football, catch the football. You are, you are catching passes from a guy that you've in theory had no shortage of time to be able to work with. Now, if, if we're talking about a situation which Carson back isn't necessarily putting in that work and developing rapport with these receivers, all right, that's, that's one thing. Catch the football. Catch the football. That's what you're there to do. You are, you are time and time watching this Georgia offense be just totally out of sync as a result of those drops and while it's not entirely all on those guys and Beck definitely deserves some blame and I think you've seen his frustration boil over and yeah, maybe there are some things he could be doing away from the field that would help those relationships again. I don't want to connect those dots. I don't want to assume that I know all of those things and all those details and that all these comments are just a result of how Beck's year has played out but catch the football. Catch the football. Yeah. I agree. Like to be clear, but it's all related. Right? It's the fact that these receivers took two steps back. It wasn't that they took a step forward and you could talk about the coaching. You could talk about the recruiting. You could talk about all that, but at the end of the day, that's not changing, you know? So at the end of the day as a quarterback, you got to know that you have receivers that struggle with that. You got to work with a mixture because these guys aren't bums. They're not Mac receivers. And if they are, what are we doing, Cheney? You know what I'm saying? Point being like, I think it is Cheney, right? I feel like I got lost in all that, that the receivers coach because they hired another guy back. But anyway, not worth getting into it now. But like point being like, they, I know the receiver position has not been great for them even historically right since Pickens, but the concept of you're supposed to have a franchise quarterback with Josh Allen is doing the NFL right now where it's like, Oh, you're throwing at these garbage men and you're still making it work. Beck was supposed to be that type of talent. So the fact that he wasn't, you know, I don't want to go back and back out with these receivers were never that good. If you have, you know, these great, you know, any receiver come up great with a great quarterback. We've seen that so many times in these different systems. So point being, um, I, I think that like, I'm not trying to dump on the kid. I'm not trying to do that. And I'm not talking about, you know, Gunnar Stockton was picked first in the, in the school dance or whatever. I'm talking about when Carson Beck made a mistake, he never struck me as a guy who was like, Hey, my bad. He never struck me as a guy who was like, we're going to figure this out. It was a lot of just like disdain and like, I just, I just felt like he wasn't a leader of this team needed. And I think there was Stockton, baby, like I said, at least you know what you got. Like that's my thing about the backup quarterbacks at all is that I would rather have a guy that I know what I got. Allah, Koker, like we talked about versus a guy who's going to go out there and expect to be Aaron Murray when in reality he's probably the season, the most risky Jordan quarterback that we've seen. Follow how these Georgia receivers progress during this playoff run. And I say run because it's a possibility that this could be three games that they play or it could be one. And if you don't think that Georgia could lose a game like this and tell me why Vegas still has that spread. So they're at what? One and a half points. It's a game in which Georgia cannot afford to play a C plus game and expect to win. Okay. And I do think that it's, it's going to come down to those critical moments with Gunnar Stockton. Got to be able to make big time throws. Got to have your guys on the other end feel inspired enough to catch the football. That's a bad way to put it. We won't put it left. Two. I mean, the two Texas games made a combined zero sense. That's the thing. Like Georgia just came. Oh, oh, your quarterback's hurt. Okay. Well, who cares? Oh, well, this is going like your other quarterback has like three picks and he's playing like bad matter. Oh, now you're not going to win by 50. You're going to win by 20. And so point being like, that's just, that's the thing is that every time Georgia has come out and been this team has been so inexplicable that I'm just like, no, Dave is the one that's going to end this, this weird magical ride this year. I don't know. Like I said, I'm not, it would be hard for me to pick here if I, if I were betting money would be Notre Dame for sure. But I'm kind of there with you that it's just hard for me to imagine the game script where they just have no answers for Notre Dame after seeing their backs against the wall of the season and them just smoking a better Texas team twice. Kirby smart 35 and one against non SEC team since the start of 2017. Pretty good loan loss in the building that he will be in. Not the Caesar Superdome, just the Superdome game that he lost to Texas and the sugar wall. Same three and 23, it's AP top five teams since 1999. Last time that they won against the top five team at a neutral site, Texas A&M cotton bull 1992. Who could forget? Yeah. I was really hoping that was going to be a Jimmy Carter administration stat. It was not unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Will you want to recap some, some SEC bowl games? Let's do it, man. Actually, let's get an update on Iowa and Sue for the people who are approaching this via like newspaper. Wow. The over is almost hit already. It's 21 to 14 and half, 21 to 14 and half Brady Cook is just calling his own number repeatedly in this one. He's got 10 rushes for 60 yards. He's got 100. Wow. He's got 200, 200 total yards at the half, but allowing 21 points to Iowa. Hang that is not, not great for the old Mizzou defense, but yeah, we will keep the people up to date on the result of that because nobody will know the results of that by the time they listen to this podcast. All right. Gasperable. Florida beats Tulane. We already sort of did a recap of this one. Sort of not really some bad picks for lagway. Some really bad picks in this one credit john summer all who I thought did a really nice job of kind of disguising coverages, confusing a freshman quarterback. It was just the much better team and it was one of those games we looked up and wondering how was Florida only winning six to nothing when they're moving the football seemingly at will and Tulane can't do anything. Ty Thompson was not exactly, let's just say he didn't end the day improving his portal value. He was in the portal at the time of this game that just goes to show you bowl games in the year of 2024, but maybe in the big picture, long term view for Florida, maybe it's better for lagway that he didn't have his best game and that they didn't win this one pretty. I mean, the score is still opposite what was it 33 to eight or something like that weird final score, but my way doesn't have his best game. He can still kind of treat that as like, Hey, that's motivation for the off season. I still got a lot of work to do. I think he still would have approached it that way anyways. It's not like if he'd come out and just 350 passing yards, four touchdowns, no picks. He's like, Oh, I'm good for the off season. I don't think lagway is wired like that, but ultimately you can kind of spin it like this. If you're him, if you're that coaching staff, Hey, we got some things that we need to be able to work on despite the fact that, look, you win your final four games. And I do think that Florida by winning this gets to clinch ultimate good vibes team could do a little bit more to get that, you know, opinion universal. If you could get some guys in the portal, I still think they'll do that. The portal is closed, but guys who are in it still can be able to pick whatever teams they want. And you can still go out and say like, Hey, we can get a count rate Lambert Smith post spring. Like we've seen, you know, Jordan Addison was a post spring edition for USC a couple years ago. That's a position where you really can plug in a little bit more than you can in like quarterback or something like that. So yeah, it's going to be interesting to see kind of how they approach with that. Maybe the branch brothers who knows if that's going to be a possible destination for Florida as well. But I think they are far from finished with the pieces that they're going to try and add around like way despite the fact that the window has kind of closing as we've talked about. It seems like there are other teams that were more active early on, especially at the receiver spots. I thought Nick Anderson would have been a really nice kind of pair with DJ lagway and LSU was quicker to the punch on that one. Yeah. No, I mean, that's what's so crazy is I, you know, I'm always a little bit skeptical with the ability of your hype. Like we've talked about, he did win two pretty big games back to back this year, which is like a really big deal from a minimum. But like I'm just scratching my head on like, yeah, I think they need a couple of receivers. And I feel like that was all they needed in my opinion. Obviously I don't know their depth or like that, like I'm sure they could have used some other guys. But in terms of like, Hey, you need two or three receivers and I'm all out on this team and I'm sitting here looking up and I'm like, who are those guys? I think the branches would do it. I think that's a guy that's a couple of, you know, guys that are still there. But yeah, I'm like, you have DJ, like way again, you guys were like, I made the joke that it's real. If you guys are kind of in or out with Billy, all year, like you're getting ready to pay the buyout. So you have money. I would expect them to come up gangbusters in the portal and basically do what Ole Miss and Ellis you did. Cause they have the juice, they have the mode who doesn't want to play a library right now. Can I throw out something that is just the most message board thing ever? But it's there's, this isn't going to happen. Okay. I'm not predicting that this is going to happen necessarily. But it would be incredible if it did. Let's say Ryan Day gets fired, 30 day window, Jeremiah Smith on the open market. What kind of DM offers is he getting because they are silly, absolutely silly. And especially after what he did to German McCoy, I do think it's one of the best cover corners in all of college football and he took him to lunch. I mean, Jeremiah Smith would get so much from teams like Florida would be like like two years, 10 million bucks on 5 million a year. Come play here. Come play with DJ legway. I'm not saying that he would leave or anything like that. I don't know. It would, so much of that probably would depend on the situation of like who's replacing Ryan Day, you know, what's the quarterback in future situation looking like is Julian saying going to be end up being the guy there. Did he stay in Ohio State? Did he transfer? I don't know. It's tough to keep track of all this stuff. Jeremiah Smith in the open market with a receiver needy team like Florida would just be an incredible transaction to watch unfold. It probably won't happen, but I don't know. Be really fun if it did. Well, that's the thing. We know they're going to end up with somebody. That's always fun. It's your point about like, you know, I wasn't, I'm trying to think about the spring window because like I was shocked when LSU got Jayden Daniels. I thought it was going to be, you know, Nuss or one of the other guys hanging out. So at the, the times that teams have needed someone going into it, I, I'm fascinated because it might be, oh, there's, here's another one, you know, guys on playoff roster's period. Yeah. They can still hit the portal. They can still hit the portal. Like we're here in, uh, it was in, uh, Boo Carter had a lot of like rumblings that like kind of say it's going to see. Yeah. Like, like, because he paid because he was thinking about it in the portal. So like, that's the thing. And there might, they might just have verbals from like five playoff teams and guys start losing and they start, so I don't want to like be too. It's just weird that the portal is like going one way out of Florida where this team finished the way they did. Like this would be, again, Lane Kippen, Lane Kippen is always a Hopium merchant. That's why he does so well in the portal. It's like, this is exactly the lane special right here. You just want to bowl game. It gets too late and you got like two big win anyway, but I think they'll figure it out in terms of the receivers. I'm just interested in who it is. Yeah. If we're going into fall camp and we're looking around like, well, I was in Florida more aggressive in the portal. Could they not get NIL funding to be able to get some of these big time targets? I think that's a more concerning conversation. And I, that would be really tough because obviously you can sell lag way to, to anybody and why wouldn't you want to play with a guy like him, if, if everything else lines up and that would probably be an indication of things to mind up. But Florida gets to eight wins. It's to eight and five after the year that was go figure just a while season now, granted they had seven regular season one, but, but remember the predictor? It was like, if Florida gets eight regular season, they'll be in playoff talks. Yeah. That's so bad. That's casual. Yeah. I got Kelly for it at eight and four for the, for the projection there of like, Florida would have been worthy of playoff conversation. But yeah, eight wins, including the bowl victory. Nice. For Florida to be able to cap that off. First bowl victory since, since 19, yeah, crazy. Not quite a Miami losing streak when it comes to bowl games. Miami has not lost 13 consecutive bowls despite what Danny canal tweeted. They won one of the last 13. They won a bowl game 2016. People forget that, but they sure did. Yeah. I don't know why DK did that. Anyway, armed forces, bull. Holy cow. Well, I am so happy that we no longer have to watch the 20, 24 Oklahoma offense. You told Oklahoma fans, they're like, don't watch this game. You couldn't have been more right. Watch the first quarter, then go do something else. Just assume that they won. Yikes. You know, it's funny, dude. I've never been more right than about these meaningless bowl games. I was like, yeah, you're perfect for these boys down to the point where I said, and we'll get to the popular thing where I was like, they're going to have like some, some paint on their jersey. And that literally happened, but it was, dude, when I saw that quarterback for the 95 yard touchdown for Navy, I just went, oh, this is the best day of this guy's life. Dude, Blake Horvath deceptively fast. I don't think he's fast. I don't think he's deceptive. Everybody almost caught him. He was just too big to bring down. They tackled. I think he's just fast. Yeah. Yeah. But you got to be fast to be a service. All right, to be fair, you know, the school history, they've been playing football since like the Civil War, the mirror Mac playing for Navy football. Anyway, it was like 12 states when they were playing football in the longest run in school of history. I'm real. Yeah. Yeah. It to be clear. The Oklahoma offense that we saw in this game wasn't really the Oklahoma offense that we saw during the regular season, but it was kind of the story of the Oklahoma offense. If that makes sense, it was a variation of it. And it was another bad variation of it to blow a 14 to nothing lead against the service academy. We respect the troops. We do. Okay. But we see Venables make the decision to go for two. And after they have this drive that looks like it's going to tie the game, maybe we're going to get over time and say it's like, Oh, no, we're going for two. I wonder in that moment, what's this confidence level that they're actually going to convert? I couldn't just try to avoid injuries for the off season. Dude, he's like, you're out of here, bro, give me out of here. I can't watch the offense anymore. This needs to end now. Either when this or we lose this, I'm not taking this into overtime. And it said Michael Hawkins takes a sack against a free rusher. It was bad. It was bad. Um, basically after, and it started off so good too. That was a crazy thing is that they get off to this 14 nothing lead hockey picks a play that was unreal. He goes all the way to his left, realizes there's nothing there. I'm going to work all the way back to my throwing side. Find a guy, a CUNY 56 yards downfield. His last name is spelled the same way that Carney, Nebraska was my first job out of college, like Carney hub and Carney, Nebraska. So that's if I ever say Carney, guys, that's why, um, but he makes this play where he just drops it in a bucket and you're like, Michael Hawkins, you showed up, man. Like you're, you're ready to go. That was it. That was it for the OU offense. At one point and to be clear, losers online, we're like, this is what happens. You get an SEC team that step with a service academy in a ball game. That's why the SEC is what is wrong with y'all. This guy's like, it was not going to be 60 minutes of fun from the Oklahoma offense. It was not. You received the Oklahoma offense. How did you think that was? Anyway, at one point, I'm curious if anybody watching this picked up on this. I definitely did. At one point, they were doing this return from commercial break and it's one of those production meeting things where they're like, we're going to talk about, you know, how great the history of Oklahoma quarterbacks are. It's just kind of what you do on a national broadcast. All right. Whatever. They showed, you know, the great quarterbacks the last 25 years with hypo and white, Bradford Baker, Kyler, like all these guys in the very next place, two plays, Hawkins tries to throw a quick out. It's like the same exact play, the first throw, it's a drop, like that's bad second play. He like changes his arm angle and it's not particularly close and you're like, wait a minute. You can't complete a pass. The simplest of passes. It can't even do that after we just showed this great history of these quarterbacks. This feels so wrong to even say that that's part of the same group. Then right after that, they get a delay, they get a delay game penalty because they can't even get the play in and it's like, what are we watching? This is terrible. This is so bad. It was just so fitting for how frustrating this offense was, some of which definitely injuries and whatnot. I've talked to Nauseum about losing your top five receivers in September and how bad that was, whatever. But Hawkins had a chance to show his new OC something. Ben Arbuckle is the quarterback's coach in this game. He's coming over from Washington State. The most important hire of the Brent Fennebels era bar none. I don't think there was any world in which Arbuckle is going to come from Washington State and be like, yeah, I'm going to start Hawkins over my guy, John Mathier, I'm bringing with him from Washington State. That wasn't going to happen, but that post first quarter showing from Hawkins. But now it's easier to equate to people where he's like, well, you saw that bull, right? Yeah, like don't sell this to me as a battle or it don't do that crap. And Bennebels, you know, he took Jackson Arnold at SEC Media Days, he was like the only sophomore there. So say what you want about Bennebels and indecisiveness at the quarterback position with putting in Hawkins first half of their SEC debut. But I do think in the offseason, he'll be a little bit more, I think, forthcoming with who they're going to start because it will be John Mathier, as long as he stays healthy. Maybe Hawkins transfers, post spring, I don't know. I think he should stay and improve under what's considered one of these decorated up and coming offensive minds. That's what Arbuckle is. But think about this too, Will. And this is something to remember for all SEC teams, right? Not just Oklahoma. 10 of 16 ICC teams start to multiple quarterbacks this year, okay, that's a lot. That's odds are you are going to need someone else to start and that could be a prime opportunity for you. Maybe not to win that specific job, but set up your next opportunity. And I don't know. Like I look at Hawkins situation. I'm like, that guy's not ready to start at another place. He can do some things well. But over the course of 60 minutes, I watched it time and time again. The flashes are there if you just want to pull up a clip or two of him, you can convince yourself that he's going to be a guy. But you kind of see it over the course of 60 minutes and you go, eh, that's, that's really not great. And I know the surroundings were not good either. It was like their ninth different offensive line combination. I don't want to talk about the Oklahoma offense anymore. I'm kind of done with it. It's so bad. Yeah. I will just say this. Hey, man, if I had a nickel for every time an SEC team lost the armed forces bowl on the last play of the game in the low twenties, I would have two nickels and what happened to the other two. And what happened to the right? Yeah, good call. They did exactly that. And they lost to like a last second field goal. And what did they do after that? They brought a new offensive coordinator and they figured out their offense. So there's some Hopi and Polli Oklahoma fans, not in love with what you've done an offense, but not really a secret. I don't think anyone is. I don't think the players mama's are in love with the little offense this year. But that being said, you know, you can be exactly here and be just fine the next year. Um, they, they had a season in between that, my armed forces bowl and bringing in Kirby Moore as the OC, right? Yeah. Because armed forces bowl was, was 21, I want to say, and Kirby Moore comes in 23. So there's a season in between them, but that's what I'm saying where the story ended out there. You're right. It wasn't the same off season. It wasn't the same off season. So I got a little bit too greedy with the comps there. But point being, I can remember that bowl game where it was like, the Jews cooked like this is, this is so embarrassing. And so yeah, I'm not, maybe I just like the animals. I don't know. I'm like looking back. I'm like, what did he show me this year that I like the defense was really good. That's his thing. Um, I'm going to give them one more chance at this. And to your point, I think the, uh, most important hire moniker. That's another good comparison to Kirby Moore because boy, howdy do they need to fix that offense. Dan Burke's coming back. That's good. Going to need more help, um, they're continuing to add pieces in the portal, um, at the pass catch response. But yeah, uh, gotta, gotta have the quarterback situation right and they're following the Vandy model. Yeah. That's what they're doing. OC quarterback. Let's bring them on board. Let's do it. Worked out. Let's talk about Vandy. Let's talk about the game that was down the street from where you were, how far honestly was that game? So I actually started to go to, we talked about it on air and then it just started the torrential downpour. Yeah. And saw it on air and I was joking. I was there with my nephew. We just ended up watching the game. And I always say, you know, if you could see it on TV, it's rated bad because you can never see rain on TV. And there was like, gobs of rain coming down and I'm like, this game is to be, it's the classic, not what I want to catch double pneumonia off of, but it is to classic nonetheless. I was locked in. Yeah. Probably not worth pneumonia. Probably not. Yeah. Diego Poppy. I felt very vindicated for the lightning delay. True. True. At that point though, Diego Poppy had already taken over. Yep. Why I would ever suggest that he would lose a coin flip game is just, that's on me. I gotta be better. I gotta be better. Because Abe's king was on the other side. That's sick. I know. But that was Diego Poppy. He was super bowl. That was it. He treated it like it. At what point? Aaron said on the broadcast, he's like, did he just flip a ball to the fan? Like, was he feeling himself that much? He did like this, this like little, little somersault thing as he was, what he was getting back up. He takes the picture afterwards with the cigar, like he's, he's just, just juice. He is the guy you talked about doing the victory lap and God, yeah, although he's looking around going, yeah, I'm just a vibe. Like everybody get on my level. I'm not going to worry about fitting in here. You guys can fit in to what I'm doing here. Just so brash, man. Like he's, he's just, he's been a pleasure to watch. My only note for this game was Diego Poppy of forever. And I cannot believe that you correctly nailed the end zone paint prediction because Haynes king was covered in it absolutely covered in it early this game. And I wasn't, I was Leo DiCaprio watching, I was like, well, look, it happened. They did it. Dude, that quarterback match up perfectly lived up to everything I thought it would be. You know, like these two guys looked like they were fighting a war on a prosic size. It was paint. There was like probably some blood. There was like sweat, all the clothes shots in like the eight K cameras with the rain coming down. I was like, this, this is an old school. This is why I love college football right here. So I'm like talking to my nephew who like played at IMG, like it's becoming a Southern boomer watching Vanderbilt, Diego, probably again, this is one of my favorite ball seasons in a while guys. They're pretty much going to run it back. Yeah. So it looks like in towers, I would assume he's going to be off to the NFL. Gosh, the catch that he made there was at one point where Bobby is just screw it, throwing it to Star Wars. Just jump ball, go get it. And he just comes down and makes the play. He's had a whale of a year. That's guy that at, you know, fall of 23, he's still thinking he's going to be a quarterback and he has really developed into a stud tight end and I can't wait to see, you know, what the next level conversations are going to be like with him because he's really coming into his own. But yeah, there, I mean, Jerry Kill wants to come back. I hope he wears that Vandy Pancho every single game that he was wearing for this one. Jerry Kill, man. I was like, let's get him the press box, man. He's been through too much to be out here in Birmingham. Cool, bro. I love Birmingham. Yeah. But that's the thing when he was that Minnesota, right? Minnesota for a long time. Yeah. And he's been a lot of jobs since then after I thought I thought he was going to be done in football and he was just going to step down. But no, he was at Minnesota 2015 and he retired or looked like he was retiring and then it's just taken no shortage, no shortage of jobs since then. Yeah, exactly. So I think that was, you know, it was so much colder and worse up there. He was like, this feels like home to me. So, but yeah, I, to your point, I hope he's coming back next year to like, like running everything back. I'm just so fascinated by this Vandy team because again, talking about, you know, it's just hard with Vandy as far as what can they do in the spring window because we talked about, you know, their AD, maybe not exactly prioritizing athletics, but then they got the contract extension and they're renovating the state. It's just hard to figure out where they're at as far as talent. But point being, I think they've at least created an environment where the best players are not one way out of Vandy, the way that we've seen over and over again, you know, and the leadership there has really changed. So from, from a football standpoint, I'm really excited to watch and make sure, did they start to make sure you rank your thing? No. No. So, but the Pavia preseason conversations will be fun. And to think we're going to have SEC quarterback rankings with Pavia as one of those returning guys. Us Meyer already talked about, you know, the, the sellers, arch, Yamali Ava group, you know, Marcel Reed is certainly part of that and lag with course, but there's just going to be a really fun group of quarterbacks and Pavia is part of it, it's definitely part of it. I am so glad that he has won this against the NCAA and that the plan is for him to be able to come back because man, what a fun player to watch and I hope that people were, who were just wondering, what am I going to do in this random Friday afternoon? Oh, Diego Pavia is on and he's bawling and he's playing out of his freaking mind. Yeah. I'm going to turn that on every single time. Why wouldn't I? Because you go probably off of a way against the NCAA coming back the next year. He had to ask her off in the courtroom, shed him one deer going, Oh my God. So you did it. You came back. You beat my record. I mean, what a story for Diego Pavia, the king of college football. And for those saying like, Oh, you know, why take the picture with the cigar afterwards and the throwing like you just won the Birmingham bull like chill out guy. They had a winning Alabama undefeated in Alabama. Great point. I undefeated. Yeah. I defeated in Alabama. Yeah. They had a winning season of Vanderbilt. Come on. Mm hmm. I smoke two cigars, three, four, I don't, I don't care. We did. I did the 10 best SEC moments of 2024, not just football, all sports. I put Diego Pavia, Vandy beating Bama at four on that list. I feel like I already want to reminisce about that. That's how good it was. The fourth down there, I beat just insane. Just meant more game. Yep. Might have to go there. Might have to go there. Off season's coming up. We're going to have some content. Put it in a media request to Diego's pot. We can collab in the off season. Let's do it. Would love nothing more in this life, literally nothing more. All right. Liberty bull. Texas second Arkansas tailing green, tailing green, tailing green man. Thank God. Arkansas had a tailing green. This game was bonkers. Weird. That's very weird. Tailing green had 31 yards per completion. Of course he did. That's hard to do. It's hard to do. I mean, his past got yours were Isaac Tesla and then just freshman guys who hadn't played and Desmond James. Sorry. If I'm saying, yeah, I think it's Desmond, like Jasmine with the D and a Z. I remember that, Jill, but because I often go to, should I know this guy's name? Am I out of the loop? That was a guy. I was like, nope. Shouldn't know that guy's name. Like he looked shocked. He scored a touchdown in his picture. I remember this being like, oh, that guy just put them in a box, huh? He was unreal. CJ Brown was really good. Yeah. I mean, there were so many moments early on. We just thought is Arkansas going to have like 80 points in this game? Are they going to have a thousand yards of offense? It's possible against this Texas Tech defense. That was bad when it was healthy. It looks even worse now. The angles that they take in the secondary, oh my God, anything is possible. That didn't end up happening. It ended up being a little bit of a strange game because the second quarter was just the exact opposite of that. But really only one bad quarter for the Arkansas defense and the rest of it, they kind of, you know, did exactly what they would hope to do against a Taj Brooks list, Texas Tech offense. But a nice way for Arkansas to be able to close the season. A nice way to go into this off season after, look, I think if you had told Arkansas fans coming into this season that you would have a three win improvement and you would be to playoff team, I think they would have said, that sounds great. And then they would have said, what's the portal situation though? And that's the part we got to remind them you've got 29 guys that have left in the portal. It's kind of a lot, kind of a lot. But at the very least, the people that we're saying at this time last year, Arkansas is back in the Chad Morris levels of SEC bowels, they are not in that place. They definitely are not. And a big part of that is because the tail and green thing, I think for the most part is worked out. Now is he's still a guy that makes way too many mistakes who, look, we just mentioned all those quarterbacks coming back next year. Tail and green is on the fringe of that conversation. I don't think he's going to start off as an all-SCC quarterback or anything like that. But you have a guy, no guy, you have a guy that can do a variety of different things who can really take advantage of some lesser defenses. I mean, he certainly showed he could do that this year. And he's going to be a unique guy to have to prepare for. And what they do in the portal will be really, really interesting. But this could have been a whole lot worse than what it was for Arkansas. There are a lot of teams that wish they could be sitting there with seven wins and a bowl victory with a quarterback who was fun to be able to watch this year. And I know that sounds like we're saying, oh, just accept whatever we give to you and don't ever compete for championships, someone I'm saying, but it just could have been a lot worse. And our goal for the season was what? Embrace the Hall. Did you do that? Or did you not? I think you embraced the Hall. It felt embraced. It did. It really did. I had a competitive game with Texas. You beat a Tennessee team that ends up going to the playoff like there, there were moments that didn't make you feel like crap. Now, obviously you would have liked to have stayed on the same field with Ole Miss. That would have been ideal. You would have liked to have been able to close out a game against an Oklahoma state team that did not end up winning a big 12 game. That would have been ideal. Your season could have gone differently if you could have held on against A&M. These things though, I think in the grand scheme of things, is that assignment your program is falling apart and is on the outs? Absolutely not. But still, Sam Pittman's going to go into next year, the same way that he went into this year, fighting for his job. That's still going to be the case. He is not all of a sudden like, oh, hey, give him another extension. He's going to be locked in for the next four years. Now he did get, as Steve Berkowitz reported for USA Today, that quarter of a million dollar raise that we were talking about, which is so funny to think that this game got him to a winning season, got him a bull victory and all that stuff. I mean, but I would push back on that though, because I think, I mean, think about where they were last year. And let me take a quick side. Well, if he goes four and eight next year, he's gone. No, no, no, no, no. I mean, you don't go four and eight in the SEC. The fact that he survived a four and eight season is what I'm saying, it's like a similar place. And I'm saying like, bro, cold in the last year, it was like, we hired Bobby Petrito. You brought in this dude from Boise State. It's different. We're talking about, you know, so like I will say they, they, you know, built for sure in a linear way. And I think that's really impressive. And this would be a good comment. I want to hold myself accountable to see if I can remind you this for media days. You'd add a really good line of questioning to tailing green about Bobby Petrito. I would wonder how that relationship will change after that bull game where it's like, okay, you know, I mean, 11 completions for 341 yards. How do you do that? How physically do you do that? Is that possible? You got the gentleman, Desmond James and Isaac Tesla, entirely too many days in that name. I mean, just what do we do with that name? He gets a mispronounced all the time, like Tesla, they were doing the Tesla, you know, it's kind of like the joke. We have about 24 seven versus two four seven sports. Yeah. If it isn't Tesla and you're guessing that you sound goofy to just don't, it's a point of being like, I, I, like, this was the apex Taylor green game. Gentlemen had the whole, like, like a tied for lead in rushing, right? 81 yards, had 341 yards, inexplicably 11 completions played the most Taylor and green game. You know what I'm saying? But it was just him out there to your point. I don't want to take away from, you know, the two guys we talked about, don't want to talk about that. But this season, honestly, this bull game ended up mattering, I think, because if they choke with nobody, you know, they had the weird situation, the offensive lineman I'm getting into, but it could have been an all time, like vibe changer for a season where you come out and just look like you have nobody left and it's like we have nothing to be excited about. Taylor green, of course, you know, straps it on. And like I said, like, I think Bobby Petrino was probably good either way. I think Pitman was good either way, getting a bonus is helpful, you know, a bonus versus a, an Instagram graphic that's pixelated, definitely different situations, but point being like, you know, I, I think that Bobby Petrino has got at some point, you know, lay his little sash down and be like, look, he didn't play within the flow of the offense. I screamed at you all game, but you had about 350 and you was the game. So it would be nice to you to solve out because you'd be nice, Bobby, he's not situationally aware. No, I would love to know what that relationship is like moving forward and because clearly Bobby is still Bobby and they're still going to be those moments. I don't expect that to change with Taylor and green, even though he's played a lot of football, I think that'll still be the case for Arkansas moving forward. All right, let's close with the Vegas bull will, um, so I'll be honest, I don't often say this. I guess I am saying this, um, because we're not currently watching this mazoo Iowa game update. I was still up 21 to 14 second half has started there three minutes in just in case the people wanted to know. Good. All right. Um, I don't know how to say this, but I did not watch the second half live because I don't think it started until 1230 on these coasts, bro. I started to text you and I'm like, I don't want to make you feel bad of these because dude, that game started way too day late. I was on central time and I was getting E P by halfway through the third quarter. And I ended up, I turned it off when I had him scored in the second half. I was like, Oh, they got this. And then again, it was about two a.m. I'm like, okay, USC, one thing about USC. I'll just say really quickly is despite everything, that is a team that just knows how to look cool. But did you see the guy get hurt? That was one of those electric looking returns I've ever seen the fact because like hurdles, I'm not going to say they're overrated, but they're kind of like blocks and basketball where they look sick. But then it usually gets you about a yard or two, fully hurdle to dude, almost hurdle to second dude. The picks, the catches, I'm like, where was this team outside of LSU and Texas? They just have dudes. They find dudes all over the place. And they certainly had some that were testing the A&M secondary. But yeah, I made a business decision. I said, you know what, guys, I'm not going to watch this one live when we weren't recording the next day. If we were recording the next day, I would have stayed up and watched that. But I hope A&M fans did the same thing you did just turn this game off and when it's 24 to 7, and just assume that everything's going to work out just fine. So everything you need to see. But yeah, I had to go back and catch it afterwards. Even if you just turn this game off at that point, where there's five minutes left in the third quarter, it's 24 to 7, USC has a ball deep in its own territory. You probably would have gone to bed thinking, hey, I guess it's nine wins, solid way to close year one of the Alco era. But as Alco said afterwards, it's tough to close games where you can't play zone coverage at all. You just have no idea. That's how you blow it 24 to 7 lead, which A&M did. TD that kind of got USC going, where if you go back and watch it, A&M linebacker and DV, they both just cover the tight end and Jacobi Lane slips behind them. Good recognition by my av on that play. A&M couldn't take advantage of turnovers, they miss chip shot field goals, they're bad in short yard situations. I'm third down. They had freshman corners who just could not challenge those dudes that USC had. It's kind of a tough combination. All those things working against you. Also, another great reminder to just never care about recruiting because I remember being so sad when others who didn't get desert ricks and I've watched it about their going, this kind of thing has never played football before. He was getting hooked in that second half, bro. Yeah, it's tough for a freshman in that spot. Yeah. Very difficult. He was in the corner back playing at this level of football and some guys get exposed and some guys do what they can and not get exposed and that was certainly not the best day at the office for him. But, yeah, look, if A&M knows how to defend a slant or play in zone coverage, we're probably having a much different conversation right now, so I don't want to harp too, too much on the results. It's some sign that Elko doesn't have anything going at the end of year one, but you were sitting there as the last SEC team on beaten and conference play going into November, right? You were sitting there in just such a favorable spot. We talked about how advantageous that was coming off the LSE win and man, this is working out as well as A&M could have ever possibly hoped. Not only do you not make it to Atlanta, you lose your last four games against power conference competition. It's the same thing we knocked Kevin someone for. Now it's a year one coach, so it's entirely different to do that in year one versus year five, okay? But the calendar turns to November and it's a collapse. That's been the A&M cadence for the majority of the playoff era. Since Johnny Mann's left college station, we've had now 11 seasons post Manzel. Here is A&M's year by year records once the calendar turned to November, okay? Three and two, two and three, one and four, two and three, four and one, three and two, five and oh, Jimbo actually started 12 and three in those first three years of post October games, which fueled that extension that he got after 2020. And then after that, two and two, two and two, two and three, one and four. That's seven and 12 in post October games in the past four seasons. It's kind of hard for people to think differently about you when that trend continues. And that's going to continue to be the thing that Mike Elko is fighting against. It's not, can you get talent in the door? It's not, can you even find a quarterback that you can build around? It's not, can you find the right coordinator to do this, that or the other? Can you just avoid these November collapses that A&M has become way too much of a punching bag for? And I mean, way too much just from a sense of like, you just can't be that bad down the stretch when you're spending those types of resources on football, you know, you can't be the team that runs out of gas, coach after coach season after season. And that's, that's the biggest thing that Mike Elko has to be able to, to overcome that will probably define his tenure in college station. Yeah. And it's so interesting, right? Because it's like they made a quarterback switch that we allotted them for. And it was ultimately, I think pretty clearly the right switch, but then the defense just kind of fell off a cliff and with a running quarterback, I just, that just doesn't make any sense to be like, if it had been the inverse and you started with Reed and he didn't have the juice, you put him wing, he was like, Oh, like you're playing twice the amount of game now because you're throwing the ball twice as much. It's, that's weird, man, because that's the thing that would, I would hang my head on. And I will say too, not to insult new in here, but, you know, some of those A&M teams weren't good before November either. You know, I mean, there was a gym between Mr. Bowl game, you know, so you're right about November. But I do want to say like what they did up until November was very, someone, was someone they were good though. Yeah. Like it's tough because he has like, you know, the arrested everything and he's just kind of like, it's not like he's leading some championship program, wouldn't grade it, you know, Arizona, but not like he won that breakup either. I think I was just lose lose, but I think that his time at A&M is going to be looked better, you know, especially with man's all of all that. So point being, yeah, I don't exactly know what to do about that. I mean, maybe it's a little bit of Oco. He showed some maturity this year, man, and I don't want to just blame it on that, but I don't know what happens when you have one of the best defensive minds on the sport. And, you know, you're shutting down these offenses, you're shutting down, you know, making Nussmeyer look horrible when he's on the path to be, you know, Heisman invite at that level. He's playing like the best quarterback in the SEC or close to it with, you know, Jackson Dart and Pavia, but just completely like kind of destroy that season. And again, you know, you lose his background or whatever. But you know, there's just, you just look, there's, you can't have all this, you know, the Auburn game. Okay. Whatever is this weird Auburn, but like the way they lost the Texas game where it's like, when you got that weird turnover at the end of the game, when you just got stopped at the goal line, like same deal with USC or controlling the game, man, like, it's not like you're getting blown off the field. It's not like you're, you know, whatever, it's like these key decisions and, and there's, I mean, maybe you're one year or two, Oco is going to be different, but it's almost like he got too much dip on his chip after the first couple of months of the season. He sort of trusts himself too much because those decisions, right, the fourth down call against Texas, these, you know, it's like he's a little bit too bold and brash and it's like, bro, like you're the defensive guy, like you're not the offensive guy, like you need to just sit back and be great at defense. So again, I've said it over and over again, this season was a win to me once A&M beat LSU. I think that for that point in that season, as high as they were ranked being in the conversation for the playoff and for the SD championship, as late as they were in that season, say which will schedule technicalities, scheduling Notre Dame, not embarrassing yourself that, that losses age really well. But I think that Elco specifically weirdly has a lot to look at because I don't really want to blame these players for this outside of Des Wrecks, which is mostly his fault. It's a strange year, a strange year, and you can spend it in a lot of different ways. You definitely can because I thought down the stretch once I thought I was talking to David Nuneo at TechSag's about this, about how they're, they're stud defensive lineman who these guys all opted out of this bowl game, which all right, like, that's not necessarily stunning that Stewart, that Stewart and Schmar Turner and, and. Yeah, the Schmar, the Schmar's, the Schmar's, that, that those guys in squirting out of the bowl game. All right, like, you're going to struggle to get pressure probably in a game like this, but it was kind of that way throughout the last month and maybe this A&M secondary once they didn't have the benefit of those defensive linemen speeding up quarterbacks, they didn't look quite as good. And that's maybe too simple of an answer for some of this. There's certainly some holes in their roster that need to be addressed, getting concepts he owned from NC State's going to be a big time addition for them. I really like that, that compliment with what Marcel Riek does, and I think it's going to benefit him a lot. And we've already talked about all the different ways you can kind of spin this A&M season, so I don't want to repeat myself too much with that. But yeah, maybe a microcosm in the season, this game, 24/7, you get up, you blow this lead when you feel like you should have been in a much better place by, by night's end, by season's end than where you were at. And that's the tough pill to swallow. Yeah, and I'll say this too, I've said this pretty consistently about Texas A&M. It's pretty hard for me to feel bad for them because it's the transfer portal era, it's the NIL era, you're always going to get your guys. The thing about Texas A&M is everyone there is the same kind of crazy, right? So when we have booster issues, like Tennessee, Auburn, Texas, stuff like that, it's because people are different types of crazy. At Texas A&M, everyone is singularly focused on winning football games, and they tried the Jimbo way, now they've got this way, but the fact is, they don't really regret building those ranches. That's the thing, because it got them to beat Alabama, it got them here. It's not like there's something in an austerity period with the way that they're spinning, right? And then we'll eventually figure it out as Miami kind of did, because they just have more money than God, and they're going to be fine. So I think that having a coach that isn't Jimbo Fisher, and you give him the keys to the castle and he just burns it down, I think though. I'd still rather be here than where they could have been if they had held down to Jimbo and been like, "Yeah, we've got to wait a couple more years until the buyout gets to this level now." I'd still rather be where they're at right now, and I still feel better about the future knowing that they still face this hurdle. They face this hurdle dating back to someone, and that's going to be a topic of conversation moving forward. Yeah, and getting Scorton and getting Conception on two of the top five guys in each of their cycles, really revealed. So again, they haven't stopped spinning. Definitely. All right, well, that out of the week, that out of the century, that out of the week doesn't do it justice. Jimmy Carter. He left this world at age 100. I was watching Fox NFL, actually, when I saw this, which I think a lot said again. Big Fox News guy. It's very difficult to talk about Jimmy Carter and not get into politics stuff, and if you watch the movie Argo, it's kind of a tough edit for Jimmy, but we'll kind of keep it apolitical as much as possible for this, but yeah, a hundred years old was in hospice care forever. And man, what a life, what a life. I thought about making a bunch of Jimmy Carter era references throughout. It just kind of just sneaking them in here as much as possible. And I was like, I don't want to do my guy Jimmy like that. They're natural. They naturally come up in so many different ways, and we don't need to force those. So I thought it might be better to just honor someone who gave his life to this country and to people all around. I loved that tweet from Delta about when he boarded a flight, he would shake everyone's hand. Everybody's seeing that video, I'm sure by now, of just Jimmy Carter just going around and everybody. And it's weird because usually if you see a video of a politician doing that, it feels slimy. You're like, all right, get it guy. If you've watched enough shows like that, you're like, okay, we understand what you're trying to do here with Jimmy Carter just felt like a nice old man who was being a nice old man in public, and there's something that felt so genuine about it. Tons of Jimmy Carter stories around the internet, and you could find ones that are way better than the one I'm about to share. So I don't mean to pretend like this is the best one, but well, I watched the show claim to fame. If you've ever seen it, it's on ABC and streaming on Hulu and stuff like that. And there was this guy on, I think season two of it, who was in his 20s, and it was just this really immature, annoying guy who thinks he's jacked and he's not, which is one of my least favorite things ever. And you're just wanting this guy to lose. And then as the show develops, like in the show is basically centered around the premise of who is my famous relative, and you have to try and figure out it's like a who's who, but in, you know, format of like, I'm related to this very famous relative, and it's your job to guess it. And that's kind of how you get eliminated or whatever. So when it becomes very clear that his celebrity relative is Jimmy Carter, it's his grandpa, all of a sudden everybody kind of has like a little bit more of an appreciation for him. And then when he finally gets eliminated, he lasted a really long time. He gets so emotional speaking about Jimmy Carter and this guy who is just not likable 1% in this moment, I'm like, God, can you imagine being Jimmy Carter's grandson and how kind of that guy, and of course he shares, you know, like just how genuine of a person he was, and how much he looked up to him and how much he idolized in this guy that seemingly hasn't said a nice word about anybody in this entire show. And then he gets to talking about Jimmy Carter and he just becomes a human being. I just thought it was, you know, one of those reminders that Jimmy Carter will do that to people. Unfortunately, never had the pleasure meeting him, but wish I could have because he seemed like an absolute legend. Yeah, I, you know, living in Georgia, the guys like, you know, fingerprints are all over everything. I, there's like a historian that I listened to that is left of me for sure, and one of his best quotes is like, Hey, you know, there's one like truly kind person who became president, like one good person. And it was Jimmy Carter and everybody hated him for it. And that seems right. Right. And then he goes on to be the best post presidency president. You know, he started, he started to be Carter foundation. He's like eradicating diseases left and right. And you know, it's so crazy. I forget about this away, I've talked about this with my neighbors are amazing, amazing sweet people. He'd love them. Michael and Lindsey Lindsey works for him. And she gave us like, you know, RIP, like rest in peace to give a tribute to my boss. And I was like, wow, that's actually crazy kind of how involved, you know, he is on kind of the, the scene here. And it's, it's crazy. It just goes to show what happens when you get, you know, former peanut farmer, kind of just a man of God from the south that has these morals. Again, you could talk about his presidency here or there, but easily, in my opinion, the greatest post presidency president because of all the stuff he did, because he kind of felt like to your point about the Delta flights of like, he just kind of is bewilder that he got this far. Like he's like, Oh my gosh, I'm so happy to be here. I'm so happy to be president. Good to see you. And it's all genuine. So yeah, point being, I think that, you know, as a man, as a person, there's a lot to be admired. And honestly, a lot of the lesson there is, you know, sometimes you don't compromise on that stuff. But I think that he very rarely did. You can, we can talk about his presidency. I'm not going to, you know, being the guy who has a tweet, it's like, actually Jimmy Carter wasn't a good shot up, like, you know, like, you know, when, you know, cool, right, like go ahead and stick, dude. You know, you don't like the thing that we're all sad about. Cool. So yeah, that's, that's, that's my whole thing on Jimmy Carter again, didn't get to meet him, but just an awesome dude for everything I've heard. I can't remember who tweeted this. He's the first president I was born in a hospital. Isn't that crazy? Golly. So I think was born on, I, I, this is a Jimmy Carter fact, he was like born on a different time zone and they've since changed the time zone of that place. It was like, oh, that's cool. Like one little part of Georgia that he was in was on like central time and they like have since. So yeah, like, just a very quirky, unique president. Yeah, they don't make them like Jimmy. They absolutely don't hope to hope to one day experience a year 100 like Jimmy Carter. It did. That'd be incredible. Yes. I do have one more, uh, uh, uh, uh, what's it called? Honorable mission. Hard to follow that obviously. Um, I'm just going to spend a second to talk about geocaching. Um, yeah. Well, it's me that, well, uh, well, some of you messes on, well, is it, yeah, some of you messes on Instagram about this, about the K club Nick thing maybe that went semi viral. Did it go viral? I don't know. And I'm like, well, I have no idea what this is. I've never seen this word geocaching in my entire life. You know, like you, you don't know what this, no. I've never seen it. Never heard it said. I'd ask you how to pronounce it. So this here for those of us who do not know what this word is and why this came into a tweet related to cake club Nick, this is your official explanation of what geocaching is. Yes. Geocaching. So, okay. Again, we've seen the SCC quarterbacks say things that have been confirmed that are more ridiculous than this, but there is the classics we've all seen the screen, the tweet format of girls hand with freshly done nails, snapchat, SCC quarterbacks name, something super embarrassing. Yeah. And it looks like this girl is trying to catch Kate club Nick and he's like, I want to see you are in. Maybe like he's trying to hit her up is like, Oh yeah, what are we going to do again? She's like, Oh, I hit the pay there here. Probably go geocaching. What? You know, a geocaching. So geocaching was a trend. I'm just going to talk off the cuff here about geocaching. It's already been a weird pod. Uh, I'm sure, you know, it might have predated this, but when it got into the, uh, the lexicon for me, it was like a very gen one or two internet thing where there was this list of GPS coordinates and it was on some server or some document that was maintained by whatever geocaching society and people would just hide stuff and you could go consult the list. And like I was in Birmingham or Hoover, Alabama and I would go geocaching locations. Oh, there's one here by the target me and my boys are going to go. This is very like Hawkins high, but with technology. And so literally it's just people leave in weird stuff for each other and then being like, here's some weird stuff. Go find it. The fact that he pulled the geocaching riz move and like that's something that's like closer to your generation than mine and I made the joke earlier. You were just too busy being cool, like applying to Indiana, playing football, doing adorable stuff where as I a little bit younger than you was like, time to go geocaching. I did this one time with a girl guys. Like it was not some things. What did you find, what do people hide when they geocache, what is, what is something that you can put that you have no sort of like your, because you're not going to find out if somebody gets it unless you go back to it. So you don't even get the reward of seeing what this is like, unless you're stalking this place out. Yes. I'm just confused what you could possibly hide that you have no sort of emotional attachment to that you also feel the need to put out there. Hey, this thing is here and it was worth putting at a specific place instead of just on my doorstep for anybody to pick up and claim. Yes. So every geocache has a log book in it that you signed saying that you found the thing and then you have to replace the thing with a thing. So you have to go out, bring your thing. Take a penny, leave a penny situation. Exactly. Like a penny, leave a penny. What are those little like good things? I don't know who maintains this. I don't know. Again, I don't know if there's an LLC or some weird history, but I think it's just some dudes like Craigslist style that are like, hey, not to be sexist. It's probably some women too, but this sounds like weird dude internet stuff. They're like, the one in Alabama that I went to was like in a tree and I had to like get up there with this girl watching me. It was pretty skinny, luckily. It was like good. I have to look athletic for a second. So did you get anything from it? Like what was the reward? Was it worth it? There was signing the log book. I think I brought, you know, I probably brought like a little LSU piece of memorabilia because that was my vibe in high school in Alabama just to be Mr, you know, non-conformist LSU guy. And so I, you know, I don't even remember the item because the initial item is the only one listed and then people just switch them out. So yeah, a dude talking about geocaching, but I mean, I'm so, I don't have, dude. I'm so, this the best week, two weeks this guy could have for me. Geocaching. All right. Learn something today. And it might not be real. I don't care. I want to talk about geocaching today. I didn't want to cut you off. I'll cut you off. That's fair. Look, hey, we all need to expand our horizons. I don't need that. I don't know that I need to expand my horizons to geocaching, but nonetheless, maybe somebody listening to this will, who knows, we'll see. All right. Plan is going to be recorded on Thursday. We will recap all things playoff related, all things SEC bowls that we have not gotten to yet. Oh, can we get one more update for the people who will not know the final score of this by the time they're listening, Iowa currently leads 24 to 14, but Mizzou is on a four-yard line. So. Oh, yeah, the Iowa four. So close game. Stay tuned. We'll have a six-for-clock news and they'll keep you updated tomorrow's paper, buddy. Oh, breaking news, four-yard touchdown run 24 to 21 game. You heard it here first. They're back. I got to go throw that on. Yeah, seriously. Don't spoil it for me. I don't want to know what happens. If you haven't, leave us a five-store review, subscribe to our YouTube channel, where you can watch every episode of the Saturday Down South podcast, follow us on Twitter @PSCSbot at setdown. I'll see you here at Echo Show. Thanks guys. Talk soon. Bye. in. (wind blowing) [BLANK_AUDIO]
It's a loaded pod with tons to preview and recap. The guys break down CFP quarterfinal matchups between Texas and Arizona State, as well as Georgia and Notre Dame. Will both SEC teams advance? Plus, the guys recap SEC bowl games from Florida, Oklahoma, Vandy, Arkansas and A&M, and they close with some Jimmy Carter love in Lad of the Week
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