Thoughts from Week 2
The biggest thing we learned on Saturday about the ‘Cats was that we can score… a lot. Also, we can also score with just about anybody. Also, we can do all of this without our All-American Returnman/All-B1G Running Back Ricky Football.
We also learned that despite our still apparent weakness to giving up the big play on defense, we can take the ball away from you… a lot. And we can do it when it counts. The defense is still a work in progress, but is showing some flashes of greatness.
But you all watched the game. You don’t need me to tell you this. Here’s what we (may have) learned from around the B1G.
Illinois is not a joke?
Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves here… Purdue barely beat Indiana State who was absolutely walloped by Indiana (who just lost to Navy), so maybe Cinncy is not as good as we think they are… However, that was a lot of this team beat this team nonsense which is about as useful as a BA in English… The main point is that Illinois laid the smack down on a BCS team. Not something I would have thought would happen any time soon (perhaps not even during the Tim Beckman era). If they can manage to pull of a win this week against Washington, this team might actually be for real, for real.
Michigan State decided that they don’t want to play offense this season.
The Spartans have scored 42 points in their first 2 games. Only 14 of them have come from their offense. They have 0 passing TDs. I don’t care if you have the best defense in the country (they don’t) but you aren’t going to win too many games with offensive output like that. They need to figure that our FAST.
Nebraska’s defense is…still not that good.
Don’t be fooled by Nebraska holding Southern Miss to 13 points (as many other writers are). Southern Miss only managed to put up 15 points (2 of which were a safety) against Texas State. I still think that unit is a huge question mark and could be B1G trouble for them this week against UCLA.
We still don’t know that much about what the hell is going on.
I’m speculating just as much as the next guy…but lets be honest with ourselves for a second. We’ve only see every team play at most 2 games. Most of them against whimps. There is still a lot of football to be played. We can make our best guesses, but there are still many surprises to come. As the great Pat Fitzgerald once said… “Buckle Up.”
Week 2 Power Rankings
Team |
Points |
1. Ohio State (3)
|
69 |
2. Michigan (3)
|
68 |
3. Northwestern
|
60 |
4. Wisconsin
|
54 |
5. Nebraska
|
48 |
6. Michigan State
|
36 |
7. Minnesota
|
34 |
8. Penn State
|
33 |
9. Illinois
|
30 |
10. Indiana
|
18 |
11. Iowa
|
12 |
12. Purdue
|
6 |
Ohio State and Michigan split the #1 votes at 3 a piece. Indiana, Iowa, and Purdue took 10th, 11th, and 12th respectively on everyone’s ballot. Gmail started to think it was a signature… I kid you not.