3rd Saturday in Blogtober

1) What is the most important thing we learned about the 2010 Alabama Crimson Tide in the wake of the San Jose State game?

We learned that special teams are going to be just fine.  Will it be on par with last season?  Perhaps not.  We still don’t know what our return game is going to look like since SJSU avoided kicking to anyone, but if there is a drop off, it won’t be much.  Cade Foster looked every bit as qualified as his recruiting reports said he would be (and the kid can lay a lick…check out the pipes on that freshman).  Cody Mandell may have shanked one trying to place it out of bounds, but that’s not exactly something we’re not familiar with.  The other two punts were booming kicks over fifty yards and that is new territory.   Coverage also seemed improved, but its not even the standard “it’s just SJSU” caveat.  I have no idea what to expect from the Spartans’ return game to judge it by.

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Awesome turn out last week folks!  We had 35 picks, and we hope for a similar turnout this week.  We’ll pick 10 games again, and like last week

Have your picks in by Thursday at 5 CDT

• Oregon at Tennessee
• Penn State at Alabama
• Awbarn at Mississippi State
• Georgia at South Carolina
• South Florida at Florida
• LSU at Vandy
• Florida State at Oklahoma
• Miami at Ohio State
• Michigan at Notre Dame
• BYU at Air Force

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There was a lot to digest this weekend. How do you differentiate between cupcakes that consist of various levels of sugar and sugar-like substances? How much can we really garner from these games? How much should I punish teams that struggled against said cupcakes? There’s a lot of flux in here this week as some teams disappointed and some surprised, but this is still just one week’s worth of games, so hopefully I didn’t overreact too much. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Third Saturday in Blogtober Ballot – Week 2

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama Crimson Tide	–
2	Ohio St. Buckeyes	–
3	Boise St. Broncos	1
4	Iowa Hawkeyes	4
5	TCU Horned Frogs	1
6	Wisconsin Badgers	3
7	Oregon Ducks	6
8	Miami Hurricanes	2
9	Texas Longhorns	-2
10	Florida Gators	-7
11	Georgia Bulldogs	4
12	Florida St. Seminoles	7
13	Nebraska Cornhuskers	-1
14	Penn St. Nittany Lions	4
15	Arkansas Razorbacks	2
16	Oklahoma Sooners	-11
17	South Carolina Gamecocks	6
18	Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets	4
19	USC Trojans	-5
20	Stanford Cardinal	1
21	Utah Utes	–
22	Houston Cougars	3
23	Virginia Tech Hokies	-12
24	West Virginia Mountaineers	–
25	Michigan Wolverines	–
Dropouts: Pittsburgh Panthers, Oregon St. Beavers, LSU Tigers

SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings »

Opening Day is always a special one, especially in Knoxville.  This one was especially exciting for me, as this is the first year my family has had season tickets.  That teamed with a new coach, and a renovated Neyland Stadium, it’s needless to say that I had lead foot syndrome all the way from my Huntsville, AL home to Knoxville.

My brother and I had decided that our first stop would be Litton’s Burgers in Fountain City.  Our dad hadn’t been to this local favorite (and featured on Todd Blackledge’s Taste of the Town,” and being a huge cheeseburger lover, Litton’s did not disappoint him.  I went for their classic 1/3 lb Litton’s Burger with thick cut bacon, smoked cheddar, fresh jalapenos, onion, maters, and lettuce, all piled up on a fresh baked burger roll.  Matched with an order of fresh cut fries, diet Coke, and finished off with their famous Red Velvet Cup Cake.

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Julio Jones is 1 catch away from tying Lamond Russell for 5th place on the All-Time Career Receptions List at the University of Alabama. Jones, who now has 107 catches for 1,613 yards, needs just 11 catches to nudge past Keith Brown and move into 4th place All-Time. The junior will need another 250 yards to move into the top 5 in All-Time Receiving Yards.

On Saturday Trent Richardson rushed for 66 yards, hauled in 3 passes for 46 yards, and added 34 more on a kickoff return. With the addition of that 146 all-purpose yards, the true sophomore has cracked the 1,000 all-purpose yardage mark for his young career. Richardson has 817 rushing yards on 155 attempts, 172 receiving yards on 19 receptions, and 54 yards on 2 kickoff returns, giving him 1,043 all-purpose yards.

Alabama charged into the 2010 season by flattening the San Jose State Spartans 48-3, but the road gets a little bumpier this week when #19 Penn State visits Bryant-Denny Stadium.  With the warm-up out of the way, the season begins on Saturday.  The Nittany Lions spent Saturday much like the Tide, kicking a tomato can around State College.  Penn State diced up Youngstown State in a 44-14 win, highlighted by the play of true freshman starting quarterback Rod Bolden, who completed 20 of 29 pass attempts for 239 yards and 2 touchdowns.

All wasn’t ginger ale and co-eds in tight sweaters for the Lions, an anemic rushing game in the early going and an 80 yard touchdown pass on a wide receiver screen by Youngstown State should give State fans a little pause heading into the game this weekend. Here is a link to the box score of PSU and YSU for those who like that sort of thing.  Of note in the box score, the Nittany Lions rushed for 132 yards on 29 carries and Youngstown State was 21 0f 25 passing the football for 189 yards – 80 of those yards coming on the Penguins first quarter touchdown pass.

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It’s been a pretty consistent narrative for several years now: BCS teams need to do a better job of scheduling tough out of conference opponents, and as fans, I think we all want to see that. I for one am more excited about Alabama’s matchup with Penn State this weekend than I was the game with San Jose State last weekend. Boise State has certainly been vocal about it’s desire to be in those games and a couple of times the result has been entertaining.

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Tennessee’s preseason camp last 31 days, though that month of the August seemed like it lasted 300 days.

I got to be there to cover all but a few of those, so I know how slowly time crept along, and how I swear I wrote stories on just about every single player on the team (and some twice).

So after all the Tennessee football program has been through since that now infamous Tuesday night in January, having a game to watch, talk and write about and move forward from was an excellent and welcomed change of pace.

But after all that time, what did we learn about Derek Dooley’s first team against UT Martin Saturday?

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Senior wide receiver Gerald Jones broke a bone in his hand when a UT-Martin defender stepped on it Saturday night, and he will miss at least the Oregon and Florida games, Vols coach Derek Dooley said Sunday.

Also, fellow senior WR Denarius Moore and most seasoned OL Jarrod Shaw are questionable for the Oregon game with injuries.

Moore and Shaw maybe will play, but the loss of the oft-injured Jones is a big blow. He is easily one of the two most productive UT receivers. This means that freshmen Justin Hunter and Da’Rick Rogers will be thrust into action immediately and must produce.

Just a big, big blow for the Vols. Jones also returns punts, so that’s going to be a big issue.

Before I get into this, let me first say that San Jose State is not a very good football team. And that’s being nice. They had several players participating in their very first game at the collegiate level. With that being said, Alabama did what a championship caliber team is supposed to do to an over-matched opponent. They beat the stew out of ‘em.

• Bama rolled up almost 600 yards while playing mostly subs the entire second half. The o-line simply enforced its will on the hapless Spartans. Aside from Eddie Lacy’s fumble and Julio’s drop, the offense couldn’t have played any better.
• Julio!

• CJ Mosely gets it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was starting by the end of the year. Playing the run as a linebacker is pretty intuitive. It typically takes a young player time to get accustomed to playing the pass, but Mosely was in the passing lanes the entire second half. Now he just needs to learn how to catch.
• Even without Dareus on the field, the athleticism of the defensive line borders on absurd.
• Just as the offense had two bad plays, the defense gave up two big plays, but aside from that they were dominant. Giving up 175 total yards is a good day’s work no matter who you’re playing.
• And what about those special teams we’ve been so worried about? Mandell boomed two 50+ yard punts, Foster and Shelley combined to go 8-for-8 on field goals and extra points, and the coverage units looked improved over last season.
• Overall, it’s hard to take much from games like this, both the offense and defense ran about as vanilla schemes as it can get, but Alabama went out and took care of business. We’ll learn a whole lot more about what this team is made of next week.

Now on to what we learned about the rest of the SEC and beyond.

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