Have y'all seen Fargo (FX, Mondays, 10 p.m. ET), the television series? I give it two Marionaire Guns Up.
BOUT TIME, BYE WEEK. Ohio State is dinged up right now — and that's just the injuries we know about. I'm sure handfuls of other players are carrying small-time knocks, which is why this bye week is a welcome sight to Columbus.
The one downside, however, is that it puts the brakes on a Buckeye machine that was finally humming.
From Dispatch.com:
This week’s challenge
Rest and recuperation are on the agenda for the regulars. For Urban Meyer and his staff, the task will be finding ways to keep the intensity up for an offense that, under the direction of Barrett again, hit its stride through the second half of the Penn State win and through the last three quarters at Rutgers. Now comes the November stretch run, and spring is in the air.
"Momentum is huge," as Ray Lewis once famously opined on Monday Night Football. Still, I think the pros outweigh the cons. Plus Ohio State has two glorified exhibitions before Sparty knocks on the Horseshoe's door.
THANK YOU TO MACK BROWN'S BAD EVALUATIONS. J.T. Barrett confounded Rutgers on Saturday night.
Here's a befuddled Kyle Flood, via FoxSports.com:
"Here's what makes him so difficult to defend as a football player," Flood said Saturday night. "You look at him in the run game, 13 carries for 104 yards, you say, all right, there is a really athletic, running quarterback. But then, as a passer, he's 14 of 18."
[...]
"I mean, he is the prototype dual-threat quarterback and he puts a tremendous amount of stress on your defense whenever he has the football," Flood continued, "because he can run it like a running back and he throws it very well like a quarterback."
That kind of diagnosis is why Kyle Flood earns the big bucks ($1,250,000/year), folks!
Barrett's run game is what slays me. It's the equivalent of the 36-year-old, pill-addicted construction worker with a bad knee that's still, miraculously, a force of nature on a blacktop basketball court.
He doesn't dazzle by any means, but there he is... working his angles and not breaking much of a sweat. Opponents know what's coming... and they still have no answer.
SHELLSHOCKED MICHIGAN FAN IN PUMPKIN FORM. Michigan could still ruin Ohio State's perfect season, but that's not going to stop Ohio State fans from getting their jokes off.
@BuckeyesRadio @tf0620 @BuckeyeManiaOSU @ESPNCFB @TheBuckeyeNut pic.twitter.com/2hIvv9qQUt
— Tom Burton (@poppyTburton) October 26, 2015
I said yesterday Ohio State should freeze Adolphus Washington in carbonite like Han Solo between games. I should've saved that joke for today, because for some reason it just hit me: That stupefied Michigan goof frozen in carbonite would make a great Holiday gift for any Buckeye/Spartan fan you know and/or love.
GET DUMPED THEN, CLEMSON? Despite the 2014 Orange Bowl/1978 Gator Bowl... I don't rate Clemson high on the Dumpability Index. It's a talented team with no history that plays fun football.
And advanced stats say it might be the only team on Ohio State's level.
From SBNation.com:
Take a quick look at last year's S&P+ ratings. The top two teams (Ohio State and Alabama) were ranked in the top 11 in both offense and defense. Six teams ranked in the top 20 in both categories, and Oklahoma came very close. You had your single-unit teams -- Oregon was second in offense and 28th in defense, Ole Miss was 35th in offense and first in defense -- but a) the bad units typically weren't that bad (Georgia Tech's defense and Clemson's offense aside), and b) single-unit teams weren't the norm.
Now take a look at this year's S&P+ ratings. Clemson ranks 11th in offense and fourth in defense. Ohio State ranks 13th and 11th. Strangely enough, Oklahoma again ranks 14th and 21st. And that's the entire list of teams with two top-20 units.
Fave this Tweet: If Clemson meets Ohio State, bet the rent on the Buckeyes. Dabo Swinney won't know what hit him. Nobody wants any part of Urban Meyer coming off a loss in a rematch.
GET DUMPED THEN, OFF-CAMPUS LANDLORDS? Ohio State will begin requiring sophomores to live on campus in 2016. Off-campus landlords are anxious about it.
From Bizjournals.com:
A 2008 study commissioned by eight large university-area landlords assessed the dorms’ potential impact. It said students generally enjoy off-campus housing stock, especially the lower price, bigger space and independence it offers, but that exteriors needed to be improved.
That much is apparent when walking through neighborhoods around campus – many apartments and houses appear properly maintained. Some renovations were taking place on a recent visit to north campus. But often there’s a house or apartment building with a sagging gutter and other signs of dilapidation.
Still, many landlords are cautiously optimistic most properties won’t be negatively impacted by the dorm requirement.
Offers to buy are still coming in – Talbott said “the market is the highest of the high now.”
Dorms are the dream... until you move out of them. Then they seem like an underfunded and overcrowded halfway house.
Two years in the dorm trenches in glory to the State and University? Better these wild-ass #teens than me. That's my #take.
THOSE WMDs. Explore Mars' Gale Crater... How NYPD divers searched a river for a gun that killed a colleague... The rise and fall of .Ly... The ticket kings making $50 an hour playing arcade games... On Lamar Odom's fall from grace... Why would anyone choose to be a soccer ref?
