Skull Session: Top Grades Against Nebraska, Ohio State Shows Its Ceiling, and Ezekiel Elliott Rolls Over the Browns

Folks, the local team is back! After two weeks of being bad, it switched Saturday night as soon as Tyler Durbin boomed the opening kickoff. Actually, that's wrong. The game was over as soon as Mark May delivered his pick:

pic.twitter.com/ox0qWkksWN

— hayride blake (@ChipotIe) November 6, 2016

Is there any better kind of switch than the one where your team goes from bad to good? Nah, there isn't. 

Shoutout, by the way, to everyone who came to the Land-Grant Charity Banger and the Dubgate. It's always a pleasure to run into my dudes BuckeyeVet and Abe Froman in the wild. They're both great Americans, but my new new goal in life is to take all of Froman's bacon wisdom and import it into my skull.

I also drank my first FourLoko since at least 2010. It went better than the last time I drank one, which ended with Columbus' finest arresting me out of the passenger's seat of a cab. (You're damn right I beat the case; thanks for asking.)

Lastly, shoutout to fans of the local team. Ohio Stadium isn't always rowdy, but the fans bring the ruckus when the lights shine the brightest.

 GOOD GRADES FOR THE GOOD FOOTBALL MEN. Football is a tough sport to watch in one take and walk away with a full grasp of the interlocking parts that produced the result.

Thankfully, there are smart football people out there who rewatch the game to pass out grades so fans like us can knowingly nod while squatting over a toilet in the predawn hours of a Monday morning.

From profootballfocus.com:

Sorry, Jerome Baker! You played well this year but looks like it's time to make way for walk-on Joe Burger.

Great to see three offensive linemen in the top five of offensive grades, too. The Slobs have taken it to the another level since the debacle in Happy Valley. If they're moving weight and the defense is creating turnovers, Ohio State is a monster with which not many college football teams can contend.

 THAT CEILING IS SO DAMN HIGH. Remember when Ohio State was bad, actually? That was a hellacious two weeks, and I hope those days are behind me. That's just my take—sorry if it's too hot for some.

But the original point stands: When Ohio State plays like it did against Nebraska, it's almost impossible to beat. That was the most complete game I've seen since the 2014 Big Ten Championship.

From landgrantholyland.com:

Ohio State completely dominated every facet of the game, showing the absurd ceiling this team has. In the stats preview for this game, we noted that the Buckeyes have the tenth-highest volatility in the country this year -- the team's ceiling is as good as anyone in the country, but the offense is volatile enough to play below an average team as well. Against tenth-ranked Nebraska we saw just how good the team can be.

[...]

Were there any negatives?
The offensive coaching staff rightly believed they could win by throwing short passes and using the run game to pick up second- and third-and-short plays. So the running backs didn't get a very high volume, with the streak of sub-100 yard performances on the ground continuing. Weber and Samuel averaged 6.5 and 8.2 yards per carry respectively and the 52% rushing success rate is far more efficient than we've seen in recent weeks. But there's still room for improvement, particularly because the inside zone run game seemed relatively ineffective.

Overall, this game showed that Ohio State does at least have the ceiling to be a championship contender -- they just have to be more consistent.

I wish Ohio State played Michigan this week. Hell, I wish that game started as soon as the Nebraska game ended because the Wolverines want no part of a Buckeye team operating on that level.

Blue fans can say what they want, but not one of them has put money on their Twitter fingers despite my door being open for the last three weeks.

 EZEKIEL ELLIOTT DUMPS THE BROWNS. I almost tuned into a Browns game Sunday afternoon. But after enjoying a nice traditional Mexican meal with Whitney (#shoutout to La Fiesta in Troy, Ohio, USA) I elected to take a nap.

If the Browns were close when I awoke, I would watch. Instead, the Dallas Cowboys smoked them like a free crack rock. And according to reports, Ezekiel Elliott led the way.

From cleveland.com:

Elliott, though, met little resistance from the Browns defense, running around and through tacklers on his way to 92 yards and two touchdowns on 18 carries. His first touchdown, a play that saw him switch the ball from his right to his left arm in order to reach it inside the pylon before his right hand touched out of bounds, was punctuated with Elliott spelling out O-H-I-O with his arms.

"It's only right. I'm back in Ohio," Elliott said.

[...]

"There couldn't have been a better team for me to get drafted to," Elliott said. "Come into a situation and having the great guys around me, the great players that I have around me, it makes me better and I think we all make each other better so I'm grateful to be here."

Good to see the Browns had no use for Ezekiel Elliott (or Joey Bosa) because there's no doubt in my mind Zeke would have 130 yards and a broken leg by this point in the season. Sucks he plays for the Cowboys, but it's good to see him on a competitive team and not toiling under the thumb of Jimmy Haslam, who should be rotting away in a federal penitentiary in Kansas.

Browns fans, take heed: Our team is a joke. If this were any other product, would you keep investing time and money into it? No. Stop buying tickets. Stop buying merchandise. And most importantly, stop watching. 

I'm confident there's no prize in the afterlife for watching hours of shit football. Jettison this trash franchise from your life and live luxuriously on fall Sundays. Happiness is out there, friends, if only you're brave enough to reach into the abyss and grab it.

Besides, if the Browns get good, you can slide back onto the bandwagon for the playoffs. The resulting Super Bowl victory will feel the same regardless if you spent 50 hours in 2016 watching the worst team in the league.

 GET DUMPED THEN, MICHIGAN DEFENSE. My sources indicate the local team plays Maryland on Saturday. I was also surprised to learn it's coached by D.J. Durkin because I assumed Jim Harbaugh executed Durkin in an Ann Arbor Denny's parking lot after Ohio State ran roughshod over his defense last year.

Unfortunately, The Game is still three weeks away, but Michigan is out here taking pride in injuring opposing quarterbacks.

From freep.com:

Michigan's defense leads the country in seven categories and might be ahead in an unofficial one, too: quarterback changes. The latest was Maryland senior starter Perry Hills, who suffered an apparent shoulder injury in the first half of Saturday's 59-3 loss to the Wolverines.

"You never want somebody to get hurt -- that's not what we go for, we're not targeting players," U-M defensive end Chase Winovich said. "But it is a notable thing. I think we're up to eight quarterbacks that haven't finished the game. That is an interesting point of a defense and reflects the style that we have. I put Perry out of the game today. It's funny because one of my first interceptions as a safety in high school was in a seven-on-seven game against Perry. So to see it come full circle ... .

"It's a violent game. Nobody makes it out alive. Nobody's safe in this game, especially if you're playing quarterback against us. We're coming. I hope Perry had a speedy recovery."

First of all, if nobody made it out alive in football, it would be illegal. Just want to throw that out there.

Also want to throw this out there for Michigan fans who read my articles for some reason:

Overall opponent record:
Alabama 49-32
Clemson 48-31
Wisconsin 47-34
Ohio State 47-34
Auburn 46-33
Michigan 42-40
UL 38-43
Washington 34-47

— Cole Cubelic (@colecubelic) November 6, 2016

But hey, Michigan drilled Penn State in the Big House back in September! Their fans are pretty proud about that win. You don't even need to ask them. They'll tell you.

 TUBERVILLE GETS MAD IN REAL LIFE. Things aren't going well for Tommy Tuberville, who dined and dashed on talented #teens to take a job in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Brigham Young University rolled into Nippert Stadium on Saturday and left with a 20-3 victory. The loss dropped Tuberville's team to 4-5.

Afterward, a heckler tore into Tuberville, who promptly tore into the heckler's employment status:

Frustrated Tommy Tuberville vs a frustrated fan after #UC loss to #BYU. .@WCPO pic.twitter.com/L6anZFpkVV

— Keenan Singleton (@KJMSingleton) November 6, 2016

I don't know, Tommy. An unemployed man affording tickets is a bigger indictment about the state of your program than losing at home to BYU by 17.

 THOSE WMDs. Branson grapples with the rise of pay-by-the-week hotels... The internet is loosening our grip on the truth... Turning back the clock one hour takes a serious toll on your mental health... Chip Kelly not eyeing return to college football... Trailing a killer grizzly bear.