Burt Macklin

I'm surprised to see Miami's defense in the top quartile. It feels like they're in a shootout that Cam Ward ekes out most weeks. The New Mexico placement certainly checks out. Devon Dampier is one of the most exciting players in all of CFB, and an incredible QB for NMU standards, but they're fighting tooth and nail just to make a bowl because they don't have the athletes on defense to stop anyone. I do find it funny that pretty much every single advanced metric you can find has Texas as a top 3 team, but the media narrative this week is to say Texas has to win out to make the playoff because we don't have a big win. Never mind that our strength of schedule is tougher than pretty much every team they're trying to put in over us, and they can't find a single metric to show the team they're propping up is better than us. Let's focus only on wins against top quartile opponents and ignore any bad losses and quality of play by the other teams.

Sounds like you're just mad because he could beat you in a 40 yard dash.

He’s never even had 600 receiving yards in a season. You’re drastically overrating him.

Using total yardage to determine the best offense in 2024 is certainly a choice. They put up huge yards against terrible teams. They’re much worse against good defenses, and they’re very turnover prone. FEI has them as the 5th best offense we’ve faced. If you factor in UF’a injuries, Arky is the 4th best offense we’ve faced. Huh? Nico has been bad this year, and Tenn struggles to pass the ball, which is Ark’s weakness. We will be able to pass on them. No way they shut us down like they did Tenn.

Where are you seeing this? Every major betting site I see is at 13 or 13.5 still.

It’s really weird that you’re focusing so much on SOR when it’s primarily used as just a part of evaluating a team’s performance, not its own standalone metric. Why should the committee overvalue strength of record while ignoring how well a team actually plays in those games? On top of that, their actual strength of schedule has been a joke. They’re around 70th in SOS in most metrics and that’s with SMU propping them up despite them playing SMU early when they were rotating QBs and were a drastically worse team than they are now. BYU has had a bunch of lucky outcomes against mediocre to bad teams to go undefeated. All their SOR really shows is they’ve been lucky this year. When you look at how they actually play in those games, it’s pretty obvious they’re not even remotely underrated at No. 6 and they’re actually pretty overrated there. Theyre 21st in FEI, 28th in FPI. Wanting them to be overrated even more because they’ve been lucky against a weak schedule makes no sense.

This is what happens when you have a very deep-pocketed alumnus who can easily monetize NIL access.

You’re really overrating the impact of that first game for the next round. 6 seed is not where you want to be at all. You’ll be playing a BIG or SEC team of similar skill level. That extra game against a similarly talented team drastically decreases your odds of winning the title. Then you’ll likely be facing a Miami team that is ranked 9th or 10th by most advanced metrics. Not nearly the pushover of whoever the 4 seed Big 12 champ is that the 5 seed will play. The 5 seed is a good spot to be. 6th seed is not anywhere near as good. The BIG is almost definitely getting the 5 seed this year, so anything short of winning the SEC will put us in a tough spot.

2 of the top 6. It’s always going to be the case that only 1 team from the SEC and BIG each will get a bye, and they will pretty much always make up the majority of the top 10. Getting the 5 seed over the 6 seed will also be a big advantage since 5 seeds gets to play the G5 team.

Luther Burden at 10 makes absolutely no sense to me. He’s going to test well, and he’s extremely good with the ball in his hands, but he’s not a good WR. He doesn’t seem to separate much against good CBs because he’s not a good route runner, and it’s too hard to scheme guys consistently in the open field to use a top 10 pick on him. He got bottled up last year against good defenses. Against teams with NFL talent on defense (Kentucky, UGA, Tenn, and tOSU) last year, he averaged 3 catches for 27 yards. In the other 9 games he averaged 8 for 123, which is great but not nearly as meaningful when projecting to the NFL. Loveland 13 spots ahead of Warren also seems off. Warren is bigger and a better athlete. I get Loveland is very good, but I don’t see the ceiling for him to be 13th and ahead of Warren.

lol wut. You think Braeden Locke is beating Oregon?

It's wild someone can have this opinion after we all saw the 2021 game with our own eyes. It's one thing to have this opinion 3 years ago before it proved to be dead wrong. Maintaining this take now is truly impressive. Bravo, sir. You belong here.

I'm sure plenty of teams would take a chance on a former highly rated guy for minimal NIL commitment. If Cook still believes he's a star despite all the film he's put out to the contrary then he's going to have a hard time finding a team.

Teams get to start using wind tunnel time on 2026 regs in 2025. RB doesn’t want a second driver that moves them up in the WCC standings this year or next.

Not sure how true it is, but the Cover 3 podcast was saying the reason LSU didn’t do much in the transfer portal this year is because they’re going heavy on the 2025 HS class to put talent around Bryce Underwood.

We were probably going to hit the portal for 1 or 2 high level WRs already. I don’t think Cook leaving had any affect on that.

Huge bummer. He would've absolutely thrived as the WR5 on our roster next year.

That was my read of it as well, but it's also a pretty dumb take considering our OL is struggling with picking up blitzes and also not very effective in the run game. We will absolutely need a good performance from our QB to win at A&M.

It'll be interesting to see if Elko overemphasizes DL to the full extent Jimbo did while at A&M. Elko has always preferred to play 4 DL that are all over 270 so he can stop the run with 4 and get the offense into 3rd and 6+ where he can bring his disguised blitzes. He might be the best coach in the country at timing disguised blitzes and getting pressure with 4 or 5 on passing downs, but if you're going to trot out 4 DL at 270+, you are usually going to need to the edges to be 5 stars if you want them to be that size and have a pass rush. He was fortunate Shemar Stewart came back for another year and a first round DE in Scourton being from College Station was available this year. Next year will be a lot tougher for him. There's no one on the current roster who can do what they do. I expect A&M to spend huge on at least one DE in the portal and HS recruiting. Obviously, going full Jimbo would hurt him elsewhere. They don't seem to be able to land WRs to save their life so maybe Elko/Klein give up and put all the WR money into the DL bucket.

The writing's been on the wall for a while. He's been underwhelming when he gets playing time and has fallen out of the rotation. We have 3-4 guys who will be returning ahead of him plus two 5 stars coming in and I'm sure Sark will take at least 1 transfer WR this offseason, so he'll be going into year 3 with no real prospect of playing. The only unexpected part is that it happened mid-season. He was top of the list for attrition candidates this offseason.

Nothing gets past you.

This team plays like they’re being coached by a middle of the road G5 coach.

I’m starting to think Carlos doesn’t actually want Ferrari to win the WCC. -Crazhed with Perez in Baku -crashed in Singapore quali with a top 2 car (which also messed up Leclerc’s quali) -crashed out in Brazil quali and the race. Ferrari would be ahead in the WCC right now if he could just stop crashing.

Stroll is just non-stop entertainment. Just an absolute embarrassment.