It's officially time to panic......

Who knew Temple had the 85 Chicago Bear defense?

It is hard to muster up a lot to say about this absolute stain of a game. All I know is, I have never been embarrassed by the football team. I have been disappointed, like I was against Michigan, but never embarrased. Well, there's a first time for everything.
Temple? You lose to Temple by 14 points? You let Temple dictate the game? There is no excuse. You can say Temple is better than people think, but, since people think they are putrid, that really isn't all that hard to accomplish. It still doesn't make them good.
What I think we have to accept at this point is that Uconn just isn't good. All the hype, all the talk of winning the Big East, doesn't mean anything on the field. Simply put, Uconn looked bad against a very mediocre team and they have problems that don't seem to be going away anytime soon.
There's plenty of blame to go around. Uconn's defense allowed Temple to rip them for 364 yards, 201 of which came on the ground. The tackling, again, was shaky. There were too many times where runners gained extra yards after first and second contact. Also, there were no adjustments made to try and adapt to what Temple was doing on offense. How many screen passes did The Owls throw? All their passes were screen passes, it seemed, yet Uconn was always caught off guard. For all of the accolades thrown at Randy Edsall, the most frustrating thing about the veteran coach is that his teams rarely modify what they are doing, even when the game dictates they should. Uconn got beat time and again on essentially the same type of plays.
Then, you have the special teams play, which remained erratic at best.
But, to me, the major failing of this team is under center.
Zach Frazier isn't good. He might have a strong arm but he throws an ugly, ugly ball that flutters like someone shot it mid-air and has little idea of where it might end up once he releases it. He misses wide-open receivers, makes terrible decisions (with 10 second left in the first half and the ball on the 8-yard line, how do you dump the ball down to a running back, 6-yards away from the end zone?), and just simply doesn't seem to have a feel for the game. The Huskies have a great runner in Jordan Todman and a good running game, but you have to be able to throw the ball a little, and Frazier is incapable of doing anything other than dump down and, occassionally, throw a 20-yarder to a receiver who finds an opening in the defense's zone. In a sport where offensive plays always seem elaborate and creative, Uconn runs a scheme that would bore Frank Gifford to death.
That's the other problem: play calling.
I have no idea if Randy Edsall refuses to change things up or he simply can't because of his quarterback but something has to change because, sitting at home miles and miles away from the game, I can all but predict what Uconn will run, play in and play out, at about an 85% clip. That's just not good.
Edsall has been a golden boy now for a while, justly given credit for helping build this Uconn program into something resembling respectable. His work, and the credit he has earned, even had him on a short list of finalists for the Notre Dame job last year and rumors have been circulating that, if the Rich Rod experiment in Michigan died after this year, Edsall would be getting a call from Ann Arbor.
Well, if you're going to get the accolades, you have to take the slams as well.
Simply put, Uconn isn't playing at a high enough level. Not for where they should be. Not for a program that is supposedly growing. Losing to Temple four or five years ago would be no big deal, but losing now, that's unacceptable. Edsall created this atmosphere and has welcomed it. But, much like Greg Schiano a few years ago at Rutgers, when you ask for expectations, you have to deliver.
Edsall needs to instill something in this team or all that good will, all those expectations, will be dead and gone if the Huskies continue to play at this pathetic level.

Gametime Thoughts before Temple/Uconn showdown

Uconn beat Temple 12-9 in their last meeting. They need a better showing this time around.

Temple always seems like a school whose athletics should be better than they are, right? I mean, I always think of Temple basketball as somewhat of a big deal, even though every March comes and goes without the Owls doing much of anything.
Temple football?
They've been a real PITA (pain in the ass) for a while now. In fact, the last two meetings of these teams, you can make the case that Uconn should have lost both outings (a 22-17 victory in 2007 and a 12-9 ug-fest in 2008).
As such, this, to me, is a somewhat important game for the Huskies. First, quite simply, you don't want to lose to a MAC team. Sorry Temple fans but, if you're a team from a BCS-qualifing conference with Orange Bowl aspirations, you can't lose to Temple. Case closed.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, college football remains a beauty pagaent as much as an athletic competition. How you win becomes equally as important as that you do win. Uconn had a very bad showing on opening day of this year in The Big House against Michigan after much hype. It knocked Uconn back into the relative obscurity of also-ran college teams.
However, Michigan's subsequent win at Notre Dame, and Denard Robinson's virtuoso performance against the Irish, where he ripped them for more yards, both on the ground and through the air, than he did to Uconn, has made that loss look, well, okay. It gives Uconn the "out" so many schools look for. "Hey, I know we didn't look good against Michigan at Ann Arbor, but look at what Robinson is doing to everyone else? We are still a pretty good team" will be the mantra from this point forward.
No one is going to schedule a parade because the Huskies dismantled Texas Southern. But, beating them by a score of 62-3 is what good teams are suppose to do. It's hard to imagine that any top-tier school could have won or dominated by more.
While no one expects Uconn to destroy a team like Temple by 59 points, they need something more than a last-second field goal victory here. They need a resounding win, one that lets people know Uconn hasn't gone away.
Temple, so far, has beaten Villanova and Central Michigan, both in close games (Central Michigan was an overtime game). That's not an impressive showing.
Simply put, Uconn needs to continue to establish itself as a good team, and a lopsided victory at Temple would help keep that momentum going.

Thank You, Texas Southern!!!

Photo courtesy of AP

Look, it's Texas Southern. This wasn't exactly Alabama walking in to The Rentsch Saturday afternoon. This is a SWAC team that doesn't even do much in the SWAC. That says it all, right there.
But, so what? This is what you're suppose to do to bad teams. In college football, where you get style points, winning 62-3 is impressive no matter who the opponent. I look at Texas Southern like this: sometimes, with race horses, trainers will bring in a second horse to run against their prized stallion. The second horse is always inferior and its only purpose is to lose and instill a sense of confidence in the racer. That was today, and it was needed.
When it's 62-3, there isn't much to discuss. It isn't like there is a lot to break down. The game was over before it started. Uconn scored touchdowns on seven straight posessions at one point, and Jordan Todman was over 100 yards for the game before the first quarter had even been put in the books. Randy Edsall literally could have gone into the stands, grabbed a dog and beer, and talked baseball with some fans and the outcome of the game would have been the same. It was a beatdown.
The only thing to take away from the game, quite frankly, is that everyone just needs to relax. As I said in the post after the Michigan game, Uconn wasn't winning a National Championship, so one loss wasn't a big deal. if Uconn takes care of its business, and gets better and better each week leading up to the Big East schedule, they will be in prime position to take that next step forward.
After a 62-3 mauling of another team, it is important to note that Uconn played about as bad as one possibly could for the first quarter and a half of football in Ann Arbor, got down by three touchdowns, then, for the next two and a half quarters, allowed Michigan only 9 more points and had two separate opportunities to turn the complexion of that game completely around. It is also important to note that Michigan beat Notre Dame at Notre Dame on Saturday where Denard Robinson went for 500 total yards, about 200 more than he got on Uconn. In other words, Uconn played poorly, but wasn't outclassed by Michigan.
Conversely, they manhandled Texas Southern the way a superior team should. So, we can all, in Husky Land, feel a little better about things. We can relax a bit, wait for the game in Temple, expect that Uconn will continue to get better, and get ready for Rutgers down in Jersey in a few weeks to open up what will be the referendum on the team.
Thanks, Texas Southern, for taking the body blows Uconn needed to deliver, for their own sanity.

Well, that sucked!!!

Should I catch this? Nah.

So, that was it? All the hype, all the excitement, and it ends with another loss to Rich Rod and his West Virginia 2.0 style? Does he have something on Randy Edsall? Maybe a grainy video of Randy and Jonathan the Husky in the locker room after everyone has gone home?
All I know is that it always seems as if Uconn teams are taken off guard by Rich Rod running quarterbacks. "Wait, he isn't passing the ball? What the hell do we do know?" That might be the conversation on the sidelines for all we know because, yet again, a Michael Vick clone just pounded the ball down Uconn's throat for what seems like the 3,000th time under Randy Edsall's tutelage.
There are a couple of things I take away from yesterday:
*Randy Edsall deserves a lot of the credit he gets. If anyone was at Uconn in the mid to late 1990's, they know that Uconn Football got less of an audience than a beer pong tournament at one of the frat houses. It was a non-factor.
Edsall has changed that, turning the program into one that can get games against Michigan and Notre Dame, and one that has "expectation." Maybe it's unfair to hold Edsall to a standard that wouldn't even exist if he hadn't done such an outstanding job to this point, but the reality of the situation is that, now, the Huskies are expected to be more than just also-rans, meaning that, when they produce a prodigious crap-bomb like yesterday, some of the fault lands on Randy.
We can talk about the limitations of recruiting in the Big East and up at Uconn all we want. Certainly, Rich Rod is getting the better recruits to come play for Michigan. However, it remain's somewhat disturbing that a.) Uconn continues to start off games slowly, allowing their opponent to jump out to leads they spend three quarters just trying to erase, and b.) that they still have no real way of stopping a running quarterback.
By the third quarter of yesterday's game, Uconn had regained its footing. At 24-10, they were going in for a score that would have made it 24-17 and put the Big House on mute for a while. After giving up 21 points in a little over a quarter of play, the Husky defense only allowed nine more points the rest of the way. The significance? Had the Huskies come out and played better in those first 20-25 minutes, they would have been right there to win it, regardless of fumbles and dropped passes. Again, Edsall gets a tremendous amount of credit, but the team's shaky early play in games is a definite kink in his armor.
*It might be time to cope with the fact that this is who Zach Frazer is: an okay college quarterback who is never going to rival Kurt Warner in accuracy or Tom Brady in decision-making abilities. He wasn't helped by his wide receivers, who dropped passes as if the ball were made of procupine skin, but he also missed some wide-open shots (including one that would have gone for a touchdown) and everything is thrown at 600 MPH, whether the receiver is 30 yards, or 30 feet down field. Someone needs to get to Zach and let him know that you don't get points for almost taking your teammate's head off with a short pass.
*The biggest problem the Huskies have is the small size of their front line on defense, which was obvious yesterday. They got man-handled. They got assaulted like a Ben Rothliesberger blind date.
Sometimes, smaller defenses can present real problems for their opponents. Indianapolis in the NFL has routinely had a small front line, but the quickness of Dwight Freeney and the like has made their defense stout. Of course, in the NFL, you are taking the pick of the litter. In college, a lot of times, you're taking what you have.
If Edsall and his defensive coaches don't come up with a real plan to negate their obvious size disadvantage, then the scenario we watched play out in the Big House is going to repeat against other top-quality opponents as the season goes on.
*I have no idea if Michigan is as good as they looked, Uconn as bad, or the Huskies had an off day, but even their vaunted linebacker core just looked a step slow. First, there was no containment of the quarterback. With the D-line getting overwhelmed as they were, it was up to that linebacking unit to limit the damage and keep 5-yard gains from turning into 30-yard romps. They didn't. Again, the group has enough talent to give them a mulligan for game one, but they need to play a lot better if Uconn is gonna have any kind of a chance this year.
Look, it's one game. We all get that.
One of the biggest problems I have with college football is how everyone wets themselves over the concept of a weekly "one-game playoff." Whereas college basketball's regular season is simply about NCAA Tournament placement, CFB enthusiasts claim, college football has something on the line week by week. A lot of people love that. I, personally, think it's stupid.
The idea that you're season is done, or that your chances of doing anything of significance is over after week one is absurd to me. You don't get a bad game in college football? You don't get to lay a stinker like Uconn did on Saturday and have it be something off of which to build, rather than settling in to a three-month consolation schedule? To me, of all the problems in CFB (competitive imbalance, BCS standings, the fact that teams like Florida or Alabama can schedule teams that they can beat by 60 points at the end of the year) the thing that really bothers me is this notion of "one and done."
But, no matter my problems with the sport, the truth is, because of yesterday, Uconn will go back to being a non-factor. Maybe they rattle off a bunch of wins. Maybe they run the table in the Big East. Maybe yesterday was just a bad game at the wrong time, and maybe Uconn's dream of actually making it to a BCS Bowl didn't die in Ann Arbor yesterday. But, after getting knocked around by another Rich Rod squad, it's going to take some convincing.