Ah, the mysteries of gambling. Isn't she a strange and unpredictable mistress? How else do you explain that I went 5-1 with my picks last week and STILL LOST MONEY!?! I can't even recall how it happened. Sometime between the time when I finished my column on Friday and placed my bets on Saturday morning, I forgot everything all the precious bits of wisdom I had bestowed upon you, except, of course, my brilliant decision to back Jonathan F'ing Crompton laying 8 points. I can't even recall what I gambled on. I could pull up my bet history, but I'm really not in the mood to torture myself any further. It's a good thing the old reliable NFL was there to make all my money back for me. Still, there's no excuse for ignoring my own brilliance. I promise it won't happen again. On to this week's picks. Again, I'll only be discussing games that matter, but just so the record is complete, I'll take South Carolina -20.5 over FAU, LSU -26 over UL-Lafayette and Alabama -39.5 over North Texas. My picks are in CAPS and my confidence rating is next to each game in parenthesis.
Louisville @ KENTUCKY -13.5 (2)
We've only seen Kentucky once this season and that was against a Miami (OH) that has yet to score a touchdown this season. As Tennessee so painfully taught me, there's a limit to what you can learn from watching a team in one game against terrible competition. Add to that the completely unknown entity that is Louisville and the embodiment of pure evil that is Rich Brooks, and this one has STAY AWAY screaming at me from all directions. Well, I'm going to take a break from all that logical mumbo jumbo and go with my gut here and my gut tells me this Kentucky team might actually be a pretty good team, possibly even the third best in the East. Do Tennessee, Vandy or S. Carolina have weapons like Randall Cobb and Chris Matthews and Derrick Locke to turn to on offense? No. Their defense only returned 4 starters from last year, but one of those starters is Trevard Lindley - possibly the best CB in the league - and the rest played significantly last year and are, by all accounts, more talented than the guys they replaced. Obviously the crucial question is at QB, where Mike Hartline is again the starter even after his Crompton-esque performance in the games he played last year. Clearly, I have no idea if Hartline is better yet, but I watched him play last year and I watched him in their game this year and I hardly recognized them as the same person. Again, I realize that's not a lot to go on, but gambling's about educated guesses and gut reactions. I always want to lean more towards the former than the latter, but sometimes that's just not possible. So, I'm going with my gut. Plus, taking Kentucky here helps complete a theme for my picks this week and I love a good theme. See if you can tell what it is.
Tennessee @ FLORIDA -29.5 (2)
I used to have a rule to always take the points in any games between SEC schools where the spread was 4 TDs or greater. I gladly waive that rule for this contest. Frankly, this spread could have reach triple digits and I'd still probably go with the Gators or, more correctly, against the Vols. Is some of that due to spite? Perhaps. Perhaps I'm carrying a little bitterness towards Tennessee after they totally screwed me last week - embarrassing the SEC by losing to a UCLA team that was the picture of Pac-10 mediocrity and, more importantly, handing me my first Pick of the Week loss in Week 2. I watched that game outraged that I had staked so much on any team with Jonathan Crompton on its roster and it's entirely possibly that that regret it clouding my vision a bit this week. You know what? I don't care. I don't care that this is the most obvious pick in the country this weekend. I don't care that Monte Kiffin has had this game in mind since he took the job at UT with an eye towards tackling the most unique offense he's ever faced (not saying much since he came from the NFL where everyone runs the same offense). I don't care that Kiffin has to now realize how dire his QB situation is and must have a plan for limiting his exposure there with more rushing and creative play-calling. I don't care because I believe that even without the gaping sinkhole of darkness that is Jonathan Crompton, Florida is at least 3 times as talented at UT right now. It won't always be that way. I remain very impressed by Tennessee's young RBs - frankly, I think Brown should be starting over Hardesty at this point - and all signs point to UT having a very successful recruiting class for next year. Right now, however, they are very much a work at progress and their taking that work to Florida to play against the best team in the country that is coached by one of the great spread coverers to have ever paced the sideline. 45-10 doesn't just seem possible; it seems nearly inevitable.
Mississippi State @ VANDERBILT -9 (3)
Vanderbilt has found a new level of acceptance and even (GASP!) respect under the direction of Bobby Johnson. I am not certain this is warranted. I do think Johnson is an excellent coach who has brought a discipline and focus to Vanderbilt that I've never seen before. However, the case can be made that he does not, in fact, have the Commodores in a position to beat teams today that they could not have beaten before. That is, you could argue that he's made Vanderbilt about as good as it should have been all along, not necessarily better. Most people point to their bowl-eligible 2008 season as proof of vertical trajectory he has the team on, but I'm not putting a great deal of stock in what any team did in 2008, considering it was probably the worst season of SEC football in my lifetime - with three programs in absolute free falls that would ultimately lead to coaching changes (Auburn, Tennessee and Mississippi State) and several more performing at levels well below expectations. The only notable win from their slate last year was an early victory at Ole Miss - the Auburn and South Carolina victories looking much less impressive in light of later events. More notable are their losses - Duke, Tennessee and even Mississippi State, easily the worst team in the league last year. Now, I'm not arguing Vanderbilt hasn't made some serious strides under Johnson, I just think the strides have not been quite as large as the general public seems to think, which is incredibly valuable information from a gambling standpoint. Like it was last week against LSU, the line for Vandy's games this year might be disproportionately skewed in Vandy's favor, which means there will be a real chance to make money by going against them.
So, after all that, why am I taking Vanderbilt laying two scores to a team that beat them last year and is probably at least slightly better this year? Well, as I mentioned in the SEC Digital Network post below, I have spent an embarrassing amount of time this week rewatching (and rewatching and rewatching) Auburn's victory of Mississippi St. last week - even going so far as to meticulously diagram every play Auburn ran enroute to piling up 49 points and 589 yards on offense. I started that exercise hoping to be wowed by new Auburn OC Gus Malzahn's schemes, which I was to an extent, but what struck me even more was just how poorly Mississippi State played on offense. New State head coach Dan Mullen is strictly an offense-minded guy, so I've got to figure that the planning, coaching and general responsibility for State's defense falls squarely on the shoulders of venerable DC Carl Torbush. Torbush is a well-respected defensive mind who had considerable success in the SEC while he was the DC at Alabama under Dennis Franchione. He followed Franchione to Texas A&M where he had, um, less success and was toiling as the LBs coach at South Alabama when Mullen came calling. I thought it was an excellent pick by Mullen and perhaps it will eventually prove to be so, but only if his squad shows considerable improvement from their performance last Saturday. I was stunned by the number of errors - coaching errors - that State made in the game. Auburn was essentially lining up and running a series of inside zone, quick trap and stretch plays. State's first plan was to sit in a traditional 4-3, which could not stop the run. They then switched to a 3-4, which made things worse. Then finally settled on the curious choice of exchanging one of the LBs for another safety and lining up in a nickel look with at least 4 and often up to 6 defenders greater than 8 yards off the line of scrimmage, basically saying, "We'll give you 8-10 yard runs, but we're going to keep you from breaking anything longer than that." - an interesting strategy for a team down several scores on the road and one that didn't work anyway. He brought almost no stunts or blitzes until it was way too late. Still, those strategic decisions can be forgiven. Torbush had never faced a Malzahn offense before and may have personnel issues that forced him into the schemes he ran. What is not forgivable are the numerous mental errors his defense made. On a few occasions, they did not have the correct number of players on the field - sometimes 10, sometimes 12. His LBs were routinely drawn too close into the interior line making them much easier for the offensive linemen to reach and prohibiting them from performing the horizontal scrapes LBs much be able to perform against any type of spread offense. His DEs and OLBs completely failed to keep containment on the edges, allowing Auburn RBs to easily cut back runs to the outside where they were usually only greeted 10 yards downfield by the poor CBs forced to tackle them over and over again. These are basic coaching points. Even teams with vastly inferior talent can be in the right place with the right idea of what they're supposed to be doing. That was not the case with MSU last weekend. Until I see vast improvement from their defense, I simply cannot justify taking them. In fact, I'll probably be loading up against them as I am this week - making this pick my Luck of the Irish Pot O' Gold Pick of the Week.
Georgia @ ARKANSAS -1 (1)
If anyone can explain what happened last week in the UGA/SC game, I am all ears. Seriously, call me immediately if you can explain how two teams that no would would pick to combine for 50 points even if they went to 3 overtimes was able to put up 54 in the first half of last week's game. If the over/under for that game would have been 77.5, I would not be able to write this column due to my thumbs being broken. Why did South Carolina's defense (which I quite foolishly praised last week) look so helpless against the low star-power attack of the Bulldogs? Can anyone say anything for certain about any of the units on either team? The only thing I feel even somewhat comfortable saying is that Georgia's defense looks as if they have not solved the many problems they had last year, which is bad, bad news as they go to face an Arkansas team with a coach who loves to score in bunches and who suddenly appears to have the weapons to do so. Still, if Georgia is a ball of confusion, then Arkansas is totally unknown - a cypher, wrapped in an enigma, smothered in secret sauce. So, children, what do we do when we have to completely unknown entities facing off against one another? STAY AWAY! But, since I have to pick someone, I'll go with the rested home team. Seriously, that's all I've got. You've been warned.
West Virgina @ AUBURN -7 (1)
As you can tell by the deflated confidence rankings, I'm not exactly crazy about this week's lines. It seems like we have a lot of unknown factors in play this week. This is pretty standard in Week 3. We've been through two weeks of football and we feel like we know alot about the teams involved, but we really know nothing because two-thirds of the games played have either been against cupcakes or overrated paper tigers. Plus, most teams are just about to hit their stride and become what they will be for the rest of the season. So, the truth is we know very little about the teams we've actually been watching for two weeks and even less about the teams we haven't seen at all. It's a bad time to put a lot of money on the table.
This game is a perfect example. What do we know about Auburn? I have watched (and rewatched, as covered earlier) Auburn football about as closely as any person could over the past two weeks. I have diagrammed plays and charted tendencies. I have read hundreds of news reports and analysis on both the local and national level. I follow practice reports so closely that I am more familiar with the health of many Auburn players than I am of my own. And yet I know almost nothing about this team. I know they have some talented RBs. I know they have a better-than-expected, but possibly still not very good QB. I know they have zero depth at every position on their defense and are prone to mental mistakes due to their youth and inexperience. I know they are running a unique, fast-paced offense that spreads the field, but emphasizes power rushing more so even than the Auburn teams of the past. The problem is, I knew all of those things before the season even began. Basically, I have learned virtually nothing in the first two games.
I was initially excited by the performance against Mississippi State, but, as discussed, I now feel that Auburn's success seemed due mostly to the deficiencies of their opponent. So, how do I evaluate how they will perform against a better opponent? How do I even know if W. Virginia actually constitutes a better opponent? I can't know. I can't know anything, which is why this is getting a 1 on the old confidence scale. Look, I think this Auburn team is pretty good and I think that last year's Auburn team was so bad for so many reasons and that very little of what happened last year is helpful or informative when evaluating this season's games. West Virginia beat Auburn badly in Morgantown last year in the middle of Auburn's slide into misery. Now, Auburn has an entirely new staff and system and WVU has lost their long-time QB and has changed to more of a passing attack. Can we use last year's game to evaluate this year's game at all? I'm guessing (and I really mean that) that we cannot. So, I'm throwing everything else out and looking at this as a battle between upper-ish level SEC and Big East teams. In that match-up, I'll take the SEC team every time, especially at home. That's about as strong an analysis I can give you in the time of great uncertainty that is Week 3. Be wise, good soldiers, and take it easy this week so as to live and fight another day. Things are about to get really fun.
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