Week 10 college football thread

Coming into this season, Mississippi State's school record for fewest rushing attempts in a game was 18, set against Auburn in 1969.
In six games this season, they've gone below that four times. That includes yesterday against Vanderbilt, when they had 11 attempts (three of which were sacks) for minus-22 yards and still managed to win 24-17. The 11 attempts is the new school record.
Last season they averaged 220.7 rushing yards per game. This year they are averaging 16.7

 

How do you recruit a halfway decent running back with such few opportunities? I know this is weird for MSU, but it has been Leach’s calling card forever.

 

Another season begins at Microville Tech.

 

He inherited a good one with Kylin Hill, who came back for his senior season, and then decided that handing off was for suckers.
Hill had 1,350 rushing yards and 10 TDs last season, and through three games this year had more receptions (23) than rushing attempts (15) before he decided to shut it down and get ready for the draft.
It's a weird culture change. Mississippi State has been a ground-and-pound rushing team forever. Now this year they're setting all sorts of passing records in a good way, and all sorts of rushing records in a bad way.

 

In their first post-Leach game, the Cougs ran for 229 yards on 30 attempts in their win at Oregon State (sorry, micro).

I don't think WSU had that many rushing yards in any game during Leach's eight years in Pullman.

 

Gary Andersen gets shitcanned three games into his second season at Utah State.

Man was gifted a job at Wisconsin, where you can just stumble into 9-10 win seasons annually and no one will bat an eye, but he couldn't handle Barry Alvarez wanting to be all up in the video so he went to Oregon State, where he went 7-23 and got run out of there. Weird career choices.

 

Andersen had been successful at Utah State previously. Was Anderson run just because of a poor won-loss record (seems weird to pull the plug that early in his second season) or was there something else going on?

 

Jon Wilner's column about the Pac-12 talks extensively about Cal and Utah having their games canceled. He said the rules are different for each school. Some are bound by the student health dept., some bound by local city or county ordinances. Cal is bound by the City of Berkeley. The Bears had one defensive lineman (according to Wilner's sources) test positive and he was asymptomatic. Berkeley required all of the DL players to be quarantined for 14 days. They couldn't play without a DL. Utah had a few Covid positives but the entire state is under assault. WSU was missing 32 players, but didn't specify the reasons. It played and won anyway. Wilner said Cal is thinking about moving out, possibly relocating to Reno or Fresno (haven't they suffered enough -- smiley face) since they aren't going to classes anyway.

 

Boo

 

Probably something else, but they got waxed in the first three games and this was looking like a very lost season. I think the interim coach, Frank Maile, will get the full time gig. I get the feeling that administration wanted to make the move and it was easiest to do it now.

 

I'm not football savvy enough to break down the difference in the run game of the Air Raid vs. the Run 'n Shoot, but the S-back in the Houston RnS got a lot of yards. You needed a particular kind of guy, one who could block well, catch passes out of the backfield, and run hard, typically draw plays. Chuck Weatherspoon had an 8.2 yard rushing average for his career, and IIRC was at 10.6 all purpose yards if you included kick returns. My mind still boggles at an RB who got an average of 10.6 yards every time he touched the ball.

You'd think that Leach could find a way to do something similar and recruit to fill that spot.

 

Considering how highly NFL teams value pass protection and receiving in running backs, you'd think a coach like Leach could recruit a few off that pitch. Show 'em some film of Darren Sproles and James White. Then show them some film of Sproles' and White's houses.