Welcome to Week 12 Midweek Musings.
Alabama/Tua
Obviously, the injury to Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa overshadowed much of what happened on Saturday. The bad news is that Tagovailoa has a long and arduous rehab ahead of him. The good news is that the injury doesn’t appear to be career-threatening. Will he be the first overall pick in the draft? Probably not. Will some team take him at some point and possibly get a steal? Entirely possible. And as multiple sports personalities have mentioned, being drafted later and going to a less-awful team is not necessarily a bad thing.
And before you feel too sorry for Tua, he appears to be in good spirits in this tweet from a teammate https://twitter.com/vsunseri3/status/1196478809349984257
LSU
I don’t know when LSU last racked up 714 yards of offense against an SEC opponent, but I’m guessing it’s been a while. Quarterback Joe Burrow completed a school-record 17 passes in a row and broke Rohan Davey‘s LSU record for single-season passing yards- with two games left to play. Ja’Marr Chase tied the LSU record for touchdown catches in a season with his 12th.
On the other hand, it was not the greatest performance by the defense. Ole Miss rushed for 402 yards and scored 37 points. Freshman quarterback John Rhys Plumlee ran for four touchdowns. (As a Giants fan who has spent the last decade-plus watching Eli Manning, it seemed very strange to see an Ole Miss quarterback wearing #10 run that fast).
Linebacker Michael Divinity, who left the Tigers a few weeks back for personal reasons, has rejoined the team. I don’t know how much his presence fixes, but it certainly can’t hurt.
Texas
The “Texas is back!” takes were, as it turns out, premature. Texas was ranked as high as #9 this season, but is now just 6-4; their loss to Iowa State on Saturday took them out of the Top 25. Their first two losses, to LSU and Oklahoma, are certainly respectable. But neither TCU nor the Cyclones were ranked at the time of their victories over Texas. Up next is #13 Baylor, and the Bears will be grumpy after a late loss to Oklahoma. Speaking of which…
Baylor-Oklahoma
I was going to put this game on for a little while, but when I saw that Baylor led 28-3, I didn’t bother. OOPS.
LWOS covered the game here.
Oregon State
I didn’t watch the Beavers this week, but I wanted to give the team a shout-out for winning their first home game against a Pac-12 opponent in almost three years. Their last victory was over Oregon in 2016. This year’s seniors would have been freshmen at the time, and probably didn’t play much if at all, so it’s hard not to feel good for them.
Michigan
Jim Harbaugh quote alert, regarding the team’s improvement since the Penn State game: “You can’t plant potatoes one day and expect to eat potato salad the next day”.
On the topic of Michigan, many expected the linebacker position to be weak this season, after Devin Bush departed for the NFL. After his replacement Josh Ross was injured, Cam McGrone stepped in and has opened some eyes. The AP ran an interesting article on McGrone this week.
Highlight of the Week
In case you missed this during Tuesday night MACtion, we have an offensive lineman doing a (pretty good) cartwheel during play.
That’s all for Week 12 Midweek Musings. Enjoy the games this weekend!
