Tag: College Football

Scouting the South Carolina Gamecocks ahead of Saturday’s matchup

Here’s everything you need to know about this year’s South Carolina team.

The Florida Gators are in dire need of some positivity. Coach Dan Mullen is now just 2-7 in his last nine games against Power Five teams after dropping two straight games to rivals. The team had a bye to prepare for No. 1 Georgia on Saturday, but it suffered a 34-7 drubbing to fall to 4-4 (2-4 SEC) on the season.

Luckily, the road does get easier for the Gators the rest of the way. They should be heavy favorites in their four remaining games, and that starts with a road trip to take on the South Carolina Gamecocks on Saturday night.

The last time UF made the trek to Columbia, it was a rainy and sloppy football game that saw the team emerge with a 38-27 victory. But things have only gotten worse for the Gamecocks since then, and they currently sit at 4-4 as well but with a 1-4 conference record (and the win coming over Vanderbilt).

Here’s what you need to know about this South Carolina program.

Anthony Richardson sustained concussion, hasn’t practice this week

Emory Jones might be the man under center for Florida once again on Saturday as Anthony Richardson works his way back from a concussion.

Anthony Richardson left the game against Georgia early after an apparent injury, but no update was given by head coach Dan Mullen after the game. On Tuesday, Mullen told the Orlando Sentinel that Richardson had yet to practice this week after sustaining a concussion.

Richardson was in the middle of his first career start at the college level when Georgia linebacker Adam Anderson delivered the blow. Emory Jones came in for Richardson and led Florida to its first score of the day. The injury has Richardson questionable for Saturday’s contest against South Carolina.

It’s unclear if Mullen planned on sticking with Richardson as the starter after three interceptions against Georgia, but the head coach did say that he thought the game would be a learning opportunity for the young quarterback. Jones has had his own turnover troubles this season, but limiting Richardson this week to preserve health might be a good idea even if he is cleared.

The timing of Richardson’s injury couldn’t be worse. He wasn’t expected to right the ship immediately against the best defense in the country, but he’s now missing valuable reps needed to take the next step. There are far worse options than Jones at quarterback, but Florida’s turnover margin is still -7 with him as the starter this year.

The good news for Florida is that the schedule should get easier from here on out. There are no more Georgias or Alabamas on the schedule, and Florida should be able to breeze through the next three games regardless of who’s throwing the ball for them.

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Texas WR Xavier Worthy named to Biletnikoff Award watch list

Star freshman Xavier Worthy has been recognized as one of the top receivers in college football.

Even with Texas’ season not going nearly as planned, their star freshman receiver has been making waves in Austin.

Xavier Worthy has been the best player on the offensive side of the ball outside of running back Bijan Robinson. He has been the lone bright spot in a receiver group that has been as inconsistent as they come all season.

Worthy’s stellar freshman campaign has rightfully earned him recognition as one of the top receivers in college football. On Wednesday, he was named to the Biletnikoff Award watch list, which honors the season’s most outstanding FBS receiver.

Worthy has certainly earned the right to be in this discussion. He has posted 33 catches for 657 yards, seven touchdowns, while averaging an impressive 19.9 yards per catch.

He is on pace to break multiple Texas records for a freshman receiver, as he is just 242 yards away from breaking Roy Williams’ record for most receiving yards by a freshman. His seven touchdowns are also just two shy of Williams’ record for most touchdown catches by a freshman in school history.

With four games left in the regular season, and a possible bowl game on the horizon, it is seeming very likely that Worthy will be able to reach these marks, and potentially blow them out of the water.

Bryce Young is making a case for the Heisman each week he plays

SportsPulse: Right now, it feels like Bryce Young can do it all. That’s why he sits atop Paul Myerberg’s QB rankings. But can he win the Heisman?

SportsPulse: Right now, it feels like Bryce Young can do it all. That’s why he sits atop Paul Myerberg’s QB rankings. But can he win the Heisman?

College Football Playoff Rankings Released

Who is too high and who is too low?

The initial College Football Playoff rankings were released on Tuesday night after nine weeks of play.  We’re roughly two-thirds of the way through the regular season, so how do things shape up so far?

Here is how the CFP committee ranked the top 25 teams in their initial rankings that were released Tuesday night.

Notre Dame bowl projections after beating North Carolina

Would you prefer a first-time Notre Dame opponent or an old rival in the postseason?

No. 8 Notre Dame sits at 7-1 with a month to go in the 2021 season.  Their remaining schedule starts with a home slate against 2-6 Navy this weekend before a trip to 5-3 Virginia next week.  The Irish will spend senior day hosting 3-5 Georgia Tech on November 20 before wrapping up their regular season with a trip to 3-5 Stanford on Thanksgiving weekend.

Will we be looking at an 11-1 Notre Dame squad when the regular season wraps?  And if we are, where would the Irish be spending bowl season?

Here are the latest national projections for Notre Dame’s postseason destination:

Gators see drop in CBS Sports 130 after loss to Georgia

The Gators fell even further to No. 37 after Saturday’s game.

Florida’s 34-7 loss to Georgia on Saturday in Jacksonville wasn’t anything unexpected. But it also sent the team to .500 on the season and guaranteed a losing record in SEC play for the first time under coach Dan Mullen.

The Gators haven’t been ranked in either poll since their loss to LSU two weeks ago, and even in the CBS Sports rankings, which include all 130 Football Bowl Subdivision teams, the team has taken quite a tumble in recent weeks.

After the beatdown from the Bulldogs, UF dropped seven spots in the latest CBS Sports 130 to No. 37, ranking below teams like Appalachian State, Nevada and Wisconsin.

That is far from where this team wanted to be heading into the season, and now even a fourth-straight New Year’s Six Bowl is completely out of the question.

This will be Mullen’s worst season as the head man in Gainesville, and the only question is how his program will respond to the way this season has played out to this point.

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College Football Playoff Rankings Predictions

Three questions: Who will be 2-4 tonight? Where does Cincinnati come in? And where does Notre Dame check in?

The first set of College Football Playoff rankings comes out tonight and the college football world will be keeping an eye on what they say.  Although I have no inside information as to what has been said by the committee leading up to this, I do have history and common sense to form an educated guess as to how these will look tonight.

With that in mind here is my guess at what the first set of College Football Playoff Rankings look like this evening.  I’m doing these as how I think the committee will think, not how I would actually rank the teams and I want to make that clear.

Predicting the first College Football Playoff rankings for 2021

The playoff committee has a huge day ahead of them in deciding the order of these teams.

The best time in college football is finally here, as the College Football Playoff committee is going to sit down and rank the top teams in the nation.

While Texas likely could have been in this discussion several weeks ago, they went on to lose three consecutive games against ranked opponents. Had they won those, it would have given them one of the strongest resumes in the nation.

Even with Texas being eliminated from just about everything except a bowl game at this point, there are multiple Big 12 teams that are actually in contention for the playoff. The committee does not announce their choice’s until Tuesday evening, so I took the liberty of predicting how the teams will stack up in their initial rankings.

The playoff committee has their own set of factors that determine these rankings, so I will best try to emulate that. If these were my personal rankings, they would look a bit different.

Does Oklahoma crack the top four?

Florida cancels media availability after contentious press conference

After Dan Mullen was clearly unhappy with a question about recruiting, Florida canceled media availability for the rest of the week.

Something strange is going on within Florida’s athletic department. On Monday, coach Dan Mullen took the podium like he would any other week to talk about the Gators’ upcoming game against the South Carolina Gamecocks.

But very quickly, you could tell Mullen was not happy with the line of questioning. The first question from Gators Breakdown’s David Waters asked Mullen about recruiting and if the team needs to change things up. Mullen quickly cut him off.

“We’re in the season now,” Mullen responded. “We’ll do recruiting after the season – when it gets to recruiting time we can talk about recruiting.”

It’s pretty obvious, or at least should be, that Mullen was trying to say he doesn’t want to talk about recruiting until after the season is over, not that he doesn’t recruit during the season. But the fact remains that for a coach who has struggled tremendously on that front, the optics of this answer aren’t great.

And the optics only got worse from there.

Florida’s communications team ended the press conference prematurely and without much warning at around just the 15-minute mark, and no players were made available immediately after. As someone who covered the team as a beat writer during the 2019 season, I can tell you that it’s unusual for players to not be made available after Mullen’s Monday pressers.

Things got even weirder, though, as the University Athletic Association released a statement later that day announcing that no players or coordinators would be made available for the rest of the week. Mullen would still be available on the Wednesday SEC Coaches Teleconference, but that would be the only media availability this week.

This is a strange step, and it has naturally welcomed quite a bit of speculation as to what may be going on. As the Tampa Bay Times’ Matt Baker wrote on Twitter, this is a step the program didn’t even take following Jim McElwain’s midseason firing in 2017.

Barring access to media is a drastic move, and it’s one that usually backfires on whoever is trying to attempt it (see Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley’s handling of the quarterback controversy between Spencer Rattler and Caleb Williams).

It’s hard to speculate what exactly all this means, but something strange seems to be going on in Gainesville.

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