Real Kato Blog: College Football 2013: Week 4 Recap

Michigan squeaks by UConn; N.C. State loses to Clemson.

Michigan 24, UConn 21.
Another week, another close game against a terrible opponent.

After thinking Akron was a fluke, now I'm thinking that Michigan has some real issues. In particular, the interior offensive line looks like a real liability. Most of the ire of Michigan fans is focused on Jack Miller, but the guards Graham Glasgow and Jack Miller had their share of busts too. And yes, Devin Gardner had a bad game, but sometimes it's hard to be a good quarterback when you're running for your life.

The main criticism I have for Gardner is that he needs to learn to step up in the pocket. This is really the same criticism we had of Denard Robinson a year ago: movement in the pocket is difficult to learn but a critical skill for an Al Borges West Coast pocket passer.

But of course Al himself shoulders much of the blame for this outcome. As good as his philosophies in the passing game are, he seems pretty lost in terms of coming up with a running game. In the RichRod era, the offense had a hundred ways of making the defense pay for overcommitting. In Borges' offense, we telegraph our run plays and don't seem to have any audibles and counters. Maybe we're just saving the sophisticated part of the offense for conference play? If so, that almost caused us to have an embarrassing loss against weak competition.

Heroes: Desmond Morgan for his amazing interception, Jibreel Black for a good day on the DLine.

Goats: Jack Miller, Al Borges.

Next week: bye.

N.C. State 14, Clemson 26.
N.C. State showed up in this game, particularly on defense. It's clear that State has the athletes to compete in big games, but it just wasn't quite enough against Clemson's up-tempo offense. Clemson was aided greatly by an egregious call, where an 83-yard touchdown reception by Bryan Underwood was called back by a referee who thought he went out of bounds. If not for that, and a couple of other breaks... who knows? It's hard to believe that this was the same State team that squeaked by Richmond.

Despite the loss, this was a pretty good game for State against an extremely talented Clemson team. State's defense was fast and strong, and that'll help win a lot of league games.

Next week: vs. Central Michigan.

Other Notable Games
#5 Stanford comfortably beat #23 Arizona State 42-28.

#6 LSU beat Auburn 35-21.

#19 Florida demolished Tennessee 31-17, but lost starting quarterback Jeff Driskel for the season due to injury.

#22 Notre Dame beat Michigan State in an ugly 17-13 game.

Missouri stomped Indiana 45-28.

Georgia Tech beat UNC 28-20.

Virginia Tech got by Marshall 29-21.

Pittsburgh beat Duke in a wild 58-55 game.

Maryland looked impressive beating West Virginia 37-0.

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