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^ you are absolutely right Wulfpack. We are at the point were we have a good enough coach, and are recruiting enough high quality players that we need to make our own luck.
There is no reason that State can’t be consistently a NCAA tournament team, making the tournament at least 3 of 4 years. The ceiling is higher than that, but that should be the floor.
Once we make ourselves competitive in the ACC…as the story goes…if you build it, they will come.
Apparently I forgot my english in my excitement to type as fast as I possibly could…in the above…4th paragraph, 2nd sentence…should read
We would avoid the dreaded first round
vs.
We we about the dreaded first round
Lost the edit button here, so this was the best I could do…
I think that 6-3 for the remainder of the season is not unreasonable, but agree that the most likely end will be 5-4 or 4-5.
I believe that we will win 1 of the 3 games against Syracuse, Pitt, and UNC (would actually be best to win the Syracuse game), and we will win 5 of the 6 other games (probably losing one of the 2 vs. Miami).
That would round out our season at 10-8, with 1 more good win, and another not so good loss (is any loss really good?).
Then, our fate resides in the ACC tournament. We we about the dreaded first round, and win our second round game, we will have another “marquee” opportunity in the quarter finals vs. Syracuse/Pitt/Duke/VA.
I think our “best dream” for the remainder of the regular season is 7-2, and on the bad side, we could go 3-6.
^ I’m not sure it would have been a whole lot different. No doubt that Harvin is a high caliber talent, but running better than 13-3 in the NFL is a difficult chore.
It’s possible that they might have beaten Arizona and gone 14-2, but Indy’s offense and 49’ers defense were both “spot on” in those games, and I’m not sure that Percy could have changed the equation enough to turn and L into a W.
I’m sure that someone is going to jump me for this, but IMHO opinion that it’s a lot easier to keep your focus on winning when you’ve lost 1 or 2 that you should have won. That, again IMHO is what killing the patriots undefeated season a few years back.
So, from what I can tell, the based on the way that the NFL salary cap and player salaries “conspire” to work against dynasties, the Seahawks can plan on one more year before they will have to disassemble their team (ala last years Raven’s) in order to sign Russell Wilson to a new contract.
Assuming that Seattle has another very good to great year, you can assume that Russell Wilson will command the $20 million/season kind of money that franchise quarterback (including flacco) get these days.
Also, both Richard Sherman and Jermaine Kerse’s contract end next year also. You can assume between those three guys that it will tie up ~$40 million in cap room (nearly 1/3 of the estimated 2014 cap).
The NFL salary and cap structure are going to cause more teams to go the route that Seattle went this year…keep the QB and most of the skill positions on both offense and defense young, pay for a couple of veteran guys (like Percy Harvin and Marshawn Lynch.
I can’t find a way to choose between Russel and Nate, so I’m just hoping for a good, injury free game.
Go Pack!
I also noticed that TJ was playing more aggressively. I wonder what the coaches said.
On the remark about Cat vs. TL, I think the difference is experience. At this point in his career, TL sees the floor better. No ding on Cat. We need them both and things are working pretty well and getting better.
My only question Mark on Cat is that he (like TJ) seems to go down hard, at least once a game. Tonight the FSU player fell right on his leg, that looked like it hurt. My question is whether his body can take that kind of punishment in the long run.
Go pack!
Having just watched the replay on ESPN3, I couldn’t be prouder of the team. Everyone did their job, they kept themselves in the game, and the Vandwagon and Dez Lee made the play at the end.
Go pack!
BJD…you’d have to do something, because you can’t have 15 teams play 9 games each, the numbers multiplied by each other 15×9 result in an odd number, so every year some team would have to play either 8 or 10 games. That’s where ND and their 5 games can fix things.
^^ I’m with howlie here.
As a proud owner of both a Prius and a Leaf, I can tell you a couple of things.
1. The price difference between a prius and the equivalent non-hybrid is very small. Here in raleigh you can get baseline prius’ for well less than $20K
2. The price I paid for my leaf after the tax credit was, again, similar to what I would have paid for an equivalently equipped non-electric car.My prius averages 47 MPG (for 9 years now), and with gas prices in the $3.25 range, the leaf gets an eMPG of ~110 (mpg).
You can spend all day and tell me all the issues with Prius’ and Leaf’s, but these decision are based on the workings of your personal life (how much your drive daily, number of passengers needed, etc…), so Please stop explaining to me how foolish I am, and I’ll do the same.
I was just glad to find out the “Mess in the Middle” didn’t refer to our combo package of bigs “Vandwagon, Freeman, Washington, Anya”, who I have found to be refreshingly better than I hoped they would be.
compsciwolf…you are correct. I overstated the strength of some of the teams schedules, and we too will “luck” into a ND game in the relatively near future.
That doesn’t detract from my position that a bad OOC schedule hurts ticket sales, hurts recruiting, and in my opinion delays the development of our players.
And, foose….you are absolutely right, but there are FOUR OOC games, if we scheduled ODU, USF, GS, and added a real team from a real conference, my compaints would diminish significantly. Even better if we went with 2-2 (real games to patsy games).
Of course, as someone will remind me, we nearly lost one of our “patsy” games last year. So maybe we are the patsies and no real team will schedule us, because they don’t want to destroy their OOC SOS.
Presumably CowDog is saying that playing both GT and GS gives us more show than normal in Georgia, which is a pretty hot recruiting area. Hard to deny, but I can imagine the pitch from DD in the top recruits living room. It might go something like this:
Recruit: “I’d like to play against top competition, so the NFL scouts know that I can get it done, regardless of who we are playing”
DD: “No problem, because we are in the Atlantic Division, we play FSU, Clempson, and Louisville every year”.
Recruit: “Wow coach, that’s a top notch schedule. What about bowl games…my pappy doesn’t like to travel, so we need to be on TV so he can watch”
DD: “Once again, no problem, just to make sure we get to a bowl game, we schedule games against the sister’s of the blind, the sister’s of the deaf, AND the sister’s of the taste impaired, plus throw in a I-AA game, and we’re golden.”
Recruit: “Oh, my pappy doesn’t get ESPN3. Thanks a lot coach, I’ve gotta go though, I’ve got a meeting with an SEC team is 1/2 hour”
DD: “But…if you play in the SEC…all you’ll get is exposure on every ESPN channel, highlight on every (non-NFL focused) program. If you play at State, you get to go the Weiner Bowl”
Recruit: “uh…thanks coach…see ya”
FSU’s 2013 schedule included home games against Bethune-Cookman and Idaho. I don’t think their fans are doing much complaining.
Not to mention the Nevada Wolf Pack. I’m no fan of their schedule, but at least they had Florida on it (granted Florida wasn’t even a good team this year), but in essence, I’ll go ahead and agree. When the Wolfpack wins all of our conference games, plus the conference championship by an average score of 50-12, I’ll stop complaining about our OOC schedule too…
Frankly, I don’t hold a specific grudge against the anyone in the athletic department, I just believe that you get better by playing teams better than you. By playing these sorts of games (and I know, everyone has 2 or 3 of these), I believe you relegate us to the also ran position…
Of course, the natural argument is that at least 8 teams on our schedule ARE better than us, so why over do it…
On the other hand, if you don’t play any real OOC games, then you have no chance at an OOC statement win…
I understand that there are warring interests here, but the long term goal is to get cheeks in seats, and I’m not sure how playing Georgia Southern, USF, ODU, and Presbyterian does that.
Greywolf said:
I expect it will be the same Wolfpack fans who bought tickets last year.
Those were the same Wolfpack fans who were castigated by DD for not coming back in the 2nd half. The same Wolfpack fans that, by the end of the season, left CF looking like Kenan stadium (< 1/2 full I mean).
I know that we have to win to get people to buy tickets, but even if I thought we were going to win the national championship, I would have no interest in spending an afternoon in CF watching us play Presbyterian.
I’m not saying our out of conference schedule should be Alabama, Oregon, Oklahoma, and Michigan…but it shouldn’t be what it is either.
I remember playing OOC games against Texas, Tennesee, Baylor, Alabama, Purdue, Syracuse (when they were good), Miami (pre-ACC), etc…
At least 1/2 of the other ACC teams have chosen to play games outside the conference…
BC – Play Southern Cal
Clempson – Plays Georgia and South Carolina
FSU – Plays Oklahoma State, Notre Dame (semi-NC), and Florida
Louisville – Notre Dame (again, semi-NC)
NCSU – Nobody!
Syracuse –Maryland,I mean Nobody!
WF – Nobody!
Duke –Kansas…oops sorry, wrong sport, Nobody!
GT – Georgia
Miami – Nebraska
UNC – Notre Dame (again, semi-NC)
Pitt – Nobody…I mean Iowa
Virginia – UCLA
VT – Ohio StateAlas, we will be spending the year on ESPN3 and the ACC Network…
I’m pretty disappointed with our non-conference schedule. I understand that we want to figure out how to win 6 games so we can go to the Cheesy-McNutts Bowl, but the NC schedule is awful.
So, we have home games against:
Georgia Southern – former FCS stud
ODU – current FBS dud
Southern Florida – past their Hayday
Presbyterian – current FCS dud
FSU – National Champions
BC – current ACC bottom feeder
GT – current ACC bottom feeder
WF – current ACC bottom feederFrankly, who’s going to buy tickets?
According to ESPN recruiting, we currently have 30 players with verbal commitments. 5 4*, 29 3*, and 1 2*.
I thought it was standard practice to always get too many commitments, because there are a few that will change their mind (or someone with cash will change their mind) at the last second before they actually sign.
The problem, as you all know, is that this team can’t take a hard punch to the jaw and get back up.
It happened against Cincinnati, NC Central, Missouri, Pitt, UVA, and Duke. Sometimes the hard right came early, other times later, but as soon as it did, we packed up our tent and left.
I’ve stripped my list of “I hope we”‘s for this year too…
– Get our young bigs a lot of playing time so they have the experience for next year
– Same for Cat, his ceiling is high, he’s just overwhelmed right now
– That we find a way to get past this “glass jaw issue”
– DW forces Gott to hire a new defensive coordinatorOther than that, it would be nice if we could win 3 or 4 more games this year.
