2u: Jacob Clark

DNPs: Cam Cook, Cortez Braham

Postgame Thoughts: Boise got spanked and Maddux Madsen was absolutely horrid in this game. Thank god for him getting benched for Max Cutforth. Kinda knew the game script would be on our side for this one with Washington up a good bit at some point but didn't think it'd be that much of a challenge for either Boise QB to get the ball out. Their offensive line was terrible but Cutforth eventually connected with a few 20-yard passes in the 4th to send him over.

Final line: 5 Rec, 70 Yds 

Bowl Record 1-0

This was a wash as Cam Cook was a gametime opt-out that nobody knew about until the game kicked off. Fun !

Bowl Record 1-0-1

Postgame Thoughts: This was an incredibly frustrating sweat for a majority of the game. Henicle had 24 rush attempts with 4 sacks, so I felt comfortable with that read either way. Two of those sacks made it the sweat that it was. On the second drive of the game, Henicle fumbled on the sack he took and the ball bounced about 15 yards back for a 19-yard sack in total. He then had another "fumble" on a sack in the 2nd quarter that pretty clearly seemed like a forward pass but was never reviewed and led to a loss of 12. But just when it all seemed dead, Henicle got his name in the hall with a 51-yard keeper to ice the game. 

Final line: 24 Rush, 107 Yds

Bowl Record: 2-0-1

Postgame Thoughts: This game wasn't exactly the shootout a lot of people expected it to be. Delaware came out pretty slow offensively and never really found it through the air. Minicucci only finished with 176 passing yards with a pregame line that got steamed up near 300. Thankfully he really only found success throwing to his two guys. Sean Wilson and Kyre Duplessis accounted for 13 of his 19 completions and 150 of his 176 yards. All the chunk plays came through them and Minicucci found Wilson across the middle for some big conversions down the stretch, which was also huge for Squad Ride bettors.

Final Line: 8 Rec, 81 Yds

Bowl Record: 3-0-1

Postgame Thoughts: This sweat was absolutely something. We were boots on ground for this one and it was incredibly apparent from the second the teams ran out that one team was juiced and wanted to be there and one team did not. Arkansas State's front seven was getting repeated instant pressure on Jacob Clark and they had no response early on. It looked as dead in the water as could be. Game script was on our side pretty much the entire game but the offensive line was so bad that they couldn't get anything going for the first three quarters. It was 31-7 going into the 4th quarter with Clark sitting on 169 yards after a huge 36 yard pass to Jmariyae Robinson right before the quarter ended. Then the magic started. It was a repeated cycle of sacks and penalties getting them into 2nd and 3rd and longs, then Clark throwing a bomb to convert. The sequence of events needed for this to cash was pretty incredible, capped off by a 59-yard pass to Dash Luke on the final scoring drive that cut their deficit to 6.

Final line: 25/35 349 Yds, 4 TDs

Bowl Record: 4-0-1

Postgame Thoughts: Definitely one of my least favorite bowl games, and the result showed it. Wasn't really too sure about the game script I figured we'd get but thought regardless that Kennesaw would have to run the ball against a really good Western Michigan pass defense. I was right about that but wrong about the guy getting the carries. In a game they lost by 35, RB2 Chase Belcher had 16 carries for 148 yards while Coleman Bennett only had 9 carries for 48 yards. Would have missed by a lot more if it wasn't for a late 23-yard run to bring him right to the line. But can't complain too much about losing one with a game script like that despite the Belcher moochjob.

Final line: 9 Rush, 48 Yds

Bowl Record 4-1-1

Another wash here as Cortez Braham was another inactive we found out at kickoff. Not even an opt out but had a sneak surgery nobody knew about and couldn't go after trying to warm up. Sad end to his career for the guy.

Bowl Record: 4-1-2

Postgame Thoughts: A weird sweat for sure and figured Bama would need to throw some wrinkles in. The large comeback script was probably not the right one for that. He did get his rush attempt though, it just happened to be pretty much a regular inside zone rather than a jet sweep to the outside and ended up getting stopped at the line of scrimmage which sucked. Was a demon but still a tough one.

Final line: 1 Rush, 0 Yds

Bowl Record: 4-2-2

Postgame Thoughts: Hitting a square in this game actually felt incredible. Steel curtains with hurricane winds and Marcel still found a way to get Bethel-Roman the ball. Absolute legacies. Whether he stays with A&M or even follows Collin Klein to Kansas State, I think he'll be a guy that'll find his way into a lot of lineups next year. If that game was a little more offense-friendly, Bethel-Roman could've exploded for an even bigger game. But we only needed 23!

Final line: 4 Rec, 44 Yds

Bowl Record: 5-2-2

Postgame Thoughts: This was a game script square, and we had it from the jump. Just another one where the backup got what we wanted. George Pettaway caught 2 passes for 37 yards including a 24-yard TD. That 13-yard catch was painful too. On JMU's last drive they ran Knight on a texas route that was pretty covered but also went right off of his facemask. The next down they brought Pettaway in and ran the same play that was wide open for that 13-yard gain. So yeah that sucked, but given the lack of volume didn't really deserve that one anyway.

Final line: 3 Rec, 18 Yds

Bowl Record 5-3-2

Postgame Thoughts: Not too much to say about this one, it was absolutely free. He had a 17-yard catch on their second drive of the game that brought him to 24 yards immediately. Obviously Tulane got blasted so massive W game script on this one especially for ladder bettors since he nearly tripled his line. Been sweating too many of the squares deep into the game so felt good to get one early.

Final line: 4 Rec, 52 Yds

Bowl Record: 6-3-2

Postgame thoughts: Wasn’t a fun sweat at first because of how awful Bryson Barnes was in the first half, but they were also getting killed so W game scripts. Eventually he figured it out and took some shots to Boyd, including the 43-yarder to take him over early in the 3rd quarter. Somehow Boyd ended up being the only WR on the team with multiple catches which is hilarious within itself.

Final line: 4 Rec, 99 Yds

Bowl Record: 7-3-2

This game made my head hurt searching for a square. Has the potential to get ugly for Toledo but that doesn't really make me too excited to take a square on the Louisville side. Lot of people love Caullin Lacy today with no Chris Bell which makes sense and I like too, I just worry about the game script for that. With both Isaac and Keyjuan Brown playing too, it made this backfield too tough to choose between the both of them. You could definitely argue game script concerns for Trayanum, but Kalieb Osborne is not anywhere near the downfield passer Tucker Gleason is, and I dont think they can truly fully abandon the run if they go down big. Trayanum gets his chance as a former blue chip guy to stick it to a power conference team one more time. And for what it's worth, Louisville doesn't have their full front seven for this game either. Some potential for Chip to pop a big run early and catch a few dump downs later on to get us there.

Postgame thoughts: Toledo indeed wasn't really able to abandon the run and came back to keep the game close in the end but it sadly wasn't enough. Trayanum got 18 touches but was only able to convert them into 70 total yards. He wasn't able to break the one big one on the ground that we needed for him, plus Osborne missed him badly on a few designed screens where he was wide open. Despite Louisville opening the lead up to 21-3 at a point, the game script really didn't hinder him too much either. Just couldn't get there in the end.

Final line: 16 Rush, 65 Yds/2 Rec, 5 Yds

Bowl Record: 7-4-2

Rodney Tisdale really intrigues me. Freshman QB with a big arm and great mobility in this system could be one to watch come next season. Has some typical freshman decision making issues with turnovers but in a game like today's I think you want him to work through those. Blake Anderson is taking over for Charles Huff at Southern Miss and he loves to chuck the rock early and often. This game definitely has the potential to get into a shootout game script if he has his way with it, which would be great for this Tisdale square.

The USM defense continued to trend down in the 2nd half of the year especially in their pass defense. Outside of Josh Moten (who is headed to the draft and we still don't know if he will even suit up), there are plus matchups across the field for the WKU WR room especially in the quick game that gets their speed guys out in space. This feels like one where Tisdale gets more comfortable throughout the game and starts to find success for bigger chunk plays in the 2nd half.

Postgame thoughts: Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to see that 2nd half as he got destroyed in the backfield before halftime and didn't return to the game.

Final line: 9/20 65 Yds

Bowl Record: 7-5-2

Numbers are all over the place and moving up and down everywhere for this one, so get whatever you can. But this is the game where explosive plays should rule the roost. And I'm not telling you anything anyone doesn't know, the total is 65.5 which is the highest of bowl season. Parker Navarro is petitioning for another year of college football but without having a ruling yet we're going to treat this like his last game and I'd assume he's doing the same. Both of the defenses in this game are bad but UNLV in particular provides a great matchup for Navarro, especially if they end up in a trailing script as 7-point underdogs.

Navarro doesn't throw the ball at the highest clip in MAC conference play because of how fantastic the run game is with him and Sieh Bangura, but when he does produce chunk plays in the air it's attacking man coverage downfield to guys like Chase Hendricks. Guess who plays a lot of man coverage? UNLV. That not only opens up downfield shots but rushing lanes as well for Parker. UNLV hasn't faced very many true dual threat QBs this year for a full game either outside of Bryson Barnes (threw for 256 and ran for 124) and Liam Szarka (who I'm not sure counts). I'd also think with all that's going on with the coaching situation at Ohio that this is a game you lean on your leader and put the game that closes his college career on his shoulders, especially in a likely high-scoring affair. 

Postgame thoughts: What an odd game this was. If I told you a team in this game looked like they had zero interest in being on the field you'd very likely have assumed it was Ohio given their coaching situation. But it was UNLV. Just nothing going offensively for them which definitely hurt the search for the back and forth game script we hoped for. UNLV was so unable to finish a drive that Ohio really didn't have to open it up very much with Navarro, but instead could play it relatively vanilla with Bangura since Colandrea and the offense just couldn't beat them. Wrong read on the game script for that one, just had a lot more faith in the go-go offense like I'm sure many of us did with the 65.5 total.

Final line: 11/15 143 Yds/12 Rush, 43 Yds

Bowl Record: 7-6-2

Postgame thoughts: Didn't have time to get this one up on the site pregame, but realistically there wasn't much to it. De Jesus is Sagapolutele's favorite target (almost to a fault) and you just knew in a game like this he'd feed his guy. He was also chasing the ACC single-season reception record so you knew the typical De Jesus screen package would be out in full force. Which it was, but didn't exactly start that way. De Jesus got some downfield shots early including his 41-yard TD to open the scoring. He exploded for 95 yards in the 1st half and was relatively quiet for the rest of the game until the mid-4th where he began to get peppered again to get his line.

Final line: 9 Rec, 137 Yds

Bowl Record 8-6-2

Looking like an extremely thin backfield here for Northwestern today. That backfield has dealth with injuries all year, beginning with Cam Porter and Dashun Reeder and finishing towards the end of the year with Joseph Himon and Caleb Komolafe going down. Thankfully Komolafe will be back for this one (according to all reports at least, can never be too sure in bowl season until he steps on the field) and should get a bulk of carries against a vulnerable Central Michigan front. Preston Stone isn't really built to go air raid on a defense as is (partially because he has Griffin Wilde and nobody else), but the Chippewas are definitely more beatable on the ground than through the air. Their interior defensive line has struggled mightily to provide resistance against the run all season, which will likely be a problem against Komolafe and this rushing attack. And while I do think CMU could keep this game close and sneak a cover if all goes well, Northwestern should still control the low and slow tempo of this game with Komolafe and their offensive line.