The passing game isn’t quite there yet, but in the end we beat MTSU by the margin we should be beating them. Not quite enough to turn around the feelings of a lot of Vanderbilt fans, but a win against Georgia Tech could go a long way.

Honestly, been a bit of a quiet week here on AoG. Even though it was MTSU, winning really does make up for a lot of woes. Our passing game looked marginally better, but only after Odin delivered mjolnir to Kyle Shurmur a 90+ minute delay. Vanderbilt super-villains, we emplore you, fire up your weather machines.

It was far from perfect. We barely passed for over 100 yards. Though as I’ve argued in the predictions thread, we don’t need to be terribly strong on the pass. All we really require is a QB who can consistently punish a defense that sneaks too far up. Sure, it would be great to have a passing game that turns that into 20 yard plays, but all you need is a guy who can throw a PA throw for 7-10 yards. Keep the defense honest.

Still, it was MTSU, and there’s a lot of circumstances that surround that game. I don’t blame people for dismissing it as a fluke. A victory against Georgia Tech would really go a long way to start to motivate that things may be coalescing.

If we stick to a run-first offense and tire their LBs with power and traps and hit em hard and early, we can open up the passing lanes. That’s our strength, we need to play to it. Run first, bite off some decent gains over the top. We don’t even need 200 yards in the air if our running game is firing on the right cylinders. Between Webb and Blasingame, that could very well happen.

In the end though, it’s all on our offense again. Our defense will keep us in, it all depends on our offense just keeping ‘em off the field and get us on the score board.

As you wake up this morning, catch up on your AoG news with the writing staff.

In other news, VCDW started his yearly “new stadium” rumor mill. It sounds a lot more like a reality now than in previous years, but we’ve heard this before.

Finally, we have our schedule for 2017. Those of you with the wrong opinion that the Thursday game should be axed got your wish, so congrats I guess.

Week 2 followed a great opening week with... well, something resembling football now. Still, quite a few games delivered some excitement so it wasn’t as bad as week one usually is.

• Central Michigan 30 - #22 Oklahoma State 27. Unless you have been living under a rock, you’ve heard about this game. Up 27-24, on fourth down and 0:04 seconds left, Oklahoma State just threw the ball out the back of the end zone to end the game. Or at least that’s what should have happened. Because that’s intentional grounding. Technically, you don’t get untimed downs on penalties on the offense, but the offiicals made a mistake and awarded CMU with an untimed down. Then you know what happened. Countless crybabies have been furious this week, and I can’t help but to wonder if that outrage would be the same if it weren’t a team at the level of Oklahoma State. After all, we’ve been blatantly robbed of games in a similar matter before. The officials have been suspended two games for the mistake. The best part of the story though? The Oklahoma State student paper are demanding CMU “prove its integrity” and surrender the win to them.
• #9 Georgia 26 - Nicholls 24. Hahahahahaha. UGA had only 375 yards of offense against Nicholls, a team they should have crushed. You wanna talk about offenses looking lost? UGA looked completely lost. Their OL didn’t seem to know where to block when (I’m working on an OL piece) and on top of that, UGA shot themselves in the foot with turnovers. We all remember Nick Chubb. Nicholls kept him under 100 yards. Midway through the third, Nicholls was up 14-13, before UGA (mildly) woke up and scored two touchdowns. It should be noted though that the final score reflects a fumbled punt by UGA at ~4 minute mark. Still, how well Nicholls played UGA should be of some mild encouragement to VU fans.

• Arkansas 41 - Texas Christian U 38. This is a hard game to really comment on. For three quarters neither team played like they wanted to win. TCU kept just handing the ball away with undisciplined play and Arkansas looked just as bad as they did against La Tech. Still, TCU decided to spot Arkansas 13-0 going into the half. TCU came back though and with the game at 21-20, they scored again to go up 8 with 2 minutes to go. Then the Kenny Hill “throat slash” (it wasn’t) penalty was called, giving Arkansas a shortened field to tie the game up. Arkansas made the (usual) fatal mistake though - they left too much time on the clock. TCU used the minute they were given to get down to the 11-yard line. TCU throws a TD pass to Emmanuel Porter, only for it to be taken away because Porter had stepped out of bounds, and failed to re-establish himself. THEN, Arkansas blocked the 28 yard field goal (on third down at 16 seconds). Then... in 2OT, Arkansas managed to pound it home on a QB power play. TCU has no one to blame but themselves, but boy was this game a phenomenal finish.
• #2 Clemson 30 - Troy 24. Clemson needs to start playing like a top five team. They don’t deserve to still be that high. 15 maybe, not 2. Clemson made so many mistakes against Troy, but they did find a way to win . It’s gotta be worrysome that Clemson is missing some fundamentals on the offensive line that shouldn’t be showing against TROY. Speaking of horrible fundamentals in blocking, someone (see: no one) tell the UT OL how the hell to take their first two steps. Anyway, the Clemson defense is getting the job done and keeping Clemson in the game, which they certainly need with an offense that coughed the ball up 3 times to Troy. I think Clemson will turn it around, I just am more interested in taunting my Clemson fan friends who may be reading.

There’s a solid amount of good games to watch this week! Here’s a list of what you should be keepin’ track of.

• #2 Florida State @ #10 Louisville - 12:00 ET (11:00 CT) on ABC. You’re a moron (or maybe a Clemson fan) if you’re near a TV and not watching this game. Even fans of THEM should be watching this game instead of their game against Ohio (they’ll lose anyway). I mean, obviously keep it as the “last” button when 11:30 rolls around and you switch to VU-GT. Still. Top ten matchup early season, at midday, you best be on top of this one.
• #1 Alabama @ #19 Mississippi - 15:30 ET (14:30 CT) on CBS. Mississippi has won the last two games against Alabama, including at Bryant-Denny last year 43-37. In addition, Alabama is not playing very disciplined football, somehow committing a dozen penalties to WKU of all teams AND they’ve got the Alabama ref aura. I’ll tell you this though - I watched the FSU-Mississippi game, and Mississippi’s pass defense is every bit as bad as you’ve heard. They’ll get a lot of pressure on both Alabama QBs but Alabama is too disciplined to let it get to them. That and Saban will eat the soul of any young QB who does.
• Pittsburgh @ Oklahoma State - 15:30 ET (14:30 CT) on ESPN. Pittsburgh beat the COACH WHO SHALL NOT BE NAMED at PSU last week. I didn’t put that in the recap because honestly, HE made it pretty darn close and almost came all the way back. In the other corner, we have an Oklahoma State team that’s pretty furious over their loss to CMU. Oklahoma State should handedly win this one, but it has all the makings of a big upset game if things go sour early. A lot of emotions in this one, so it should be fun to keep an eye on just to see where it goes.
• Mississippi State @ #20 (lol) LSU - 19:00 ET (18:00 CT) on ESPN2. This is my article and I’ll continue to post LSU games as ones to watch unless they’re playing McNeese or something. Your tears sustain me, keep crying about it. Besides, what are you going to watch instead at this point? Navy - Tulane?
• #17 Texas A&M @ Auburn - 19:00 ET (18:00 CT) on ESPN. Ok, yeah, there are actually games worth watching instead. Auburn has been a surprise to some (who weren’t paying attention). I also happen to think Aggie is waaaaay OVERrated. You know you do too, let’s keep an eye on it and see if either team has chops.

• USC @ #7 Stanford - 20:00 ET (19:00 CT) on ABC. Your Pac-12 degenerate game of the century (of the week). I don’t have much of a choice for this game this week. Besides, USC losing is always great schadenfreude. Always. In fact, I was there for this glorious announcement in 2007 at the Florida game...
• #11 Texas @ California - 22:30 ET (21:30 CT) on CBSSN. Texas right now is looking good, and will likely steamroll Cal. Especially when you lose to SDSU. Still, this has all the makings of Texas flying too high to the sun and falling victim to a trap game. It likely won’t be. If it’s well into the game and it’s crap, just tune into Utah @ SJ State or something I don’t care. It’s west coast “football”.

Did you know Vanderbilt - Gerogia Tech is a trophy game? Yeah, apparently both of our schools forgot too. As a silver plated cowbell, it is a unique piece of history and actually a neat trophy. We want it back.

In any case, did you also know that we have an actual respectable record against Georgia Tech all time? Granted, the majority of our wins were before those traitors left for the inferior ACC, but whatever. Also, apparently they have a secondary mascot in some sort of car. And no, it’s not a cab that fires molotov cocktails at you, I checked... once again my childhood has lied to me.

We’ve got some ridiculous predictions for you, and none of them involved Darius Sims being involved in the depth chart this week. You can correct that mistake by submitting your own predictions!

Hard to set a drink minimum on an early game, but we may be switching to whiskey early. Stay safe y’all.