Dare I Say ......

Morelli for Heisman??? Wow, what an impressive game, in the wind and rain no less. He had zip, touch, smart decisions, the whole package. Definitely the highlight of the game. If you haven't seen any stats, the Blue (most of the starters) beat the White (17-0). The Blue was also stopped twice near the goaline on the first two possessions of the game, so it was a pretty dominating performance as would be expected. Morelli finished 13-16 for 191 yards. He did take two sacks though, where he didn't show a lot of speed running from the pressure, but we already knew he was no MRob (which isn't a bad thing). Let's go through the rest of the team. The receivers looked excellent as always. It was nice to see Williams back on the field. Williams actually lined up at QB twice, and threw both times. One for a 6 yard completion on an out, and the next play he threw a nice bomb probably 30-40 yards downfield, but there was good coverage and it was incomplete. Norwood was the leading receiver, 8 for 154. One interesting receiver note, Mark Rubin (redshirted by injury last year) now looks to be playing safety. He's still wearing the number 80 though. I guess too many good young receivers now.

The running game was a little bit of a disappointment. Not very much running at all, and no really good runs. Kinlaw had one decent one were he showed good explosion through the hole. Hunt ran a few times. Hahn ran the most, but never got more then a few yards. Oh, there's now talk Scott might not be hurt too bad, so I guess that's still up in the air.

Backup QBs were hit and miss. The best was probably Kevin Suhey, who had some decent throws. Paul Cianciolo looked terrible at first, throwing up lame ducks. Then he made a couple good throws in the middle of the game, but reverted back to poor throwing late. Once again, our backup kicker looked absolutely horrendous (same as last year's BW game). He doesn't look like he could even kick for a high school team. Williams was back as PR at the beginning, though they didn't actually return anything, just fair caught.

I'd say the defense looked pretty decent. There were no blitzes, so you couldn't really tell about pressure on the QB. Jim Shaw played really well at DE, which is a spot we'll need. The safeties and CBs made some good plays when Morelli wasn't threading the needle. Our LBs may be the deepest we've had in years, so no problem there.

So what do I think? If Hunt is fully healthy, I think the offense is going to be lethal. We might not have the running game of last year with Robinson, but our passing game should be tough to stop. With Brown and Shipley on the O Line, as long as the others are servicable we'll have a high scoring team. I have faith in the defense. We might be burned in the secondary early on (especially facing Akron and ND in the first two games), but I think they'll come together. If the D Line can get some pressure going, we should be fine there. I think we're taking Quinn down in the second week of September. The Ohio State game is going to be huge, and will likely decide the Big 10 title I think. Will it also decide one of the BCS championship teams? Quite possibly.