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Joined: Nov 2021
There is a Reddit CFB post to the effect that two years ago, North Carolina, Clemson, and Florida State were the three ACC teams to vote against westward expansion. This weekend Cal defeated North Carolina, SMU defeated Clemson, and Stanford defeated Florida State.
Watching those teams flop around is fun for this ACC fan of 42 years. Karma's a bitch.
As to last night's game, I look forward to Matt's take. It might be fairly sober. I do fear we just hit our target for the year.
I suppose Stanford is about as good or as bad as the 'Noles and both are looking for coaches.
A few more specific thoughts:
1. Stanford was solid if not spectacular most of the night. FSU is a total mess, though.
2. Pretty clear why Gulbranson/Brown are QB 1 and 2. However Brown isn't that much worse than Gulbranson. I wonder if the message to him has been 'go elsewhere' or 'we'll develop you next year if we aren't developing someone else.'
3. Tough night for injuries. We sure can use Ford and that might be the best offensive lineman.
4. Feast or famine for the secondary. Excellent coverage mixed in with open targets for Castellanos, who overthrew some dudes. The last two penultimate defensive plays were awful coverage/technique. Awful.
5. Turtling is back baby! When they forced a turnover on downs to have the ball with a touchdown lead and 1:33 or 1:34 or whatever on the clock and FSU had three time outs, I figured they would gain maybe three yards and burn all of ten seconds. Pretty close.
6.
7. I'm glad they won. That type of collapse can be a nail in the coffin of a program barely alive. The kind of nail you would need to ruin the coffin to pull out.
8. Sorry to be harsh, but the day Stanford isn't relying on the likes of Mitch Leigber is a good day for the program. So stupid, so dirty. I see someone questioned whether that was targeting. Are you serious? Castellanos gave himself up and is on the ground. Knock a QB out and almost cost the game. I will grant that perhaps this is less malevolent intent and just a lack of skill.
9. Second time in as many of my teams' games that ACC replay got it 100% wrong on obvious calls. Also, even though the long pass into quadruple coverage should have been knocked down, there is no way in an honest world they should have put 0:02 on the clock and give FSU all the time they needed to set up for a play. Long downfield catch ten yards short of the goal line in the field of play with no timeouts launched at 0:09 is exactly what a team does not want. Hated that they ran a stupid plan and were rewarded by Stanford and the officials not doing it right.
Did he get in? I thought he did, but I was certain Stanford was choking the game away. Inconclusive and lucky the camera angles sucked. Honestly if FSU was undefeated and looking like the Bama victory was not a complete outlier, they might have gotten the call.
The Norvell watch began before the game when he was in a nice light grey suit with caramel brown shoes, which to this day I don't understand. (That pairing of shoe color with suit color. Never claimed to be fashion forward.) FSU has a bye coming up. That might be right. Bye.