Boilernation

I haven't seen Valpo play this year. I'm curious why you feel they're that good? Samardzija's Junior Year was probably when they were their best during his tenure. They had some really good seniors, BIG lines, a big bruising RB (Matt Handlon) who played at Yale. They also had Carl Gioia at PK who was solid at Notre Dame. He nailed the ame winner in 2001 when they finally got past Penn in Regionals.I believe a lot of the Juniors and Seniors that year were guys who Hoffman played on Varsity their Freshman/Sophomore years to have them ready for when they were upper classmen.

Yeah. Grant is a pretty big dude as well.

I will say I was expecting both Valpo and Merrillvile to take a step back this year after losing some generational type of talent. I think it's a promising outlook for the future that both Seiss and Marshall can rebound quickly from losing a very productivie Senior class.

I think both are true. Trubisky is likely better than how he looked while playing in Nagy's offense, but he's still not starter material. The guy needs what Buffalo had him do in the pre-season: A lot of rollouts and narrow down the reads. He can't sit in the pocket and read his progressions. My guess is he'll have a long career as a backup and generate Fitzmagic type buzz when an injury gives him start starts. Nagy is a distaster and should have been fired last season. I listen to a lot of Chicago sports radio while working. The Chicago media was calling for Pace/Nagy's head on a platter last year and National talking heads that make the daily rounds on Chicago sports shows all chimed in that Nagy/Pace didn't deserve another season. The owners son (George) went on one show after the season and was getting absolutely grilled on he could say he wants the Bears to succeed but has a career Accountant (Ted Phillips) running football operations. All he could say is they trust Pace/Nagy to make the football decisions. Nagy is just clueless. I respect Rex Ryan as a defensive mind and here was his view on Sunday: "...thirty drop backs in this game, 21 times to go five man protection, Are you out of your mind? I wouldn't do that with Tom Brady. This is absolutely ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous." It's a valid point. Cleveland's D Line was killing the horribly constructed Bears O-Line and Nagy is still going with 5 man protection. Crazy. The disaster this season will turn into was inevitable at the end of last season with Ted and George praised Pace/Nagy as the football guys. Ted is a career riser on the Financial side of the Bears org and has no business as Pres. of football operations. George is part of a family that has no knowledge of football other than their dad married George Halas' daughter (Virginia). The best hope for Bears fans at this point is for the McCaskey children to cash in on their inheritance and sell the team once Virginia (Age of 98) passes.

The Illinois game was an ugly one to watch, but I'll take a 3-1 start with the top 2 RB's and David Bell not playing. I'm surprised to see the Bowling Green loss has moved Minnesota to the underdog. I don't like this matchup. Fear their O-Line is just going to pummel the Boiler D into submission with at least 250 yards of rushing. Plus, I don't like Purdue not be settled at QB. I'm hoping O'Connell is QB1 on Saturday.

I turned the game off at 24-13 with 9:34 left. Did a double take when I saw the 41-13 final score on the score ticker. On the contrary, I hope I'm wrong once again about an ND score. 😉

https://www.nbcsports.com/chicago/bears/bears-matt-nagy-shredded-olin-kreutz-alex-brown-david-kaplan

Haha! Love that handle.

On the plus side I’ll be at Soldier Field next Sunday.

Eddie Jackson (# 4) is the worst. Makes Prime look like a good tackler.

I completely underestimated just how bad of a QB Mertz is. Yikes. ND will survive again. I think your over 8.5 is a lock Temp.

I woud love to see a Duneland team finally make it out of the North in 6A even if they were completely pasted by Center Grove; however, nobody is beating the Sectional 4 winner unless Fishers or Noblesville pull off a miracle.

Fishers 27 Avon 13 -- Avon's worse season since?? Westfield 31 Brownsburg 17 -- How did Cathedral keep the Rocks out of the endzone? Such a great offense. HSE 42 Zionsville 31 -- Nice bounce back W for the Royals Franklin Central 24 Noblesville 14 -- West keeps rolling.

Yeah, IU under 8 appears to be a lock. That ND one is going to be close. I think Wisconsin beats them in Chicago. Have a feeling they'll bounce back at home against Cincinnati. I could see at least two losss between @ Viriginia Tech, North Carolina, and @ Virginia and @ Stanford. USC, Navy, and Georgia Tech should be gimmes. @ Stanford should be tough regardless of Stanford's record. 9-3 or 8-4 seem like the most probable outcomes. I would be surprised if they hit 10 wins in the regular season.

I really don't get why Morton scheduled this game. I can see adding Elkhart or Bloomington South to round up excitement for Morton following the consolidation of HS's in Hammond. But, Cathedral? That's nearly as asinine as Warren Central scheduling Bishop Sycamore.

Sounds about right. Cline Avenue is just east of the HS and a major thoroughfare to get to Arcelormittal in East Chicago. There are a lot of industrial businesses / organizations lining Cline between Hammond and Gary.

IU only giving up 9 in Bowling Green. I would take Western Kentucky straight up on the money line if I were still a Bachelor and didn't have to explain a potential monetary loss to the spouse. Gut feeling the woes continue on the road against a non P5 viewing this as a huge game.

No, it's not. They have a powering O-Line that can push the ball down the field and some bruisers and speed at RB. I would love to see them figure out a way to sprinkle in an effective passing attack out of the power formation. Just something to rely on 7-10 times per game to keep the chains moving and the back 7 from selling out on the run.

I wish I had some drive charts or specific notes to rely on, but I would say any yardage of at least 5 and longer they will still dial up the power run game.

He and Johnson have turned such promise into completely underwhelming college careers. The woes continue to Hunter. His statline from Saturday was 6/16 75 Yards and 3 INT's.

Per Max Preps, here are the final stats for the Noblesville/Zionsville game: Total Plays: Noblesville 67 Zionsville 52 1st Downs: Noblesville 19 Zionsville 16 TOP: Noblesville 27:32 Zionsville 20:28 Rushing Yards: Noblesville 421 Zionsville 178 Passing Yards: Noblesville 11 Zionsville 181 Once again, similiar to the Fishers game, Noblesville's inability to have any sort of a passing game is really hurting them. They're not getting HCC defenses to break when trying to run the ball on 3rd and long. Plus, it's making 4th and short even harder when the defense is going all out to stop the run. The turnaround in Year 1 with West in Franklin Township is remarkable. At this point I'm expecting them to be 5-2 heading into Week 8 @ HSE.

I like Brohm. Think he inherited a complete dumpster fire of a program and 5 years still might be too soon to create any meaningful depth when it's tough to recruit above the 3 star level at Purdue. Plus, I would wager the odds are better we would take a step back in coaching if Brohm did leave. My biggest knock on him at this point has been are achilles heal for quite some day. Brohm is a failing miserably to develop any sort of an offensive line. D-Line isn't that stellar as well. Purdue seemed to crank out NFL O-Linemen and occasionally on the D-Line during the TIller/Spack years. It's painful to continuously watch the run game get completely stuffed on short yardage situations.

This complete dud of a game at least provided an entertaining 4th quarter, which ended with one of the worst drives I’ve ever seen to with a chance win a game. Maryland tied the game with 2:13 left on an 86 yard drive that ended with a TD. Illinois’ final drive started at their own 25. They went negative 18 yards on 6 plays. Before punting on 4th and 39 from their own 7, Illinois was sacked on 3 straight plays including an intentional grounding call on Peters. Maryland started at the Illinois 46 and quickly got into FG range on a 26 yard pass. The rest was history for Beer Belly Brett.

I was listening to a college podcast on the way to work this morning that mentioned Bieniemy and Joe Brady as 2 NFL guys that USC has to contact just to see if they're interested. Regarding Campbell and Fickell, the host believed both were too "milk toast" for LA, which I could see. Historically, 2 of their most recent successfull hires were from the NFL (Robsinson & Carroll) . The glitz, glamour, and NFL legends surrounding the program may be too much for a career College coach to handle. They should take another look at Kiffin as well. He's more suited for the job than his 1st go around in LA. Maybe he views the bridge as burnt, but I can't imagine he wants to stay in Oxford long term.