Sports Travel with Josh Sachnoff: College Football Week 5 Recap

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

College Football Week 5 Recap

My Overall Record: 35-15
My Record in Week 5: 10-0

Best Game from Week 5: Miami (FL) 44, NC State 37

Students rush the field as Washington upset Stanford 17-13

I can finally say I went 10-0 in picks after this past weekend. My big pick of the week was Washington upsetting #8 Stanford at home on Thursday night 17-13. The Huskies hung in there the whole game and eventually got the best of the Cardinal, who missed key tackles that could have prevented the upset. Saturday was full of games that came down to the last few minutes. Miami (FL) played in another crazy game for the second week in a row and found a way to win it with 19 seconds remaining. West Virginia and Baylor went on a bigger scoring spree then anyone could have ever imagined, and Michigan State and Ohio State battled it out until the very end in East Lansing. The Tennessee Volunteers almost pulled off the upset in a surprisingly high scoring game with the Georgia Bulldogs, but turned the ball over twice in the remaining minutes of the game. Wisconsin was beating Nebraska 27-10 early in the 3rd Quarter, but Taylor Martinez got his team back into the game with a 38 yard touchdown run and a 10 yard touchdown pass. Wisconsin tried to comeback with a minute remaining in the game, but Montee Ball fumbled the ball and the Huskers escaped with a 30-27 win. Lastly, ranked Texas and Oregon State had to score last minute touchdowns to beat Oklahoma State and Arizona.

What we learned from Week 5:

West Virginia quarterback Geno Smith is the clear Heisman front-runner.

- Geno Smith has been sensational so far this season. This past weekend Smith was 45/51 for 656 yards with eight touchdowns. Not saying Baylor has the best defense, but those numbers are unreal. Smith's total quarterback passing statistics for the season include being 141/169 for 1728 yards with 20 touchdowns. He also has a completion percentage of 83.4 and no interceptions. A big reason for the success of Smith is his two explosive targets Stedman Bailey and Tavon Austin. We will see just how good Smith is when his Mountaineers travel to play Texas this Saturday.

LSU may not be as good as we thought they were.

- LSU looked shaky these past two weekends against Auburn and Towson. This has caused the Tigers to drop from two to four in the AP Poll. The problem has come down to LSU fumbling and turning the football over. In these past two games, the Tigers have turned the ball over five times. If the Tigers want to be successful in the SEC, they cannot afford to do this every game.

Virginia Tech is overrated.

- What else is there to say about the Hokies? They came in looking to be a force in the ACC again this season. The Hokies have lost two of their last three games to subpar Big East teams. Virginia Tech got throttled in Week 2 by Pittsburgh 35-17, and then lost with 13 seconds left in the game against Cincinnati this past weekend by a score of 27-24. Hokie Quarterback Logan Thomas has not been the player everyone thought he would be by passing for just eight touchdowns and throwing six interceptions. Frank Beamer is notorious for losing early season games and winning the rest. We will see if his Hokies can turn it around this weekend as they travel to Chapel Hill to take on a scrappy North Carolina team.

Oregon State's offense is potentially dangerous.

- The Beavers pulled out another Pac-12 road game. The nation now knows that it isn't just the Beaver defense that is giving opposing offenses nightmares. The Beaver offense may be incredibly lethal this season. Quarterback Sean Mannion looked great this past weekend against Arizona as he passed for 433 yards and three touchdowns. Mannion is averaging 362.6 passing yards per game and has wide receivers Markus Wheaton and Brandin Cooks to thank. Wheaton has averaged 158 receiving yards these past two games with three touchdown receptions. Speedster Brandon Cooks has averaged 162 yards these past two games with one touchdown reception. The new explosive member of the Beaver offense is freshman running back Storm Woods. Woods had 29 carries for 161 yards with one touchdown run against Arizona. The Beavers will look to continue their three game winning streak as they host Washington State this Saturday.

Last Thought:

We are less than half way through the 2012 season, but the Pac-12 has looked surprisingly good thus far. At the moment, the Pac-12 has six teams in the AP Top 25 Poll. Please let me know the last time that actually happened. I'm not completely sold on the conference as a whole yet. Each team has only had two conference games and there have already been two huge upsets. #21 Stanford upset #2 USC and Washington upset #8 Stanford two weeks later. The real question will be is if the Pac-12 consists of good teams beating good teams or mediocre teams beating mediocre teams? It's hard to tell if teams like Oregon State, UCLA, or Arizona State are for real right now. These next few weeks we will begin to figure out which teams are the contenders and who are the pretenders.