It’s once again the latest “FootballScoop: They Said What?” installment, with outstanding outtakes from a wild weekend of college football that includes Deion Sanders, aka Coach Prime, bemoaning his Colorado Buffaloes’ inability to protect their quarterback Shedeur Sanders to Mario Cristobal’s blunt assessment of his Miami Hurricanes’ snatching defeat from the jaws of victory; Kentucky’s Mark Stoops stunningly acknowledges wondering, basically, what in the actual world was his quarterback seeing at Georgia and more.
So, once again, here is the seventh installment of FootballScoop’s popular new feature.
Onward …
MORE SACKS THAN A GROCERY STORE
There isn’t a coach in college football – or, at any level, for that matter – who doesn’t love two elements coming out of a game: a victory coupled with readily tangible teaching moments.
Colorado head coach Deion Sanders likely has the latter in spades after his Buffaloes rallied to knock off Arizona State, 27-24, Saturday evening on the road.
Coach Prime saw his son and Colorado star quarterback Shedeur Sanders sacked multiple times and ultimately now for the 31st time on the season. Deion Sanders insists he’s sick of it – and so is Shedeur.
“(Shedeur) is upset with hit after hit after hit,” Coach Prime said. “You think he’s happy being the most-sacked guy in college football and he’s still doing what he’s capable of doing?
“He’s sick of it.”
Still, Shedeur Sanders helped drive his team downfield against Arizona State to set up Alejandro Mata’s game-winning field goal.
Coach Prime had thoughts on his son’s toughness – and the Buffaloes’ offensive linemen’s lack of respect for helping their signal-caller as well.
“I don’t know if it even registered, because you got a quarterback that’s not known for running lowering his shoulder and runs over a guy,” Deion Sanders said. “It should be three linemen there to help him up, shouldn’t it? Didn’t see that.
“That should, right there, make you want to say, ‘Oh my God. Our quarterback ain’t no joke. He’s a dog.’ No. Didn’t see it.”
DID KENTUCKY’S QB ‘STOOPS’ TO A LOW LEVEL OF PLAY?
Previously undefeated Kentucky saw its perfect season, as well as its reputation as some super-physical, blue-collar squad, annihilated at two-time defending national champion Georgia.
The Wildcats trailed by two touchdowns barely 10 minutes into the game and by three touchdowns less than 25 minutes into the contest; they had yielded 34 points – same as they allowed total through their opening three games – by halftime en route to an embarrassing 51-13 shellacking at the paws of the Bulldogs.
UK quarterback Devin Leary also was rendered totally ineffective; he completed just 10 of 26 passes – a paltry 38 percent – in the 38-point defeat.
And Wildcats coach Mark Stoops, who has elevated the Wildcats into a mid-tier SEC program but cannot seem to lift the program further upward, was surprisingly candid about Leary’s poor play.
“I was a little disappointed myself,” Stoops said of Leary’s general inaccuracy against Georgia. “Usually, I don’t say a whole lot during a game to a quarterback to not get him off (mentally), but there’s no excuse to not hit some of those passes.
“We had some guys wide open, so you just put that, whether we miss open plays to keep it close early and then you add in the penalties and it gets away from you very quickly.”
The Cats’ penalties weren’t too bad – five for 60 yards – but they often came at catastrophic sequences for Kentucky.
MIAMI FUMBLES CHANCE TO STAY UNBEATEN
It has been replayed ad nauseum – and will continue to be shown as precisely what not to do when victory is literally seconds away.
Mario Cristobal’s Miami Hurricanes, who had clawed back to take a late-game lead and position themselves to remain undefeated against a Georgia Tech team coming off an embarrassing home loss to Bowling Green, fumbled inside the game’s final seconds when taking a knee in victory formation would have sufficed.
The Yellow Jackets promptly capitalized with two passing plays, the latter being Haynes King’s game-winning touchdown pass. Undefeated no more, and stunningly defeated in a game in which ESPN’s win-probability algorithm showed Miami with a more-than-99-percent chance to escape in game’s final moments.
Though too late, Cristobal didn’t mince words in his postgame.
“When the drive started, it was going to be at 1:57 and we could burn about 1:27 off and then it was recalibrated,” Cristobal said. “We should have taken a timeout there at the end. We thought he (quarterback Tyler Van Dyke) could get the first down, and we talked about two hands on the ball, but that isn’t good enough.
“That’s it, we fumbled the ball and they went 75 yards in two plays. There is no excuse.”
And then …
“We should have taken the knee.”
Now, rather than being undefeated and setting up a marquee ACC matchup at undefeated, high-octane North Carolina this week, the Hurricanes face an almost must-win contest against the Tar Heels if Miami is to keep alive its hopes of challenging for a berth in the conference championship.
JIMBO’S JUMBO CHALLENGE
Texas A&M, again, finds itself in precarious position entering the season’s second half after 2022 provided one of the program’s most disappointing seasons this century.
The Aggies, just 5-7 a year ago, have reached the midpoint of their season with two losses already against their two toughest opponents – at Miami and home this past weekend against Alabama, in a game in which the Aggies led in the second half and had opportunities to pit Nick Saban’s Alabama Crimson Tide into a much deeper hole.
“We got to keep – regroup,” Fisher said after the 26-20 loss. “We got six games left. We have to go on the road and play six games. There's not a game out there we can't have success in, but it's also going to be a very tough schedule. We've got to line up and go play.
“It's only one loss in the league, and there's a lot of football left to see. Unfortunately, we got to find a way as coaches, and me as the head coach, to find a way to get one more play and put them in a better position. We will get better at it."
Though just one league loss, the Aggies effectively now sit two games behind Alabama in the SEC’s West Division. But the Aggies do not have six road games left; they have three contests at home and three away – beginning this week at top-25 Tennessee. They also go on the road to Ole Miss and LSU – two league rivals also populating the top 25.
BOOM-ER NOT BUST FOR OKLAHOMA
A year after its worst-ever loss to rival Texas, Oklahoma and second-year coach Brent Venables stunned the undefeated Longhorns with a final-minute touchdown in their 34-30 win against the Longhorns inside the venerable Cotton Bowl Stadium.
“There's no limits on what this team can do,” said Venables, who noted his Oklahoma squads had welcomed 63 new players onto its 2023 roster. “And no excuses either. We’ve got everything that we need.
“We're certainly not there, there's plenty we'll have to improve and get better at but, boy, we're just really thankful for our players and their effort. They were nothing short of amazing today.”