This Is A Stick-Up

Well, it’s been a wild weekend on the gridiron, we had a robbery in plain sight, and apparently 4=100 nowadays. We’ll explain why in a second but today we’re going to quickly run through the College Football Playoff, some NFL action, and run through some other sports news from the weekend.

College Football Playoff

You read our recap yesterday and we knew there would be 1 deserving team left out. We whole-heartedly thought it would be Alabama and the football world was left in shock yesterday.

The CFP committee selected the top 6 teams in this order.

1. Michigan

2. Washington

3. Texas

4. Alabama

5. Florida State

6. Georgia

Florida State got hosed by the committee after going a perfect 13-0 and playing TEAM football in their last two games and won with some epic defensive performances.

Want to know how we know FSU got robbed? It’s simple. Think about this.

If the committee put FSU in over Bama, we’d all be sitting here talking about how Bama shouldn’t have lost to Texas and how they narrowly escaped Auburn sans a magical 4th down TD, how they narrowly escaped, Arkansas and USF. We’d talk about the complete football team that FSU is and their dominant performance on defense and how they held a team to just 30% of their average yardage in the ACC championship. We’d talk about how FSU earned the #4 spot by scheduling LSU and dominating them in the season opener and how FSU faced adversity in The Swamp against the Florida Gators and had an impressive come-from-behind win at a very difficult road venue.

Instead, the last 24 hours have contained so much uproar about how FSU was shafted. FSU isn’t the same team because their QB broke his leg 3 weeks ago. 1 player out of the 22 who play offense or defense. 4% of the roster. That’s the difference. The committee failed to understand that there are 10 other players on offense and 11 who play defense.

I have one simple question… what could Florida State have done differently to get into the playoff? If you’re only answer is not to have their QB break his leg 3 games ago, you need to check yourself. Jordan Travis should not be apologizing that he broke his leg.

If Bama got left out and you asked the same question of what could Bama have done differently, there’s a clear answer. DON’T LOSE IN WEEK 2 TO TEXAS.

Bama played a great game on Saturday against Georgia, you can’t take that away from them, but let me explain this. Sometimes the beauty of competition isn’t that you win, it’s that you ruined the other team’s season. That’s what the SEC championship was for Bama. Alabama’s reward should not have been ruining Florida State’s season, it should have been ruining Georgia’s 3-peat chances.

We’ll see you on New Year’s Day for the Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl.

The Rose Bowl will be a matchup between #1 Michigan and #4 Alabama and the Sugar Bowl will be a matchup of #2 Washington and #3 Texas.

NFL Sunday (Rapid Fire)

🏈 The Colts beat the Titans 31-28 in OT. Derrick Henry was having a day for the Titans rushing for 102 yards and 2 TDs on 21 carries but suffered a concussion when the game was tied 25-25. Gardner Minshew threw the game-winning TD in OT

🏈 The Chargers beat the Patriots 6-0. The Patriots are so good at tanking

🏈 The Lions just narrowly escaped a 2nd half push by the New Orleans Saints. The Lions are 9-3 after a 33-28 win.

🏈 The Falcons won’t go away in the NFC South. Atlanta beat the Jets 13-8 and the Jets outgained the Falcons 259-194 in total yards.

🏈 The Steelers are 7-5 after suffering a loss to the Arizona Cardinals. The final score was 24-10 and the Steelers’ offense couldn’t score once again, even though they had over 300 yards of total offense.

🏈The Dolphins are happy to have De’Von Achane return to the backfield. He ran for 73 yards and 2 TDs in a win 45-15 win over the Commanders. Tyreek Hill continues his monster year for the Dolphins with 5 receptions for 157 yards and 2 TDs 🏃‍♂️ 💨 

🏈Nico Collins had his best day as a receiver for the Texans in a 22-17 win over the Broncos. Collins caught 9 passes for 191 yards and 1 TD. Russell Wilson must’ve left his apron at home because he was not cooking yesterday. Wilson finished 15/26 for 186 yards, 1 TD, and 3 INTs.

🏈 Tampa Bay beat the Panthers but’s that not the main story as they Panthers are now 1-11. The main story is Bucs WR Mike Evans caught 7 receptions yesterday for 162 yards and 1 TD and topped the 1000-yard mark for the 10th straight year. I feel like it was just yesterday he and Johnny Manziel were connecting on wild plays at A&M. 😢 

🏈The Cleveland Browns lost 36-19 to an LA Rams team that is looking decent right now. The Browns’ defense is not the same with CB Denzel Ward being out and Myles Garrett playing through an injured shoulder. This is Garrett’s first game in which he didn’t record a single tackle 🤯 . Matt Stafford connected on 22 of his 37 pass attempts for 3 TDs and 279 yards. Kyren Williams also had a decent rushing day with 88 yards and a tuddy on 21 carries.

🏈 One of the best games of the year was in the late afternoon slot. The SF 49ers vs the Philadelphia Eagles. It was a rematch of the NFC Championship game from last year in which Brocky Purdy tore a ligament in his elbow and the Niners were only a 4th string QB at that point. Brocky Purdy came in and was 19-27 for 314 yards, and 4 TDs. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of those TDs were made possible by Deebo Samuel’s athleticism, but damn this 49ers team is good. We should also mention that the Eagles had a 6-0 lead at the end of the first quarter after the Niners basically didn’t show up for the first 15 minutes. The final score was 42-19 and I think the most impressive stat line was the Niners holding the Eagles rushing game to just 46 yards.

🏈 The Green Bay Packers may have given us the biggest surprise of the day with a 27-19 win over the KC Chiefs. The only surprise that could’ve possibly been bigger is the missed P.I. call by the refs on the Chiefs’ last drive in the game. The Packers deserved this W though and Jordan Love has been in top form the last few weeks. Love was 25-36 for 267 yards and 3 TDs.

Monday Night Football

We’ve got a Monday Night Football matchup between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Jacksonville Jaguars.

📺️ Gametime is set for 8:15 pm on ESPN, live from Jacksonville

💰️ Jacksonville is favored by 10 points and the O/U is 39.5

Did You See This?

On Saturday night, the Dallas Mavericks were playing the OKC Thunder and were down 24 points in the fourth quarter. The Mavs went on a 30-0 run and still lost 126-120. It sounds crazy but after the Mavs scored 30 straight, the Thunder responded by going on a 15-3 scoring run to close out the game. WILD

NHL Power Rankings

We’re practically a quarter of the way into an NHL season and there’s been some surprises so far. Check out The Score’s NHL Power Rankings to see how your team stacks up on the ice.

We’re back tomorrow with some NBA In-Season Tournament matchups, a Monday Night Football recap, and some chatter about the college football transfer portal.

Have a great start to the week.

-The Daily Breakroom