Chuckroast said:
bear2be2 said:
humdinger05 said:
bear2be2 said:
BearTruth13 said:
bear2be2 said:
humdinger05 said:
BearTruth13 said:
Based on what I've seen from bowl season, we lose to:
5 SEC teams - Florida, Auburn, Bama, LSU and clearly Georgia
5/6 Big 10 schools - OSU, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Penn State and probably Michigan
1 ACC school - Clemson
1 PAC school - Oregon
1 Big 12 school - OU
1 Independent - Notre Dame
So you are right. We are probably around 15/16. I just don't want to be proud that we lost to OU and Georgia. OU got ROCKED by LSU. I think they are probably a fringe top 10 team. And Georgia benched half their team tonight.
Our offense is so awful that I'm just not confident in our ability to beat quality teams. Our defense can only do so much.
I think there are at least 5 teams you named that we would beat
... Or that we could beat anyway.
This idea that we couldn't compete with the majority of the names on that list is absurd and underrates the talent level of the two teams we lost to. Oklahoma and Georgia aren't LSU, but neither is anyone else in the country. Those two teams are as good as or better than any team not named Clemson and Ohio State, and we were competitive with both.
We were "competitive" with Georgia by losing by 12? To a team with most of their stars benched? Based on that I don't think we could hang with the SEC teams I listed. I just don't think OU is that good. Based on bowl performance, I don't think we hang with those Big 10 schools. Clemson is in another league. Notre Dame killed an ISU team we struggled with. I think Oregon is better than OU.
Yes, we were competitive. We outgained them by double in the second half and were a couple of drops from putting a serious scare in them down the stretch. They had more talent than we do, and we struggled early. But once we settled in and made some adjustments, we proved we were more than worthy to share the field with them.
And when you recruit like Georgia does, you're replacing current stars with future ones. So I don't lend any credence to missing player excuses. Injuries are a part of the game and suspensions/game-skipping speak to the character of a team. You either have the depth to overcome those things or you don't.
Outside of LSU, Ohio State, Clemson, Alabama, and OU/Georgia we should be favored or at least near a pick em against anyone else. You're not watching the same team if you disagree with that.
I agree. I wouldn't argue that we'd beat everyone else. But we'd compete like hell with them and have a chance to win at the end.
I'm not saying we would definitely lose all of those games, but I do think we would be an underdog in all of those games and probably to a few other teams not listed.
I think a lot of those games would be pick 'ems or field goal spreads one way or the other. Minnesota, Iowa, Auburn, Michigan and Notre Dame all have their flaws, and I'd like to see how we'd fare against Oregon, Penn State and Wisconsin. None of those teams are substantially more talented than the Oklahoma and Georgia teams we played right with for halves at a time.
Those would all be tough games, for sure. But I don't think any of that first group of teams are definitively better than ours.
That list for me would be confined to LSU, Clemson, Ohio State, Georgia, Alabama and Oklahoma with probablies on Oregon, Penn State and Wisconsin.
It's a shame we don't get more decent nonconference matchups and/or a real playoff system to determine these things on the field.