Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperMatt18
Yup, as of right now TCU has a huge argument to hold at least a share of the National Championship.
To me this once again shows that the system is a little broken, there should be no questions at the end of the season to who the champion is.
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And you could easily say the NFL playoff system is broken considering there's a 7 win team still playing. Playoffs aren't perfect at determining the best team either, contrary to popular belief.
But I do agree that the long layoff does need to be looked at. I don't think the layoff affected the sharpness, but it really gives the coaches a ridiculous amount of time to scheme and completely changes the way this game would look at the start of December.
I really didn't think the teams looked that rusty. I think the defensive schemes were just allowed to catch up to the unique offenses both teams run. Both QBs weren't perfect, but still completed a high percentage of their passes.
This game was really lost when Oregon's offensive schemes gambled that they could zone-read on Fairley instead of the usual DE (although reading on a DT isn't anything ground-breaking). I was pretty sure they'd do this, but thought it'd take Fairley out of the game. Instead his quickness and acceleration completely broke things up forcing Thomas into a bunch of bad reads and big losses. After the first half Oregon had to completely abandon their zone read game plans because of this (it's not as easy as just switching over to reading the DE every play at halftime) and were never in a comfort zone that allowed them to speed up the pace.
One bit of controversy on that last replay - Dyer's wrist appeared to be down and I've seen that called several times this year (as recent as last week...although that may have been in an NFL game). Either way, it's a bit of an anti-climatic end to what was looking to be an exciting finish.