Thursday, February 17, 2005

Letter of Intent Commentary

February 4th marked the first day that players could sign LOI's to play DI football for the 2005 season. The Beavers did their usual signing JC players to fill immediate needs and expanding the talent pool with some skilled guys out of high school. No superstars according to all the rating experts who picked the Beavers class as 8th to 10th out of the 10 Pac 10 schools. Not that that means much. These are the same guys, along with most schools, who underrated receiving stud Mike Hass when he walked on at OSU.

Here is how the 2005 class shapes up.

With the departure of Browner and Williams there was a glaring hole at CB. Consider it resolved. Riley and Co. signed two JC studs to plug those holes immediately. One, Edorian McCullough, was originally a Texas signee and passed up offers from others this year including Oklahoma. The other, Aaron Miller, was a former Oklahoma signee and is bigger at 6'2" and 205, but can still run a 4.5 40. He turned down offers from USC and Cal in favor of the Beavs.

Also out of the the JC ranks the Beavs signed another stud TE in Jason Vandiver. While he can catch he is known as a great blocking TE, something the Beavs could use to bolster the pathetic running game of 2004.

The Beavs landed 3 home staters in LB Kevin Maher, OL Michael Marks and LB Bryant Cornell. Maher played for state runner-up Lake Oswego and was the 4A offensive player of the year. Marks played 8 on 8 out in Burns and has good size at 6'5" and 300.

The only area the Beavs feel like they failed was at DE. Needing to replace Swanny the Beavs were hopeful of landing the #1 DE in the country in Grants N. Suh. He opted for Nebraska instead.

Here are the bios of all the recruits and Riley's comments.

Go Beavs.

Monday, February 07, 2005

New England Wins, T.O. Amazes

New England won their third Superbowl in four years, once again by 3 points. It was a good competitive game to watch, which is becoming commonplace with NE. Philly's clock management at the end of the game was poor at best and the decision to onside kick with 1:48 and two timeouts left was iffy. This game should have ended up in OT, but give credit to the Pats, they made the plays when they had to and are once again the champs.

My favorite play of the game was the downing of the NE punt with under 1 mintue to go in the fourth. NE was punted from the Philly 35 and was just looking to give them a long field for the Fg to tie. The punt was up and landed at about the 10 and started to roll towards the goal line. Instead of getting cute and trying to down it at the .00001 yard line, the NE player got inside the five and setteled at about the three. He placed himself between the ball and the goal line and as the ball approached he pounced on it. Mission accomplished. No fighting for extra inches that didn't matter, no misstep on the goal line and putting it out on the twenty. A good smart play at a critical time. Seems to be the trademark of this team.

The most shocking thing about this Superbowl, aside from the rather bland commercials, was the performance of Terrell Owens. Now let me be clear, I hate TO. I despise his antics and me attitude and frankly could do without him altogether. When he had screws put in his ankle 6 weeks ago everyone, save TO, was saying there was no way for him to play again this year. Even the doctor who performed the surgery was unwilling to provide him with a waiver to play. But TO insisted he had been healed. Like most I thought this was his way to stay in the spotlight and get more attention. I figured if he did play it would be along the lines of the pathetic effort Randy Moss made earlier this year to keep his consecutive games played streak alive. TO's effort was far from that. He had 9 grabs for 122 and was on the field for 62 of the 72 offensive snaps. He was able to regulary beat the NE DB's and even run away from them at times. Again I don't like the guy one bit, but this was a stellar effort and was honestly courageous. It almost has me believing he was doing it all to help his team win a title instead of for personal gain. Almost.

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