The Starting Five

I spent most of last night and the better part of today trying to figure out what went wrong with Baltimore last night in its 12-7 deflating, unimpressive, embarrassing loss to the lowly Jacksonville Jaguars. The short answer is the offense. That’s obvious. Offensively, things couldn’t have gone much worse. No first downs for the first 40 minutes of the game. 40 MINUTES! An offense with Ray Rice, Anquan Boldin, emerging young tight ends Dennis Pitta and Ed Dickson, budding receiver Torrey Smith and Joe Flacco who can throw a football through a bank safe couldn’t gain 10 yards to get one first down. That is down right pathetic.

So let me start breaking down exactly how bad the loss was. First, it came on Monday night in front of a national television audience. There were talks before the game about the Ravens being the best team in the AFC. Not after last night. Second, the team that beat the Ravens is a team that has to tarp off 14 sections of its stadium seating with advertisments so it drops the stadium’s capacity down to around 67,000 so it’s easier to sell out games an avoid television blackouts. Third, the Jags had lost five straight games going into to last night’s game. Fourth, they had a rookie quarterback (Blaine Gabbert) starting. Everyone — and I mean everyone — figured the Ravens would easily win that game. Well, almost everyone. I’m sure all 23 Jacksonville fans had faith. Yes, it was bad. (continue reading…)

We’re halfway through Randy Edsall’s first season at the helm of Maryland football and I think I’ve just now began to figure things out. It only took six uniform combinations, two quarterbacks and a laundry list of injuries to figure out.

When C.J. Brown stepped into the game against Georgia Tech when Maryland was trailing 21-3, I was very skeptical. Granted, Danny O’Brien had posted Rex Grossman-esque numbers, but he was the incumbent. He was the man. He was the 2010 ACC Rookie of the Year. And, unfortunately, he was the guy that couldn’t grasp Gary Crowton’s spread offense. Danny O. made some uncharacteristic mistakes all season, and it all started against Miami on Labor Day night. The Terps had marched down the field on their first drive and scored a touchdown to go up 7-0. On the second offensive possession, Maryland was poised to go up 14-0, but Danny O. tried forcing a pass that he should have never thrown. I watched that play about eight different times and came up with the same conclusion: just run it in. He had a less-than-stellar showing against West Virginia two weeks later where he threw three interceptions and then played possibly the worst game of his life against Temple. I’m not going include the Towson game in this because that was a gimme-game for the Terps. But even against an FCS opponent, it appeared Maryland struggled a little bit. Then, against Georgia Tech, everything hit the fan and Danny O. went a whopping 1-for-6 for 17 yards and an interception. (continue reading…)

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Through week 5 games, Boonsboro is still in second place in the 1A West computer rankings. The 5-0 Warriors have a 7.80 average, just behind first-place Fort Hill’s 8.44. Mountain Ridge, also 5-0, is third with a 7.00 average. Fourth is Brunswick and fifth is Clear Spring.
Middletown and Walkersville are running 1-2 in the 2A West and Catoctin is 4th.
Thursday night, Boonsboro and Catoctin meet, so there will be plenty of competer points on the line.
In 3A North Hagerstown stands in 5th place with a 5.20 average, well behind fourth-place Linganore’s 6.60.
The top 4 teams in each region throughout the state reach the playoffs.
To view all the rankings visit www.mpssaa.org