Bishop Media Sports Network
Tar Heels To Step On Seminoles?
By: Robert Craft
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
Florida State hosts number 5)North Carolina on Saturday evening at Doak Campbell Stadium.
The Seminoles enter the game with a 1-3 record, including an ugly 0-3 record against their Atlantic Coast Conference foes.
The Tar Heels are at an undefeated, 3-0, with all three victories coming in conference play. North Carolina enters the game on a six-game winning streak.
The Tar Heels’ offense is led by sophomore quarterback Sam Howell (fun fact: He was at one time an FSU commit).
Howell leads the ACC with passes over 10 yards and greater (154), 30 yards and greater (30) and 40 yards and greater (17). After three games, Howell is 57 of 83 for 777 yards, 6 touchdowns and 3 interceptions.
Howell isn’t the only weapon on offense, Michael Carter and Javonte Williams have created arguably the best running back tandem in today’s college football.
The duo has a combined average of 232 rushing yards per game.
Carter is averaging 10.3 yards per carry and has two rushing touchdowns so far.
Williams is averaging 6.3 yard per rush and has seven total touchdowns.
Both are very capable receivers as well; Carter has 8 receptions for 81 yards and Williams has 6 receptions for 133 yards and a touchdown.
Watch out for junior receiver Dyami Brown, he leads the Tar Heels with 13 receptions for 240 yards and 2 touchdowns.
On the defensive side of the ball the Tar Heels are led by sophomore defensive end Tomari Fox. Fox leads the team with 4.5 tackles for loss and 3 sacks. North Carolina has 20 tackles for loss and 23 quarterback hurries.
Florida State enters this game with one certainty, Jordan Travis will be the starting quarterback.
Travis was one of few bright spots in the 16 point beat down last week by Notre Dame. He showcased some play making abilities that were really impressive.
Jordan Travis, a transfer from Louisville, was 13- 24 for 204 yards, a touchdown and an interception.
He also rushed for 96 yards and a touchdown. Travis’s 48-yard bomb to Tamorrion Terry late in the first quarter showed his play making potential.
The Seminoles still have a problem protecting the quarterback and opening lanes for the running backs.
All the sacks and pressures from the first three games can be placed into one of three categories: missed assignments, linemen getting beat, and poor quarterback play.
After last Saturday night, those categories have shrunk to two. But without a supporting cast on the front line, will it make a difference?
Freshman Robert Scott, getting his second career start at right tackle, showed some flashes and impressed me. The other four starters on the line couldn’t bust a grape!
Here’s a stat: No defense in the country allows more first downs than Florida State. The Seminole’s defense has been pounded on the ground and through the air. Playing defense has become a trending problem for every team in the entire state of Florida.
North Carolina opens as an eight-point favorite. This one will be close for the first half, then I see the Tar Heels wearing down the Noles. Final score: UNC 48 FSU 27.
FSU took another loss on Tuesday when their top linebacker recruit Branden Jenning decommitted. FSU currently has 16 commits and ranks 25 overall.
MCA Buccaneers Coach’s Show w Bradley Warren October 11
Out Of The Nest
By: JJ Lanier
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
“And like that…he is gone.”
It’s been 25 years since Kevin Spacey uttered that line at the end of “The Usual Suspects”, unveiling one of the biggest plot twists in cinematic history.
Yet, I can’t help but think how those six simple words may apply to the Atlanta Falcons personnel at the end of the season.
It was a foregone conclusion Dan Quinn would be dismissed at the end of the season. He did not make it that far.
The decision the Falcons front office, specifically Arthur Blank, will now have to make on the direction of the franchise- do they continue and try to make it with the roster they currently have constructed, or take a step back and begin to build for the future?
Atlanta has some big-name talent at some of the more prestigious positions, but they are more than a new coach away from being a playoff team.
That’s not to say the organization needs to dismantle everything from the ground up, but their focus needs to shift from trying to make one last run to making decisions based on what’s best for the team in the long term.
How that translation will look could go a few different ways. Does Atlanta take the Bill Belichick approach and start getting rid of productive players a year early as opposed to a year too late?
This way of making decisions certainly has proven to work in New England, but can prove to be a difficult sell to fan bases that haven’t experienced that type of success.
Do they bring in young, future starters through the draft and free agency, allowing them to learn from the veterans?
It’s an ideal way to go about things since it keeps fans happy and allows the younger players to grow.
The downside, of course, being most top tier players don’t want to spend their remaining years grooming their replacement; in most cases they’d rather be traded or released.
And let’s be honest, when I’m talking about the positions those choices will revolve around, I’m talking about Matt Ryan and Julio Jones.
Both of those guys have one, maybe two years left, before we start to see a precipitous drop in their level of play.
I completely understand if Atlanta chooses to go with whatever option suits Ryan and Jones best, they just need to make sure it’s not to the detriment of the franchise, moving forward.
Look, Atlanta’s in that unfortunate situation where they’re going to have to sacrifice the end of the careers for some of their most important players for the good of the franchise.
Again, that doesn’t mean they can’t be competitive, but it’s not easy to admit making the Super Bowl isn’t the main focus.
The NFL is full of teams that have made surprise runs to the playoffs and exceeded expectations. And I realize it’s a bit premature to start talking about next year when we’re not even halfway through this season.
It’s almost a guarantee things will look very different in Atlanta, beginning with a new coach.
Jason Bishop Show w Kipp Branch October 10
Jason Bishop Show w Kipp Branch October 3
The Good Ole Days
By: JJ Lanier
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
It’s hard to believe a quarter century has passed since the Carolina Panthers in Jacksonville Jaguars played their first NFL games.
I remember watching Carolina play Tampa Bay at Clemson with my grandfather and father because the stadium in Charlotte wasn’t completed yet.
I also remember all the arguments and debates going on about how you actually pronounce Jaguars; was it “Jag-wires” or “Jag-u-wars”? Speaking of which, how nice would it be if the biggest issue in sports today revolved around the pronunciation of a team’s nickname?
Even though I was only fifteen during their inaugural season and was more interested in playing sports than watching them, the one thing that always sticks out in my mind was how neither team really felt like your typical expansion team.
For instance, take a look at Jacksonville’s first five seasons; after struggling a bit their first year in the league (4-12) they made the playoffs four straight years.
Two of those years, 1996 and 1999, culminated in an appearance in the AFC Championship game.
There aren’t too many teams that can claim to make it to their conference championship game in only their second year in existence (hold onto that thought for just a minute).
As for the ‘99 season, a little bit of bar trivia for if/when we ever get to do those types of things again- Jacksonville only lost three games that entire season, all to the Tennessee Titans.
It’s almost as if that year’s Titans team was to Jacksonville like Alabama has been to Georgia recently. (Cheap shot towards Georgia fans? Yes. Unnecessary cheap shot towards Georgia fans? Absolutely.)
As for the Panthers, well, you probably remember or have at least figured out they too made the playoffs, as well as the NFC Championship game in their second season.
After a very respectable 7-9 record their first year, they won their division (the NFC West, which consisted of more teams east of the Mississippi River than west) with a 12-4 record and of course, the conference championship game, as I mentioned.
The Panthers success wasn’t as consistent during those first few years as the Jaguars- they didn’t experience another winning season until 2002- but they have had the advantage over the last decade and a half, and overall.
Since the ‘95 season, Carolina has had more wins (204-183), playoff appearances (8-7) and Super Bowl appearances (2-0), than Jacksonville.
I’m going to stop any more comparisons between the teams because that really wasn’t my intention when I started writing this.
Rather, I wanted to talk about, and give credit to, what both teams were able to achieve at the start.
Like basically all expansion teams, both rosters were full of players other teams didn’t want and rookies, being coached in this case by two first time head coaches- Tom Coughlin and Dom Capers.
It showed that with the right coaching and atmosphere players can perform at levels other teams didn’t recognize or just overlooked.
In a strange way it also helped contribute to today’s way of thinking, where if a coach can’t win within the first year or two, he’s gone.
I mean, if two expansion teams can make a conference championship in both of their second seasons, anyone should be able to, right?
Neither team may have had the overall success they were looking for 25 years ago, but they’ve exceeded most expectations, no matter where they called home, or how you pronounced their name.
Braves And Fish
By: TJ Hartnett
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
So, in a rare moment of fortune for a professional sports team housed in Atlanta, I get to write the following sentence: the Atlanta Braves have won the first round on the 2020 MLB Playoffs and are moving on to face the Miami Marlins in a best-of-five set starting on Tuesday.
The reason it’s such a treat to write that sentence, and the reason it’s momentous despite maybe not seeming worthy of such pomp and circumstance, is because I wasn’t employed by The Southern Sports Edition the last time the Braves made it out of the first round.
In fact, I couldn’t be legally employed pretty much anywhere at the time because I was 13 years old.
That’s right, the Braves snapped a 10-series losing streak when the swept the Cincinnati Reds behind some stellar pitching performances from Max Fried, Ian Anderson, and the entire Atlanta bullpen, which shut the Reds down over 2 games and 22 innings.
But instead of dwelling on the past, let’s instead look to the upcoming Division Series against the all-too-familiar Marlins.
There’s good and bad in facing Miami.
The most obvious good being the Braves’ record against the Fish in 2020 was 6 wins against 4 losses.
Normally Atlanta would play Miami almost twice as much, but even in a much smaller sample size, Atlanta has the edge.
But there’s bad, too. The Miami pitching rotation, and particularly the starting trio of Sixto Sanchez, Pablo Lopez, and Sandy Alcantara, is very, very good.
With a two-game sweep of the favored Chicago Cubs, only Alcantara and Sanchez have made appearances so far, but both were excellent.
Alcantara allowed one run in 6 2/3 innings, and Sanchez shut the Cubbies out over 5.
They’ll go toe-to-toe with Fried and Anderson, with Kyle Wright likely in the mix for Atlanta.
The parallels are actually pretty fascinating.
Both rotations are young. Anderson and Sanchez are both rookies that debuted halfway through the season.
Lopez and Wright both debuted in 2018 and showed only flashes of what they can do before this season’s more consistent success (Wright’s is a much smaller sample size).
Alcantara and Fried have become their respective teams’ aces despite only solidifying their spots in the rotation last season.
Plus, Fried is the oldest of this sextet at the tender age of 26. That’s a lot of inexperience for a lot pitchers that these two teams are relying on.
The big difference between these two teams and the thing that likely haunts the Marlins’ dreams, is the offense.
The Marlins have one that is serviceable; the Braves have arguably the best bats in the league.
They proved that to Miami, beyond a shadow of a doubt, last month when they hung 29 runs, an NL record, on the Fish.
Granted, that offense was slow to wake up against Trevor Bauer and Luis Castillo last week. Scoring just 1 run off of that duo in 13 innings.
They came alive at the end of Game 2 and scored 4 runs in the eighth, which is a bad sign for Miami, but they looked bad enough during the rest of the series to question whether or not they’ve gone cold at the worst possible time.
But speculation is just guesswork, and we’ll get to put that all aside and see what happens.
Brunswick High Pirates Coach’s Show w Sean Pender September 30
Frederica Academy Knights Coach’s Show w Brandon Derrick September 30
Glynn Academy Red Terrors Coach’s Show w Rocky Hidalgo September 30
