Before the media swallows this story alive, I wanted to put my point of view out on this, especially since my previous blog was so popular(I keed!).
The reason I believe that Crabtree is back in negotiations with the Niners has to do with a couple of factors neither of which involve a paycheck. The kid isn’t suddenly destitute or is having trouble paying his bills. Keep in mind he’s made almost $750k this year in endorsements while unsigned.
No this has to do with 3 very vital things that have come into play in recent weeks.
First, the Niners are better than most believed, and Shaun Hill has proven himself to be a more than adequate at getting the ball to his wide outs. If you don’t think this matters, you should dunk your head in a tub and wake up. If the Niners are 0-4 this isn’t happening.
Second, is I believe that the sponsors that Crabtree is working with now, are putting pressure on him. They are ok with paying up front money for now, but continuing that relationship with him would be tough without him under contract.
Third, and I think most important in this is, the tampering charges that have been leveled. At first I sort of dismissed this, but it seems now, things are more serious, and so getting Crabtree under contract, and shutting the door on that chapter would be of utmost importance to him, and the teams potentially involved.
From what I am hearing this has nothing to do with the reported contract demands. Honestly I don’t think it ever was. Would Crabtree have signed if they’d offered him a contract better than Darius Heyward-Bey, would he have signed? Probably, but that wasn’t the point.
I fully expect Crabtree and the Niners to work out a reasonable contract fairly quickly. I don’t think this is a situation where the Niners called Crabtree’s bluff and he caved. The situation has changed in several significant ways, and Crabtree and the Niners stand to benefit at this point, from a quick agreement. And don’t kid yourself, the Niners may be doing very well this year, but there’s no downside to adding a talented wide out to a team no matter how much trouble they give you. Just ask Denver.
I’m really glad this is going to get done, because the Niner franchise is really on the upturn and they can use his talent, and Crabtree is a great talent that the league deserves to see.

Wow, what a game!  Two very good teams going at it for 4 quarters.  I’d love to finish that with, “and the best team won” but that really wasn’t the case here.  Now before I get any hate mail because I’m a Sooner fan, hear me out.

When I wrote about the upcoming game, I pointed out that Stoops would wait as long as possible to announce a starter and that’s what he did.  This cannot be a good thing for Landry Jones.  You just don’t prepare the same.  Jermaine Gersham was on crutches on the sideline, and early in the game, Jones favorite target Ryan Broyles goes out with an injury.

All that aside, the Sooners were still up 10-0 at one point.  Then the Sooner coaching staff decided to nod off and leave huge gaps in the short middle of their zone defense and Jacory Harris exploited.  Thank Mark Whipple for that.  They dink and dunked it right down the field while the coaches made no adjustments.  Just more failed blitzes up the middle vacating the same spot.

I tip my hate to Miami for the win, but it was at home, against a team at only partial strength on offense, and here’s my small rant, a group of officials who couldn’t find their flags when they should have. I’m a let them play kind of guy in many cases, but one thing I don’t like is pass interference.  If you don’t call it, the offense has no hope.  And the Miami corners for most of the game seemed incapable of playing coverage without committing PI.  It was called a couple of times, but by my count 6 more of Jones incomplete passes were a result of PI on Miami dbacks.  That’s unacceptable by an officiating crew.  Let the teams decide the winner, not the officials.  Just like in the LSU/Georgia game, in this game the officials had a profound effect on this game.

So all in all, I am less concerned about Sooners, and more concerned about what effect a “loss” like this will mean.  They will tumble in the polls and the Canes will be media darlings yet again.  Because they won a home game, against an undermanned team, with a huge advantage by the officials.  Nothing I’d be proud of.

I said in my preview for this week, the team that wins this game will be the one that delivers the knockout punch.  And that’s exactly what LSU did in the form of a 33 yard touchdown run by Charles Scott.

For Georgia I spent most of the game thinking how I was going to write about how the play of Jox Cox was going to cost this game for the Bulldogs, but honestly he really rallied his team in the 4th quarter almost bringing them all the way back.  And no, that last pick doesn’t hurt him,because it was desperation.  But the story of this game really was the amount of skill players that LSU has, and how even the Bulldog defense couldn’t deal with the level of talent they were dealing with.

When I talk about the elite skill players on LSU, I will exclude quarterback Jordan Jefferson.  I realize he’s just a sophomore and has his best football ahead of him, but the fact is, if this team doesn’t win the SEC a lot of it could fall on the shoulders of this young man.  The team as a whole just seems to underachieve for the amount of talent they have, and that should translate to more dominance on the field.  Man per man, I’m not sure if there’s a team in the country with a better group of backs and wide receivers in the country.

For Georgia they too have a couple of really great skill players, but like LSU are hampered by inconsistent quarterback play.  Their defense is really solid all over the field but you could just see that they couldn’t matchup with the athletes for the Tigers.

At some point, the discussion of LSU as national champions is going to come up.  I suspect it’ll be next weekend, when Florida come to town.  A less than 100% Tim Tebow could leave the door wide open for Les Miles and the Tigers to take control in the SEC.

That was one of the most entertaining games I’ve seen in awhile.  Both teams played a ton of great football on the offensive side of the ball and neither played much defense.  Let me say this, I do not think Jake Locker is NFL ready.  Not even close.  I think that another year with his new coaches and his new system, and I have no problem putting him among the top QB prospects for the 2011 draft.  But this year, he’s just not in the conversation.

On the other hand Jimmy Clausen is NFL ready.  He throws a great deep ball, plays in a pro style offense and has really grown into(meaning physically) a bigtime quarterback.  That Notre Dame team is deep at the skills positions, but it’s Clausen that makes it go.

Back to the game.  This one had so much offense, you have to realize the Fighting Irish only punted twice.  This was a case where both team’s defense played tentative all game long and the offenses exploited it.  You can’t fault the offenses in this game, but anytime more than 80 points are scored the focus for next week for both teams has to be why neither seemed to be able to stop anyone.

Overall a fun game to watch and just puts me more on the Jimmy Clausen bandwagon.

I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so.  I tweeted yesterday about this game with a very interesting fact.  In college football a team that blocks a punt wins 88% of the time.  And no team has blocked more punts than Frank Beamers Virginia Tech team.

Well lo and behold, the Hokies block a punt for a touchdown, and it carries them to a dominant win over the Hurricanes.  This game was far more one sided than I expected.  The Hokies were able to come out and establish the run game early and maintained it in a game that took place in a steady rain.

On the other side, the Miami run game got stuffed in a hurry and they just could never sustain any drives.  Any Heisman votes Jacory Harris got last week, he probably lost as he was never able to get in any sort of rhythm.  Granted Va. Tech QB Tyrod Taylor didn’t have great numbers either but considering the weather, it was to be expected.

This game was a great example of how a physical team can negate the advantage of speed.  A big part of that came from the weather, but make no mistake the Hokies came out to beat the Hurricanes down, and they did just that.  The most interesting part of this will be how to does the U rebound this week when the Sooners come to town.  Did what Tech did to them linger or will they rebound?  Regardless a team that was all over the national spotlight, not only for the team, but for a quarterback who was all over Heisman ballots, went into a hostile environment and laid an egg the size of the Orange Bowl.