CFB Handicapping – Florida State Seminoles vs Notre Dame Fighting Irish
Two programs prone to re-live their 1980s-1990s glory days meet up in this year’s Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando.
Two programs prone to re-live their 1980s-1990s glory days meet up in this year’s Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando.
The annual Army-Navy game is as American as hot dogs, apple pie and foreclosures. Okay, that was below the belt. But the two military academies have been locking horns for the past 81 years.
The Green Bay Packers are now the league’s only perfect team and the way they have been playing they might stay that way for a while. Most of their wins have been blowouts with the team that got the closest being the Panthers in week 2, they lost by just 7.
The Atlanta Falcons had to have a victory last week against Carolina and won by 14 despite being outgained for the contest. They are still behind the eight ball in the divisional and conference playoff picture and need to get away from their win one, lose one pattern after six games.
The Chicago Bears won on Sunday night against a horribly troubled Minnesota Vikings team.. At 3-3 they are staying alive in the early NFC playoff picture but they have a lot of work to do if they want to challenge the NFC North leaders Detroit and Green Bay.
This is a great matchup between the two most pleasant surprises in the league this season. San Francisco had absolutely no letdown last Sunday after coming back to beat Philadelphia the previous week. They destroyed a pretty good Tampa Bay team, winning by their largest margin since 1987 I believe.
The Bears got back to winning last week, taking a close one against rookie sensation Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers. It was somewhat of a stunning result given they were beaten big time in the stats.
Tennessee is the most pleasant surprise in the NFL season in my books. I thought this was a team that might win 6 games this year and heading into week 5 they are already half way to that total. Included among them was a victory over the Baltimore Ravens by 13 points, a Ravens team that beat Pittsburgh by 28 in week 1.
The Denver Broncos are 1-2 but all of their games have been close, decided by three points or less. Last week they were winning late but Matt Hasselbeck was able to engineer a Titans TD drive in the closing minutes for Tennessee to steal the game.
Minnesota is the most surprising of the group of teams that is currently 0-3. Not because they are any good but because in all three of their games they held double digit leads only to give them up over the course of the second half and lose – most recently to Detroit in overtime.
After two games the Wahawks sit at 1-1 but it is hard to gauge this club right now. They were shutout by Florida State in their opener and followed that up with a 35-7 pasting of Grambling State.
It may not be the headliner this weekend, but this PAC 12 vs. Big Ten matchup at Illinois has all the makings of one of the best games of the week.
Soldier Field will be the site of an interesting matchup between the Wisconsin Badgers and the Northern Illinois Huskies this Saturday. The game is being billed as the “Soldier Field Showdown II.”
When Washington and Nebraska meet this coming Saturday in Lincoln, it will be the third time these teams have met in the last year.
The Iowa Hawkeyes look to bounce back from a disappointing triple overtime loss to Iowa State. It was a game that the Hawkeyes were expected to win, but in the end their defense let them down.
Boise State had little trouble with Georgia in the opener but I am not sure if they were helped in their pursuit of a BCS title game bid by the Bulldogs close loss to South Carolina last week.