Editor’s Note: Raider and his lovely bride were moving this week, leaving us unable to give you people our witty and important thoughts on each match-up. Raider was kind enough to give his thoughts on the team. Which I mean to publish yesterday but it seems I forgot to hit the publish button. So I’m not smart.
–the following is all Raider’s Thoughts
Before I begin, I’d like for all of us to take this opportunity to point and laugh at Philip Rivers. Go ahead, find some video on the interwebs of one of his three INT’s last night, I’ll sit here and wait until you return…
Show us your lightning bolt indeed!
Often as sports fans, it’s not too terrible of an idea to see our beloved teams not as they are going to look this season, but what they can become in the future. Mind you, if you’re a fan of Peyton Manning’s team, it doesn’t really matter if you think Brock Osweiler is going to be an All-Pro or not. It probably does eventually, but the here and now is a little too good. Your team is winning right now and winning without the help of late game interceptions by Tony Romo.
(That actually would be a great cologne. “Interceptions by Romo”. The scent would be a representation to how Jessica Simpson and Carrie Underwood may smell and would also have that hint of football disappointment and various other first world problems. Get on that, Calvin Klein!)
Consider for a moment that I’ve been chomping at the bit for a good two months to discuss how excited I am for the upcoming Warriors season. A starting lineup of, say, Andrew Bogut, David Lee, Andre Igoudala, Harrison Barnes and Steph Curry is as good as anything you’ll find this side of South Beach, am I right? Mix in some Klay Thompson off the bench, maybe a little Jermaine O’Neal and the legendary Kent Bazemore here and there, and all of the sudden you’ve got a team to reckon with. While they might not be good enough to beat the Spurs, OKC, Memphis, the Rockets or even the Lakers, I really think this collection of Golden State Warriors will be a team that might be good enough in a season or two to win a cham—boy, I almost said the “C” word. It’s so foreign to me to associate that word with this franchise.
But what do we make of the Utes now after the UCLA game last week and what they could become a year from now. I don’t remember a football game on any level where I’ve seen a quarterback have so many passes tipped and subsequently picked off. And not being a coach in person or on the Internet, I don’t really know what to make of that, except for the fact that the Bruins are the class of the South division. Does it mean that Travis Wilson is better running with the football than throwing the football? Or that a RB other than Lucky Radley had carried the ball on 3rd and short midway through the 4th quarter when the Utes were only down 3?
(Now is as good of a time as any for me to mention that I just directly violated my own hard and fast rule about not being “Playcalling Guy” or “Personnel Guy”. You know the type and every fan base has at least a dozen or so of them. While I’m not necessarily advocating that someone other than Radley should have been given the carry or even that the play call should have been different on that play, I can’t help but be curious as to what would have happened if Cassius Marsh hadn’t ran him down short of first down yardage.)
Honestly, I sort of went into that game with a similar hope to the Stanford and Oregon games that we wouldn’t get completely blown out. Well, that not only didn’t happen, I do feel a lot better about the direction of this football program and that at least talent wise, we are closing the gap. Even a crappy pre-Christmas bowl game for this team would feel pretty good after the buzzkill of last season. And who knows, there’s plenty of opportunity for the Utes to end up at 5-7 again or worse, just as there’s ample chances for the Warriors to rip my heart out and drop kick it all along the new Bay Bridge. (The Raiders, Giants and Sharks have done it to me constantly, it’s just typically the Dubs remove all the suspense and often underperform from the very outset). But if there’s a shred of moral victory that originates from this defeat, it’s that maybe things aren’t quite as bad as us eternal pessimists say they are?