The last 2 weeks we have witnessed a completely different
team.
It took a few seasons to get here. The system had to take
hold. Pillars had to be firmly implanted before the could be built upon.
Last season the team showed flashes, including a win over a
big in-state rival. Sure, it didn’t end the way we wanted, but still, progress
was there.
This season, the team has continued to trend upward. There
was the loss to a big conference opponent early, but hey, we played them tough.
The last two weekends, the offense has looked great, and the QB seems to really
be coming in to his own.
Yes, life sure is great as an East Carolina fan.
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East Carolina is a middling state school in Greenville,
North Carolina. Their head coach is Ruffin Mcneil, a LONG time assistant coach
who got his shot at a head job when his boss at Texas Tech, Mike Leach, got
fired and the then-coach of his alma mater, Skip Holtz, son of satan, left to
coach USF.
Really, that is what ECU is. A school so mediocre that it a
stepping stone to a job like USF.
And yet the last two weeks East Carolina has taken it to, in
succession, Virginia Tech (fresh off a road victory against Urban Meyer’s
Buckeyes) and North Carolina (by the score of 70-41).
Here is why I bring this up: more than I could hate 1,000
Duke football teams combined, I FUCKING HATE that right now, East Carolina has
a better football program than Miami.
Could Miami, in any scenario, beat UNC and VT in back to
back weeks?
Maybe, but I hate to think of the Pyrrhic cost that would
entail.
We have reached a stage where NOTHING good can happen
without some sort of opportunity cost.
Defense looks decent against Louisville? Doesn’t matter,
because the offense is going to look like the JV squad playing the varsity.
Offense finally looks good against a good team? Doesn’t
matter, because the defense is going to revert back to last year’s form!
By the way, Nebraska ran the ball on 37 of their last 40
plays…and Miami was still playing 2 deep safeties. Good call guys, the scheme
TOTALLY works. Don’t change a thing.
It’s gotten to the point where it is even happening in
recruiting. We can’t get a kid to commit without another kid deciding he would
rather go elsewhere.
It is all enough to make you want to stop giving a shit. But
then there is East Carolina. A mediocre program, with a mediocre coach, with
mostly mediocre players, and yet they have figured it out. They add to the
frustration, but also lend hope.
Could East Carolina beat Alabama? Probably not. But there is
not a shred of doubt in my mind that they would beat us, and they would give
Saban’s Boys a hell of a better game than we could.
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On to Duke.
Look I hate that place for all the same reasons you do.
The cheerleaders are BY FAR the ugliest in the ACC.
The campus is beautiful but SO BORING.
The students are either Jersey douche bags who couldn’t get
in to Harvard OR engineering / math geeks who will all make more money than me.
The basketball team is great and obnoxious and omnipresent
and arrogant and beautiful and ugly and pretty much everything you have ever
read about them is true – good, bad or indifferent.
They play up the “Harvard of the South, Stanford of the East”
card which is true but also IT’S NOT LIKE THEY HAVE A TON OF COMPETITION. Seriously, who else is there? Vanderbilt? Emory? Morehouse? See how quick that list thins out?
Their football team plays in a glorified high school
stadium, and they talk about “doing it the right way”, which is one of those
phrases that should always trigger a red flag in your brain.
(A couple of years ago, people were praising Roger Goodell,
Adrian Peterson and Ray Rice for “doing it the right way”.)
Duke is a basketball school which happens to have a pretty
decent football program.
Last year’s run to the Peach Bowl was pretty objectively cool,
if you can take away the “I hate everything about Duke” glasses for a second.
David Cutcliffe is an amazing coach and always has been,
with a great mind for the game, even if he does look like Franklin the Turtle.
Duke is going to put a lot of points on this defense. That's a fact.
Brad Kaaya, if this playcalling stays as good as it has been the past 8 quarters, is actually going to be the guy that keeps us in the game. 4 games in, and he already has "the look". If there it anything that I am going to take away as a positive from these first 4 games, it is that Kaaya appears to be every inch of what we thought he was as a recruit.
I hate that Duke has a great coach.
I hate that we don’t.
I hate that I don’t expect to beat teams like Duke anymore.
And I hate that even though we are only 4 games into the
season, there is NOTHING that makes me think this season isn’t over already.