5 Thoughts for August 27, 2016

1. Seattle Seahawks: Through three preseason games, the three clear signals we have are, (1) Christine Michael has matured and is now a very good running back, having chosen to take the difficult route to getting where he is now; (2) The team is in a much better place than they were all of last year, with depth all around and a much improved offensive line; (3) It looks like Seattle won the lottery for best value in the undrafted free agent market, picking up TCU's Trevone Boykin who might be the best backup Carroll's ever had in Seattle.
2. Tony Romo: When he went down against Seattle, all I could think of was that he should consider retiring. He wasn't hit hard nor did he land on the ground particularly awkward, which makes one worry that 2016 may mirror last year with Romo breaking a bone and forced to sit out the remainder of the season. At least this year they have a really good rookie in (Mississippi State) Zak Prescott. Today, it was revealed that he had a compression fracture in his back and will miss 6-10 weeks. It might be time to retire before something far worse happens on the field.
3. Hawai'i vs Cal: The college football season has officially started. Hawai'i and Cal in Australia was a crazy offensive affair. My five observations are (1) Cal's defensive front four might not be so good as they generally didn't seem to be able to control the line of scrimmage; (2) Cal's offensive line might have a lot of experience but they had trouble with blitzes and run blocking, which might not be obvious from the stats but much of their run yardage came from second-level failures in the Rainbow Warrior defense; (3) PAC-12 officiating is still bad, getting calls mixed up; (4) Both teams used senior quarterbacks, but whose passes were frequently off target; (5) Cal used a hurry-up offense, getting in 89 plays, and it worked against a team that was in the bottom 20% of total defense last year, but seems likely to work against them in the PAC-12.
4. Why USC-LAT Poll Is Weird: Sure, I buy the 538 argument that you can simply add 5 points to the USC-LAT Poll to compensate for house effect (bias towards GOP) and still see how their poll mirrors the national aggregate. But what is weird, is that the people polled consistently believe that Clinton will win, even as many of them obviously express a preference to vote for Donald. In the nearly two months they've been tracking people's expectation of the winner, Hillary is sitting at her highest point (55+%) and Donald at his lowest (~39%).
5. USC-Alabama: I've watched the Alabama spring game a couple of times now, and I think it goes without saying that its offense is not at the same level as last year, but especially without Cam Robinson at left tackle; if he plays against USC the offense will be okay, but without him they'll stink. The true freshman Jalen Hurts is a really good dual-threat quarterback and would make their offense look a lot better, even if Robinson isn't playing, but some of his throws can be way off the mark and he's willing to take the sack far too often. The defensive front seven are stout, particularly the linebackers + 'jack' position. Their field goal kicking game sucks big time. Looking at the matchups, I think Alabama's defense has the edge against USC's offense, but USC's defense under Clancy Pendergast has the advantage over Alabama's offense (yes, really). The oddsmakers all seem to think the over/under is 54 with Alabama a 10-point favorite, but I think the over/under will be 31 with USC and a 3-point win (or 3-point loss). I just don't see how Alabama scores 30+ points with the state of their offense, even if they rely solely on the run game. On the other hand, I can see USC's receivers possibly taking advantage of Alabama's secondary, especially over the top with Max Browne, particularly from the play-action pass. The difficulty will be establishing the run against Alabama's front seven to make the play-action pass work, but if they are able to do that, the Trojans just might shock the country and roll up a 30-14 win against the Tide.