Okay...seriously, Wisconsin must be frozen right now

This is getting ridiculous. James wins two weeks in a row??? Obviously this victory is tainted for two reasons: a) after tempting the fates and submitting a team after games started last week Phil didn't even bother to turn in a line up this week and b) Shockley's injury prevented one of the best JLM (sorry Phil...no show, no letter) shootouts in recent memory from materializing.

James: 134
Matt: 117
Larry: 84

Larry pulled a James on the receivers and squandered 62 points from the RBs (31 each for McFadden and Norwood). Shockley's injury was unforeseen and unfortunate but Milner (0, chance James would have of surving a fight with the dude who married the chick he used to boink back in college), Swain (4, or as many wins as Grissom had in the 17 years I lived in Huntsville), and Taylor (5, sadly his best total since the opening game) pretty much blew. Choosing a kicker from uat didn't exactly pan out even though the freaking loser with a dollar bill taped to his leg (seriously, I hope an LSU or Auburn player just lights him up on a kickoff and stands over him and says something like "how much you worth now, dickweed?") kicked the game winner for the Luckiest Team on the Planet. Neither one of his FGs were over 40 yards so he only added 6 points. And while I certainly appreciate Larry's faith in uat's opponent, it backfired on him with a team loss.

I put together a solid effort minus Shockley's bum knee. The man, the myth, the legend known as Sidney Rice dropped a serious 31 point effort against the 'Dores (although if James hadn't picked him as well, he would have gone for 17 yards and no touchdowns). Combine that with the 58 from the RB position (27 from the new Brent Fullwood - Kenny Irons and 31 from McFadden) and I was looking good. All I needed was one of those incredible 24 point games from a kicker, with 2 extra points, 4 FGs from 39 yards and in and 2 50+ yard bombs. Alas, I got four extra points. Damn Vandy kicker.

James' squad was solid all around: 21 from Cutler, 31 from Norwood, 27 from Irons, 31 from Rice. The 40 point total from his wide receivers equaled his entire receiver output from the previous 5 seasons of JLM combined...I think. He even went out and had the highest scoring kicker. I blame the cold weather down here in the south. It got into the 40s last night! James' blood has thickened up in the tundra and he can handle these temperature changes much better than Larry and I (not even gonna mention Phil's name here...doh!).

So it's on to a new week for the JLM crew. And the race for first is on. May the best (or warmest) man win.

Now, onto something a bit more important. My thoughts on the LSU game. I think my soulmate is a guy named Matthew Zemek who writes for CFN. He mentioned two things in his column about the game that made me scream Saturday night and that haven't been mentioned in any other stories I've read. First, why didn't Carl Stewart throw the ball on the halfback pass??? As soon as he started drifting out toward the sideline I jumped out of my chair and said, "he's gonna throw it". Only he didn't. He just drifted along and finally tried to get back to the line of scrimmage. I didn't notice it on the replay, but Zemek said in his article that Mix was wide open on the five yard line. Second, and most damning in my opinion, why in the hell did Tuberville call timeout before the LSU kick?? The playclock was under :05 when the kicker started walking off his stance. They had no chance of getting the kick off. The LSU coaches were frantically trying to call timeout (their last one) and we bailed them out by wasting our last one. Of course this hurt us when Brandon committed a cardinal sin by throwing a pass in the middle of the field without getting it past the first down marker on our final drive. If we have that timeout, we can get two to three more plays off and get Vaughn closer on the last play. Granted, the way his luck was going he probably would have missed anyway, but you never know. A couple more thoughts...Stanley McClover is way overrated. He's good, but he's definitely no All-American. He's not even All-Conference. We cannot get pressure on the QB without blitzing and on obvious passing downs Gibbs prefers to drop a lot of guys into coverage. This is going to hurt us against Bama. Croyle can kill you if you give him time, but if you get in his face and hit him he gets pretty gunshy and makes some crappy throws. Ben and Devin and Courtney dropped several passes right in their damn hands that would have kept some drives going. Brandon missed some passes, but he also threw a lot of passes right on the money that were just flat out dropped. David Irons needs to stop jumping up and down and celebrating open field tackles after 17 yard runs. I'm happy he made the plays and all, but come on. They jut ripped off a good chunk of yardage on first and ten. Our defense is solid, but we don't have enough big play guys...difference makers. We didn't force a single turnover against a team that was around 100th in the country in turnover margin.

Next two weeks should be relatively easy. Ole Miss' defense is going to give us a few problems early, but we should roll them in the second half (30-10) and Kentucky won't put up any challenge at all (48-7). If Shockley is back and healthy then the UGA game is a toss up. If he's out, we should win by 2 touchdowns. If we win the next three games and go into the Iron Bowl 8-2 with a shot at winning the West, I think we win by 10 points or more. If we come in with a loss to Georgia and Bama has already wrapped up the West, I don't like it.