Illinois Hokie's Recent Comments

I see we're still critiquing the outfits of the string quartet on the Titanic...

Keenan Thompson might be a good pick.

Also, aren't there projections that landing Landon Dickerson would move us into the top 25 recruiting classes? This isn't a disaster of a class, it just doesn't have the traditional high-4 anchors our classes usually have to tip us into the top 25. I'd rather have a stable of high 3 and low 4 star WRs coming in than a bunch of 4 star "athletes" who will never find a spot.

Whenever I meet an Iowa fan (and I meet bunches, living in western Illinois) I always have a lot of respect for them because you know they love their team for the right reason. And they're also never an embarrassment, either in terms of record or scandal. They are what they are, and their fans love them for it.

Yup, exactly. That's the idea I was trying to preface my original comment with.

That's the thing, though. The comment was VT can't sustain long drives. That's demonstrably false. We're averaging 1.7 long touchdown drives per game. The problem is not that we cannot sustain a drive. The problem is we're either getting an 8 play, 75 yard touchdown drive, or we're punting after a 5 play, 19 yard drive.

I think it would actually be easier to accept if we were just bad. But it's way more infuriating than that. Because just when you're ready to throw your hands up and exclaim that suck, we go 80 yards like we're playing against a junior varsity team.

If we were just bad, at least we would know what we are. But instead we see flashes of greatness that we can't sustain drive to drive. It's the false promise that slowly kills you inside. Like I said, mediocrity is it's own special hell.

I noticed that. An while I get that TWIS is definitely not a quality source of football analysis, I think this is indicative of the trap we've fallen into.

I pointed out on another thread, we have twelve touchdown drives so far this season that covered 75+ yards. We have the ability to produce long, sustained drives. The problem is, we can't do it with any consistency.

Casual football fans and talking heads don't know what to do with inconsistency. Then narrative is that a team is either good or bad. So a team like us, whose primary problem is consistency, gets the rep that we are inept on offense. And the narrative sticks, because that's how we look on about half our drives. The other half, when we have our success, gets written off as a fluke, because, as the common logic goes, if we were good, we'd be able to do that all the time.

Mediocrity is it's own special kind of hell, because people just don't know what to make of you.

Last two games decided by a total of four points. I don't think they're clearly the better team, I think we are essentially equivalent. Results on the field would support that. Based on the last two years, they're the type of team we'd win five out of ten against.

You are correct. Slye is 8 of 12 on the season. Of the four misses, three have been from 45 yards or longer.

It should be noted, this isn't a bad thing. It's a byproduct of the fact that we are doing very well at scoring TDs in the red zone this year. We're currently 21st in the nation at red zone TD percentage, which means Slye just isn't getting a lot of easy, short field goal attempts.

Bold prediction time. Starting Brewer adds a wrinkle Duke isn't prepared for, as Loeffler opens up the playbook and uses things he wasn't able to with Motley. Duke is caught flat-footed and VT wins comfortably.

OMG I want to give you all the legs. I had totally forgotten about Sasha cutting Abraham in that scene.

Now if they still maintain that scratches kill it'll just wreck the internal consistency.

Yeah, most of the time, if a person's dying of a walker bite, it's a situation where they're getting eaten alive, so the death is actually blood loss, not infection. But there's been smaller bites that result in due to infection rather than blood loss.

• Jim from season one. Probably the best example. It was a small bite in a non-vital area. Developed a fever and eventually died.
• Dr. Candace Jenner (TS-19). We don't know the extent of her bite, but Edwin Jenner said she agreed to be monitored during the progression of the infection, which led to her death.
• Sophia. This one is more speculative, but the only visible bite when she come out of the barn was on her shoulder, nowhere near jugular vein or the corotid artery. The bite we see on her shoulder wouldn't be fatal on its own.
• Andrea. This one's maybe iffy, but when they found her, she had stopped the blood loss but they commented that she was burning up with fever. Blood loss makes you cold, not hot. A typical medical infection wouldn't have had time to set in yet.
• Bob Stookey. Very similar to Jim. Nothing about the bite should have been fatal, same fever and perspiration.

I think the producers have tried to establish pretty clearly that a bit is fatal in itself, without actually having a Jenner-like scientific authority verify it onscreen. I suspect season two of Fear the Walking Dead will confirm.