It's Notre Dame's bye week which means we won't have any opponent previews or Q&A sessions to do this week. Instead, let's take a look around at the new SB Nation United and some of the other quality work that's being produced from various other sites.
Over at Maize n Brew, a review of the Notre Dame game was written by HoldTheRope.
Here are some choice excerpts:
At this initial sign of pressure, Denard did what he often does in these situations. Instead of attempting to extend the play or opting to simply throw the ball away, he essentially did what amounts to tossing it up and hoping.
Ahh, Denard the improved passer!
Of course the highlighted play above is recounting one of Robinson's interceptions. The hope did not pay off that time as he tossed it up.
I know we didn't really get into it before the game, because it's often difficult to tell if someone has improved if you're not watching every snap, but was anyone outside of the Michigan fanbase buying the fact that Denard Robinson is an improved passer this season?
At Rule of Tree, the SBN Stanford blog, Todd Husak has a very good article on the program building efforts led by Cardinal head coach David Shaw.
Shaw was asked by Husak whether the Stanford program would go the way of Tennessee after they lost Manning or more like Texas after McCoy and Florida after Tebow. Shaw replied:
"Because we built this program to not rely on just one player. We have a system set up that allows for all of our guys to be successful, and we reloaded after Toby Gerhart and will do the same after Andrew Luck."
The gist of the story is simple, and it's hard not to agree. Stanford still has a lot of very good players and they are deep at many positions. It doesn't appear they are going away any time soon.
As true as that is, there will still be a lot of pressure on Stanford to recruit at a high level year after year. So far this cycle isn't looking great for the Cardinal but they did finish with a flurry of signings last February.
Conquest Chronicles has an ever-so-short recap of USC's victory over Cal last weekend that begins with...
Meh...I didn't see the game but followed it on Twitter.
I guess that's what one loss to Stanford does to USC fans?
CC did have a recap by trevor.wong that talked about 3 thoughts in their recent win.
1. The Trojans do have a running game
That's not good news for Notre Dame.
2. USC's defense is coming into its own
Perhaps, but Cal's quarterback is one of the worst in the country.
3. Matt Barkley has a sub-par performance for the second straight week
That's good news for Notre Dame.
Hey, did you want to know more about BYU? Well your best place to go for Cougar coverage is Vanquish the Foe, and they are even one of our independent brethren on the SB Nation network.
Anyway, VtF isn't very excited to see QB Riley Nelson start this week and they had THIS to say about it. I'm not really sure how Nelson beat out Jake Heaps, but I'm pretty sure all indications are that both players are close to awful.