Taylor just screwed up. Complete a pass for a first down with 16 seconds left. They have two timeouts but he doesn't call one. Let a few extra seconds run off and then they threw an incomplete pass so there's only 5 seconds left. They should have been able to run another play to try and get into FG range.

Touchdown UIW but it's being reviewed. Heck of a catch if it stands. I didn't think he was close to getting his foot down but he did. Checking for a bobble though.

And it stands. 66-63 UIW with 27 seconds left.

This game is nuts. IW with 1st and 10 from the Sac 21 with 33 seconds.

Sac recovers another onside kick. Sounds like a mistake by the IW player. Radio guy said he tried to jump over it because it wasn't going to go 10 yards. Why are you closer than 10 yards if you're not going to go for the ball?

Scoop and score for IW. 59-48 now with 8:30 left.

Sac scores to make it 45-41 then pulls an onside kick. They recover it and drive for another TD. They're up 48-45 with 10 minutes left.

Certainly looking like a who has the ball last wins situation.

Sac in a bit of trouble. Down 28-17 at half.

Correct. I'm fine with the current rule of giving the players the ability to transfer once without the penalty of losing a year of eligibility. I was just giving what I thought was a more fair alternative to how the rules used to be.

I've never thought it was fair that a coach can spend all this time recruiting kids to the school/program but they can just up and leave for the next job without sitting out a year while the kids, some of whom came to play for that coach, would be forced to sit out a year if they want to transfer.

Maybe that means you make the rule that if a coach leaves, the players can then leave without sitting out a year. Even that would be much better than the system we had a few years ago.

Also noticed that of the 8 teams left, 2 are undefeated and 5 have 1 loss.

The only team with 2 losses? North Dakota St.

They're lucky the game is on Friday. Saturday it would have been awful weather with both rain and a 20 mph wind.

Weirdly three of the four playoff games are on Friday this week.

Incarnate Word’s only loss was by 6 on the road to SE Louisiana, who won their first round playoff game. Hammered a 5-6 Southern Illinois team and also won at Nevada (they went 2-10 but it’s still an FBS win). Scored at least 31 in every game this year and over 40 in 9 of their 12 games.

Definitely cost us the win too.

Only 3. Sac, Montana St and SDSt.

All 7 home teams have won so far. Sac the last one left.

Looks like NDSt let Montana hang around for a while but then took control. A nice crockpotting. Just ran it down their throat with 40 rushes for 455 yards. Only 58 passing yards.

It's definitely up there as far as worst moves. Because they're stuck with him for a few years due to the dead cap money if they cut him. I don't know exactly how it works but if you cut a player, sometimes there's money left on the contract that goes to the salary cap for the next season. I believe the record dead cap hit is $40.5M for Matt Ryan this year with Atlanta. The league salary cap this year is $208M. If Denver cuts Wilson after this year, they'd have a dead cap hit of $107M in 2023. If they cut him after the 2023 season, they'd have a dead cap hit of $85M in 2024. After the 2024 season and it would be $49.6M for the 2025 season.

Then, like you said, there are the draft picks. They gave up the 9th overall pick in 2022, a 2022 2nd round and a 2022 5th rounder. They also owe a 2023 1st rounder (which should be in the top-10 and could be top-5) plus a 2023 2nd rounder.

One theory I've heard is that Wilson pretty much doesn't run anymore. And if you don't have to worry about a mobile quarterback running, it makes them easier to defend. He'd averaged at least 21 rushing ypg in 8 of his first 9 seasons. Last year he was at 13.1 and this year he's at 13.7. He's always been a good passer but he was never Tom Brady. He used his legs to buy more time before throwing. And teams had to be wary of his running. So if he's not running anymore, that means teams can drop an extra guy into coverage, which will make it harder to find open receivers.

Not trying to defend Hackett because it seems like he's done a poor job, but Russell Wilson is not good anymore and it's hard to win in this league without a good QB. Wilson has 8 TD passes in 10 games. That's not all on the head coach and the playcalling.

Things I'm hoping for next weekend:

Montana to lose by 40.
Sac St to lose.

I'm basing this purely off the schedule but Sac's game doesn't appear to be easy. They face Richmond who lost to FBS Virginia, #5 William and Mary by 11 and Elon (1st round playoff loser) by 3 in 2 OT. They also beat New Hampshire at home and Delaware on the road, both of whom won their first round playoff games.

"Truax [Bucknell AD] provided several reasons for UM’s inclusion ... challenged themselves in cross-conference matchups. — movielover

Boy they sure did challenge themselves when their three cross-conference opponents had a combined record of 9-24. You know who actually did challenge themselves? UC-effing-Davis. One of our non-conference opponents single handedly had more wins than all three of Montana's combined.

“UC Davis made a late push to get in there … and while they showed well, they only finished with six D-I wins … every other team we were talking about had seven.” — movielover

If only we had the ability to look a bit beyond just the record of the teams in question. If only we could, say, look at head to head results or the quality of opponents the teams played. If we could do that, we'd realize that despite Idaho having a better record than UC Davis, Idaho not only got their ass kicked at home by UC Davis but complied that superior record while playing a weaker schedule.

These idiots have no good reason to have left us out other than "well, they went 6-5 which is worse than 7-4 therefore we must not consider them". It's beyond awful. Like we’re not even asking them to pick between a team from the Big Sky, the MVFC and the CAA where they might not even have any common opponents. These are three teams from the same conference where we have a ton of data points to evaluate.

I thought two days later I was mostly over this and had moved on to the World Cup but nope. Clearly this would hasn’t healed yet.