Snarkastic

Everybody's beatable.

I feel...very fine. (No, stay with me here. It's not in my nature to get out from under the little black raincloud I operate in, but I'm trying to work through this.)

It took me the hour and a half drive home from Anaheim with Evil Nine turned up to eleven to figure out why. I was f'ing buoyant, almost bouncing in this bubble of serenity that survived the somber handshakes and exchanges of business cards following the alumni party (my new black cards got a lot of glances askew--I assume these were all Tee Martin detractors), half a dozen sneering phone calls from Georgia alums on the drive home, and the realization that my prediction of winless conference play looms closer by the week.

Then I remembered yesterday's picks:

Every word of doubt from the Georgia faithful is reverse-sandbagging at best, condescending head-pattery at worst. Colquitt and Nick Stephens represent the best hopes for a close one, but unless either of them can, respectively, provide his own punt coverage or pass to himself (or, hell, PLAY MONTARIO HARDESTY AND LENNON CREER FOR THE LOVE OF FRIED DOUGH), it won't be enough. Tennessee two weeks ago = Very bad football team. Tennessee tomorrow = Very bad football team plus human field position apparatus and untested shades of legitimacy at quarterback. The sum of their parts will not save us. Count on: Another maul-y day from an appallingly talented Vol defense, Georgia playmakers soldiering through injuries, and thousands of heavy hearts trudging back to Knoxville after dark.

Not much in the way of surprises. I'm all right, because the game didn't come with any real system shocks. This team bounced back about as far as could be expected inside of a week. We were headed into Athens with a quarterback straight out of cellophane to play a pissed-off perennial rival fielding superior talent and coaching at almost every level, and our boys played their best game of the season by a light-year. My face refuses to fall, because what was messing with my head wasn't the losing streaks. We've had plenty of those. What we haven't had, since I was old enough to know what I was talking about, is such an intractable quarterback problem. The doomsday question today, in my head, wasn't whether to scratch a W or L in the final column, but rather, Is Nick Stephens The Guy?

Things For Which I Am Not Sorry, Exhibit #249A.

He is. Nick Stephens is the answer, finally. And if we're smart, we will revel in this for just a little bit and then get to work on the rest. I'll sit down here in a little bit and rewatch this thing, and tear my hair out over our rushing stats and time of possession and the continued inexplicable refusal to get the ball to Hardesty and Creer. I'll rail against the new clock rules for paragraphs that will mercifully never see the light of day (again, absolutely no illusions here as far as Georgia--they're the better team; we knew that this morning and we'll know it tomorrow, and I'm not saying it would've made a difference, but the rule changes are ruining fourth quarters week after week). There will be hollering on talk radio, runs on pitchforks and torches, but I cannot shake the fact that I feel better about this team than I have since the third quarter of the Rose Bowl tilt, including following our two wins. We played Georgia hard. Nick Stephens is The Guy. We may just be onto something here.

Posted by Nastinchka at October 11, 2008 06:30 PM