Skull Session: Dwayne Haskins and Joe Burrow Get Wins, Michigan and Texas Get Dumped and Michael Thomas' Subtweet

By Kevin Harrish on September 3, 2018 at 4:59 am
Chase Young and Nick Bosa eat the quarterback in today's Skull Session.
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That game was a fascinating combination of far better than I could have imagined and also the sky was falling sometimes.

The offense did absolutely unthinkable things to the Beaver lads to the northwest. Dwayne Haskins somehow exceeded god-like expectations, Mike Weber looked like a dump truck with broom wedged onto the accelerator and Nick Bosa played about a half of football and still managed two sacks, two fumble recoveries and a touchdown.

But then you look at that box score and see "31" next to Oregon State's name and things get all confused. But I'm confident no defensive problem wasn't fixable and I'm not sure many teams could win a shootout with the Buckeyes any way if it came to that.

So I'm just going to sit back, and enjoy the ride.

ICYMI:

Word of the Day: Futz.

 HOP ABOARD. Dwayne Haskins heard all your preseason hype and then just cooly gave you what was quite possibly the best starting quarterback debut in Ohio State history.

The kid has absolute swagger, absurd confidence and all the skill to back it up.

From Bill Landis of Cleveland.com:

A fact from Saturday's game is that Oregon State might be the worst defensive team in the Power Five conferences, and every thing you'll read praising OSU's offensive outburst (77 points, 721 yards) needs to come with that clarifying point. But accuracy and ball placement matter whether you're covered or running free down the middle of the field. Haskins on Saturday showed a knack for putting his receivers in good position to catch and run.

"He did a great job with timing, the way he sees things develop offensively and getting us the ball out in space," receiver Terry McLaurin said. "He gave me a chance on that little hitch route to turn my head around and get the ball, and allowed me to be an athlete."

McLaurin ran for 75 yards and a score on that play to open the second half. A lot of that is because he's a superior athlete to the guys he was playing against, but Haskins also put the ball in a place where McLaurin could catch, plant and turn up the field.

"His anticipation is very elite," McLaurin said. "We know as receivers that he's a very good timing quarterback. We just gotta get in and out of our breaks really fast, and the most important thing is running out of routes because he's gonna put it on you."

Look, I know it was Oregon State, but if that's anything close to the offense we see the rest of the year, god be with our enemies.

I think the most frustrated I'll ever be with with Haskins is when I'm yelling "run!" at my TV as I look longingly at 10 yards of green space in front of him while he continues to scan downfield.

But if that comes with 300 passing yards a game, I'll take it without hesitation.

 JEAUX BURREAUX. As soon as I saw Joe Burrow chirping at some Hurricane players before the game, I knew it was a bad day to be a Miami backer.

Sure, Burrow didn't light the world on fire in his LSU debut. He went 11-for-24 for 140 yards and no touchdowns, but he managed the hell out of that game, doing everything he needed to do against a defense littered with future NFL talent to get the win.

Evidence:

The playcalling was understandably tight on Sunday night, but it like Burrow's got the trust of the coaching staff and the keys to the offense now, so maybe we'll see him air it out a little more in the coming weeks.

I think Joe is going to be just fine at LSU, and that debut was stellar. Now, he just has to figure out his new school.

It's going to be crazy watching LSU and Ohio State in a College Football Playoff Semifinal.

 THAT SCHATTENFREUDE. The only thing better than a 46-point win to start the season is Michigan and Texas Tom beginning the year winless.

Nearly simultaneously to Ohio State's carpetbombing of Oregon State was Maryland shivving Texas in the season opener for a second-straight season. A loss which has Tom Herman completely unconcerned.

From ExpressNews.com: 

Sure, it might have seemed like the Longhorns made all of the same mistakes they did last year, and that the offense showed no signs of progress from a season in which it ranked as one of the worst in the Big 12, but that’s only because we did not notice any of the details Herman and his staff did.

“We saw a lot of development,” Herman said. “I wouldn’t say we failed in that area.”

And although we know-nothings might have assumed it might be a unnerving to lose a second-consecutive opener to a moribund program that had spent the past month mired in a scandal, and was playing for an interim head coach, and had not beaten any ranked team aside from UT in 22 tries dating back to 2011, it’s actually not that big of a deal.

After all, when Herman was asked by a knee-jerk journalist to describe how big of a setback the defeat was for a program that wants so desperately to be taken seriously again that it made “Prove Us Right” the team motto, he answered, “Not very.

That entire column is absolutely fantastic and taught me a very fun fact: Texas has finished as many seasons unranked as they have in the top 25 over the past 34 years.

Then there was Michigan. Good lord, there was Michigan.

First thing's first, I take full responsibility for an extremely bad take of earnestly believing the Wolverines would handle Notre Dame without issue this weekend. I was catastrophically wrong and it will never happen again.

Second, it's getting harder and harder to wrap my head around just how gloriously incompetent this football team is on a routine basis.

Years ago, I thought the issue was just a lack of talent. Then Brady Hoke came and brought in some pretty talented classes, but still couldn't do anything. Then I thought it was the coaching. But then Michigan brought in their christ figure in his khakis and well...

That's extremely good company!

The Wolverines, led by Jim Harbaugh, have now lost eight of their last 16 games. For perspective, Ohio State has lost exactly eight games since Urban Meyer arrived in Columbus in 2012.

I used to make fun of Michigan years ago and a small part of me was nervous, thinking the clown show was short-lived and that the Wolverines would be back with a vengeance. But I'm now realizing there's really no hope for them.

It's not getting any better anytime soon – not when they're offering scholarships to Missouri State basketball commits and future Ohio State baseball players to bolster their roster. It's come to the point where disaster is the expectation, and it's absolutely amazing.

 SUBTWEET OF THE YEAR? Michael Thomas has almost built his entire social media brand on cryptic tweets and he was at it again on Saturday.

It sure sounds like he was just throwing extreme shade at his quarterback of two years on the same day that quarterback got cut from the NFL team they both played on. That's pretty damn frigid.

 THOSE WMDs. North Carolina fentantyl bust turns out to be 13 pounds of sugar... Couple built drive-thru window into mobile home to sell drugs... The real-life diet of Desmond Howard, who still has a six-pack at age 48... The jaw-dropping story behind an NFL coach's search for his family...

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