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I Hate You, John Crist: Responding to reader comments from Week 1
By John Crist
Published:
Interacting with readers can sometimes be a risky proposition for writers. It’s easy to fall down a bottomless rabbit hole.
The anonymity of the internet is the primary culprit. Readers don’t have names or faces. They have creative handles and incognito profile pics. While most readers are happy readers, the comments section isn’t a place for happy readers.
I’m a columnist. It’s my job to have an opinion and express it passionately. If I’m doing it right, then half of readers will agree with me. Therefore, simple math tells us that the other half will disagree — oftentimes just as passionately. I’m not offended by this in the least. As a matter of fact, it’s welcome.
I’ve covered the Chicago Bears in the NFC North. I’ve covered the Florida State Seminoles in the ACC. Both have loyal and widespread fan bases. But in my role as senior writer for Saturday Down South, nobody brings it like SEC supporters.
So keep reading. And keep commenting. It’s healthy for both of us. Here are some of the my favorite comments from this past week:
To the dismay of many, I put LSU’s Leonard Fournette at No. 3 in my Heisman Watch and Georgia’s Nick Chubb in the On the Rise section.
Strictly looking at the statistics from Week 1, clearly Chubb (32-222-2) was more productive than Fournette (23-138-0). However, since we’ve only played one game, I didn’t want to wildly overreact based on a single performance.
Fournette was considered one of the frontrunners for the award before the start of the season, while Chubb (below) was a bit of a wait-and-see case — a tailback coming off a shredded knee is always a question mark. Sure, the Tigers were upset by then-unranked Wisconsin, but it certainly wasn’t Fournette’s fault.
As for Chubb, he was positively sensational in a comeback win over then-No. 22 North Carolina. He can absolutely win the honor, so look for him to creep into the Top 3 if he has a few more performances like that.
Writers are always accused of bias after writing something readers don’t like. But when they write something readers do like, all bias comments disappear.
It’s not that I don’t think the Alabama defenders are any good. The Crimson Tide are incredible on D both individually and collectively.
My point is that the system — and the coach, obviously — is more important than the players themselves. No matter who moves on to the NFL each and every spring, the following fall there is a replacement just as good or better.
A’Shawn Robinson was nothing short of a monster last season along the D-line. But now that he’s gone, Jonathan Allen is equally terrifying. Reggie Ragland was a force at inside linebacker. Based on what I saw in Week 1 from Reuben Foster, he’s an even more punishing tackler. No Cyrus Jones at corner. Did you see Marlon Humphrey (below) play?
Because coach Nick Saban has dominated the recruiting trail and stockpiled so much elite talent, he can survive any defection. He also maximizes most of said talent in college, which is perhaps why few of them develop into stars in the NFL.
And stop worrying about my rooting interest. It’s my duty to cover the SEC in unbiased fashion. My alma mater is immaterial to the discussion.
In what will be a weekly feature from me every Sunday during the season, The Hangover is a comprehensive review of Saturday’s action.
I excluded the Appalachian State-Tennessee and South Carolina-Vanderbilt matchups because both were played the previous Thursday. By the time The Hangover was set to run Sunday, those games were old news.
But since you asked — if your own way, I suppose — about the Gamecocks and Commodores, my takeaway is that the former might be a little better than expected and the latter is probably a little worse. Vandy didn’t exactly look great building a 10-0 lead, just like USC only marginally impressed coming back to win 13-10.
Until the ‘Dores find some way to throw the football, their defense will continue to crumble in the second half. As for the ‘Cocks, consider me optimistic that some sort of rotation under center with Perry Orth and Brandon McIlwain could work.
Am I ready to revise my outlook for either program this season? Not a chance. I believe they’ll both be home for the holidays.
Ole Miss definitely deserves some credit for taking on a program the power of Florida State in Week 1. The Rebels weren’t alone, though.
Alabama lined up at a neutral site with USC. Auburn began a home-and-home series with Clemson. LSU essentially played on the road at Wisconsin. To suggest that Mississippi was the lone school ballsy enough to risk starting 0-1 is simply wrong.
Yes, when the Rebs built that 28-6 lead on the Seminoles midway through the second quarter, I was one of many thinking we had a blowout on our hands — two-thirds of my postgame column was already written by halftime. The pace of the offense was stunning to watch, and the defense was shutting down Heisman contender Dalvin Cook.
However, you can’t conveniently gloss over the fact that Hugh Freeze had no answers for FSU in the last half and change. Chad Kelly (above) was ridiculously careless with the ball. A freshman QB making his first start threw for 419 yards.
At 28-6, Ole Miss did indeed look like a force to be reckoned with in 2016. But outscored 39-6 the rest of the way? Paper champions.
In my weekly QB rankings, I put LSU’s Brandon Harris sixth, a spot above Kentucky’s Drew Barker and a spot below Tennessee’s Joshua Dobbs.
The last thing I’m going to try to do is convince you that Harris played well against Wisconsin. As is usually the case, he was consistently inconsistent. And with the game on the line late in the fourth, he threw an unforgivable INT.
However — like my Heisman rankings — I don’t want to go overboard one game into the 2016 campaign. Last year, Harris finished a respectable seventh in the SEC in efficiency. His touchdown-to-interception ratio was a solid 13-to-6. It’s not his fault that coach Les Miles is stubborn and offensive coordinator Cam Cameron is shackled.
Will Harris end up being the sixth-best passer in the SEC this season? Probably not. But Austin Allen of Arkansas (eighth) and Luke Del Rio of Florida (ninth) need to build up their résumés first. They’ve started one career game each.
Sort of like Dobbs, Harris is what he is at this point. There’s no reason to expect him to blossom. He’ll likely fall down the list eventually.
John Crist is the senior writer for Saturday Down South, a member of the FWAA and a voter for the Heisman Trophy. Send him an e-mail, like him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter.
John Crist is an award-winning contributor to Saturday Down South.
