All right, here we go. Season number two, episode 10, 10, 10, 10 of the Shawn Mackey show. Gonna get into some NCAA talk, Cubs and Bears. Gonna start out with the NCAA last weekend, Saturday, September 27th, week five. Of course, we saw some more upsets. We see that the college football writers had to go back, and re-rank some things and we're gonna kinda get into that a little bit here as we talk. Illinois pulls out a last second victory against USC. 34 to 32 on that kick. At one point had a 31 to 17 lead in that game. 

Fourth quarter, I believe, kinda let that melt to the point where they had to come up with that last kick with a few seconds left to go on the clock. That only bumps them up one spot from 23 to number 22. Some other upsets that we might have seen. Virginia, course, upsets Florida State. Virginia at that point was ranked 24 and Florida State was ranked 18. Ohio State, now I know they continue to stay at number one. Who else are you gonna put there?

But I look at Ohio State versus Washington. And to me, they struggled in that game a little bit. You know, Washington's a little bit better of a team than Ohio State thought. And it was kind of a close game there for a little bit, you know, for a while. And then again, you only pull out a 24 to six victory in that game. That was a tough one for Washington. I thought that they could have beaten Ohio State.

Number 10 Alabama upsets Georgia. Number 12 Georgia. Well, that's not an upset. Number 10 ranked Alabama. I take that one back. So we did see a few upsets last week. Now let's get into these college football rankings. The AP, the top 25, they've got Ohio State still at number one. Oregon moves up five spots, four spots to number two.

Miami comes in at number three, Texas didn't even play last week and they bump up a spot from number 10 to number nine. That's why I say I don't really ever understand these things. guess it gives the writer something to do. But I know if you look at the the power rankings, they're completely different.

I was looking at those and I was like, I know I saw that Texas moved up to number nine and then I was looking at the power rankings and they were ranked the number 12. So those are a little bit slightly different ESPN's college football power rankings.

They've got Ohio State number one, Oregon number two, Miami number three, Ole Miss number four, Texas AM, Oklahoma number six, Indiana number seven, Penn State number eight, Texas Tech at number nine, Alabama at number 10, Georgia number 11, and then they have Texas at number 12. Scrolling all the way down the power rankings, I believe have the Illinois Fighting Irish at

So that's a little bit different from the AP Top 25. I know if I were to look at CBS, it might be a little bit different than those. It's just crazy to me. And I came across this article which explains the power rankings or the top 25. And you look at the college football playoffs and

Since 2014, there's only been one clear cut winner who started number one, finished number one and won the national title. In 2014, Mississippi State was the number one college football playoff ranked team. At the end of the season, Alabama was number one and Ohio State wins the national championship.

2015, Clemson number one, starts number one, finishes number one, Alabama wins the national championship. 2016, Alabama starts number one, ends number one, Clemson, a flip flop there from the previous year, Clemson wins the national title. 2017, Georgia number one, first number one, Clemson ends up number one at the end of the season, Alabama again wins the national championship.

2018 day one, Alabama day last Alabama national championship Clemson, basically a repeat of 2016 back when Clemson was having some of their best years. Uh, the only time it looks like here in 2020, Alabama started the season. Number one, ended the season. Number one. And they win the national championship 2021 Georgia, Alabama, Georgia, 22 Tennessee, Georgia, Georgia.

Ohio State in 23 is Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan and 24 Oregon, Oregon, Ohio State. So I don't know, I guess it gives the writers something to do. That's why they keep having these rankings. They got to have something to do. We got to we got to rank everybody that way we can figure out who's going to go to the playoffs. This, that and the other thing. I don't know. It's just a weird bird to me. I kind of try not to pay any attention to that. I just kind of watch the games as they happen.

during the week or the weekend. Well, usually starting Fridays, you know, getting some you're getting college football spread out all across the week anymore. Now, to me, it used to be a beautiful system when I was growing up. It was like high school football was Fridays. College football was Saturday's and professional football was Sunday and Monday. Now we got the Thursday games in the NFL. When college football is over, we get some of the NFL games on Saturday and I get it. It's all about the money.

broadcast networks have to have something there that they know a lot, if not the majority of people are going to watch to bring in that TV revenue. All their halftime shows, pregame shows are getting more intricate and bigger and more grandiose as they say across the last few years here. So

Coming up in week six, let's see what we've got going down in week six for college football. Some notable games to look at. Texas, My Texas does play Florida. 2.30 p.m. on Saturday, you got number 16 Vanderbilt with number 10 Alabama, at Alabama. Minnesota versus Ohio State.

Miami hosting Florida State who dropped all the way to 18. Number 13 LSU host South Carolina. Let's see what else we got. And, uh-oh, Illinois's got to play number one, Ohio State. That's a tough one. This right here, that's a game. Now you're playing number one, so if you lose to them, I don't think you should drop out of the top 25.

But we'll see what the writers decide to do if Illinois loses. Now they are playing at Illinois, so that would be interesting to see and how that plays out. But, you know, offensively, Illinois looked good against USC, but defensively, of course, it didn't help that Illinois fumbled twice at the goal line last week. So that was a tough bird for them to handle. Came out victorious, though, so we'll see how.

Week six plays out coming up in a couple of days, Saturday. One, two, three days from now, right? So that'll be it for the NCAA this week here on The Shawn Mackey Show. Let's take a look at the Cubs. They win their first playoff game in many years. I think the last time they won a playoff game that wasn't the World Series was in the NL.

CS against Los Angeles back in 2017. I know the last time they were in the playoffs was the COVID shortened season of 2020. And that was when we first kind of got that the best of three series going on. And if I remember correctly, the Cubs got ousted by Florida in two quick games. Wasn't looking good for the Cubs yesterday at the very beginning. know they took a early, Padres took an early one to nothing lead on an air by

Pete Crow, Nico Horner tries to short hop and tag on that throw, of course, because it hits the ground, they give PCA the air. Kind of stayed that way until about the fifth inning. So. But the Cubs with a nice comeback victory, putting that insurance run on the board late in the game to end up with a three to one. Victory to lead the series one game to nothing.

Let's go back and take a look. Now, I'm interesting this. I'm interested to see what happens here. Cade Horton has no doubt been one of your better pitchers. Matthew Boyd's been there right with a Matthew Boyd has a solid outing outing yesterday for the Cubs. Can't take that away from him. And I was worried. You know, what do you do here? Right. Game two. You win this game, you move on. All right.

By all accounts, based on how your season went, when Cade Horton went on the IL, you would have looked to Shota. Shota gonna come in today? I know Andrew Kitteridge is starting that game. And he pitched yesterday an inning for the Cubs. So is Kitteridge gonna be a starter? Craig Council is one of those guys that likes to have that one guy go in the first inning, kinda hopes to stretch.

your your your legit starter that you bring in an ending number two, a few more innings. So do they go to show to or do they go with Colin Ray or Jameson Tyone? Maybe not Tyone. think he pitched the last regular season game, so I doubt he's had the rest, but it is the playoffs. Now, my concern is showed a showed a showed us he's given up.

I wanna say like nine home runs in his last three games and I'll have to look at the game logs to see what he has.

Let me see. Now I know he said, and I talked about this last week, he had to stop giving up the long ball. Well, no shit, Shota, right? The league's figuring out. You're still not bad.

Why can't I find the damn stats right off the bat? Usually when you put in a player's name, you know, it gives you it gives you the stats and it that's because somehow my fat fingers pulled up. Injury, which that's not what I want. So all right, let's look at his game stats. Last three games would have been 17. No.

September 14th verse, the devil rays gave up two home runs. September 19th verse, the Reds gave up three home runs. September 25th versus the Mets gave up two home runs. September 8th against the Braves gave up one home run. But here's the deal. In every single one of his starts since August 10th, he's given up one or multiple home runs on the season for the regular season. He's given up 31 home runs. That's not just the league figuring you out.

There's something there that has shown a tail off in productivity from Shota. So if he is the guy that you bring in in game two.

You know, let's hope the Cubs can jump out to an early lead in that game, and maybe it doesn't really matter. Kind of sucks that Kate Horton went on the I.L. at the end of the season there. You know, I would have loved to seen Horton and Boyd your number one, number two starters. Maybe the Cubs sweep out, win two out of that three and move on to the NLDS. They still have a chance. If they're going to get hot, if they're going to start doing some things, they're doing some things offensively.

It was a kind of tough to watch yesterday. I don't remember exactly what inning it was. I want to say it was the sixth, maybe the seventh inning. Cubs get the first two runners on base right away. No outs. Ian Happ comes up, hits into a double play. You got a runner on third. Kyle Tucker, first pitch swing, pop up, end of inning. That was rough because you had a chance there to do something good. At least it wasn't like the Yankees, I think, ended up yesterday in that game. They had that lead early. Boston comes back.

takes that two two to one lead. And I think I saw a stat where it said the Yankees are only the second team in the major league baseball in a very, very long time in the playoffs to have the bases loaded with no outs in an inning and not come away with a single run. They had a grand opportunity there and they do not capitalize whatsoever on that opportunity that they had. So.

The Dodgers shit, the Dodgers and Reds, the Dodgers almost gave that game away. I was I, you know, I'm not a big Dodgers fan and I was like, I was rooting for the Reds there. And at some point, you know, they had a 10 to one lead. Then it was 10 to two. Next thing you know, it's 10 to five. Reds got the bases loaded. Tyler Stevenson was up at that point. And I thought, man, this guy gets a knock here. You're looking at 10 to seven, right? Maybe he pulls out some magic, hits the grand slam in the eighth.

and you end up it's 10 to nine ballgame. We know that didn't happen. Dodgers get out of that inning and then they secure the victory. Shohei Atani with a couple of bombs in that game. So, you know, the guy continues to produce. That would have been a guy I would have loved to see the Cubs drop a whole bunch of millions on, but I don't think the Cubs, they weren't ever going to go up as high as 700 million. No way.

Know how Cubs, don't spend money. So we'll have to see at the end of this season how the Kyle Tucker deal plays out. Does he stick around with the Cubs? Do they offer him some money? You know, last big contract the Cubs had after Jason Hayward was Dansby Swanson. Defensively, Dansby's pretty good ballplayer. Offensively, hot and cold, hot and cold, hot and cold, hot and cold, hot and cold.

You know, sometimes he hits, sometimes he doesn't. I think he's running in at a.

to something was he hitting? Well, in the playoffs, 333, but I think he ended up the season under 250, I want to say.

Yeah, 244. 24 homerun, 77 RBI is not bad for your shortstop, but you know, for 170 million, I think the dude needs to produce a little bit more. But 244 is probably right there around the league average in batting average in this day and age. I miss the old days when the league batting average was above 280, you know, 275, something like that, 280. And it's just dropped off consistently with.

All the fireball pitchers out there just hitting hundreds of miles, know, a hundred miles an hour on the gun consistently in games. So that's, you know, that's how that plays out. So it'll be interesting to see what happens this afternoon. October 1st in Cubs game two versus the Padres. It looks like Andrew Kitteridge is going to start. Does he go more than one inning?

And let's see, who do we have? Who's going to go for? San Diego, Dylan Cease. 8 and 12 with a 455 ERA. I mean, that was a guy you had in your organization, moved across town to the White Sox, then the White Sox let him go. And so now we've got Dylan Cease on the mound for San Diego.

So I'd like to see how this game plays out this afternoon. Very, very interesting to me. Now, onto the meat, so to speak. My Chicago Bears, the Chicago Bears. dare I say, I'm starting to come around on Caleb. I had said in the past, I didn't think he would be a guy.

too many mistakes, you know, and it was last season and I know he had Matt Eberfluss as a coach. They had that whole debacle with Shane Waldron at offensive coordinator. Thomas Brown kind of takes over those duties after Waldron's let go. But I didn't, I didn't really see a lot of improvement from Caleb Williams last season from week to week to week.

There would be decent, brilliant games. And then there wasn't. I know in that Washington game, he did have that long drive, gave the Bears the lead very late in the game until that disastrous Hail Mary pass. And I'd been on Tyreek Stevenson ever since that game. But I will tell you what, and I will own up to this. Tyreek has shown me something in the last two weeks. We know the game he had against Dallas and he looked pretty, pretty damn good against

The Raiders now that Raider game that I that had me all up and down, up and down with that Raider game because there was not a lot of mistakes by Caleb Williams that I did see some improvement there with him. And especially that last drive, he puts them in that position with that Thomas Jones touchdown or Thomas Jones. Jesus Christ. The I'm going back way back on that one. Deandre Swift.

The Bears take the lead, but defensively again, where's Dennis Allen's aggressiveness? And is it because so many starters on the defensive side of the ball are injured and not playing? Because I still, you know, in that last drive, he was bringing the pressure, but Geno Smith was just kind of taking those eight, nine yard little completions and just moving Vegas down the field.

and he gets Vegas into field goal position. And if it wasn't for the blocked field goal, the Bears lose that game. I don't wanna say it was luck. When you see the interview with Blackwell, who had said that Scott Daley had been watching film and he's like, hey, just before their long snapper is set to snap the ball on PATs or on field goals, he moves the ball slightly. So Josh is lined up there, he's looking at that ball.

The second he sees that ball move ever slightly, he knows that snaps coming and he gets a great jump off that edge and just obliterates that field goal. And I'm to tell you what I was posting on Facebook during that game. Again, I posted where's Dennis Allen's aggressiveness is this a, and I think it boils down to the fact that if the Bears defense does have four or five starters out because of injury, again, that takes me to this is a Ryan Poles issue.

This is an issue where he doesn't put the right players on the field for the coaches to be successful. Right. So I was posting and I was getting pissed and I was I was trying to be cool and not posting anything. And then I had a couple of posts in there and then boom, that blocked field goal. And I'm like, holy fuck, I take it all back. Retract, retract, retract. The Bears end up with that win to put him to two and two on the season. So

I don't think we got a game until next Monday night. The Bears are on their by. So hopefully that'll get some guys healthy. Kyler Gordon, probably not Jalen Johnson. But Bears have had some issues in linebacking core. I like what Noah Sewell has been doing. He's been stepping up playing really good, good football on the defensive side for the Bears. So one of the things I did want to address and holy crap, it just slipped my brain.

My old ass brain. What was I what was I going to talk about here? With the bears. shit. There's probably a good reason to take notes and actually have notes. I'm a podcast guy who just I kind of think about stuff. I watch the games and then I put the stuff together in my mind. And then I need to really start taking some notes. Maybe that'll help me. this is what I want to talk about. So.

Darnell Wright is out last week. You start Theo Benedetta. Max Crosby was single handedly tearing that offensive line apart from both sides of the field. He was a one man wrecking crew. Braxton Jones gets benched. Braxton Jones gets benched.

like the move because what did I see after that? You move Theo Benedet over to left tackle in place of Braxton Jones. You bring in, you bring in Ozzy, Ozzy Trapilo and he against Maxx Crosby, 40 snaps, 26 passing, 14 run, zero sacks, zero quarterback hits and only two pressures. That offensive line got better the minute you took Braxton Jones out of the game.

You moved Theo over to the left side and you brought in Ozzy. Now Darnell Wright comes back healthy after the bye. Ben Johnson did say he had the right to, he reserved the right to make changes during the bye week if he saw fit. They gave Braxton Jones the job. He was coming off an injury. They said he kind of deserved the position to see what he could do, but he's slowly been going downhill each week. He gets benched. The Bears offensive line does a whole hell of a lot better. I don't think Theo Benedet or Ozzy Trapilo is going to upseat Darnell Wright. Darnell Wright is still pretty much a stud over there on the right side. If you do bench Braxton Jones, it'd be interesting to see. Do you go with Theo Benedet or do you go with Ozzy Trapilo?

Now know I think his senior year at Boston College, to pillow like started 12 games or something at right tackle. He has played left tackle. They did give him a bunch of reps in spring at left tackle with the first team. And then eventually they kind of moved him out of there. So I'd be curious to see if you keep Braxton Jones on the bench. Who do you go with? Trapilo or Theo Benedict? Now I hadn't seen any grades for Theo Benedict. Let's see if we can pop up some grades on Theo.

Theo Benedet gets graded at 38.7 and Ozzy doesn't really say what his grade was, but he did have to go against Max Crosby. He did commit one penalty, doesn't allow any sacks. He did allow two pressures and two hurries. He started at right tackle, shifted over to left during the game and it was his first NFL start filling in for injured Darnell Wright.

So, Bears grades against the Raiders. Best and worst. Let's see who had the best. Best offensive grades. Running back Kyle Monangai, guard Joe Thuney, center Drew Doman, wide receiver Rome Odunze, and wide receiver Olamide Zaccheaus. Worst grades. Let's see, that was offense. Best grades, Kevin Byard, two picks, Tyrigue Stevenson.

I'm coming around, coming back. The guy's showing me he has what it takes to continue, right? He's changing his ways and he's playing some really good ball. Defensive tackle, Andrew Billings, Montez Swett and Josh Blackwell best out defensively. unfortunately, worst offensive grades, Theo Benedett, Braxton Jones, Cole Kmet. Ozzy Trapilo graded out.

At 47.9, according to this article on Bearswire as being one of the best in tight end Durham Smythe. Not good, even though Trapilo had a really good game against Maxx Crosby.

Defensively, Dayo Odeyingbo, Jonathan Ford, Tanoh Kpassagnon, Nahshon Wright and Tremaine Edmonds. Ooh, that's not good. Tremaine Edmonds is usually a guy. He's usually a guy you can count on week in and week out. So it'll be very interesting to see what happens if Bears are on a bye this week. Their next game is let me check here. Monday, October 13th against those commanders that beat them with that dreaded, dreaded Hail Mary Pass. So it looks like that's all we got for this week's episode of the Shawn Mackey show. Like I said, you know, I know when I'm season two, episode 10, got 35 episodes in, still trying to get better every week, still struggling with setup and equipment, but I'll get that figured out hopefully here coming up soon. 

But stay tuned for an episode coming up this weekend and hopefully by that time we're looking at the Cubs being in the NLDS and I think they would end up having to play the Brewers or they know I think they get the Phillies. Let me check. Let me check MLB. MLB bracket.

Who do they get? Who do they get?

So, so nope, do get the Milwaukee Brewers. Now that would be beautiful. Brewers have struggled in the playoffs every year. They don't make it very far. Cubs can beat San Diego. Go on to take the Brewers. Brewers do have probably home field advantage there. think they've got it all throughout the playoffs, but that, that I would love to see the

Cubs ousting the Brewers from the playoffs to go to the National League Championship Series. Today is going to be a defining moment for that. The worst that that can happen is that the Padres tie it up. If you end up going to Shota after Kitteridge and the Padres do beat you. Who do you go with for game three?

Could be anyone's guess. We'll see you on the flip side. Peace.