Bill’s Weekend Leftovers..

It’s still too early to know exactly what is going on in northeast Missouri high school football, but a couple good story lines are emerging.

Story Line #1--Hannibal appears to be pretty good at smashmouth football. They wore down another solid team in the rain Friday at Porter Stadium.

After an unpleasant second quarter put them behind 28-6, the Pirates buckled down and hammered out three scoring drives to tie the game and force OT.  The Blue Devils appear to be a pretty decent team but it looked like Hannibal wore ‘em down in the last 20 minutes or so. Evidently, Hurricane Isaac was in the Pirates corner. Seemed like it poured every time QHS had the football in the second half and then let up when the Hannibal offense came out.

Boonville is next.  They’re 0-2 with losses to California and Higginsville.

Story Line #2. Palmyra.  Looking forward to seeing Palmyra and South Shelby Friday night. Terry Ahern and I will have the call here on khmoradio.com. Palmyra is just about as close to being 2-0 as you can be against solid competition and still be 0-2.  A field goal at the end of regulation gave Macon a win in week 1. Palmyra lost 18-12 in 2OT in week 2 at Centrailia.  By the way, the Panthers beat South 28-14 in Palmyra a year ago. The Cardinals did not lose again until the Show Me Bowl.

Elsewhere…Missouri ran over Southeastern Louisiana at Faurot. It’s remarkable how the game day atmosphere has changed in Columbia since I started covering MU in the late 1980’s.  It’s rainy and humid and over 61-thousand show up for a guarantee game.  I can remember the Tigers not drawing that for Oklahoma and Nebraska.

I see where Mizzou DT Sheldon Richardson likened Georgia to “Big 10/old man football” in postgame comments Saturday night.  Thing is,  he's referring to smashmouth football and the upper reaches of the SEC are very, very good at that. And they're better at it than the Big 10 is.

I suspect that individually,  Richardson will be able to back up his comments. I hope the rest of the Tigers are up to that task too. I’m a bit concerned about the offensive line and the DB’s. We’ll learn a lot more about the ’12 Tigers beginning at 6:45 Saturday night.

The Cardinals are in a decent spot in the grand scheme of things as the season enters the home stretch.

Saturday’s 10-9 win in Washington was an attention getter. I liked most of what I saw and heard on Sunday despite the loss. On Monday, they took care of business against the Mets.

…Wouldn’t surprise me if the Cards have to go back to D.C. at some time in October.  Catching the Reds is a tall order. But, getting one of the wild card slots is very do-able assuming that Daniel Descalso or someone else can play decent defense at shortstop with Rafael Furcal done for the season.