FanHouse Curtis Painter

With Fantasy Football season ready to kick in high gear, FanHouse is here to preview each and every team -- one per day until we've done them all.

Meet the ...
Team under Peyton's leadership for the first time without Tom Moore*. That's right. Peyton's only offensive coordinator for his entire 11-year career has been the venerable Moore. Moore's first year at the helm was Manning's rookie season, so the two grew together. It's going to be interesting to see how Manning fares without his mentor calling the shots.

Of course, Manning's obviously cerebral enough to deal quite well with the transition, and the Colts have enough weapons in their arsenal to remain the high-octane offense we're used to seeing every fall.

---

---

Who moved to the head of the NFL class during the draft? Find out with FanHouse's team-by-team 2009 Draft Grades.

I often chuckle at the amount of time people spend whining about how you can't accurately evaluate the draft immediately. We know that. We also don't know exactly who is going to do what in each season, but that doesn't stop us from giving preseason predictions or fantasy football advice. Sometimes you just have to have a little bit of intestinal fortitude and put yourself out there. The reader demand is there, so we'll provide the supply.

One of the few cases (along with teams like the Steelers and Patriots) where it's probably not a good idea to say anything bad, though, is when it comes to Bill Polian and the Colts.

In the first installment of the end-of-season report card on the Big Ten, we looked at the schools in the first half of the alphabet. Know what letter is in the first half of the alphabet? That's right. F. But then, all the other grade letters are in the first half of the alphabet too.

Even though it wasn't a great year overall for the conference, there were plenty of bright points and hopeful signs and "wait until next year" moments which should have Big Ten fans excited for next season. Either that, or we'll all look like Charlie Brown did five seconds after Lucy teed up the football. But I digress. Let's take a look at the teams in the second drawer of the Big Ten file cabinet, shall we?

It didn't even take him a half. In the third quarter, Iowa's Shonn Greene has 134 yards on 18 carries, meaning no one has held him under 100 yards this season. Turnovers, penalties, and special teams woes have kept Purdue in the game, however. The Hawkeyes have missed two PATs, fumbled once, and have committed two drive-sustaining defensive penalties.

Purdue's Curtis Painter lived up to some of his preseason hype right before halftime, leading the Boilermakers on a quick hurry-up drive which ended with a 12-yard touchdown pass to Desmond Tardy. Iowa's Daniel Murray, hero of last week's game, added a 45-yard field goal early in the third quarter.

Greene isn't close to the all-time record of consecutive 100-yard games. That belongs to Ohio State's Archie Griffin, who had 31 in a row from September 1973 to November 1975. Greene only has one year of elegibility remaining, so he can't catch Griffin if he decides to return for his senior season. He can tie the NCAA record of 12 100-yard games in one season, currently held by Oklahoma's Quentin Griffin and Chadron State's Danny Woodhead.

Greene won't get any Heisman love, because as we all know, college football's most outstanding player is always on a team in the national title hunt.

UPDATE: Greene finished with 30 carries for 209 yards and 2 touchdowns in Iowa's 22-17 victory.

Every Thursday, Pickin' On the Big Ten breaks down action across the conference. Except for the weeks when it just breaks down, period.

Okay, sure, but what about the rest of the conference? Once again, I get it; nobody outside of State College wants Penn State to win out and make it to the title game, particularly if it comes at the expense of a one-loss champion from the Big XII or SEC. The Coke-Bottle Glass Guy must pay for the coaching sins of the Sweater Vest Guy, and the whole conference suffers until, you know, they actually win something.

So I'm guessing that whatever SEC teams wind up in the Capital One and Outback Bowls will have it penciled in as an Insta-Win; ditto the Big XII and the Alamo Bowl, the likely destination for whoever is unfortunate enough to win the North Division. I don't know what to say, other than that it's hard to argue with somebody when they're probably right. Who knows? The conference might not even win the Motor City Bowl this season, given that it's likely they'll be facing a bevy of honked-off Ball State Cardinals.

Blame, of course, is like fruitcake: Somehow it seems like there's always enough to go around. Who do I blame for the fact that the Big Ten keeps getting force-fed giant bowls of Scorn Flakes? Go back to the first paragraph.

Joe Tiller is, of course, retiring at the end of the year. Either that or he's transplanting his brain into Danny Hope's unsuspecting body, as Hope was clearly cloned from one of Tiller's jowls and set upon this earth to perpetuate Purdue's manifset destiny to go 8-5 every year. But either way ol' walrus eyes won't be prowling the sidelines at Ross-Ade any more, and that's a little sad.

So it's good that Tiller got to bench one last senior quarterback:

Purdue has switched quarterbacks in the fourth quarter of its matchup with Penn State (the Boilermakers are down 20-6), pulling record-setter Curtis Painter in favor of Joey Elliott. Head coach Joe Tiller threatened to make this move two weeks ago against Central Michigan before Painter responded nicely in a victory.

Painter joins a long line of Purdue benchees from Brandon Kirsch to Kyle Orton to whoever the poor sap was in Tiller's first year in West Lafayette. This presumably ends his Heisman campaign, too.

I wonder if Mel Kiper is hastily deleting all traces of "Curtis Painter is a first round draft pick and better than Chase Daniel" from ESPN.com yet?

ECU Will. Not. Go. Away.

After a fairly unpalatable morning set of games, we had some intriguing matchups this afternoon; Georgia, East Carolina, Oregon, Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech -- the latter by default because the ACC is horrible -- all had BCS aspirations heading into the third week of college football.

Four of those teams still do, but it wasn't for a lack of trying to fail.

Georgia needed a last second interception by Chris Smelley (Dugout Name and license plate: SMLLYCOX) to overcome what really is looking like a disturbingly stout South Carolina defense (it wasn't just NC State, we swear!). The 'Cocks held Knoshown Moreno to just 79 yards on 20 carries even though he punched one in, and Matthew Stafford was hardly effective. But the Dogs held on and their BCS chances prevail.

Exciting recap I know, but that's because I spent most of the afternoon watching a shoddy YouTube-like feed of East Carolina squaring off against Tulane. ECU AD Terry Holland had oh-so-generously offered to play the game in Greenville as Ike, et al approached the coast (what a guy, huh?) and Tulane oh-so-obviously declined the invite.

God bless you, Week 3. Finally, it's time for football with outcomes less predictable than Al Davis' wardrobe or what happens when you leave PJ Hill alone with a Twinkie. Here's 10 games to watch other than Ohio State-USC.

Kansas vs. South Florida, Friday 8PM

Why We're Watching: Velour. Please, Mark Mangino, bring back the velour. We'll plant a velour tree, write velour ballads and pray to a velour god who wears gold chains and sleeps on a circular bed (Which is probably James Caan).

Then there's the football, as two previously not-ready-for-primetime teams meet on national television in a game that's as much about this season as a dipstick on the state of two climbing programs. Quarterbacks Matt Grothe andTodd Reesing are the constants from last year's teams, but both the Bulls and Jayhawks have to prove that they've successfully rebuilt key areas of their teams. South Florida lost two four-year starters at cornerback to the NFL draft and replaced them with Jerome Murphy and Tyller Roberts, two players with two career starts entering the season. Kansas lost its leading rusher and its leading receiver, but seems to have no problem filling the holes with Brandon Anderson-styled powerback Angus Quigley and an array of receivers (Reesing has completed passes to 11 different players).

But the matchup of the game will be South Florida's George Selvie against red-shirt freshman lineman Jeff Spikes. Selvie led the nation in sacks last year, but hasn't had the chance to so much as touch a quarterback inappropriately this season. He's due, which should alone send a shiver down Bulls' fans like they just hired Isiah Thomas to run the team. And if that doesn't strike enough fear, consider this: When he was a kid, George Selvie had a Buick fall on his head. If you think that doesn't make you an unstoppable badass, ponder it some more with the entire Wisconsin offensive line sitting on your head to add to the realism.

If South Florida wins, they likely won't play another ranked team this season until they meet West Virginia in December. [ Ed. Note -- The Bulls edged out Kansas on a dramatic last-second field goal. ]

Curtis Painter is mediocre

Ah, mediocre football. The annual rite of late summer where fans of middling programs congregate and tell each other things like "if our offensive line is solid then I don't see why we can't go to a New Year's Day Bowl." Soon, of course, love and hopes are, well, amended.

By "amended," of course, we mean "discarded in favor of bloodthirsty savages on sports talk radio complaining about the coordinators and accusing the team of not wanting to win." It's a strange reaction to a 7- or 8-win season, of course, one that ends up in a warm climate in late December (grisly exception: Motor City Bowl, war-torn Bosnia Detroit). The fans never seem to get it: it could be so, so much worse. Look at Minnesota last season.

While Michigan, Ohio State, and (usually) Penn State represent the perennial powerhouse typification for the Big Ten, the conference usually hosts quite a few more mediocre programs. 2008 is no exception. Let's look at some of the programs that, let's be honest, don't stand a prayer of taking the Big Ten crown this season.

This was way more difficult than it appears. Overrated players are usually at glamor positions on glamor teams; with Beanie Wells definitively not overrated, Penn State's general lack of star power, and everyone predicting doom for Michigan there was little to go around. So, like, I had to go with concepts. But not for #1.

1. Curtis Painter, QB, Purdue

I've posted on this before, when Mel Kiper put Painter in his top ten senior prospects for the NFL draft and a small portion of the logic center in my brain died. Last year, Painter was the beneficiary of a silky-soft schedule (nonconference: ND, Eastern Illinois, Central Michigan, Toledo, and Central Michigan again; in conference the Boilers missed Illinois and Wisconsin) and still couldn't put up good passer efficiency numbers, finishing 46th. His YPA dropped almost a full yard from his sophomore year, and when it came time to play the big boys Purdue's offense completely disappeared. And now he's lost Dorien Bryant, Selwyn Lymon, and Dustin Keller. No matter: Purdue's got a Heisman campaign going and Kiper's lost his mind. This is madness. Painter's immobile and erratic; he's not a wizard at reading defenses; his conference TD:INT ratio was 11:7. He'll be better this year, but closer to average than excellent.