Happy Monday everyone! I have officially pulled myself out of the hole I crawled into after my alma mater got embarrassed on national television Saturday night. Usually I talk about the best of the weekend, but this week I’m going to talk about the worst thing of the weekend, possibly even the entire football season. If you haven’t guessed it by now, I’m going to lead off with the 78-0 blowout Michigan delivered to Rutgers… in a road game.

Michigan treated Rutgers like the computer set to rookie difficulty in Madden. A 78-point defeat at home for Rutgers is pretty horrible, but that’s not even the worst part of all of this. I could talk about how Rutgers didn’t get its only first down until the fourth quarter. I could even get into how Michigan just force-fed the ball down Rutgers’s throat, racking up 481 rushing yards on 56 carries as a team. I could bring up the fact that Rutgers was also outgained 600-39. By the way when I went to look up this box score Google asked me “are you sure?”

Everything I just went through could easily have been the worst part of a 78-0 game. Not on Saturday, because Rutgers couldn’t just get embarrassed and be done with it. Nope, they had to lose that game with over 200 recruits in attendance. I’ll type that again and put the whole picture together for you. Rutgers lost to Michigan 78-0 while hosting 200 potential recruits. So unless Chris Ash is the greatest salesman in the history of the door-to-door sales that is college recruiting, this recruiting class is going to be DOA. Michigan already had a stranglehold on the top recruits in New Jersey, but after Saturday, Michigan just roped off the New Jersey borders and announced “This is ours” as Jim Harbaugh planted a giant maize and blue flag in New Brunswick.

Okay, now that I got that one off my chest, lets get into some of the best of the weekend.

Toronto Sweeps Texas, But The Brooms Might Not Be Done Yet

The MLB Postseason got into full swing this weekend. While I wish things had been a little more competitive between Toronto and Texas, things could be far from over in the remaining three series. The Blue Jays have been on fire since the start of the playoffs and are hitting home runs at a historic rate as a team (seven different players have gone deep for Toronto so far). My only question going forward is, can they stay hot after a few days off? That may be a legitimate fear from the Blue Jay faithful north of the border.

Rain forced Game 3 between Boston and Cleveland to be postponed until today. Games 3 and 4 are both in Boston so the door is open for the Red Sox to make a series out of this, which keeps the Jays on ice for a little longer. So far though, the Indians have flat out been the better team in this series. Game 1 saw Terry Francona throw the kitchen sink at Boston and walk away with a win. Game 2 was the game that Boston had to win, but alas the ideal game script went against the Sox as David Price was chased early en route to a 6-0 win for the Indians.

On the NL side of things, the Chicago took control of its series against San Francisco jumping out to a 2-0 lead. We get quite a treat tonight with Madison Bumgarner going up against Jake Arrieta in Game 3. “Big Game Mad Bum” takes a 23-inning scoreless streak in elimination games into tonight. I still think this is the year for the Cubs, but I can’t remember the last time Bumgarner has lost a playoff game.

The most competitive series so far was unsurprisingly the Dodgers and Nationals. Los Angeles and Game 1 starter Clayton Kershaw were able to edge Washington in the first game of this series to steal home field advantage away. The Nationals evened up the series yesterday before both teams hopped on a cross-country flight to California for Game 3 today. I like this series to go the full five games for an epic conclusion and a berth in the NLCS.

Texas A&M outlasts Tennessee in Double OT

The game of the weekend honors goes to the double overtime thriller between Tennessee and Texas A&M. This game looked like it could have gotten out of hand early in this game as the Aggies jumped out to a 21-7 lead after the first quarter. The Volunteers weathered the storm and engineered another incredible comeback to force overtime. Unfortunately, it was not in the cards this time for Tennessee, who had made a season out of winning these close games. Looking ahead in the SEC, both of these teams will get Alabama in the coming weeks. I think this is Alabama’s best chance to go down in the regular season. So either we’ll be talking about upheaval in the SEC, or anointing the Tide as the SEC champions around Halloween.

Monday Night Football Preview

As usual, I save the NFL recap for Tuesday/Wednesday, so I’ll touch on the Tampa Bay-Carolina matchup on Monday Night Football. The big storyline here is the absence of reigning MVP, Cam Newton. Derek Anderson will assume the starting quarterback duties while Newton is still recovering from a concussion he sustained last week. Obviously, this is bad news for a Panthers team that needs a win in the worst way, especially with Atlanta pulling off a big upset in Denver.

The Panthers still have a fantastic front-seven on defense to lean on to make big plays, but if they can’t generate pressure on Jameis Winston, it could be a long night in Carolina. Mike Evans is not Julio Jones, but he can be a massive problem for the recently exposed Panthers secondary.

While Tampa Bay has some potential in its offense, the defense will have to find a way to stop Kelvin Benjamin and Greg Olsen. Derek Anderson is a capable backup and showed he can spread the ball around before throwing the pick-six that ended the game for Carolina last week. Tampa Bay’s secondary actually might be worse than Carolina’s.

With question marks on both sides of this matchup, there is no way this line should be as high as it is. I’m going to go with Tampa Bay (+5.5) tonight although I do believe Carolina will win the actual game.

Enjoy the games tonight, I’ll be back tomorrow to recap Week 5 of the NFL. Follow me on Twitter @thereal_jmooney and go like the Shooting the Moon page on Facebook.