Wishing Paul James the Best

You hate to hear the letters A, C, and L mentioned when talking about any football player, but it's very disappointing to know that 2014 will mirror 2013 in that we won't get to see Paul James realize his potential over a full season for the Scarlet Knights after a very promising start.

But the helmet that Paul James took to his knee in the second quarter wasn't an isolated incident; the number of low blocks and tackles from the Midshipmen was obvious even to me watching on a small laptop screen (special thanks to TimeWarnerCable for cutting out TV service in my area all weekend). If this Navy team were from any school other than a service academy, they'd be getting a lot more shit (and penalties) for their cut blocks and other attacks on their opponents lower extremities.

Even Kyle Flood couldn't help pointing this out after the game:

"You have to be really smart about how you operate because playing Navy is a very physical football game [...] the way they block on offense, the way they attack your legs on offense with your defense, even the way they tackle and take on blocks with their defense, it just creates a lot of very violent collisions and we're going to have to make sure we're being really smart here as we go through the week so that our bodies recover."

Overall, teams tend to have losing records the week after playing Navy, so it's good for the Scarlet Knights to have Tulane at home this weekend before facing Michigan, but Paul James will be missed all season.