Best of the Bull-ogosphere: September 14-21

There's been very little news coming out of Tampa during the bye week. It actually felt like the offseason all over again. But now that we're getting back into a groove (the next week off isn't until Halloween weekend, and that's split up a little by the awkward Wednesday night game with Rutgers), it's time to get caught up.

-- Skip Holtz talked with the media after Sunday night's practice. One of the focuses this week against Western Kentucky is stopping the Hilltoppers' Bobby Rainey, who's run for over 100 yards in each of Western Kentucky's first three games. That stat is all the more impressive because all of their three games have been blowout losses.

If you remember last year's game in Bowling Green, the Hilltoppers hung around for an uncomfortably long time, keeping the USF defense off balance and feeding off the typical laundry list of Bulls penalties and mistakes. I don't expect as many free yards and mental errors out of USF this year, but Rainey is still going to be a load for the Bulls to handle. Another good test for the running games they will see in conference play.

-- The new USF beat reporter for the Tribune is Adam Adkins, and one of his first pieces looked back at the Florida game. Todd Fitch says that Daniels has to play with the "shared fear" of letting his teammates down with a mistake.

-- Another story from Adam talks about the Bulls' experienced offensive line playing well so far. Some of USF's running success against the Gators was schematic (the option package worked very well), but the line did a good job opening up room for the more traditional running plays. Nothing to complain about them so far.

-- Also from Adam was a feature on defensive end David Bedford, who, true to his nature, is quietly off to a very good start. If it's any indication, and it probably isn't but I wanted to toot my own horn here, Bedford rolled up 27 sacks in one season in my old NCAA Football 10 dynasty. Totally unblockable.

-- USF Nation has a story about USF's 14th verbal commit for 2011, tight end/H-back Ty Turner out of Griffin, Georgia.

-- Jerome Murphy had his first NFL interception against the Raiders on Sunday, helping the Rams make their game interesting. Meanwhile Nate Allen racked up his second INT in two weeks for the Eagles as they held off the Lions. (As SB Nation Philly tells us, Allen was the first Eagle to get a pick in his first NFL game since Eric Allen in 1988.) And I watched about as much of the Manningpalooza on Sunday night as I could stand, but didn't see Jason Pierre-Paul out on the field for the Giants. If you saw him in the game, tell us how he looked.