USC-34, ND-27
Credit Irish QB Jimmy Causen for the close score. A tenacious competitor who refuses to quit, he brought ND back and was at the goal line trying to tie the game when time expired.
But let's get real. Charlie Weis has been a huge dissapointment for the Irish. They'd fire him if they could, but they yolked themselves to him with such a hugh contract, it would cost five to ten million dollars.
His team is mediocre -- terrible by ND standards. And yet USC struggled to slow down their scoring.
Chip Kelly is a smarter coach than Charlie Weis. OSU's Mike Riley is a smarter coach than Charlie Weis. USC's next two games are against OSU and Oregon and I'm smelling blood.
Cal-45, UCLA-26
THERE'S the Cal we've been looking for. After scoring only three points each against Oregon and USC, they find a team with an average defense and do their thing. I think this game says more about Oregon and USC than about Cal or UCLA. The Pac-10 has the correct two teams at the top. They are the teams with the best defenses.
Arizona-43, Stanford-38
Two teams ahead on Oregon's schedule, and the Ducks have to play at their venues. These two teams can score a bunch of points. But they have to. Their defenses are leaky. Oregon should show them what a tough defense looks like while taking all the points they're willing to give.
ASU-24, Washington-17.
Two more teams standing in the way of Oregon. I feel for ASU's QB Danny Sullivan. At 6'4" and 240 pounds, he's not built for speed. He's heavily dependent on his offensive line to give him time to throw. Washington's D-line is designed to rush and destroy immobile QB's. And as the season wears on for the Devils, protecting the QB will become a bigger concern.
Having said that, ASU won because Washington's defense has a lot of heart, but a heart can't run and tackle, and it's not a brain. The Dawg's D. had a total mental breakdown with five seconds left and Sullivan killed them with an easy 50-yard TD pass.
The Huskies (Oregon's next opponent) have the same problems as last year on offense because they depend so heavily on Jake Locker for all of their points and yardage.
Washington's defense is supposedly better against the run this year. But their new coaching staff ain't seen nothing yet. ASU had moments where they occasionally spread their line a little and created seams and optional gaps for their running backs. And Washinton's big slow D-linemen were worthless to stop them.
The Dawgs won't stand a chance when Kelly unleashes the Oregon's spread.]
"Feed the Tuna Mayonnaise"
[Speaking of Chip Kelly, George Schroeder of the Register Guard wrote an excellent story on what a typical day for Kelly looks like. He followed the coach around for a whole day -- the Monday before the UCLA game.
If you think you put in a full day's work, Kelly might just make you look like a couch potato.
One thing that impresses me about football is the need for the coaching staff to be extremely organized and efficient in getting the team prepared each week. I believe a coach can be the smartest X's and O's guy on the planet, but if he can't manage his own time and the time of his staff and players effectively, he won't have a successful program.
I saw glimpes of a Bellotti-led practice and was impressed how he made full use of every member of his staff, every piece of equipment, and every part of the field over every minute. He had 100 men covering the entire field in a dozen small groups, all working like a fully functioning clock.
Chip Kelly appears to take it to a whole new level.
The story is too long to paste here, I recommend you click it up and read it on your lunch break. Afterwards you'll do one of two things:
You'll cut your lunch short out of guilt and get back to work. Or you'll take a nap from exhaustion just reading about his routine.
Here's a couple of clips from the story to whet your appetite. . . .]
“He does like six things at once,” says Callie Evans, the football
program’s secretary. “I don’t know how he does it.”
None of this is unique. Long hours are a staple of football coaching. Juggling is in the job description for head coaches, who function like micro-managing CEOs.
But from well before dawn to long after dark, fueled by Diet Pepsi and trail mix, the 45-year-old first-year head coach tries to find ways to feed mayo to tuna.
[Offensive Coordinator Mark Helfrich and Kelly are talking about different things at 6:55 am. including . . . ]
. . . how Helfrich’s day has started off poorly; the
bagel shop was out of peanut butter.
“You get off the freeway (to get the
bagels)?” Kelly asks. “That’s inefficient.”
[LOL. Helfrich: "Note to self. Find someone who sells bagels ON the freeway."
Here's the link: http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/web/sports/21650215-41/story.csp ] --kb
2 comments:
You are right on with your analysis. Injuries are the one thing that can change the outcome. It is significant that Cal has now come alive. Now that it has lost to Oregon and USC, is now the wrecking ball for the rest of the conference. OSU is good enough to mess up a lot of teams plans, too.
National press still overlooks our defense. They have great praise for USC's defense and don't mention that ours has stopped some of the major offenses in the country.
Someone should create a statistic that computes the percentage of points that a team holds its opponent under its average. Even though our first game was a disaster, we held BSU to 18 pts. What is that - 40% of its average?
I'm still scratching my head that Notre Dame scored 27 points and came real close to tying the game with USC.
It'll be real interesting to see how well OSU can move the ball on the Trojans next Saturday.
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