PAC-12 Week 1 Roundup
At long last, college football has returned and Labor Day weekend gave us five glorious days of action. From Wisconsin’s fireworks show on Thursday night to the back and forth, down to the wire battle between Maryland and Miami on Labor Day night, hungry football fans, got their fill.
All twelve teams in the new Pac played games, though, a disappointing half the conference played FCS teams, not always to stellar results. If you didn’t watch all the games, here’s a roundup of what happened over the 1st weekend of Pac-12 football:
BIGGEST WIN: With all the lousy opponents this week, it would probably be easier to name a “Worst Win”, but that would require weighing Utah and Washington’s unimpressive wins over the best teams in FCS against USC’s needing two missed field goals to beat the worst team in the Big 10.
So let’s stick with “Best” win. We’ll start by forgetting the six teams who played FCS schools, and the teams who lost (UCLA, OSU, Oregon, and Colorado). That leaves only three options.
As I mentioned earlier, USC beat a Big 10 team, but it was a grim two point win over Minnesota, a three-win team last season. Fans filed out of the Coliseum with the glum realization that USC had beaten a terrible team only by virtue of the opposition having an awful kicker. So the best win must have been by either Cal and Stanford who both hosted WAC teams.
We’ll give it to Stanford, who handed a 57-3 beat down to WAC-up-and-comer SJSU. It’s not the kind of win the Cardinal will be building their BCS Championship resume around, but they showed everything fans (and AP voters) wanted to see and more. The Cardinal looked scary and ready to make their run through the conference.
WORST LOSS: This one is as easy as a Pac-12 team beating Sacramento State at home: Oregon State. The Beavers limped into their game against CSU Sacramento with injuries forcing seven true freshmen into starting roles, and QB Ryan Katz mysteriously did not appear in the 2nd half after a decent 1st half of 11 of 22 for 87 yards. James Rodgers also missed the game recovering from off-season knee surgery.
Virginia Tech played in a BCS bowl after opening with a loss to FCS James Madison last season, so all is not lost for the Beavers, but they’d better get healthy – and serious about winning– soon.
PLAYER OF THE WEEK: Robert Woods, WR, USC. Woods Caught a USC record 17 passes for 177 yards and three touchdowns on
Saturday. USC’s sophomore receiver was Matt Barkley’s favorite target last season and Saturday’s game showed that nothing has changed over the off-season. Forget comparisons with other receivers, Woods had more targets than USC’s leading rusher (DJ Morgan) had carries. Woods had more than twice as many catches as USC’s next two leading receivers combined.
He is a wonderful player, who had an outstanding day, but if USC’s offense is going to succeed this year, Matt Barkley needs to stop locking-on to Woods and look around the field. A Quarterback who only looks at one target per play, is easy to prepare for.
MISSING PERSONS REPORT: Quarterbacks at Utah, and Washington. In Eastern Washington, and Montana State, UW and Utah faced-off against two of the very best teams in the FCS, but that’s no excuse for their passing numbers. Playing at home against teams from the lower subdivision, the Utes and Huskies combined for 203 yards passing, and each averaged fewer than 5 yards per pass.
Utah’s quarterback, Jordan Wynn is coming off an inconsistent season where he looked timid and afraid to throw the ball downfield against TCU and Notre Dame. Ute fans were dismayed when he showed the same fear on Thursday against the Bobcat defense.
Washington has a great deal of offensive talent, but replaces the face of their program in Jake Locker. He leaves huge shoes for Sophomore Keith Price to fill, but ultimately Washington will only go as far in the Pac-12 North as Price can take them.
Granted, these may have seemed a bit like preseason games to teams from the Pac-12 and with USC and BYU looming for Utah and Hawai’i and Nebraska coming up for the Dawgs, the playbooks were probably not wide open. However, if either team plays anything like they did last weekend during the next two weeks, they’ll be 1-2 before they know it
Note: Oregon’s Darron Thomas put up incredible numbers last year, but he also threw for less than 5 yards per pass on Saturday. However, LSU may have the best secondary in the country and fans can look to past performances to reassure themselves about Thomas. Utah and Washington fans don’t have that luxury.