Pac-12 Week 5 Roundup
Utah and Colorado hosted Pac-12 games for the first time, Arizona’s rough road continued and Stanford bounced-back after losing some critical players to injury at Arizona in their previous game. Let’s look at the weekend’s biggest winners and losers in this week’s Pac-12 Roundup.
BIGGEST WIN: I’ll eat some crow here and hand it to a USC team who I predicted last week would be morally defeated after yielding the edge in the Pac-12 South to Arizona State. The Trojans did not seem too defeated when they took the floor of the Coliseum on Saturday and ran up a 17-0 first quarter lead.
Nick Foles leads a potent passing offense at Arizona, but the Cats defense has been awful this season. Arizona gave up nearly 400 yards passing in two of it’s previous three, and surrendered an Oregon single-game rushing record in the other.
USC had a simple game plan for the Cats: dump the ball to playmakers and let them shred Arizona’s decimated secondary. Matt Barkley threw short passes early to
playmakers that went for huge yardage. That opened things up in the 2nd half when Barkley found lots of single-coverage whenever he looked downfield.
USC set a school record for passing yards and put up 48 points. It’s a good thing too. As great as USC’s offense looked, the Trojans’ defense was almost as bad as the Cats’.
Nick Foles had by far his best day of the season against USC, throwing for 400+ yards on USC’s secondary. Arizona also had its first decent rushing outing of the year against the Trojans, going for 129 yards on the ground.
To put this in perspective, the 116th ranked Wildcats rushing attack gained only 75 yards v. FCS foe Northern Arizona and had 487 yards of total offense against the…I don’t even know what NAU’s nickname is. Against USC they rushed for 129 and put up 554 total yards.
USC’s DBs made some nice plays knocking Arizona WRs off routes leading to two INTs that proved to be the difference in the game. But if the Trojans defense doesn’t improve this season, The legendary Monty Kiffin may find himself in the curious situation of begging his son/much younger and less proven boss, to keep his job come January.
HONORABLE MENTION: We have to mention WASHINGTON STATE’s big win going to Boulder and spoiling Colorado’s Pac-12 home opener. The game was close throughout, but the Cougs took the victory on their last drive with a 63-yard go-ahead TD pass from Marshall Lobbestael to Marquess Wilson with only 1:10 left in the game.
After three seasons of two wins or less, the Cougars have opened 3-1 this year. Wazzu lost starting QB Jeff Tuel in their opener v. Idaho State, but Lobbestael has lead the Cougs like he was starting all along. He’s thrown 13 TDs to only 3 INTs and has a QB rating of 168!
Granted, the road will get much tougher than UNLV and Colorado, but the Cougars haven’t had a winning record in October for five years, so congratulations to HC Paul Wulff for making some progress on turning the WSU program around!
WORST LOSS: For a half hour on Saturday night when Brock Osweiller couldn’t figure out how to throw the ball to his own team, I thought this might go to ASU, but the Devils righted the ship and dominated the final three quarters of their game with Oregon State.
The Devils failing us, the worst loss of the week was by the UTAH UTES who did everything in the book to give away their first Pac-12 home game. My father is a long-time SLC area football coach who no longer gets too up or down from the ebbs and flows of the game. So if he’s calling me first thing on Sunday morning looking for solace, I have to guess that things are bad.
Bad they are. Salt Lake City began its Pac-12 era by packing Rice-Eccles Stadium to standing-room-only capacity in anxious anticipation for a bright new
era of Utah Football. The Utes welcomed fans by promptly fumbling the opening kickoff and Watching Washington recover it in the endzone for an immediate 7-0 lead.
Utah bounced-back and tied the game at 7-7 in the first quarter, then twice drove the length of the field, in the 2nd ,only to turn the ball over to Washington both times. The game turned with 4:30 remaining in the 1st half, when Utah drove deep into Husky territory, threatening to take a 14-7 lead into the locker room. WR Dres Anderson caught a Jordan Wynn pass at the UW 6 yard line and fumbled as he turned up field handing the ball back to Washington.
Two drive-saving 15-yard penalties by the Utes later, the Huskies were in field goal range, and scored for a 10-7 halftime lead. It looked like a small edge in a close game, but Utah’s mistakes were mounting and Washington was about to blow the game open.
Utah quarterback Jordan Wynn was injured in the early 3rd quarter and Utah’s offense left the game with him. The Utes struggled to run or pass, and turned the ball over to Washington three more times in the 2nd half.
The opportunistic Huskies eventually wore down the Utah defense and Chris Polk finished with a stellar 189-yard day, while Husky sophomore quarterback Keith Price was very sharp in the 2nd half, finishing 22 of 30 with three touchdowns.
Washington now has 4 wins in its pocket, and Colorado, Washington State and Oregon State coming up on the schedule. In other words, a 2nd straight Bowl game is looking like a near certainty in Seattle.
For the Utes, certainty is nowhere in sight. Wynn’s return looks doubtful and his backup (Jon Hayes) is a last-minute addition to the program who joined Utes during the summer when his JC (Butte College) dropped football. He had one career pass attempt when he entered the game on Saturday.
Gulp.
PLAYER OF THE WEEK: This is the part of the column where I’m supposed to fall all overmyself praising Matt Barkley for breaking Carson Palmer’s single game passing record. Barkley had a phenomenal day, but let me tell you something. (To paraphrase Ronald Regan) I knew Carson Palmer. Carson
Palmer was a friend of mine. And Matt Barkley, you are no Carson Palmer.
I know Barkley’s 82 yard pass to Robert Woods was USC’s longest completion since the Palmer Era, but let me remind you of something: That 82-yard pass was completed 4 YARDS BEHIND THE LINE OF SCRIMMAGE. That means that “Barkley’s” 82-yard pass was actually 86 yards of YAC by Robert Woods mutilating Arizona’s 112th ranked, banged-up defense. Subtract those 86 yards from Barkley’s passing total, and that should put his performance in perspective.
Which is certainly not to say Barkley did not look great. In fact, it was a landmark day for USC’s JR QB. Barkley stood in the pocket and delivered sharp passes down the middle for big conversions and made excellent decisions. Barkley also made some tremendous throws to the outside and proved why pro scouts are high on his arm. He appears to be making the leap Trojan fans hoped for coming into his Junior season.
Furthermore, the fact that a receiver other than Robert Woods had over 100 receiving yards is very positive news for the USC. Here’s hoping that we see Barkley have another day like this against a defense that has a better than triple-digit ranking.
IS LARRY SCOTT TRYING TO GET MIKE STOOPS FIRED? This isn’t all the Pac-12’s fault, but Arizona’s last 10 games have been almost too difficult to get your head around. Since early last November UA’s schedule has been a palindrome of sadness (with Northern Arizona in the middle). Those games: @Stanford, v. USC, @Oregon, v. ASU, v. Oklahoma State, v. NAU, @Oklahoma State, v. Stanford, @ Oregon, @ USC.
Arizona is not a horrible program, and their team is better than their 1-4 record, but it has got to be hard to keep the troops motivated when the schedule is one unwinnable game after another and your “easy games” are an overtime game v. your arch rival and two battles with USC.
None of AZ’s losses look bad at all when taken individually, but the fact is, Arizona has lost 9 of it’s last 10 and the one win was against an FCS school. That can be a difficult thing for the morale of a program, or its head coach, to overcome.
Arizona will be favored in 4 of it’s final six, and doesn’t have another opponent it can’t beat, but a losing season looks likely and that may mean the end for Mike Stoops. It was going to happen sooner or later, but all the losing is certainly making people restless in Tucson.