Anyway, as with the morning jog, a lot of thoughts go racing through the mind. Here’s just a few:
1) How about that UW-ASU game? Entertaining to say the least. But wow, I mean HOW IN THE WORLD did Chris McGaha get so flippin’ wide open?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omhoUYoSDlM&w=425&h=344]I know the quotes from Sarkisian after the game said that the safety bit on the out route and/or they were doubling the outside receiver, but holy moly was that a breakdown or what!? You know what I thought the first second that happened? We’ve NEVER seen that before….
Amazing. It was even the same FSN broadcast crew of Barry Tompkins and Petros Papadakis(spelling??).
That said, the end of game management by UW leaves a lot to be desired. Sark and Holt are the kings of high energy and are fantastic recruiters, but this is still Sark’s first year as a head coach. They are going to make mistakes during games, no matter how prepared they think they might be going in. It’s part of the growing process. But why they elected to throw it on 3rd down with less than a minute left deep in their own territory, stopping the clock on the incompletion? That was really weird. And of course, the breakdown in coverage at the absolute worst possible time. Somone mentioned in comments last night about the message boards at Dawgman.com, but nah, I don’t even want to go there. What’s the point? We don’t have anything to add to the conversation, and they sure don’t want to hear it. So just let ’em stew as they start to get worried about how in the world they are going to hang with the Ducks next Saturday.
Now I don’t want to go all schadenfreude on UW right now, as I’m sure they are down in the dumps or whatever. And by the way, schadenfreude: Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others……uh huh…..but isn’t this just a “return of balance to the force” or however you want to call it? After last week’s shoe-turf TD where they had one miracle go their way, doesn’t this just correct things in the football universe a week later? But things just seem, I don’t know, right again.
2) What about the USC – ND game? TWO final plays, and the Irish couldn’t pull it off. I think we thought that was going to happen with Clausen, that you just can’t keep going to the well for the miracle finish. Eventually the luck runs out. But they sure hung in there and fought, didn’t they?
I thought that sucker was over when it was 34-14 in the fourth quarter, but Clausen kept bringing ’em down the field, and USC also seemed to kinda/sorta stop playing on offense? Still though, what an entertaining game. And Matt Barkley, WOW. 380 yards passing in only his fifth start as a true frosh? What a special, special QB he is turning into.
Grippi had a good comment today, about how “football isn’t as fun anymore” with all the ref involvment in the games, the replay reverals and all that. But did anyone see the flag-happy PAC-10 ref penalize USC DE Everson Griffen for flexing his arms after a QB sack?
I guess refs are supposed to be like writers? You know, how they ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THE STORY!!? Oh well.
3) Is Cal back? We’ll find out next week, but wow, almost 500 total yards and 45 points at UCLA, one of the best defenses in the conference? Yikes. Kevin Riley didn’t screw it up, throwing for 205 yards, 3 TD’s and zero picks. That’s the Berkeley Bears we thought we would see this year, the one where their fans are super-cocky about. Still, I like the WSU defense in the match-up, simply because of the way they will sit back in zone coverage and make the QB beat them with accuracy. We saw that against ASU, and we’ll likely see the same thing next week, rushing three and dropping seven or eight into coverage, trying to keep the game in front of them.
4) So how about those Mildcats? Down 15, they would pull it out in a wild 43-38 win vs. Stanford. And what a wild one, over 1,100 total yards combined by both offenses! Andrew Luck was amazing, 21-for-35 for 423 yards and 3 TD’s, but they just couldn’t stop Arizona. That AZ QB, Nick Foles, was even better, going an unreal 40-for-51 for 415 yards and 3 TD’s. FORTY COMPLETIONS!?! That’s XBox 360 type numbers, not real life. But Foles completed 39 passes vs. UW the week before, and now has completed 72% of his passes for 1152 yards and 9 TD’s with just 2 INT’s, all in THREE starts!?? Looks like AZ has a rising star in the sophomore Foles.
5) Finally, congrats to Robb Akey. 6-1 after their win over Hawaii, and certainly appearing like they are headed for postseason play. Nice to see the bowling ball, DeMaundray Woolridge, take FOUR, count ’em, FOUR runs to the house for TD’s!? Now, before we all go nuts over Akey, let’s at least consider the situation. This is Akey’s THIRD season in Moscow, so please remember that. He won a combined three games his first two years, and they were regarded as one of the worst teams around in his first few years. But now in year three, with Akey’s system firmly in place, all the bad apples have been weeded out, etc, hey, he’s building up something nice over there. But let’s not call Akey some kind of God or anything, at least not yet. He wasn’t anything special his first two years, dealing with a ton of crap left over by none other than Nick Holt and then Dennis Erickson’s 10-month bailout. Did he suddenly figure out how to be a head coach? Maybe, sure, it’s very likely he’s grown a ton in the last few years. But isn’t it also more helpful/likely that the players he started playing a couple of years ago, like QB Nathan Enderle, are now upper-classmen? You hate to make direct comparison’s to our situation, but it does seem at least a little similar in that the coach was brought in to clean up a mess, and after a couple of years of pain and suffering, they are starting to get some reward for the struggles?
That’s it for now. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, and as always, GO COUGS!
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