Cursed?

Are the 2007 Trojans cursed?

The Trojan line-up has been devastated by injuries. This is the situation as far as I can tell, based on attrition to the depth chart since the season opener:


Affected players’ names are followed by a number indicating the number of games he has missed so far this year due to injury and his status for the Notre Dame game.
Strikethroughs indicate players who are out for the year.

The offensive line and the secondary have been hit especially hard. At one point, Josh Pinkard, Cary Harris, Shareece Wright, and Vincent Joseph were all out at the same time, leaving virtually no CBs to play opposite Terrell Thomas. Safety Mozique McCurtis filled in. It’s even worse than it looks on the offensive line. According to USC’s 2007 media guide, Nick Howell was Matt Spanos’s original backup. However, Spanos injured his triceps prior to the opener, so USC opened the season with true freshman Kristofer O’Dowd at center. O’Dowd played commendably for the first three games. Then, O’Dowd and RG Chilo Rachal both injured their knees during a single play at Washington. It looks like USC will start Butch Lewis at LT, Jeff Byers at LG, Spanos at C, Alatini Malu at RG, and Drew Radovich at RT for the Notre Dame game.

I know that injuries must be expected during the course of any season, but this is ridiculous.

Add this to the adversity with which the team has had to deal. Many of the passengers on the team’s charter flight to South Bend were thrown from their seats, putting the fear of death into some of the players, when the plane dropped abruptly during its landing approach. The pilot aborted the landing and circled around for a repeat attempt.

Welcome to Notre Dame. I’m sure the jungle grass and the green jerseys will help calm your nerves.

A tip of the hat to Student Body Right.

UPDATE: I know the graphic is unreadable, but if you click on it, you will be linked to a full-size version.

Overrated

I'm not unhappy about where USC is ranked this week, but this . . .

USC #7 Coaches' Poll
USC #10 AP Poll

is wrong. I expected the Trojans to land somewhere between #10 and #15, but a ranking as low as #20 would not have upset me.

Like I said below,

The fact is there is no objective evidence this year’s team is any better than average, even though they have more talent than any other team in the country. USC has beaten four teams with a combined record of 9-14 (Idaho is 1-5; Nebraska is 4-2, barely beat Ball St., and got blown out by Missouri; Washington St. is 2-4; and Washington is 2-3) and lost to Stanford with its 2-3 record.

USC will have plenty of opportunities to prove themselves, with games against Oregon, Cal, and Arizona St. on the schedule. I hope they live up to their still-lofty ranking.

Recalibrate?

It might be time to revise my expectations for USC football - for this season, obviously, but maybe also for the program itself. The last time I went through such a transition was in 2003 when the Trojans followed an outstanding season (11-2, Orange Bowl victory over Iowa, Carson Palmer’s Heisman) with a national championship. I started to believe that BCS bowl berths would be commonplace and national championships not infrequent.

Trojan fans have been spoiled by an unprecedented level of success over the last five years or so. We have come to expect that kind of success every year, and we have been lulled into believing that Pete Carroll has installed a system at USC that will perpetuate this success as long as Carroll remains the head coach. However, the loss to Stanford raises serious questions about this perception. Is USC returning to a more normal state for modern college football programs? Was this game the continuation of a negative trend that started with the 2006 Rose Bowl (Texas 41 – USC 38 if anyone needs a reminder), a trend characterized by losing to three unranked Pac-10 teams in less than a year, a trend in which last year’s dominating Rose Bowl victory over Michigan is an anomalous blip? Or, is USC football still on an elevated plateau with the loss to Stanford as a rare exception? I hope for the latter, but I fear the former.

The fact is there is no objective evidence this year’s team is any better than average, even though they have more talent than any other team in the country. USC has beaten four teams with a combined record of 9-14 (Idaho is 1-5; Nebraska is 4-2, barely beat Ball St., and got blown out by Missouri; Washington St. is 2-4; and Washington is 2-3) and lost to Stanford with its 2-3 record. It is unreasonable to expect the Trojans to never lose. It is not unreasonable, however, to expect the Trojans never to lose at home against a team the caliber of Stanford.

Carroll and the rest of the USC coaching staff have received excessive praise for reviving a slumbering program and building it into the dominant program of the decade. It was deserved. However, the fire and intensity with which Trojan teams customarily played during their amazing four-year run from 2002-2005 has only been evident sporadically since then. The extreme listlessness and total lack of intensity the Trojans displayed last Saturday against Stanford is impossible for me to fathom. Has all the success in the recent past led to arrogance and complacency on the coaching staff? It has sure looked that way lately. Hopefully, this loss is just what the team needed to prompt some recalibration of its own.

It’s time for the coaches to really earn their pay. Yes, Carroll is a recruiting fiend, but if this game proves anything, it’s that vastly superior talent does not guarantee wins. Apparently the Washington game wasn’t enough proof for the players that they have to do more than just show up to win, and for the coaches that they have to take every opponent seriously. Carroll has not had a Trojan team in this situation before. This team could feasibly self-destruct and limp through the rest of the season with 4 or 5 more losses (if Stanford can beat USC at home, then anybody can beat them). This team, players and coaches, needs to use this loss as a wake-up call to reevaluate, refocus, and rededicate to playing and coaching football like Trojan fans have come to expect. If that doesn’t happen, I will start having doubts about the health of the USC football program. Which will it be? Prove that the Stanford game was a fluke and USC still sets the bar for college football excellence!

However the rest of the season goes, it just got a lot more interesting, and I’ll be watching just as closely and enthusiastically as ever.

Fight On!

USC-UW

I knew our seats were probably nosebleed-inducing, but was surprised (and out of breath) to find they were in the absolute top row.


Our view of the field standing up. The support post did not actually obstruct our view when sitting.


Looking east over Lake Washington toward the Cascade Mountains. The mountains are not visible due to the weather.


Second quarter

Even though we were sitting in the top row, it was a great vantage point and we still had a good view of the action.


Fourth quarter. This play was Jake Locker's one-yard sneak for the Huskies' last touchdown of the game. The visitors' section, Spirit of Troy, and contingent of four Song Girls are in the background.

You probably can’t make out the numbers on the board displaying team statistics near the top of the above photo. This was one of the last plays of the game, so they should read something pretty close to: Huskies 190 total yards (100 rushing/90 passing); Trojans 460 total yards (224 rushing, 236 passing). Yeah, USC dominated the game statistically. So why was the final score so close? Trojan mistakes from start to finish.

USC committed three turnovers, two of which led directly to Husky touchdowns (one 14 yard drive after a fumbled snap and one pick-six). A blocked punt and return to the USC nine yard-line led to the third Husky touchdown. UW’s field goal concluded a 10-play, 22 yard drive that was jumpstarted by a 15-yard penalty for interfering with the punt receiver and extended by two 15-yard pass interference calls. USC was penalized for 161 yards and five of the Huskies 15 first downs were due to penalties.

That is the litany of negatives, aside from Booty’s inconsistency. The positives? Well, the last time USC made this many mistakes, in Corvallis in 2006, they dropped their first Pac-10 game in three years. The fact that the Trojans escaped Husky Stadium with a road win after that much sloppy and mentally-deficient play can be thought of as a positive. All the credit goes to the defense, which was truly dominant. UW’s first drive of the game was its longest at 67 yards, but ended with a Thomas Williams interception. Only one other Husky drive was longer than 30 yards.

This week’s Stanford game arrives at a fortuitous time. USC has suffered a rash of injuries. Hopefully, the next couple of games will give LB Brian Cushing, LB Clay Matthews (Cushing’s back-up), C Kristofer O’Dowd, RG Chilo Rachal, OG Alatini Malu (Rachal’s back-up), CB Cary Harris, CB Shareece Wright (Harris’s back-up), and TB Stafon Johnson time to rest and heal before the meat of the schedule begins on October 27.

UW Tailgating Photos

Cat and I flew to Seattle early Saturday morning for the USC-UW game. We landed at noon, rented a car, and drove straight to the U District. After parking north of campus, we met up with my cousins who are sophomores at UW for a few hours of tailgating with another cousin, who is a USC fan. I tailgated with Anne at the last USC game I attended in person.


Anne, Cat, and Marnie

Marnie is not actually a USC fan; she apparently lost a bet to Anne the previous weekend when USC played Washington State.


Cat was definitely the MVP of our mixed Husky-Trojan flip cup competition.


Husky Stadium, north side

The clouds over Husky Stadium looked ominous, foreshadowing the mistake-riddled play of the Trojans throughout the game.


Our tailgate hosts: Zach and Anne, Marnie and her husband.

Another Celebrity Fan of USC

I watch "24", so the following made me smile:

Ruel and the other USC assistants had gathered a few hours before the game. Having created some pretext to get Carroll into a meeting room, they popped in a DVD of uncertain provenance. On the screen appeared Sutherland's Jack Bauer, who interrupted a scene by turning to the camera and saying, "Happy birthday, Pete."

Kiefer Sutherland gave Pete Carroll a Jack Bauer action figure for his birthday, which was the day of the Nebraska game!

USC-Nebraska

I didn’t have any noteworthy thoughts about the state of the program after the Idaho game, which showed us nothing about the team. After the following two-week wait to finally see the team in real action, I was definitely tense when Saturday arrived. Obviously, I liked what I saw on Saturday night.

Things I love about the USC Trojans right now:

• Offensive play-calling – Steve Sarkisian is showing willingness and an ability to effectively adjust his play-calling mid-game. In the 2007 Rose Bowl, USC abandoned their balanced attack in favor of passing nearly exclusively in the second half (26 of 28 plays at one point; the two runs were quarterback sneaks for first downs) to blow open the game. On Saturday against Nebraska, the Trojans turned to the running game after two stalled drives weighted toward passing and Nebraska took a 10-7 lead. They finished with 313 yards rushing vs. 144 yards passing. Best of all, the feel of the Nebraska game was reminiscent of Norm Chow-called games in 2002-2004. Many opponents during those years were allowed to hang around well into the second quarter, perhaps drawing fans of those teams into a false sense of hope. However, once Chow ran through his script, deciphered the opponent’s defensive scheme, and made his adjustments, the offense became virtually unstoppable. This game felt like that.

• Rushing defense – The defensive script for the Trojans is the same as always: stuff the run and keep everything in front of the secondary. Once the opponent’s attack becomes one-dimensional, the offense as a whole usually suffers. That’s exactly what happened in Lincoln on Saturday night. Yes, Nebraska moved the ball with lots of short passes underneath for 1 ½ quarters, but the USC defense made them earn every yard. More importantly, Sam Keller started the second half with interceptions on Nebraska’s first two drives and was mostly ineffective until the Trojans started playing their reserves.

• New guys stepping up – This is also nothing new, but the depth of talent on this team and the readiness of back-ups to excel in critical roles when needed still amazes me. Freshman David Ausberry has emerged as the Trojans’ most reliable WR. Stanley Havili is back from his medical redshirt year performing exactly as everyone hoped. Sophomore Stafon Johnson, who had all of three carries in 2006, was the offensive player of the game at Nebraska (144 yards on 11 carries). Clay Matthews did a fine job filling in for Brian Cushing. Freshman Kristofer O’Dowd’s performance at center in place of Matt Spanos has been exceptional.

The Trojans’ next 5 games, with the possible exception of Washington in Seattle, look like absolute gimmes, especially considering the atrocious play of Arizona and Notre Dame so far. Unless USC sleepwalks through one of these games (which has been a problem in recent years), it looks like the Trojans now have a five-game season starting at Oregon on October 27, with a bunch of dress-rehearsal scrimmages until then.

The nervous anticipation I was feeling last week has turned into eager excitement for the rest of the season to unfold.

I Live in Cavalier Country

. . . or maybe Hokie country. It's tough to say for sure. I commonly see stickers from both schools displayed on vehicles in northern Virginia. Just across the river is definitely Terrapin country, though. The map below attempts to divide the United States into areas based on the consensus team supported by the areas' inhabitants.

I'm a map junkie and a college football junkie, so I couldn't resist posting this map.



The map is located at the CommonConsensus Map Project, which hosts similar maps for the four major U.S. professional sports in addition to NCAA 1-A football. I found this website via strange maps, a fantastic site for map junkies like myself.

I'm off to add my vote now.

Trojans to Open Defense of 2007 National Championship At UVA

USC will open the 2008 season in Charlottesville, VA against the University of Virginia. The Cavaliers will make the return trip in 2010.

I better get to work now on acquiring tickets for the game. The 2004 contest against VA Tech at FedEx Field was an amazing spectacle. Plus, Charlottesville is a pleasant location for a weekender.

Before They Were Famous

This is the funniest clip I've come across in at least a year:



Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell together on the Dana Carvey Show.