Karl Dorrell: We Are Not As Good As People Thought

"We're not quite as good a team as most people thought," Dorrell said. "I always said that I thought we're a good Pac-10 team with a chance to win the championship."

Really?!?!  That's got to inspire the team eh?!!  Imagine how the team feels reading that?!  If we thought that they were good Karl it's because YOU told us they were "the best team (you've) had" and you allowed your players to go on and on about a "national championship."  Dorrell is attempting to revise history and he thinks we wouldn't notice.  Dorrell had the entire nation believing that he had the #11 ranked team in the country (and he basked in that glory), and that he had "brought back the tradition of UCLA Football."  Now he is pretending that he always knew that we weren't that good.  He has already been caught trying to lower expectations this season once … there was an entire article in the LA Times about that very subject (by Chris Foster, titled "Dorrell tries to diffuse expectations").  Remember, Dorrell started off the season hyping this team.  Here is the progression he has taken:

1. Monday, August 27:  "Our expectations are so high … inside and out this is the best team Ive had." This is what he said before last season, and we know how that turned out.
2. Friday, August 31:  "You get a little caught up in what you're reading."  No, we got caught up in what you were telling us Karl and what you had the team believing (finish Pac-10 Champions!), AND we got caught up in the fact that you have 20 returning starters (most in the nation!), 17 of them seniors(!), along with a favorable schedule.
3. Sunday, Sept 9:  "Our offense is still evolving into the offense we're hoping it will be." Huh? That you're HOPING it will be.  What happened to the best team inside and out and the high expectations?
4. Monday, Sept 17: "We're not quite as good a team as most people thought."  See how Dorrell easily discards the expectations as if they were a figment of OUR imagination??  We have reached new lows … just when will Karl admit the obvious, that he has NO CLUE how to coach, no clue what's going on?

Forget how this must make the players feel, now that they know their own coach thinks so poorly of them, although that is bad enough.  What we see here is that Dorrell is offering his excuses again - "I've always said that I thought we were a Pac-10 team" … meaning "hey, I warned everyone about this … it's your fault for not listening." Meanwhile, Dorrell fails to OWN the loss as we all expected:

Dorrell mostly took the blame for that fiasco at his Monday postmortem news conference, though not completely.

"That's my responsibility ultimately," he said.

Our bad, he did take ownership .. finally.  Lets read on:

"It's a shared responsibility with our coaches and players."

Wait, what??  Shared responsibility with players and other coaches? One of the worst and most embarrassing losses in the history of our program and you want to share it??  Take ownership Karl!! Own the loss!! Lets read on: 

And then later there was this: "The guys who are veterans on this team need to step up and have more consistency in their play. We have to coach better and make sure they're prepared to execute the things we need them to execute this weekend."

Need. we. say. more.  This loss was all on the head coach.  Horrible game plan, horrible preparation. The players were put in the position to lose. That is the problem.  Dorrell, after 5 years, still can't see it.

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