It ended as it existed, frustratingly. A series of mistakes, penalties and giveaways, and a final gut-wrenching blown play. Oh well. Another losing season in the record books. 40 years of not hiring a proven winner and you get ridiculous streaks like 21 years without a Rose Bowl win and 10 years without a Pac-10 conference championship. Now there is only one thing left to do: change the direction of our football program and hire a head coach with successful head coaching experience.
Like we said before the game, this game did not prove either way whether Walker is a good head coach. No single game will. read more
Hey did you hear there's a game today? The WWL will host a 4-hour DeWayne Walker special today and in the background you will be able to see our Bruins take on BYU in some bowl game in Las Vegas. If anyone wanted to know how great a head football coach Walker is just tune in for a few minutes, the broadcasters will tell you. We fully expect today's game to be a long commercial for Walker. The MSM has been pimping Walker for head coach since mid-season, despite the humiliation at Utah.
Walker's PR machine is something to behold. He has managed to read more
So much for the "BYU will go 11-0" excuse … BYU lost to a Tulsa team they destroyed just last year, a team that also got beaten handily by Utah last year in a bowl game. Tulsa put up nearly 600 yards of offense on BYU whereas we couldn't even manage 240 yards against BYU. Shows the danger of taking comfort in a poor performance because A Win is a Win.
Lots of unhappy people despite our 2-0 start. Reminds us of last year after Rice. The Dorrellistas are out in full force defending "a win is a win" and offering every excuse in the Dorrellista handbook. We have seen blame being placed on Ben Olson, on DeWayne Walker, on Training Jay, on BYU's 'dirty' players, on poor officiating (against UCLA!?!), on injuries (look for more of this), and finally on students and fans not showing up to games on time and making noise. Never does a Dorrellista EVER point the finger at Dorrell. Fortunately, some of the main stream media is not exactly on the same page. To the news, bulleted for speed:
- TJ Simers takes shot at offense and coaching. LA Times columnist TJ Simers is at it again. Simers railed at the playcalling and specifically at Training Jay, who is finding out that calling plays is more than just watching the head coach do it. Simers: "WHAT A bore. Shoot, what a disappointment. UCLA has all these seniors, a highly touted quarterback, a 20-0 lead and the Bruins go on to play as if they're afraid to lose. They get the kind of offensive play-calling that will get them knocked off in the Pacific 10 Conference later this season, and good for them — they've beaten Stanford and Brigham Young, but if this is how they're going to play it, forget any real lofty goals."
- TJ Simers calls Training Jay out for scapegoating players. Looks like Training Jay has taken a page from Dorrell's book and decided to scapegoat his players for the lack of offensive production, and Simers called Training Jay out on it: read more
As you may recall, with the Stanford game we started a weekly postgame post this year based on the Top 10 Plays of the Year post that we published at the end of last year featuring our top 10 plays for 2006. We published that post on BruinsNation as well and a BruinsNation member, jtthirtyfour, put together a great video of all the Top 10 Plays of the Year in order starting from the 10th best play. It's an amazing video compilation. So this year we thought we'd get a head start by listing the candidates for Plays of the Year after each game. By the time the season ends we should have many to choose from.
Here are our Plays of the Year (POTY) candidates for the BYU game: read more
It's time to use Dan Guerrero's own words to assess Dorrell's performance during yesterday's BYU game at the Rose Bowl. Sure, we won the game, and as we expected, the Dorrellistas are starting to come out in force in plain view … proudly … to defend the win and Dorrell against "haters." But the ultimate arbiter of the job Dorrell is doing is Dan Guerrero. Let's revisit what Guerrero said he expects this season:
"The important thing this year," Guerrero said, "is that we don't beat ourselves, that we play with consistency, that we're an excellent second half team and that we improve as the year progresses."
Like we did last week and will continue to do throughout the season, let's assess Karl Dorrell's performance yesterday against BYU with Guerrero's clear points of analysis in mind: read more
Why does this feel familiar??!!
This was closer than the final score looks - we looked awful in the second half - for an uninspiring typically mediocre Dorrell win. BYU, were it not for a bad fumble call against them down in the red zone, and a series of bad penalties (11 in total!), could have gone ahead late in the game. And with this coaching staff … does anyone really have confidence that we would have come back and won it? This an ugly win plain and simple. We got lucky. We came out like gangbusters as we expected against a young and inexperienced offense. But we never got anything going in the second half. Nearly 400 yards passing given up to the inexperienced BYU offense now solidifies the fact that our secondary and our defense in general has problems. We have not "grown" or gotten better in that regard at all, even with all our returning starters and seniors. It's a shame too, we should have and could have dominated this game. Instead, we have given every future opponent ammunition to attack us effectively. For all those Dorrellistas out there happy with beating the spread, we have a problem!!!
BYU had 23 first downs to our 16. They had over 400 yards offense (436 yahoo sports) to our measly 235 (only 126 in the air against last years #65 passing defense in the nation, and barely 100 yards on the ground). Training Jay has earned his nickname today. read more
YBU today. There is no shortage of tough talk by our players today. If they back it up then it's all good. And they should back it up. As Dorrell has said, this is his best team, his most talented team yet. As nearly every "expert" has said, we have the talent to win big this year. BYU is in rebuilding mode, with 14 new starters including all their key offensive players. We should win this game at home handily and it should be fun to watch. We expect no less, per Brian Dohn Daily News:
"Our standards are total domination," UCLA cornerback Trey Brown said. "(Stanford) made a couple plays that we felt we should have made. Our standards are high. We're never the type of defense to be satisfied, so we're not satisfied unless they've got zero points, zero rushing yards and zero passing yards."
Love it. Now lets see it. Last week we heard the same type of proclamations of greatness, and yet … read more
Yep, we know YBU is misspelled above, it's just a little Friday humor. Vegas oddsmakers opened betting on UCLA BYU at UCLA -7 and the betting has gone in UCLA's favor since then. We think it will be a much more wide-open win for us at home. Our prediction, as we said yesterday, is for a UCLA 31-10 win. We don't get why people are underestimating the impact an away game at an historic site like the Rose Bowl against a talented, highly ranked, experienced team for a young and inexperienced offense. We don't see BYU getting anywhere offensively. In fact, we see their offense giving up points and turnovers. We think there will be as high as a +3 turnover margin potential for us. We just don't see this being close.
The Vegas over/under runs from 46 to 47, so a little more scoring that we anticipate. One thing that might be driving higher scoring bets is the new rules regarding timing that have made games way too long - 4 hours. There are 15-20 more plays per team than usual giving both teams more opportunity to score obviously. Normally, we agree with oddsmakers on UCLA football odds, but not for the YBU game. It cracks us up saying that, YBU. Go Bruins!!!
Other Notes
- The AP has decided to allow ranking of the formerly Div 1-AA classified division football programs in their top 25 rankings. This was in response to the epic upset of Appalachian St. over Michigan last week. After this weekend, you might see App St. hit the top 25 if they take care of business against powerhouse Lenoir-Rhyne.
- Sophomore CB Alterraun Verner will get the start at CB against BYU tomorrow even if Rodney Va's ankle feels better, according to Brian Dohn, Daily News.
- No word yet from the NCAA on Brian Price's eligibility. Remember, Frank Price was adamant that they would hear from the NCAA this week. It's Friday morning and nothing. That is one ticked off father.
This week's key Stat of the Week in our opinion is BYU's loss of 25 players, 14 of which were starters, to graduation last year. This will lead to an easy Bruin victory and the obvious 2-0 start. We have addressed BYU's rebuilding year already a few times because we think it will be that important to the outcome of the game. The BYU offense in particular lost all its key players, including their outstanding 2nd most prolific QB in their QB rich history, their school record holding running back, and 3 receivers. In other words, all their game breakers. They have new additions to their OL, and despite their good size a couple are underclassman that we can exploit. Our experienced and sack-producing DL should rattle the new Sophomore QB Max Hall much like they did Booty last year. Get to Hall early and he will never get a rhythm going. We just can't see any way this young and inexperienced BYU team can come into the Rose Bowl and have any success against our talented and heavily experienced defense.
On the defensive side of the ball, BYU returns 7 starters including a very strong linebacking corps that helped produce the nations #31 best rushing defense. Their OL is young and includes a freshman and they play a 3-4-4 set. That will open up the running lanes a little bit for our backs and our OL can continue their push to become a run oriented line. We just don't see BYU with youth and inexperience getting to BO or hurrying him that much, unless they blitz often with their linebackers (and they probably will) … in which case Dorrell and Norvell better be prepared with some quick passes to beat them. Sure, we most likely won't get big runs like we did last week but we will be able to move the ball relatively easily. The BYU secondary was a weak spot of the team last year. They are relatively experienced but still not that great (#65 in the nation last year), and they are also small. Our tall group of receivers should be able to get some good looks like they did against the small Stanford secondary last week. They may not have as much time if blitzes are thrown at BO but again if Dorrell and Norvell plan accordingly our receivers should be getting a lot of catches Saturday.
Overall, as we said last year, BYU is in rebuilding mode and they are coming into the Rose Bowl with too many new faces to beat our experience and talent. They will be a tougher test than Stanford but we see the same result. Our prediction: UCLA 31, BYU 10.
