It's Labor Day .. everyone have a good and safe one. Today we will have a speed post, and get to BYU tomorrow:

• Ben Olson National Player of the Week?  Ben Olson has been named one of 4 candidates for national college football Player of the Week selected by ESPN, according to Brian Dohn, Daily News.  The other 3 are Hawaii QB Colt Brennan, Appalachian State quarterback Armanti Edwards and wide receiver Tiquan Edwards of Rutgers.  Congrats to Ben for making the list. Read the article to see how you can vote for Ben.
• CBS Sportsline's Dennis Dodd flops again:  There aren't many sportscasters these days that have much credibility in this over-hyped era of sports and media, but Dennis Dodd is among the worst journos out there.  After calling Ben Howland an "a-hole" and saying he treats his players "like dogs" Dodd came on local radio and changed his tune and said it was all a joke. This past week he picked Stanford to beat UCLA.  Now, he changes his tune again and ranks UCLA at #12 in his power rankings (there is still a top 25 game to play today!).  From a loss to the worst team in the nation to now top 12. What a tool.
• Rodney Van ok. Rodney Van hurt his ankle in the game Saturday.  Brian Dohn is reporting that Van's ankle is ok and he will most likely play this Saturday against BYU.
• BYU has Pac-10's number.  read more
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We are starting a weekly postgame post this year that is based on the Top 10 Plays of the Year post that we published at the end of last year that featured 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 (POY) candidates for the Stanford game:  read more

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Now that everyone has had a night to digest the blowout win against patsy Stanford yesterday, we are seeing the beat press pretty much say the same things about the game, great start but against a bad team and some questions remain.  The offense showed that it will be different, new OC Training Jay had a good first outing, and Olson is in better form than last year.  The defense showed that its not playing at its best and needs to stop believing the hype.   But this team has given Bruins some hope, despite the patsy we played and despite the fact that we had a great outing against a better Utah team to start what ended up being a bad season last year.  Strangely, it might have been a hyped up Dorrell at halftime that sparked the inspired play, according to Brian Dohn, Daily News: read more

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We published this in our postgame post yesterday, but we thought since we will do this every game that it would be better to break it out into its own post and category.

Lets look at Dan Guerrero's criteria for what Dorrell needs to get done this year and see how Dorrell did today:

1. We don't beat ourselves.  Grade: B+.  No turnovers certainly helps, but going into half time with only a 7 point advantage against last year's worst team in the nation means Dorrell does not get highest marks.  Also, blowing 1st half chances at the end zone and 7 punts hurts. Also, 7 penalties brings back the problems we had last year with penalties. It's not a great deal but it certainly isn't the best we can do.
2. Play with consistency.  Grade B+. We had close to 250 yards total offense at halftime 4 punts and a FG miss, and only 14 points. The Cardinal outgained us 83 to 66 yards in the 2nd quarter.  We were inconsistent during the game. Of course, it was the first game of the season, 1st game with and for our new OC and OL coaches. But it was Stanford's as well.
3. Excellent 2nd half team.  Grade A-.  We scored 31 points in the 2nd half, and had close to 400 yards offense. The only reason we dont give Dorrell an A here is because Stanford still was in the game with 11 minutes left of the 4th quarter. The defense allowed 10 points in the 2nd half, more than in the 1st.
4. Improve as year progresses. N/A.

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An odd win in some ways, but a good win nevertheless.  Stanford came into this game having to hold the absolute worst team in college title and prove they didn't deserve it.  We on the other hand had to prove that we are not the same team as last year, that we are better on offense and even more solid on defense.  It turns out that we finished the game with some questions about the defense, and only a few questions on offense. Go figure.  Here is our postgame analysis.  read more

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It's finally here. Gameday 2007.  It's time to walk the walk.  We are 100% behind our team … let's kick some Farmhands asses today!!  So much to get to … we are going to bullet it:

• Bruce Davis is hungry!: Got to love Bruce Davis and his winning attitude and play.  He is the epitome of a great UCLA football player.  He is going to strike fear in the Stanford OL and most likely see double coverage all day.  But that doesn't deter him, "This is a dangerous game for Stanford because we’re hungry,’’ he said. “We’re definitely hungry. It doesn’t matter who steps out there. It could be a team of first graders. If they’re man enough to step out on the field against us, were going to go after them. We’re going to go straight for the throat."  Nice.
• Markey wants to blowout Stanford:  Not to be left out, Chris Markey had this to say about today's game, "We want to execute everything perfectly and blow out Stanford," UCLA tailback Chris Markey said. And the offense, Markey says, feels the urgency to be like the defense, "There is definitely a sense of urgency for the offense. We feel we have to catch up with the defense." Nice.
• Dorrell's rally cry: We can't make this stuff up.  Here is what Dorrell had to say on the eve of this significant season: read more
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It's Friday and we restore our tradition of Vegas Line, the day before the game.  This week various Vegas bookmakers have UCLA winning - 16.5 to -17.0.  This jives with our earlier score prediction of UCLA winning 27-10.  We don't make bets and our policy is to not link to betting sites, but the information we find is still useful.  Vegas also if you recall has UCLA winning 9 games, which matches our prediction for the year.  Tomorrow is about winning and winning solidly to set up the rest of the early season.  We should be 5-0 when we hit the heart of our schedule this year.  It all starts with Stanford at the Farm tomorrow.  Go Bruins!!!

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We have already stated on a few boards and here in various posts our thoughts on how this season will play out.  We are going to put it together in one post now.  Last year, if you recall, we picked the team to finish 7-6 and they did.  The losses we picked were not all the right ones, but we did pick the SuC victory.  We had just come off a 10-2 season in '05 and we at DD certainly went against the grain with our 7-6 prediction last year when many people thought we were going to dominate again.  We took a lot of heat, but it turned out as bad as we said it would.

This year, the predictions by "experts" are all over the map, picking us as high as #10 in the country, to as low as unranked and finishing #6 in our own conference.  There is pretty unanimous agreement that this year we have the talent to do very well. The key factor in the variability of rankings and predictions is, as you know, the quality of the coach, Karl Dorrell.

So here is our prediction:  We think the worst case scenario will happen - Karl Dorrell will lead UCLA to a 9-3 record, and lose in an insignificant bowl to end the season 9-4, starting out 6-0 with the easy opening schedule, then quickly doing the annual end of season flop.  Not enough to get him fired as we have long ago established. Also, not good enough to get him serious looks at the NFL … although we can always hope there is an Al Davis waiting to make their next mistake. But we can't count on that. So, we will be stuck with Karl Dorrell for yet another .500 season in '08.  Which sucks for us because we want to shut this site down and dream of a Howland like re-emergence of our football program.

Season Breakdown 

Breaking the season down, we see losses coming to SuC, Cal and a loss to either Oregon, Oregon State, or Arizona State.  These last 3 games should be easy wins, but Dorrell will do his usual stumble.  Finally, we think tomorrow's game will end with UCLA winning 27-10 against Stanford, with the Stanford defense scoring their only touchdown and their offense scoring a FG.  

So there it is, the way the season will play out according to DD.  Obviously, we EXPECT more .. we EXPECT a Pac-10 championship and a trip to a BCS bowl game, things Guerrero and Dorrell himself said was expected of Dorrell when he was hired, and he has yet to come close to achieving.  The average of Dorrell's placing in the conference is an abysmal 4th place!  His conference record in those 4 years is also 4th in the conference. And his overall record in those 4 years is actually 5th in the conference.  Dorrell peaked at 3rd in '05 and only did that once.  How much longer will the Bruin faithful accept what no other high stature football program would accept is the big question. You can bet that we will be here to apply the pressure if Dorrell falters this year. Go Bruins!!!

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So we renew our weekly feature, Stat of the Week, starting with of course Stanford.  The stat we think is useful to key in on this game is actually the stats of last year's game.  And they are the horrible offensive stats we put up at home against the absolute dead last worst defense in the country last year:

• 17 points scored by our offense against the dead last worst defense in the country that gave up 39 points a game
• 0 points scored by our offense at halftime, and only 7 points in 3 quarters, against the worst defense in the country
• 390 yards total offense against a defense offering up 470 yards a game
• 175 yards rushing against a defense offering up 300+ yards a game
• 5 turnovers, 7 sacks, and 7 punts for Stanford, and only 17 points scored by our offense

This type of pathetic offense will simply not cut it this year.  It was not long after that Stanford win that we started our incredibly ugly 4 game losing streak last year.  If we dont come out firing in this game, against this horrible team, then it could foreshadow troubles when we hit the meat of our schedule in October. 

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Howlad-hater and CBS Sportsline senior writer Dennis Dodd predicts that Stanford will upset UCLA this Saturday at the Farm.  We're not sure when CBS Sportsline put the predictions up but we are pretty sure that LawPundit was the first to go with the upset pick so we will give him the credit.  Dodd, after all, is the clown that wrote that hit piece on Howland back in March after Howland tried to get a post-game tournament press conference under control.  Dodd called Howland "an a-hole" and reported that Howland treats his players "like dogs."  It was an outrageous and baseless report. That report was made even more ridiculous when Dodd showed up on a local radio station to defend the article as "tongue-in-cheek."   It should be also pointed out that Dodd is the only one out of 5 analysts polled by CBS Sportsline to pick highly ranked and seriously experienced UCLA, the same team that blanked Standford 31-0 last year, to lose to the last-place and 1-win Cardinal this Saturday.   Dodd is developing a case of anti-UCLA bias.  

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