Just as we expected, UCLA kept the game close in the first half and then came out and took the win in the second half, uncharacteristically of Dorrell teams. We believed the key to winning this game was to keep it close in the first half. Despite Dorrell's poor ability to adjust at halftime and in-game, we knew that psychologically this team just needed to know it could win, before it would win. This victory proves the point, this team has the talent to win. It just doesn't have the coaching to win consistently, and the coaching will be tested more often than not in the coming weeks. read more
"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."
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Right on time like a Japanese subway train … Dorrell delivers his scapegoats and excuses for the beatdown at the hands of an 0-2 MWC junior varsity Utah. From Chris Foster, LA Times:
"This was a complete team effort, in terms of how well we did not execute in offense, defense and special teams."
Did Dorrell just blame the entire team and not take any responsibility himself??? Looks that way to us. Doesn't the effort and responsibility of the $1 million a year coach, and his $300,000+ per year OC and DC hyped coaches, count for anything? Dorrell also read more
Could this blowout loss to Utah be worse than Michigan's home loss to Appalachian State? Yes!! Michigan at least had a shot at the end to win it, actually multiple shots. They at least moved the ball and scored touchdowns. They at least played a championship team, albeit of a division lower. App St. was even ranked #13 in the AP by one pollster. Utah … Utah would get blown out by App St. Utah had all of 19 points and 73 yards total rushing in their 0-2 season … playing in the MWC. They didn't even have their key starters, and played with their backup QB, RB, WR, TE and one backup OL.
Lloyd Carr is most certainly gone at Michigan at the end of this year because of the historic Appalachian State loss. The talk of replacements is conventional wisdom. This for a guy who won a national championship! He's won the Big 10 title 5 times in 12 years. He's been named National Coach of the Year. He's 3rd all-time in victories at the winningest football program in the country, closely behind legends Schembeckler and Yost. He has had Michigan in the top 25 for all but 6 games during his 12 years up to this season. He's taken Michigan to 5 BCS bowls, including 4 Rose Bowls. He's never lost more than 5 games in a season, and he's done that only 1 time in 12 years. He has a .750 winning pct.
Dorrell … what can Dorrell claim? 3 out of 4 seasons with 6 or more losses. Highest placing in the conference is 3rd, and he's accomplished that feat all of once. Dorrell's winning pct is still a meager .585 … still good for worst since WW2 among UCLA coaches who've coached 3 and 4 years. What more needs to be said?! Carr is gone, how can Dorrell NOT be fired? Utah is Dorrell's Appalachian State. There is no getting over this loss. We know that Dorrell can still win the conference and go to the Rose Bowl. But this is a defining and demoralizing loss … it's over. Now all that remains is how badly will this go down.
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.
This may be a pointless exercise from here on out, but we will stick with it because we must be relentless until the outcome (Dorrell is fired) is secure. For those who are new to DD or are coming back after a hiatus, we have been using Dan Guerrero's own words to assess Dorrell's performance during the season. Here is 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."
As we posted last week and will continue to do throughout the season, here is our assessment of Karl Dorrell's performance yesterday against Utah with Guerrero's clear points of analysis in mind (obviously this won't be surprising): read more
We are not going to let Karl Dorrell entirely ruin the season of all our players, especially all the seniors. We are going to continue to highlight the great plays of the year so that at the end of the year we as fans can pay tribute to our team for the great plays they made. Having said that, finding great plays in such a thorough beatdown is not possible and even if there were one or two plays they would not be worthy of the list. Our players don't need to be reminded of this game at the end of the season. So, for this week's Utah game there are NO CANDIDATES for Plays of the Year. We will continue with this list next week with our home game against Washington.
Editors Note: For those new readers, with the Stanford game we started a weekly postgame post this year based on the Top 10 Plays of the Year post 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.
One more memorable quote before we close for the night. It comes from Sports Illustrated's Ivan Maisel who feels burned by Dorrell yet again:
Finally, it figures the one week I finally disregard the Karl Dorrell factor and bump UCLA up seven spots in the power rankings, they go and put up a vintage Dorrell-caliber letdown, getting destroyed on the road by an 0-2 Utah team. Technically, it has no bearing on the Bruins’ Rose Bowl hopes — but I’m pretty sure it ain’t happening.
Right about now Sporting News' Matt Hayes, who thinks Dorrell is one of the best coaches in the NCAA and who picked UCLA as his sleeper to win the national title and who named Training Jay as the BEST offseason hire, is wondering how to spin Dorrell's latest blunder. You can email Matt Hayes at: mhayes AT sportingnews.com.
This was totally unexpected … seriously … even by us at DD. Not even in our most dark thoughts did we ever once think that we would lose to the Utes, forget getting blown out. We are stunned. We feel bad for our players … our seniors. But the silver lining is that Dorrell has one foot out the door and this tortured era is closer to coming to an end. What or who could Dorrell possibly say is to blame now?? OC Training Jay, the guy "who speaks (Dorrell's) language," didn't call a good game?? Best DC in the nation DeWayne Walker, the guy whom Dorrell used to prove he "brought back the tradition of UCLA Football," didn't have the defense prepared? The 5-star QB recruit didn't execute?? Hot new 0 experience ex-convict WR coach Eric Scott didn't have the right receiver rotations?? The new season starts tomorrow???
We can't wait to hear how Dorrell spins this historic loss. It has been over 40 years since UCLA has lost an OOC away game by 38 or more points … when we lost to Syracuse on the road 38-0 in 1964! Bill Barnes was fired read more
Before we get on to the game check out these incredible postgame quotes, from Robert Kuwada OC Register: read more
