It was expected.  Washington has made an offer to DeWayne Walker to be their next defensive coordinator.  The deal is a guaranteed 2-year deal, where most assistant coaches get year-to-year deals, per Dohn: read more

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Update:  Perelman took down his report we quote here from his blog, without ANY mention of doing so.  We normally link directly the report and what a stroke of bad timing, the one time we dont he takes the report down.  But he cannot deny he published the report we quote verbatim!!  Also, Brian Doh!n is backpeddling from his original story there is an "intense push" by Washington for Walker (Nestor has the story). More on this tomorrow.

Don't blink.  If you did you already missed DeWayne Walker's time at the top of Washington's defensive coordinator search.  Brian Doh!n reported yesterday that there was an "intense" push for Walker to replace fired DC at Washington.  Now, not hours later, Rich Perelman is reporting on his What's Bruin blog at the LAT that Walker has moved into the second tier of candidates: read more

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With the recent news that Rick Neuheisel will be given an oppurtunity to interview for the UCLA opening, I thought that it was time to look at how important being an alumnus of the school one coaches at is to the football success in this ongoing series about the characteristics and qualities that will be important for the next coach. After all, there's a popular groundswell of support for Neuheisel because he was the underdog, walk-on QB who led UCLA to a Pac-10 championship and upset Illinois in the Rose Bowl. 

The way I see it, there are basically two possible reasons why a school would pick an alumnus to be its football coach: read more

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Now that we have the bounce back win, "erasing the memories" of an embarrassing blow out loss at the hands of a JV 0-2 MWC team, Dorrell gets back to the task of trying to get this team to play to their potential. Emotion won't carry the team this week against a middling Oregon State team at Corvallis (a team that nevertheless beat Utah 24-7).  They will have to get back to the sorts of things Dorrell doesn't do well: prepare, focus, scheme, inspire, lead, execute, adjust.  All while classes start this week. Bill Plascke, LA Times, drives the point home:

Don't know how long it will last. Don't know whether it will be enough to save either this inconsistent team or its enigmatic coach. Driving to the Rose Bowl before Saturday night's scuffle, the problem with Dorrell football became clear. Less than two hours before the game, the roads around the bowl were mostly clear, the speeds were fine, the trip was easy. Once again it became apparent, every time there is any sort of buzz around UCLA football, Dorrell's team kills it.

Before we match up against real competition in October, we have to read more

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Below are this week's Guerrero Grades.  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 will continue to do throughout the season, here is our assessment of Karl Dorrell's performance yesterday against Washington with Guerrero's clear points of analysis in mind:   read more

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We are going to get right to it this week because we are short on time.  Here are the candidates for Plays of the Year from the Washington game, there are many:  read more

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Now that we "worked" the 2nd worst Pac-10 team - annihilated the worst defense in the Pac-10 and dominated the 7th worst offense in the Pac-10 - the Dorrell cultists and MSM apologists are out in full force.  Even on our site, a Dorrellista is saying that Dorrell is now off the hot seat.  It's to be expected.  We will hear more of this the next 2 weeks when we play equally bad (Oregon St.) and worse (Notre Dame) teams.  5-1 and these cultists are going to be reviving talk of Pac-10 championship and Dorrellian glory.

And it's not just the cult and the MSM apologists that are bringing the righteous talk. It's Dorrell himself, in full self-preservation mode. Check our this odd bit of chest-thumping:

"We needed a difference in me this week,'' he said. "It was important for me to coach hard. I have good coaches on this staff, but I'm the added coach who is coaching every area. I was trying to emphasize what my role is given the circumstances from the week before. I like challenges and being put up to the task like this. I answered the bell, and I'm going to continue answering the bell like I did this week."

Huh?!? read more

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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

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It's gameday and we will still don't really care to take a hard look at the Huskies … damn. Every UCLA grad we know is down on the program right now.  Sure, we will watch, we will make noise for our guys to win.  But we all feel let down in a big way.  We are firmly in The Suck. And it worse to know that the players are dealing with this train wreck when they should be pumped and playing for bigger things.  Whatever.  Let's just kick some Husky butt today.  Incidentally, we think we will win today more than we think we will lose, how's that for a prediction?! 28-24.  And look for the Dorrellistas to come out in full force after the win saying we rushed to judgment on Dorrell and the team.  On to the notes, and Go Bruins!!!

Gameday Notes:  read more

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Ok, we promised you a Stat of the Week for today's game and we finally have come up with one.   We are pretty much 3 for 3 this year in picking the stat of the week that is key to each game's outcome (Stanford, BYU, Utah).   Last week, all the stats and data pointed to complete domination by our Bruins in every facet of the game, including the final score - though the Vegas spread was tight (UCLA favored by 14.4 to 16.5) as far as we were concerned.  We thought the spread was key to the outcome of the game, and that it would be a blow-out, so we made the spread the key stat of the week.   We were right, the spread was the key to the game with Utah pulling away and UCLA players quitting on Dorrell once Utah did pull away.  We just chose the wrong team to do that and win.

This reason why it was hard to find this week's Stat of the Week is the fact that we didn't know which team Karl Dorrell was going to get to show up, and read more

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