Turning Point?

Posted on by

Lane Kiffin repeated his standard summary of the season when he went to El Paso this week:

“We started the season 6-1. We were at Arizona on the road up 15; we had the ball, and we missed a deep pass that would have put us up 22. They threw one to us and we dropped it.

“We lost the game and had a bad month, a five-week span where we went 1-4 after going 6-1.”

Does Kiffin really believe USC beats Oregon, UCLA or Notre Dame if Matt Barkley completed a deep pass to Robert Woods against Arizona. Does beating Arizona change Kiffin’s playcalling on a goal-line stand against the Irish?

Does USC’s defense stop Oregon if Barkley completes that pass? Seems like a rationalization for the season’s woes.

25 thoughts on “Turning Point?”

  2. The turning point was in Spring camp after Tre Madden tore his knee and Kiffin decided to stop tackling.

    Unlike the NFL where the “switch” can turn back on, the defense was playing like it was a spring game the majority of the season.

  4. Hey wolfman, you sound like a broken record, move forward and quit dwelling on the past…..you keep asking the SAME questions….your obsession with Kiffin is creepy

  5. Offside penalty on 3rd Down (Breslin) kept Notre Dame’s only TD drive alive. Roughing the passer in the end zone on 3rd down (Townsend) kept a TD drive alive instead of getting the ball around midfield (Stanford or Arizona, can’t recall opponent). Freshman Fullback drops a TD pass against Stanford on Fake Field Goal and against Notre Dame. SC led the country in Penalty yards I believe. Sloppy Hackettesque performance. 1st year I can remember in a long time that SC did not look sharp in ANY game.

    • Exactly Lyle, exactly. Kiffin has no ability or willingness towards “attention to details” in preparing this team to play on the field. This is easily responsible for opponents having 2nd chances at making 1st downs & scoring. This is why you lose 3-4 games-in-a-row. And that all comes down on the headcoaches shoulders & no one else!

      • Every thing Lyle Raveling described are mental or physical lapses caused by the player(s)…Kiffin didn’t jump off sides, drop a pass, or rough the passer….bottom line, the PLAYERS need to make the plays in key situations

  6. I keep hoping you will read these posts. You are sounding like a jilted lover. Let Kiffen go, get a friggen life Scott, you have not and will not change anything except what we think of you. Right now we all think you are a sicko
    except the bucket, and who gives a shit what that low life rat thinks.

  7. It seems that many Trojan football supporters have myopia. Scott is pointing out how unsuited Kiffin is to being a head coach with a major football program. Don’t shoot the messenger, boys!

    • So you’re saying many of the supporters are nearsighted…LOL

      The wolfman has been saying the same thing about Kiffin, in a roundabout way, for the last 15 straight weeks….. Where have you been?

      • Really amazing use of a dictionary, genius! Myopia has other definitions too, smart guy. Craig is simply saying not to shoot the messenger when there is truth to his message.

        • What messenger, we’ve been getting the same shit from the wolfman week in and week out, since the start of the season, regarding his dislike of Kiffin

          One would have to be BLINDED not to see this

  8. What I can’t stand about Kiffin is that he never states openly and specifically the ways in which he fell short:

    (1) In retrospect, I made a mistake not to tackle in Spring Practice and Fall Practice and as needed afterward. With the short roster, I thought that I had to do that, but it didn’t work out, and I don’t think I would do it again;

    (2) In retrospect, Matt should have played more in Spring Practice. Timing and communication were off, and that might have been the problem. I didn’t get that communication straightened out the way I should have in the fall.

    (3) I also should have gotten much tougher with Matt and the QB coach from Spring practice on about the interceptions

    (4) I should have immersed myself in the problems with the offensive line, and I didn’t. We needed more draws, screens, roll-outs, two-TE sets, etc.

    (5) My running game calls were not good. Too predictable. We never could run when we needed to, and I should have given that much more attention.

    (4) We threw to our two WRs on almost 70% of our pass plays, defenses figured us out, and I did not make adequate adjustments to strategy. I should have been more proactive earlier on to adjust strategy.

    (5) We fumbled 17 times, and I obviously did not attend sufficiently to ball security in practice, given that we weren’t tackling, which may have been the underlying problem.

    (6) I let the penalties continue until much too late in the season.

    (7) I made some terrible time management management decisions in the 4th quarter and have to rethink that whole process.

    And so on. He’s not a man about it. He kids himself that he’s fooling someone. He’s not, and his attempted cover-up adds dishonesty to his failures as head coach. I’ve lost respect for him as a leader. He’s not one at this point in his life.

    AND SCOTT WOLF CALLED IT EARLY ON.

    • I really see no point or benefit in his “confessing” to us what he did wrong. I want to hear a plan to correct the mistakes make and improve. A detailed examination of the failures should be a internal exercise betwen the coaches and those players that can make a difference. I think practices should be closed until the sanctions are done, than examine the cost/benefit ratio of open practice. Injury reports should be done according to a model developed and mandated for all fbs teams. He is correct, if an opponent doesn’t discuss injuries (Oregon) it puts you at a disadvantage to tell them who they don’t have to prepare for.

      • If the corrections had occurred, neither Wolf nor any of us would be commenting in a disparaging way about Kiffin. Given that there were no corrections, it’s galling to read that one overthrown pass in the AZ game initiated a downward spiral, or that the offense did not use Lee too much, resulting in both missed opportunities and turnovers. Then the idiot doesn’t want to hire an offensive coach collaborator. How could it hurt?

        I have no opinion regarding the injury reports or the closed practices. I know that Kiffin’s two-day ban of Scott Wolf and his storming out on a daily practice press conference didn’t help anything.

        I rather liked Kiffin. He used to speak with realism about the sanctions, was pretty candid, and didn’t participate in the journalists’ tendency to impute over-arching meanings to discrete events. He seemed intelligent, with his feet on the ground. Some of the same issues with the defense, time management, and in-game adjustments were present in 2011, although to a lesser degree. It never occurred to me to question whether Kiffin was capable of bringing about incremental improvement in the problems.

        This year, problems deepened, appeared coach-related in important ways, and Kiffin became more and more defensive, and deflecting of blame. When he finally took some responsibility, it was vague and insincere (like Burnett’s apology to El Paso).

        To me, Kiffin showed that he’s not a leader at this time. What a specific “confession” would show is that he understands, takes responsibility, is working on it, and expects to be held accountable. Perhaps that’s meaningless to you. To me, that’s mature leadership, which I think should be the Trojan Way. It’s a classy program at a top-25 academic university. The coach should conduct himself with high distinction, as do the deans of the business school, law school, medical school, film school, etc. Apparently you don’t agree. You’re entitled.

        And while Scott can be a little bi***, he did observe these failings early on. Perhaps the Pulitzer has not been earned ( 🙂 ), but Scott was ahead of his peers on this one.

  10. wolfman, YOU ARE THE ONE who turned this mother-F-er OUT!!!

    you played your sweeeet Jedi Mind Games on Kiffy-boy in respnse to his LAME attempt to shut you up!!

    Kiffy NEVER recovered from the humiliation of having Bounce Pass send him out to publicly apologize for you!! and as I PREDICTED, the stress of the episode threw his off so bad it started resulted in the LOSS to the Trees!!! they NEVER recovered!!!

    thanks for the gumball, wolfman!!!!!

Comments are closed.