USC Morning Buzz: If It’s Friday, It’s Time For Weekly Notes Column

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In this week’s notes column, I lead off with one of the most memorable plays in USC history. Fourth-and-2 against Texas in the BCS title game. Why wasn’t Reggie Bush on the field with LenDale White? No way that happens again, right? But is USC making a similar mistake this season by not playing Ronald Jones and Stephen Carr together on a regular basis in games? Remember, Charles White and Marcus Allen played together.

And I make my game prediction.

Full column here

102 thoughts on “USC Morning Buzz: If It’s Friday, It’s Time For Weekly Notes Column”

  1. While I would love to see the two best running backs on the field, the play you are talking about White was the obvious choice. Bush was a finesse runner, White was the power runner. USC had long dropped the fullback position at that point. .
    My biggest worry is a let down from last week. If we come out flat after an emotional win, it could mean doom.

    • I do not believe our team will have a letdown. This game is way too big to do that. The revenge factor alone will keep our guys wide awake.

    • But White had just fumbled on 3rd down. And you had a Heisman Trophy quarterback in Matt Leinart who could have made a two yard pass to Reggie or Dominique Byrd.

    • The whiff of a block by the guard was a bigger factor than Bush being split wide. An extra CB in the box didn’t blow that play up. If guard gets any piece at all of his DL assignment it’s game over as it is a 4 yd run.

  2. Can’t go back in time and put Bush in there, and everybody in the football world knows that was one of the biggest coaching blunders in college football history, so there’s no need to revisit it. Putting in Jones and Carr together this Saturday is certainly doable because you don’t need a time machine to do it.

    • Pete has now two of the biggest coaching blunders ever under his leadership — not running Lynch in the SB — could even have been a bigger fail.

      • True story. Pete can be reckless and he truly does swing for the fences while horribly outsmarting himself in the process.

        But with Pete, it’s ALL GOOD. That’s how the dude lives and as a result, he’s one of the great coaches on the planet and I think only he and Jimmy Johnson have won a NC as well as a Super Bowl.

        • He swings for the fences and ignores rules. I guess that means the same thing . His players juice and are the most penalized in pro football both in terms of game & PED suspensions.
          The dude burned you, ran away like a little girl yet you still worship him.
          You are more than a little slow.

          • I don’t worship anybody Wimp Boy. Get your facts straight little gutty. And you call Pete a little girl. Those 8 on-the-field humiliations on the field obviously left a mark on you.

            You’re one of the few living humans on the planet who doesn’t know that ucla players use PEDS like everyone else. Same thing with ucla cheating and paying off its players, although Klemm did get recently spanked there. Most of the time it goes unrevealed at ucla because the bruins are just a mid-major football program that’s lucky to make a bad bowl.

            And you never hear about ucla’s PED players because they’re never good enough to get into the news, like ucla football. Who wants to cover the irrelevant, doormat bruins? No money in it.

            You still too chicken to predict a ucla victory over USC in football this season? Oh, that’s right. You need more time to watch ucla get drilled by STAN. Hah, hah, hah. Poor Wimp Boy. He just needs some bruin to love.

          • It’s all good, Jack —-but, let’s face it, the “not good enough to get into the news” line was the topper.

          • Maybe they were getting their juice from the UCLA pharmacy that was shut down for putting expired medications into heart patients. And that 26 year old coed had the goods on the whole operation so they offed her.

  3. Bad analogy using Charles White and Marcus Allen playing together because Allen was being used as the fullback to block for White. Coach Robinson’s philosophy at the time was to make guys play fullback for a few years first. White played fullback for Ricky Bell before becoming tailback. Robinson thought the fullback experience toughened up his runners.

    It’s a different time now but I’m sure you don’t want Carr in some kind of pseudo-fullback role.

  4. im confused witch dont hapen alot but writer say yesterday that he tired hereing abuot 2006 game and than he strats todays web log entree writing abuot 2006 game, it like when my teechers said ed u stop makeing those funny faces or u going to get in trubble and than they fart and make me make a funny face,

  6. Hey wolf, since you’re the self-proclaimed football guru. Please provide us with some scenario on how you would use Jones and Carr together. Helton might be interested in what you have to say

  7. I do like the score prediction Wolf, but I’ll go with 42-24 Trojans. I have a hankerin’ for a half pound steer burger.

  8. Here’s just one reason why SW probably needs his AP Vote stripped away and if he has a Heisman vote take that too. He just said that he DIDN’T have Stanford in his preseason top 25 but put them in his top 10 last week..

    Well i say, I say, i say….WTF!!!!

      • He’s all over the place. He didn’t know what game Lendale White was on the sidelines at messing with Haden but he “reports for usc”

        • SW is a disaster and an emotional, empty wreck now that USC is killing it again in football. What’s he gonna say? SC’s a one-man team? Yep. You got it. That’s how he gets out of every jam nowadays.

          He’s got a great gig here because it’s HERE – on an SC site, where you can’t fail with massive traffic.

          We are SC. Sure am glad I chose the Trojans as my team and USC in undergrad. We own L.A. and all the blog traffic in town, including the little gutties, who have to live here every day or nobody would ever read anything they say.

          • That’s his favorite go-to. That USC is a one man band with Sam Darnold, but the rest of the college media know now after last week that we are much more than that.

          • It’s why he’s not allowed on tv. He’s not an important figure or opinion. You and I might get in Sports Center before him.

  9. Was it only yesterday? “I’m a little tired of hearing about the 2006 game. Is Vince Young playing Saturday?”

  10. I actually think the front 7 for Texas is the best thing they have going for them. Speaking of our shaky secondary, it’s better than the one Texas puts out there. Looking at the horns, it’s THEIR secondary that looks ripe for the picking.

    • We won’t be playing a team that resembles the Texas team that played Maryland, Clay. This game is going to test BOTH secondaries. Hope Jack Jones and Chris Hawkins step up to the plate. We really need them to show everything they have in this game.

      • Who they start at QB matters. Playing CB is hard partly because you can’t hide out there and everyone sees your mistakes. Lineman are in there making mistakes every play but people don’t see it. At corner, one mistake and people are trying to sit you. It’s a tough gig especially when you just moved up in class.

  11. No Scott wolf, this game should not be close as these teams right now are not on the same level. And if USC plays to its level, we win.
    I like the rotating of RBs I saw last week. It gives them blows and keeps them fresher throughout the game, especially in the 4th quarter when it should matter. Only wish we could do the same with the O-line.

  12. Herman is playing the “I don’t know who my starter is” game so I’m not sure what we’ve been prepping for. One QB is a dual threat guy and the other is a pocket guy. Like WMU, Texas is an unfamiliar opponent AND they have more athletic talent than WMU. I say all that to further say that I’m not entirely comfortable with the matchup tomorrow. Texas has some serious personnel and we don’t want them getting on the right page tomorrow.

    As much as I talked about running the ball last week, I’d be trying to go after the secondary early and often tomorrow. My guess is that we open up the rotations again and try to play more people than last week. If I’m one of these receivers with all this talent and bunch of splinters in my butt, tomorrow is my day and I’m gonna do what I came to ‘SC to do. The only thing I’m lacking is opportunity and when I get it, I’m not looking back.

    • You know how important a game is to a coach when he plays the Lou Holtz ‘hide the cards’ game. This game means everything to Herman….and to Texas. It better mean the same thing to USC. That said, Phil Steele rates the Texas o-line and receivers as better than ours —-and rates their linebackers and defensive backs as roughly comparable to ours. We had better hope that whoever is quarterbacking for Texas doesn’t have a hot hand. Many have been comparing this to our last game with Texas —-the better comparison is the 2005 shoot out with Fresno State (which we barely won, and which exposed our defensive weaknesses when playing a team with a wide open attack).

        • In August, Steele ranked 2017’s top units (running backs, linebackers, etc.). Texas came out looking pretty good —-a lot better than they showed against Maryland.

          • It would be interesting to hear his opinion after two games. I wouldn’t be surprised if he reranked our o-line and running backs higher

          • He definitely thinks more of our o- line and receivers at this point—-but, the point is, I think there is at least an outside chance that he’s right about the talent at Texas. We’re better than they are —-but we need to play like it.

      • I’m sure Phil wrote all that stuff some time ago, but we have game tape on teams now.

        TX has a QB who is coming back from injury and another who has barely played. Meanwhile, they have 2 RBs that compliment each other and they’re both healthy. My guess is that TX is far more concerned with establishing these 2 backs than either of the QBs throwing a bunch of passes.

        • My worry is not so much a lot of passes but a dual threat quarterback like Ehlinger (who’s perfect for Herman’s system) taking advantage of our depleted d-line.

          • Well, for me, I felt like Stanford was kind of a one-off defensively. It was kind of a one-off offensively also to a lesser extent. We knew exactly what Stanford wanted to do and we had a very pointed game plan to counter it. Against Stanford, your offense’s ability to either help or hurt your defense is really magnified. So, it’s a very specific formula with them and we’re not likely to see it to that degree again. Therefore, I don’t know what to know about the team in a normal situation. Tomorrow’s game is more analogous to the WMU game to me in that we don’t really know what we’re getting. I still have some of the questions I had after WMU.

            My guess is Herman is going to pull out all the stops and be as clever as he knows how to be. Going 11-0 as an underdog isn’t a coincidence and he has the most talent he’s had as a head coach. I just want to blow them out early, let the crowd get into it and never let them feel like they have a chance.

          • Yeah, we don’t want to let them get too comfortable in this game —-but that’s going to require an early effort from the defense that we haven’t seen yet. If we can’t avoid getting into a shootout with these guys, we can anticipate trouble with Washington State, Notre Dame and UCLA down the road

          • TX should be trying to slow the game down and give us fewer possessions. We’re dinged up along the D-line and everything points to TX trying to get first downs and play ball control.

            With regard to passing QBs/offenses, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. That’s why we have to keep getting better.

          • Exactly —-we haven’t yet seen a quarterback who really excels at passing or running. And Herman knows it. This is going to be a good test.

  13. I know the popular opinion is that Bush should have been on the field, but I honestly don’t think it would have made a difference. That was the right call. And if the idea is that Bush would’ve have lured away one of the nine guys who crashed the box, I just don’t buy. And if the idea is it would be a fake dive to LW and toss or dump to Bush wide, I still think the odds are approximately the same. The strength of that Texas D was their secondary. They played Bush relatively well, but they couldn’t stop LW and the O-Line. Carroll went with the most dependable call, and the Texas D rose to the occasion. SC O-Line got good push even. Texas just brought the entire house, it is as simple as that. The real story is, for jilted SC fans, is that if it comes down to one play, that was not it. The VY knee, the Bush lateral, playing and blitzing both Ting brothers in the 4th quarter against the most agile QB in the country – those were some of the more important impactful plays. Better to focus on the things that did happen, than to try and imagine some ideal scenario. Hats off to UT, Young played out of his mind. I absolutely knew they were going to score, when 4th-and-2 failed.

  14. The blogger won’t be satisfied until Jones, Carr, Malepeai and Ware are all on the field at the same time tomorrow…

  15. This is the worst impersonation of Alan Malamud I have ever seen. On the two running backs comment, what the hell is his point?

  16. No. Here’s the play. Matt Leinart notices that the Texas secondary is up forming a 9 man front. Leinart considers, what I knew at the time, that we are Two Feet and One Half Inch (!) short of the first down marker. At that moment, Leinart could have guessed that 9 of the Texas defensive starters would play in the NFL. All right, when over the center, look to WR Dwayne Jarrett and give him the FOURTH AND NINE Notre Dame audible, complete The Pass, and win USC’s 3rd Consecutive NCAA National Football Championship.

  17. Old news, but………Forget 4th and 2. Why were the last 4 offensive plays in that game 3 runs by LenDale White and a pass thrown to the fullback Kirkman? Texas could not stop Leinert, Jarrett or Bush in the 2nd half.

  18. Wolfman,
    You are working this frenzied crowd like a pro.
    Keep them whipped into a frenzy the posts are nearing an all time high.
    Try that photo of Trader Joes again, that was brilliant.

    • I bet you’re a real fixture on bruinsti*nkdotcom. Maybe a moderator?

      What’s the traffic like on your little gutty boards? Do you actually hang there too with all the other bruins crying about your pitiful program?

      People actually follow USC football Wimp Boy. Even little gutty Trolls, like you.

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