Overall, defense has played admirably this year, particularly given the injures at linebacker and secondary. Maybe lack of interceptions is due to the soft zone they seem to play?

Spoken like a true defensive genius!!

Bill:
Your Bruin defensive geniuses lost to a pitiful Notre Dame. Quit while you're ahead...

Interceptions are overrated. I'll take fumbles any time.

An average punt is 38 yards. The average pass that is intercepted is approximately 15 yards from the line of scrimmage (longer passes carry a higher risk) minus about 3 yards for a runback. 38 lost yards on a potential kick less 12 yards is a net gain of 26 yards for the defense.

The average fumble is probably about 3 yards from the line of scrimmage, so 38 lost kicking yards less 3 yards is a net gain of 35 yards.

Duckmann’s final word: First of all, thank you for letting me crash your blog and interact with you for the week. You have been very cordial and have shown great pride for your team as well as the kind of class that is born out of long term success. This kind of success can make a close loss hard to deal with but your boys on the field and the fans at the game sucked it up and were congratulatory to the Ducks. I was also impressed with the respect on the field. (I saw no cheep shots or post whistle shenanigans.) I really think that this was the toughest defense the Ducks will play all year and I believe the stats at the end of the year will bear this out. It will be interesting to see if your remaining schedule has any success scoring. It’s not an easy schedule but I like your chances. In my opinion this may have been the greatest win in the history of our program (NO HYPERBOLI). Perhaps it will sling shot us to a great bowl game and maybe it’s our turn to represent the Pac in the championship game. Well, time will tell. Best of luck and see you at “the Pit”.

Good luck to you, Duckmann. This stat on the INTs is perplexing. Thom Williams has one, and I think Ellison, Mays, and Thomas have the other 3. So, only 1CB pick ALL year. Weird, with teams passing more since they can't run. Certainly, our QB pressures are down and forced fumbles are also way down. Notice how 2 of the 3 turnovers to Oregon were great Def plays by them...CREATED turnovers, the Havili fumble was due to a great defensive penetration and hit in our backfield, and on the final Sanchez pick their player said that he lined up on the other side of the field and was playing a shadow defense on Freddie.....worked his way across the field and ran through Fred for a nice pick.

Leo may be right...the soft zone, bend but don't break schemes. Or, maybe it's just the law of averages catching up with us. Our speed and talent should lead to turnovers, unless we are playing too "contain" and less "aggressive". And, I'm not sure that playing the "contain" defense isn't better with our low rush def avg and solid pass efficiency rating.

Congrats to you and the Ducks. You guys were the better team on Saturday. We made several mistakes at very inopportune times, which we could not overcome. Against a weaker opponent, we may have been able to do so.

To the Trojan fans - we faced a better team on Saturday, and we lost. Its part of life. Accept it. The true sign of a champion is one who triumphs through the tough times, and to not pack it in (i.e. notre dame) or assign blame.

We have the tools (talent, coaches, recruiting, fans) to correct the problems abd improve. Tomorrow's always a better day and another chance to make a run at a national championship.

My home computer is broken (meaning I have to wait to get to the office to post) so here are my takes for the Oregon game (whether anyone cares or not):

#1: Aside from some other big plays going against SC (2 INTs, failed 4th & 1, holding penalty on McKnight's TD) the biggest reason for the loss came down to 2 failed USC plays.
a. Stanley Havili fumble deep in SC territory
b. Jonathon Stewart rumbling for the first down on third and long. This play, maybe more than any other was a back breaking and inexcusable play from the SC defense. Oregon seemed content to hold on to their lead and punt the ball away, but when multiple USC defenders failed to tackle Stewart, it opened the flood gates and led to a 2 touchdown advantage.
#2 Mark Sanchez did not play well, but he did not play poorly either. The first interception was a late, poorly thrown ball to a covered TE (not named BFD) Not a good choice, not good execution, not a good anything. The second pick was thrown into triple coverage, but I blame MS much less for this one. There were 20 seconds left. SC was at the 30 yard line, and they did not have time to dink and dunk the ball. He had to take a shot, and his shot landed in the wrong arms. The worst decision MS made on the final drive was actually the decision to run up the middle on a scramble. Luckily for SC, the hole was quickly plugged, MS backed out, made a dash for the sidelines and dove out of bounds to stop the clock. Had he gone through with his initial plan, he would have been tackled in bounds and he might not have even had time to throw the pick.
#3 Coaching was horrendous in the game. From clock management to play calling, the coaching was just abysmal. What were the SC coaches thinking when they let the team huddle up and take their time in getting to the line on 4th and 1??? I think about 30 seconds ticked off the clock during this baffling sequence. At this point, the coaches needed to take a TO and get their act together. Had they done that, SC would have had more time to move down the field, and would not have been forced to throw into triple coverage. Sark also made it easy for Oregon's D (which I said last week was NOT as bad as the numbers indicated due to their explosive offense) By playing so conservatively, Sark shrinks the field for the defenses. How easy must it be for defenses to be able to play sideline to sideline but only about 15 yards deep? The field is then compacted and whole "8 men in the box" can become 11 men in the box. Sark needs to stretch the field both vertically as well as horizontally to loosen up the defense. Even third tier SEC teams throw the ball deep. Sark needs to get on board, or we need a new OC.
4. While the Rose Bowl (Pac-10 title) is still mathematically possible, USC just needs to go back to playing football and having fun. I could come up with scenarios like Dixon gets hurt and Oregon loses 2 more games while ASU slips up somewhere and then USC wins out, that's not going to happen. Much more likely would be for Oregon to keep winning and for USC to start mauling people. If SC can take care of business, there is a small sliver of hope that SC could land in one of the 4 BCS non-title games.

Hey, it's not great... it's not even good... but it's all we got right now.

You were right Scott. Last year when you spoke at a Long Beach Trojans Club dinner you pointed out the weaknesses of the USC football program: poor offensive coordinators, undisciplined and immature players, and a head coach in denial about these problems. No Norm Chow = no national championship!

Duckmann91:

As I mentioned in another section of this blog, Oregon was clearly the better team, and I believe with the Dixon-Stewart 1-2 punch, the Ducks are of championship caliber, and probably will play in the big game if LSU and Boston College get beat (and who knows, Michigan over Ohio State?)

Oregon was jobbed in 2001, and it was shameful that the Ducks were not allowed in the championship game against Miami (which would have been a whale of a game, although Miami was awfully good that year). But there are no great teams in 2007, so my money is on the Ducks to win, because I have never seen a quarterback with such a quick first-step as Dixon. I actually found myself rooting for the guy, he is that good!

Good luck.

How about a secondary coach. It is painfully obvious this issue must be addressed as soon as the year ends. FIND A NEW COACH. What we have is simply not working, nor has it been working the past two years. These guys have no skills in covering recievers at all; needless to say they have'nt been developed. We are constantly being assesed penalties for pass interference; that is when we are close enough to touch the reciever. T2 a "lock down" corner! what a joke!This is an area that we have to recurit better at. Also, how many times are we going to have to watch Taylor Mays miss arm tackles? I'm so tired of watching him run up field to help make a tackle. In reality he should be laying a big hit on a reciever just as he is catching the ball. And another thing; Grab someone for gods sake! Quit relying on simply hitting someone and hoping he falls down. I"m not finished yet! Would someone please host a website that endorses the removal of Sark! I thought that Kiffin was horrible!

How about a secondary coach. It is painfully obvious this issue must be addressed as soon as the year ends. FIND A NEW COACH. What we have is simply not working, nor has it been working the past two years. These guys have no skills in covering recievers at all; needless to say they have'nt been developed. We are constantly being assesed penalties for pass interference; that is when we are close enough to touch the reciever. T2 a "lock down" corner! what a joke!This is an area that we have to recurit better at. Also, how many times are we going to have to watch Taylor Mays miss arm tackles? I'm so tired of watching him run up field to help make a tackle. In reality he should be laying a big hit on a reciever just as he is catching the ball. And another thing; Grab someone for gods sake! Quit relying on simply hitting someone and hoping he falls down. I"m not finished yet! Would someone please host a website that endorses the removal of Sark! I thought that Kiffin was horrible!

Hey Mitch, I'm not sure which game you watched on Saturday, but I had no problems with the SC secondary. Oregon receivers had a grand total of 67 yards receiving in the game. Most of the aerial damage was done by the TE Dickson and the RB Stewart. The PI on T2 came on an underthrown deep ball. Coaches will tell you that the underthrown deep ball is one of the hardest plays to defend from the CB position because if you have close coverage you almost always get called for PI. My biggest problems with the defense was not tackling J. Stewart on that long 3rd down rumble. THAT cost us the game, not a lack of coverage skills.

In my opinion, the lack of interceptions comes from a lack of pressure on the QB. Quarterbacks tend to hurry their throws, not step into passes, and make wrong reads when they are pressured. SC has failed to call the safety blitz, CB blitz and all-out blitz in any kind of consistent manner. I'd like to see PC get back to the basics and rush the living cr@p out of the quarterback from now on. You will then see, that SC will give up a few more big plays, but they'll start taking the ball away at a much higher clip.

Fight on!

One issue with the INTs is in the past we would be playing with bigger leads so opposing teams would have to take chances downfield. When teams are beating us, or even just close, they can play ball control football.