In A Nutshell
USC obviously did not have the faith to open the playbook with Mark Sanchez and John David Booty did not have enough control on his passes to play.
That's the dilemma the Trojans faced and without a go-to tailback, which further limited its offensive options.
Well, well, well. There was a poll taken this week and 70% favored Sanchez over Booty. Interestingly, 70% of Americans also favored going to war with Iraq.
Sanchez did pretty well for a 3-game quarterback. Sophomores seldom beat seniors in the Pac-10...simply put, Oregon was the better team-- Dixon and Stewart are the best 1-2 offensive punch in the league...SC's defense still played a very good game, and without the offense's turnovers the Trojans could have actually pulled it out...SC was fortunate to make it interesting in the end...Sanchez showed his inexperience by shutting down too many plays too early and scrambling, but it is hard playing quarterback and learning to pick out receivers. Try it sometime...SC has been in the running for 6-years straight and they were still in it in 2007 almost into November. So thank God for Trojan football!
well, the nest to last series showed what Mark could do.
the last series (and all the others) showed what Sarkesian prefers. having just marched down and scored in under a minute, we come back out and pussnutz calls a series of stupid running plays, then puts us in a "gotta make it" passing situation. what did he expect to happen? a truly cynical observer would suspect deliberate sabotage, or gambling, but i figure SS is just a putz. one should never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity. what i don't understand is why PC puts up with this idiocy.
all in all, i'll take Sanchez. after all, what's so wrong about having someone who *wants* to win?
now we just need an OC who wants the same thing.
Like Petros said, let the horse run. Well SS let Sanchez run for one series and then went back to his conservative, predictable, vomit-filled playbook. Something tells me that not many NFL teams will be calling for SARK this offseason....but thats actually bad for SC because then were stuck with SUCK I MEAN SARK for another predictable, terrible situational play-calling year.
Hats off to our defense, they did the best they could and held a very potent offense to a very beatable score....too bad our offense is completely lost.
We have the ball given to us in the red zone, we have it 4th and 1 and we run a reverse....?>? That was just the beginnign of our offensive woes.
On the last int, Sanchez stared down the receiver, Davis, threw late, and threw into triple coverage. It was a horrible decision and throw. Also, he threw way behind the receiver on the 1st pick. He avoided several sacks, and seemed pressured all game long. I don't know that Booty would have fared any better. If Booty's finger is better, I bet he starts.
Havilli has to hold onto the football. That was our first chance to take the lead since the first quarter. It was 10-10 at that point. Two plays later, we were down 10-17. The turning point. He has great talent, but he is fumble prone at this point.
Why can't our CBs turn around when the ball is arraving on the fade route? Thomas cost us on a 3rd and long. (McCurtis cost us on the winning TD in the Stanford game). They need to play the ball. If he turns around, he could have picked it.
I like that they kept playing hard until the end. It is a shame that a horrible throw ended the game, and any chance at an extraordinary season.
OC Wanted
uscmike:
I agree with you 98%. The remaining two % is that Mark should start unless JDB's finger is 100% and it doesn't take Dr. John Frank* the orthopedic surgeon to asses that. Having followed FB you know that this type of injury takes longer than a month to heal. Hell, my middle fingers are still crooked from playing basketball in my younger days! The remaining one percent that a friend of mine alluded to on another blog. The biggest positive about Mark Sánchez happened on his THIRD game. That is he brought the best in Patrick Turner and Vidal Hazelton something JDB did NOT do in five.
*Finally Dr. John Frank played TE for the SF 49ers. His last game was the 49ers 4th SB win. He retired from FB and went back to medical school. In case you ask he went back to Ohio State.
One more thing please because I have to say this about Mark Sánchez:
3.24 GPA
How about that, how do you DO?
¡Viva Sánchez
In a nutshell these losses are harder to take than all the ones in the Hackett and Robinson2 years. At least then we knew we would lose and that we sucked.
In the last 2 years its not so much that Ore St, FUCLA, Stanford and Oregon beat us but how SC beat itself in each game!
Knowing full well we could easily manhandle each team if we got out of the friggin way!