UCLA at Washington State
I’ve never seen anything like it and I hope you all got a chance to see the game between the Bruins and the Cougars. It was amazing, entertaining, unbelievable, there’s just not enough words to describe it. So, your QB connects on almost 70% of his passes for 570 yards in the air and 9 TD’s-not a typo 9 TD’s!-and you still lose the game. How is that possible, it’s not, right? Yet, that’s exactly what happened in Pullman as UCLA knocked off the Washington State Cougars 67-63 in a game for the ages. As one commentator said on air making a basketball reference to the score, “UCLA hit a three at the buzzer to win the game.” As a PAC-12 fan in general you have to be elated for UCLA and Chip Kelly who have been under the gun after looking so inept in their first three games of the year. As a Cougar fan it’s an unbelievably heart wrenching loss at home as you know the pollsters will take it out on you big time come Monday and your hopes of an unbeaten season are gone as well as any aspirations to make it into the CFP final four.
The combined stats alone are mind boggling. 130 total points scored including 14 TD’s in the air and 2 TD’s on the ground resulting in both QB’s setting school records. As you can imagine with a score that close the stats were split almost evenly as both teams passed for over 500 yards as well as rushed exactly 150 yards a piece for 1,337 yards of Total Offense! UCLA prevailed in this game by not giving up, exploiting the six Washington State turnovers, and making some incredible plays on Special Teams including a kickoff return for TD as well as a 69 yard punt return for TD by Freshman Wide Receiver Kyle Philips. You might think with six turnovers UCLA didn’t win the game, Washington State lost it. But give the Bruins credit they turned both of the interceptions thrown and three of the fumbles into TD’s. In spite of the mistakes, where was the Washington State Defense?
UCLA’s QB Dorian Thompson-Robinson had a career game up in the Palouse connecting on 25 of 38 for 507 yards and 5 TD’s to four different receivers as well as collecting another 2 TD’s on the ground while rushing for 50+ yards. Junior Wide Receiver Demetric Felton was a one man wrecking crew for the Bruins with 7 receptions for 150 yards and 2 TD’s as well as running a 100 yard kick-off return back to the house for another score. With Saturday’s game factored in, the Cougar’s Senior QB Anthony Gordon has completed 74.9% of his pass attempts, 137 of 183, for 21 TD’s against just 4 interceptions and is No. 1 in the nation in both passing yards and TD’s. There were seventeen PATs in the game with both kickers, UCLA’s JJ Molson and Washington State’s Blake Mazza a perfect 8-for-8 and 9-for-9 respectively.
In addition to talking about how hard his team had worked and learned in each of their non-conference losses, regarding this game UCLA Head Coach Chip Kelly said; “The football is a really odd-shaped ball, and it bounces different ways sometimes. Fortunately for us, it bounced our way tonight. That’s great, but that doesn’t mean we kick up our feet and stop working.” Cougar QB Anthony Gordon commented that; “We kept shooting ourselves in the foot, [it’s] hard to win any sort of football game when you turn the ball over six times.” Coach Mike Leach agreed regarding the lack of ball security but thought UCLA did a good job of attacking the ball.
Washington State hits the road for a game against Utah who dropped nine spots in the AP Poll down to No. 19 after their shocking loss to USC in the Coliseum. Maybe the Cougars can knock those Utes right out of the Top 25. So much for media polls. UCLA has a chance to build on their 1-0 conference record in the South, staying on the road to take on Arizona which has the potential to be another high scoring affair.
Utah at USC
You have to know that just because I predict a team will win doesn’t mean I want them to win and was ecstatic to watch USC knock off No. 10 Utah 30-23 in the Coliseum. Maybe it’s my Southern California roots or maybe it’s just because I don’t like anything that Urban Meyer has ever had his paws on. Urban was talking on the pregame show and mentioned a couple of things Utah needed to correct, and if they did, they could make it into the CFP final four. Maybe Urban and Head Coach Kyle Whitingham should have been concentrating on how to win Saturday’s game? It’s no secret that Meyer covets the USC head coaching job and is desperate for Clay Helton to fail and get tossed out in spite of his pre-Fiesta Bowl Speech in 2018, after stepping down at Ohio State, that he wouldn’t be coaching college football again. Something tells me that even if Helton gets tossed the new recently appointed USC President, Carol Folt, isn’t about to pick an AD that would endorse Urban Meyer’s hiring. Hopefully Urban wasn’t needed to talk Whitingham off the ledge who probably should have been put on suicide watch after the game. Let’s reiterate, Utah has NEVER beaten USC in the coliseum-not even this week when they were ranked 11th in the country and the Trojans were unranked.
How exciting was this game-it was amazing-one of the two most thrilling games of the weekend-both brought to you by PAC-12 South Division teams. Helton did have that come-to-Jesus moment I wrote about when USC QB Kedon Slovis, (who if you don’t remember was their 2nd String QB elevated into the starting role after the Trojans lost their starting QB, JT Daniels, to injury in the first game of the season) was taken out of the game during just the 2nd play by one of the biggest college football players I’ve ever seen, 335-pound Utah Defensive Tackle Leki Fotu. What I didn’t expect is that Jesus would answer. Enter 3rd String Junior QB Matt Fink. After coming in third in the USC QB competition Fink could have entered the transfer portal and made himself available to other college football teams. But he decided to stick it out and due to an unfortunate circumstance got his chance to show the college football world that he has what it takes-and boy did he ever.
In addition to completing 70% of his passes, 23 of 32, for 351 yards and 3 TD’s, Fink continued to show the rest of the country that USC has probably the most talented group of receivers in college football with Amon RA-St. Brown, Tyler Vaughns, and Michael Pittman Jr., pulling in 1 TD a piece and about 95% of the Trojans total yardage in the air, including a spectacular 42 yard catch in the 4th Qtr by Pittman leading to a 4 yard TD run by Freshman RB Markese Stepp that turned out to be all the Trojans needed. USC was unable to run against Utah, just a pathetic 13 yards (including negative yardage) on 22 attempts-yep, you read that right. But give USC RB Vavae Malepeai credit who helped run out the clock after Utah’s field goal brought them to within 7 points with 4:00 minutes still left to play in the 4th Qtr by rushing for 20 yards and two 1st downs forcing Utah to burn two of their timeouts.
The Utes put together a very balanced attack offensively, in spite of losing RB Zack Moss in the first half due to a shoulder injury, rushing 49 times for 247 yards along with a very efficient Tyler Huntley connecting on over 70% of his passes, 22 of 30, for 210 yards and a touchdown to his Sophomore Tight End Cole Fotheringham. All toll, Utah had 457 yards of Total Offense compared to just 381 yards for USC. Both teams fumbled and lost the ball once and each of the QB’s threw an interception.
Besides USC’s 3rd string QB stepping in and not screwing up by playing a much better than expected game under the circumstances, with Utah having more Total Offense, 11 more 1st Downs, and possessing the ball 17 more minutes, how did the Trojans win? It came down to big plays by the Trojan Defense and mistakes by Utah. As the AP wrote in their recap; “USC blocked a field goal attempt, and the Utes also fumbled near the USC goal line 16 seconds before halftime, when they trailed 14-10 despite racking up 284 yards and controlling the ball for more than 20 minutes. USC’s defense came up big in the second half as Isaiah Pola-Mao’s third-down sack from the USC 1 yard line forced Utah to kick a field goal, and Trojan’s Freshman sensation Drake Jackson then got hold of Huntley in the end zone and forced intentional grounding for a safety with 8 minutes, 51 seconds to play.” Those 16 penalties for 120 yards probably didn’t help either.
This coming week USC hits the road to take on last year’s PAC-12 Champion Washington Huskies Saturday, September 28th, at 12:30 on FOX while Utah heads back home to host Washington State at 7:00pm on FS1. Big games for everybody.
Oregon at Stanford
The Oregon Ducks and a good number of their loyal fans traveled down to Palo Alto and took care of PAC-12 North Division business by knocking off a struggling Stanford 21-6 and have beaten their last three opponents a collective 133-15, not allowing a single TD since their opening game against Auburn. Stanford continues to be able to stop their opponent’s ground game but seem to have no answers regarding pass defense as Oregon QB Justin Herbert connected on just shy of 80% of his passes, 19 of 24, for 259 yards, 3 TD’s, and no interceptions. The Ducks had more yards in the air than Stanford’s combined Total Offense of 234 yards. K.J. Costello and the Cardinal running game had to deal with 5 sacks and 8 tackles for loss by the Oregon Defense which pressured him into an ineffective performance connecting on just over 50% of his passes, 16 of 30, for 120 yards, no TD’s and 1 interception that led to an Oregon TD.
Stanford did rush 33 times for 114 yards but couldn’t punch it in to the end zone. Oregon was even less effective on the ground with Herbert losing a collective 22 yards on his 5 rushes although Sophomore RB CJ Verdell was able to gain some traction for the Ducks handling the ball 24 times for 82 yards. Stanford took the lead early on a 12 play 61 yard opening drive. But after K.J. Costello’s pass fell incomplete on a 3rd and 7 from the Oregon 14 yard line, the Cardinal had to settle for a 32 yard field goal by Place Kicker Jet Toner. After that, Oregon held them to 4 punts for the rest of the first half while scoring two TD’s of their own to go up 14-0 at the break.
Stanford didn’t get another chance to score until the 4th Qtr on a drive right after Oregon’s QB Justin Herbert connected on his 3rd TD of the game to go up 21-3. On the kickoff, Stanford got a great 40 yard runback off a 64 yard kick to start their drive just 9 yards shy of mid-field. On the first play Costello hits WR Michael Wilson with a 25 yard pass down to the Oregon 34 yard line. Between a run and another pass completion by Costello Stanford had worked the ball all the way down to the Oregon 14 yard line with a couple of bad plays pushing them back to the Oregon 17. But on 3rd and 13 Costello got sacked by Oregon for a loss of three yards to the 20.
There’s just 7:32 left in the game and even though the Cardinal is down 21-3 and haven’t scored since the very first drive of the game, Head Coach David Shaw opts for a 38 yard field goal attempt that was good. Oregon up 21-6 which is where it would stay. I don’t really understand his decision to not take a chance. Since they had not been able to shut down Oregon’s passing game there’s no way they were going to win this game by kicking field goals. In comments after the game Shaw was quoted as saying, “I’m not going to hit the panic button, I don’t have a panic button. There’s no panic button. There is focusing on what we need to focus on, make sure we have guys in position to do their jobs, make sure we have the right guys in there to do those jobs.” Sounds to me like he’s beginning to get rattled a bit. I have a feeling that if they get beat this next week by Oregon State, which is a possibility, Coach Shaw won’t be the only one at Stanford hitting the panic button.
Oregon has a week off prior to hosting No. 15 Cal on Saturday, October 5th at noon and Colorado the next week before hitting the road to take on Washington. Stanford will be in Corvallis this Saturday, September 28th, at 4:00pm on the PAC12 Network returning home to host the Huskies on Saturday, October 5th.
Colorado at Arizona State
As the Colorado Daily put it; “The odds in Las Vegas had the Colorado Buffaloes losing on Saturday night. History suggested the Buffaloes would lose. If that wasn’t enough of a hill to climb, the Buffs lost their most explosive player on offense and their most disruptive player on defense to first quarter injuries.” WR Laviska Shenault Jr. who in just nine games last year had 86 receptions for over 1,000 yards and star DT Mustafa Johnson both left the game in the 1st Qtr and did not return. But that didn’t stop Colorado from getting it done against an Arizona State team that had not allowed a single point in any of the first three quarters of their first three games or more than seven points total to each of those teams.
Not only did Colorado put up more than seven points in the game, they were up 14-0 by the end of the first quarter and got started quickly by taking the opening kickoff 75 yards in 10 plays culminating in an Alex Fontenot rushing TD and a 7-0 lead. Probably when the Sun Devils’ miracle working field goal kicker, Christian Zendejas, missed for the first time this year at the end of Arizona State’s subsequent 9 play 45 yard drive we should have known that a Sun Devil win just wasn’t in the cards. After the miss, Colorado put together an 11 play 70 yard march resulting in a 29 yard TD pass from QB Steven Montez to Senior WR Tony Brown to go up 14-0. That wasn’t Brown’s last TD catch of the day either as Montez connected on 23 of 30 for 337 yards, no interceptions, and 3 TD’s-all to Brown who had 9 receptions for 150 yards, a career high in catches, yards and TD’s. With Shenault hurt, that performance couldn’t have come at a better time. On the ground, in addition to a rushing TD, Buffalo RB Alex Fontenot picked up 89 of Colorado’s 138 rushing yards on 25 carries. Junior Place Kicker James Stefanou, who is perfect on the year, added a couple of extra points and two field goals-none bigger than the 44 yarder he made with the game tied and just 2 minutes to play.
Freshman Arizona State QB Jayden Daniels and star Junior RB Eno Benjamin had formidable games to keep the Sun Devils close the whole way with Daniels connecting on 24 of 39 for 345 yards and 2 TD’s while Benjamin carried the ball 20 times for 83 yards and 2 TD’s as well. There wasn’t a lot of difference as the Buffaloes had 20 first downs to 21 first downs for the Sun Devils and just 22 yards difference in Total Offense 475 to 453. There was only 30 yards of difference on the ground and they were each tagged for just 3 penalties a piece. Neither team’s defense was disruptive with a total of only 1 sack and 5 tackles for loss between the two. But that sack, for the Buffaloes, turned out to be a big one.
The Colorado Daily described the ending this way: “After trading punches all night, Stefanou’s 44-yard field goal with 2 minutes, 3 seconds to play gave the Buffs a three-point lead, and then the Buffs’ defense came through with a suffocating stop of the Sun Devils. Terrance Lang’s sack of ASU quarterback Jayden Daniels – the only sack of the night for either team – with 1:44 to play highlighted the defensive stand, which allowed the offense to melt the final 99 seconds off the clock.
Colorado goes back home and takes a week off before hosting Arizona on Saturday, October 5th, in Boulder, while Arizona State hits the road to take on unbeaten Cal this Friday, September 27th, at 7:30pm on ESPN.