It’s still too early to say there are no great teams out there

In the wake of Florida looking a little tight against Tennessee, USC looking bad in losing to Washington and Texas getting a good game from Texas Tech, a lot of folks are saying there’s no real power team on the college football landscape this season.  In that mode of thinking, schools ranked from 4th to 12th now have a glimmer of hope that their chances of crashing the BCS title game party are suddenly much, much better.

I wouldn’t exactly start pouring cheap booze on the graves of the three teams I just mentioned, though.  No, Florida didn’t beat Tennessee by 42 points as some had thought they would, but was the outcome of the game ever really in doubt?  If Tim Tebow doesn’t fumble deep in Vol territory, the Gators go up 30-6 and are on the verge of making the bookmakers look like geniuses.  In my mind, it was closer to being a Gator blowout than a Vol upset.

But let’s give credit where credit is due, because it was obvious that Vol defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin got into the heads of the Florida coaching staff.  Florida offensive coordinator Steve Addazio admitted that he overprepared for a variety of blitzes that Kiffin never really called.  Instead, Tennessee clogged passing lanes and prevented Tebow from making big plays with his arm.  Unfortunately, they couldn’t totally account for his legs, and that proved to be the undoing of Kiffin and company.

However, I’m not going to say that Florida’s reliance on Tebow in short yardage situations was totally a result of Kiffin’s grand defensive plan.  Deonte Thompson was out with a hamstring injury while a flu bug had an impact on both Jeff Demps and Aaron Hernandex.  Without a full compliment of weapons, Florida relied on Tebow even more than usual.

I’ve thought the loss of Percin Harvin would have a bigger impact on Florida than people thought it would, and the Tennessee game makes me even more certain of that.  Somebody else on offense has to step up and make plays, because as super as people think he is, Tebow can’t keep taking this amount of punishment and never get dinged up.

If Demps or someone else can provide some of the spark that Harvin provided, then Florida will be more than okay coming down the stretch.  However, as workable as its SEC schedule seems, Florida still has to go to Baton Rouge.  LSU will throw a more impressive group of athletes at the Gator offense than Tennessee did.

USC’s prospects coming down the stretch are a lot more complicated to figure out.  It’s obvious that as good as his collection of quarterbacks is in terms of talent, Pete Carroll still doesn’t have anyone who’s quite to the point of making Trojan fans forget Carson Palmer (or even John David Booty).  Against Washington, Aaron Corp’s lackluster effort under center simply doomed USC.

In the aftermath of yet another head scratching Pac-10 loss, a lot of pundits out there are burying the Trojans, with Dennis Dodd of CBSSports.com even going so far as calling it the end of a dynasty (however, I disagree with the label, a true dynasty has won more national titles than Carroll has at USC).

Whoa folks, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here just yet.  All great programs have a season where the numbers game goes against them, and this is that year for USC.  Only three defensive starters returned from a lights out unit, and the quarterback problems I mentioned earlier really hamstring this team.

Therefore, the problem with USC isn’t that the program is falling apart, the problem is this squad was overrated to start with.  I don’t care how many Parade All-Americans you’ve got stepping into starting roles, you can’t start the year in the top five with this much inexperience.

Also, do you think it helped that Washington head coach Steve Sarkisian is a former USC assistant coach?  Call me crazy, but that probably benefitted the Huskie game plan immensely, nothing like an intimate knowledge of a superior opponent to really shrink that talent gap.  Coming down the stretch, it’ll be interesting to see how Washington fares against teams whose playbook Sarkisian doesn’t have on his shelf.

USC lost to Oregon State last season in late September and didn’t lose again the rest of the way.  If their youngsters get a mean streak coming out of this Washington loss and the quarterback play gets more consistent, who knows, the same scenario might unfold for the Trojans this season.  This is still the most talented program in the Pac-10 by a WIDE margin.

Turning my attention to Texas, I had a few people tell me they were a little unimpressed with the the fact this team only beat Texas Tech by 10 points.  In the wake of Tech losing studs like Graham Harrell and Michael Crabtree (not to mention Big 12 sack leader Brandon Williams), I guess folks thought the Longhorns should have won this game by 35.

Texas didn’t win a whole lot of style points in this one is because their offense took a second to get on track.  Playing with a noticeably restrained tempo in the first half, the Longhouns only generated 124 yards of total offense.  After halftime, though, they picked up the pace and put up 145 yards in the third quarter alone.

Interestingly enough, redshirt freshman tailback Tre’ Newton toted the ball 20 times for Texas after Vondrell McGee pulled up lame.  For a team searching for its identity in the ground game, that’s pretty significant.  No Longhorn back had carried it that many times in a game since 2007.

If Texas starts imposing its will in the running game, I think this offense will become extremely hard to stop.  Last season, Colt McCoy completed 77% of his passes without the luxury of a great ground game (Texas finished last season ranked 41st nationally in rushing offense).  He’ll get even scarier if opposing defenses have something else to worry about.

It’s very early in the campaign, so we pretty much haven’t even made it to the first turn of the track.  Therefore, it’s not all that surprising that some horses haven’t broken away from the pack.  But that’s no reason to think that the favorites won’t still do so.

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