Just when you get the offense right…

In the wake of USC’s head scratching loss to Washington, it seemed like all everyone could do was give head coach Pete Carroll the business for getting victimized by yet another inferior Pac-10 opponent.  Hey, I agree, there’s no reason USC shouldn’t have taken Washington out behind the wood shed.

But I think far less attention was paid to the fact that Washington coach Steve Sarkisian had a big hand in making USC the seemingly invicible juggernaut that everyone seems to think they should be.  Once he left for Seattle, he didn’t leave his intimate knowledge of his old team back in Los Angeles.  The guy basically owns a blueprint of how to beat USC.

So a week after stunning the Trojans, Washington laid an egg against Stanford and now Sarkisian’s team is pretty much back to where we thought they’d be…an improvement over the Ty Willingham debacle, but not quite ready to be a contender.

Now, Sarkisian and company are set to cross a couple of time zones and take on a Notre Dame team that’s played three straight games that were decided in the final minute.  If the Irish let this one get away from them, that’s pretty much it for Charlie Weis.

Sure, Pete Carroll gets the business for losing to Washington, but nobody’s asking him to clear his office out.  But if it’s Weis doing the losing, he’s got more than a few boosters faxing him over quotes for moving companies.

Try as he might, Weis still can’t get things right on both sides of the ball.  Last season, Notre Dame wasn’t that terrible on defense (39th nationally), but pretty damn mediocre on offense (65th nationally).

Fast forward to the present, and the Irish have figured out how to move the ball a little bit.  Through four games, Notre Dame already has 11 touchdown drives of at least 70 or more yards compared to 18 such drives all of last season.  But that 39th ranked defense is suddenly a very porous 94th ranked defense, even though a shutout of Nevada is included in that body of work.

The evil Bob Stoops

On the Dan Patrick Show this past Monday, there was an inordinately long segment where Patrick talked up the college game with CBS analyst Gary Danielson.  After he spent an eternity giving his theories on how a college football playoff should be implemented (just put one in so people will drop the subject), Danielson turned his attention to Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford.  Click here to listen to the whole thing.

In Danielson’s enlightened opinion, Bradford should have thrown his hat into the NFL Draft ring after last season (”What is he gonna do, come back to win one more game?”).  Apparently, Danielson is still in contact with some of his old Detroit Lions buddies who told him that they would have taken Bradford ahead of Matthew Stafford if given the chance.

I wonder what kind of input that Danielson’s unnamed Lion contacts actually have on the team’s draft decisons.  Who knows, he could have been talking to a couple of equipment guys, but dammit, SOMEBODY in Detroit was in love with Sam Bradford.

In the course of the interview, Danielson proceeded to throw not only Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops under the bus, but Bradford’s parents as well.  To hear Gary talk, he kind of implied that they all participated in an evil conspiracy to keep the kid at Oklahoma, and subsequently they’re all to blame for his injury.

Of course, all of this got back to Stoops, who described Danielson’s comments as “foolish.”  Who knows, maybe the decision to come back for his junior season was all Bradford’s, or maybe Stoops attached himself to his quarterback’s ankle and refused to let him leave Norman.  Pete Carroll tried that move with Mark Sanchez, but Sanchez wiggled free and made it to New York.

I’m sure Stoops cares about Bradford, the last thing he’d want is for the kid to get crippled up before he can receive his NFL riches.  But what is Stoops being paid a lot of money to do?  Win football games for Oklahoma.  To that end, I can’t really blame him for trying to get his most accomplished players to use up as much of their eligibility as possible. 

This and that

Ohio State has shut out two straight opponents, and if they do it again at Indiana this weekend, that will be the first time in 36 years that the program has turned that trick.  However, the Hoosiers looked mighty damn good in dropping a close game to Michigan last week.  Three shutouts in a row?  I don’t think so…The chess match between Auburn offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn and Tennessee defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin should be very interesting to watch this weekend.  To hear Kiffin talk, he’s more worried about Auburn’s offense than he was about Florida’s…Is there a more dynamic quarterback-receiver tandem right now than Blaine Gabbert throwing to Danario Alexander at Missouri?…Jahvid Best, you won’t fool me again, and neither will Cal when it comes to road games.  It’s like they can’t function away from Berkeley…Colorado’s Rodney Stewart is one impressive running back.  In that losing effort to West Virginia on Thursday night, he was finding holes that didn’t look like they were there.

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