RUSHING (UN)DRESSING

UCLA tossed the Cougars’ salad with 437 yards on the ground, but fans wonder:  Will it lettuce bowl over the upcoming diet of heartier foes, or are we about to crash into a low-Cal iceberg?  It’s time to find out if cool-as-a-cucumber Norm Chow is truly earning his healthy celery

You can’t rush genius, but you CAN rush to judgement.  And my rushed judgement is that the genius of Norm Chow is finally starting to show in Westwood.  It took a little too long (thanks to injuries and lack of talent), but the Bruin Offense is finally in the National Top Ten in a category that doesn’t involve Kai Forbath.  UCLA is now the Country’s 10th-best Rushing Team, at 262 yards per contest.

The question now, is, can the Bruins keep it up, and can an unbalanced Offense win in the Pac-10?  If Kevin Prince is able, he WILL still get the start on Saturday in the Bay Area.  Thankfully, Chow and Rick Neuheisel apparently agree that the Offense is still more potent with Prince at the helm.  However, don’t expect an announcement about the Starter until late in the week.  Based on Neuheisel’s pre-game interview last Saturday, he obviously prefers to keep it secret, forcing opponents to prepare for two different gameplans.  Despite Richard Brehaut’s fairly successful debut Start against WSU, Chow still has to call a different, slightly simpler game if Brehaut is the one executing it.

Internet fans seem to think that Brehaut had a better, more accurate touch than Prince, and a better, tighter spiral.  Maybe, maybe not.  I thought that he overthrew several Receivers, and that the difference was minimal.  It certainly wasn’t enough of an improvement to sacrifice Prince’s superior running ability, or his pre-snap, read-option decision-making.

Neuheisel and Chow deserve credit for installing the Pistol Offense, which seems to fit the Bruin talents, AND for NOT LOSING the team after their horrible 0-2 start.  And OL Coach Bob Palcic deserves huge kudos for patching together a surprisingly overpowering Offensive Line after losing all his Starters.  The Pistol might have been chosen for how it simplifies blocking schemes.  It was said after the last game that the guys basically block the same guy on every play.  And speaking of blocking, if you look at some of my photos from yesterday and today, you’ll see that the receivers are committing to downfield blocking.  For instance, on Derrick Coleman’s 73-yard run, he was escorted down the whole field by Freshman F-back Anthony Barr.

Speaking of escorts, the usc trojans, after choking to the Washington Huskies on Saturday, were escorted right out of the AP National Rankings.  And it shouldn’t get any better for usc:  They travel to Stanford this weekend.  The Cardinal killed sc in South Central last year (“What’s Your Deal?”), and they should be angry, after blowing an 18-point lead in Oregon on Saturday, getting shut out in the second half.  Maybe sc will try the revenge angle again, to avenge last year’s humiliation.  The problem is, they just tried that against Washington, and it failed miserably.  The bare-chested trojan fans with “P-A-Y-B-A-C-K”  painted on them went home depressed, and even though they may not bathe all week, it’s doubtful that they will make the trek together to Palo Alto.  Maybe they can find some more suckers, and spell out “W-H-A-T-S-T-H-E-P-O-I-N-T-?”

While the trojan season falls apart, their escaped mental patient of an ex-Coach Pete Carroll is also in trouble.  His Seahawks got stuffed by the Rams on Sunday, 20-3, while a guy he cut — T.J. Houshmandzadeh — caught the game-winning TD pass for Baltimore, to knock Troy Polamalu’s Steelers from the ranks of the unbeaten.  Shockingly, that leaves Kansas City — with Matt Cassell at QB — as the only undefeated team in the NFL, and it’s only Week 4.  The Chiefs play at Indy next week, so that will probably take care of that, allowing the ’72 Dolphins to pop their champagne corks once again, but this time three weeks before Halloween.  The Colts — like Stanford — will be tough to beat at home, after getting stunned on the road the week before:  On Sunday, the Colts got upset by the Jacksonville Jaguars, behind 2 TD’s by Bruin Maurice Jones-Drew, another one by Bruin Marcedes Lewis, and a last-second 59-yard Field Goal.  Too bad that the performance by the two Bruins just saved the job of Head Coach Jack Del Rio, an ex-trojan.

Ex-trojan Taylor Mays got on SportsCenter today, with an amazing tightwire act snag of a blocked punt for a TD, but his 49er’s lost, falling to 0-4.  Not only that, but when it was made known that San Francisco was going to give Mays more playing time, another player was so perplexed that he quit the team.  And two other ex-trojans made SportsCenter for the wrong reasons (but not as wrong as Bush’s recent reasons):  Carson Palmer let himself be sacked with the game hanging in the balance, giving the Cleveland Browns their first win, and Dwayne Jarrett couldn’t catch a 4th Down pass in New Orleans, that would have allowed Carolina to get THEIR first win.  Meanwhile, Jeff Fisher’s Titans got upset at home, falling to 2-2, despite having the League’s most-feared Running Back.  It appears that only Mark Sanchez — the guy who Pete Carroll said was a fool to jump to the NFL last year — had a successful outing this week, in a lopsided win.  But the Jets were actually carried by Ladainian Tomlinson, and the opponent was the winless Bills.  Still, with the Colts and Saints struggling, the Jets may be the best team in the League, especially when Darrelle Revis gets healthy.

Speaking of healthy, I promised that I would post more UCLA Cheerleader photos, so here they come, right after some more from the game itself..