A little help from a friend

My pal Casey Hancock sent me over a piece on Washington’s win over Utah last week. A lotta good stuff in it so I figured I’d throw it up for the world to see. As an ASU fan it’s always good to keep tabs on what the rest of the league is doing, so if anyone out there follows any other conference teams closely, and wants to write a piece please send it my way. I just ask that you keep the personality of the blog and include drug and alcohol references, sexual stories and casual swearing. Take a peek below at Casey’s work, it’s a well written piece!!!

The Huskies Welcome to the Pac, Utah

by C. Hancock

And welcome back to true relevance, Washington. Ok, I know that this was Utah’s second Pac-12 game, but it was their first home game and all their fans could talk about is ‘wait until you have to play in Rice-Eccles…’ Didn’t turn out so well for them. I know University of Utah fans are mostly non-Mormon, but I think the lack of alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine, and pre-marital sex throughout the state makes them a little ignorant when it comes to grown-up things. And as they learned Saturday, Pac-12 football is for grown-ups. Fans of the Utes and Dawgs must have very different thoughts going through their heads right now.

 Utah fan: “Damn, it really isn’t fun to have to worry about losing every week.”

Washington fan: “Wow, it’s been a while since I felt like we have a chance to win every week.”

The turn around that Sark has pulled at the U is pretty incredible and has Husky fans feeling like their darkest days are way behind them. This optimism coming from the fan base was last seen when Slick Rick Neuheisel was roaming the sidelines and the Huskies were fresh off a Rose Bowl victory in 2001. The reasons for optimism are plenty: good, young quarterback; good, young coach; excellent recruits pouring in; and new stadium and new TV deal mean more money coming in to the program.

And to cap it off, the Huskies put in a rock solid performance against a historically solid program in a tough road environment. Over Sark’s tenure, the Dawgs have put together other solid performances (see USC last two years, Cal two years ago, and Holiday Bowl last year), but what was noticeable in the win against Utah is that the Huskies could have easily laid an egg after fighting for their lives for the first four weeks of the season. Utah was a heavy favorite and all people could talk about was how tough it was to play in Salt Lake City. But Washington showed a lot of toughness and confidence and came out flying and finished strong.

First off, I loved how the Huskies started the game. On the first kickoff, two UW players completely blew up Utah blockers and the return man fumbled the ball when he got hit and Jamaal Kearse scooped it up for a touchdown. On Utah’s first offensive play, Jordan Wynn was sacked. Only 30 seconds after the opening whistle, UW had asserted itself as the physically dominant team and Utah fans must have been wishing for the good, old days in the Mountain West. These plays reminded me of the old Husky teams that were fast, physical, and relentless with opponents and it was good to see.

Here are my general thoughts on the game…

(Since this is my first post of the season, there are a lot of insights on all five games up to this point.)

Pros

1. Keith Price continues to assert himself as a big time quarterback – Five games in and Keith Price has just about proven that he is UW’s next great quarterback. Barring injury or something unforeseen, this kid is gonna be a star. Just look at his stats. 10^th in the country in QB rating (ahead of Kellen Moore, Matt Barkley, and Nick Foles), 2^nd in the country in TD passes with 17, and he’s completing almost 70% of his passes… Oh, and this is all on a completely fucked up right leg. It’s awesome to see an accurate QB inSark’s offense. AgainstUtah, all price did was go 22-30 for 226 yards and three more touchdowns. He started a little shaky and threw an interception when he sailed the ball on a short touch-pass. But he finished strong as all three touchdowns came in the second half.
2. Chris Polk is a bona fide beast! – This guy is an absolute stud and continues to be a workhorse for the UW offense. In the first half, Utah seemed to have him bottled up but he came out rolling in the second half and rushed for 145 yards in the second half alone including over 100 in the third quarter. It seems like he never gets tackled by the first guy and his combo of power, speed, and vision is fun to watch and should make him desired by many NFL teams.
3. Fab froshes – Austin Seferian-Jenkins and Kasen Williams were big-time recruits from the Huskies backyard. Both look to be the real deal. Seferian-Jenkins continued to impress with his size and skill. Even though he only had 3 catches for 35 yards, they all came on third down and resulted in first downs. Kasen Williams has been pretty electric when he touches the ball and despite his size, he is very quick and agile. While he hasn’t been a focus of the UW offense (mostly because UW is stacked at receiver), he has been impressive when he gets the ball in his hands.
4. Improving defense – The UW defense has to be a pro and con at this point in the season. In the first half againstUtah, they looked feeble and got lucky thatUtahturned the ball over three times, twice inside the red zone. However, the positive is that the front 7 continues to play solid and the defensive backs continue to come up with timely turnovers. Utah’s running back, John “I’m Not” White IV, was getting a lot of hype early in the year but UW’s defense held him to 35 yards. Outside of the Nebraska game, the defense is only giving up 52 yards a game and about 2 yards per carry. The corners continue to get abused game after game but Desmond Trufant and Co. are forcing turnovers when the field gets short. I don’t know if they’re lucky or clutch but it’s been working so far.

Cons

1. Rough 1^st half – Even though UW took a 10-7 lead into the break, it was not a great first half and easily could have been 21-0 Utah. First, the offense had only 112 yards of total offense. After silencing the crowd early with the fumble return for touchdown and a quick three and out by the D, the offense was putting together a good drive as they looked to jump out to a 14-0 lead but then they stalled just inside Utah territory and Polk couldn’t convert on a 4^th and 1. On UW’s field goal before the end of the half, two personal fouls on Utah were the main reason we got into field goal position. The defense wasn’t much better in the first half. Despite a quick three and out to start the game, Utah moved the ball with ease on their other three drives. Two turnovers in the red zone saved UW from going into half time trailing.
2. Secondary – This unit was supposed to be solid after playing well to end the year last year and having a lot of experience under their belt. However, they look awful game in and game out. They play press coverage but allow receivers to get open in the short, medium, and deep passing game. Regardless of man or zone coverage, receivers are open. If the D-line doesn’t get pressure, this unit gets picked apart with ease. What’s worse is that UW is going to face much better passing attacks than it has thus far. I wonder what Matt Barkley and Robert Woods are going to do when UW travels to the coliseum later this year. The strange thing is that the secondary has also come up with UW’s biggest plays and biggest stops this year. Against Eastern, Hawaii, and Cal, the secondary made big stops and caused big turnovers at crucial points in the game. That trend continued against Utah with DB’s accounting for 2 picks and a forced fumble.
3. Alameda T’amu – This guy was supposed to be a beast inside this year and has done basically nothing. He continues to clog holes and help the run game but he’s not making many plays. He was completely ineffective in the first half against Utah but did a good job of getting pressure up the middle as the game wore on. Hopefully his play will improve because the UW secondary needs as much pressure on the quarterback as possible.

Overall, UW fans gotta be happy and excited. Their schedule hasn’t been easy and they are 4-1 and undefeated in Pac-12 play. The offense has looked sharp in each game and Keith Price and Chris Polk should continue to roll as the season goes along. What’s also important is that the defense has improved throughout the season and has gotten stronger as the game wears on in each game. As long as they can keep forcing turnovers and making stops when they need to, that should be enough for the offense to outscore most teams. There are still a few tough games on the schedule, notably at Stanford and USC and at home against Oregon, but I see this team winning 8, 9, maybe even 10 games this year. Hopefully the Dawgs can keep it rolling and turn Husky Stadium back into the electric atmosphere that it can be.

The off week should help to heal up some injuries and hopefully Price’s leg will get better. Then the Huskies host Colorado who they should handle easily. The four games after that will be rough though. They travel to the farm to take on Stanford, then host Arizona (Foles could light up the secondary) and Oregon(chance the Huskies could pull an upset here) and then go to the Coliseum to take on USC. After that stretch, if they are 7-3 fans should be very happy.

Ewwww That’s Sloppy

No need to glamorize this win………it was ugly. ASU played maybe the worst team in the Pac-12 and instead of flexing their muscles and running away with an easy win, they played down to the competition and kept the game way too close.

There’s two ways to look at this game, as an optimist, or as a pessimist. To be fair it’s probably best to take a little from both sides.

The Pessimists – This looked like the same old ASU team, who can’t come up with a consistent effort week in and week out. A week ago against USC this unit looked fired up and inspired, playing their most complete game in years. On Saturday they looked half asleep and made the same old, suicidal mistakes.

The biggest cause for concern was Brock Osweiller. His first quarter, and really overall performance was pitiful. He turned the ball over in the offense’s first three possessions with two picks and a fumble; he held onto the ball for way too long taking four sacks; and threw another dumb interception early in the second half that let Oregon State back into the game. What’s more concerning with Osweiller is this was his second lousy performance in ASU’s four Division I games. If you were to give him grades on those four games he’d probably get two A’s, a C, and a D.  He needs to control the turnovers for ASU to win against quality opponents. In the Illinois and Oregon St games he had a combined seven turnovers; that needs to stop now.

 The Optimists – Take your pick on which cliché you agree with. A win is a win, it’s better to win ugly than to lose pretty, ASU would have lost that game a year ago, sometimes in football these things just happen.

Here’s my favorite coming from Ted Miller: “Some might see the sloppy win over Oregon State as a negative. I see it as confirmation. The Sun Devils played poorly and won by 15 points. Questioning that is the way we analyze good teams.”

You have to be happy with the defense. They were put in short field positions three times early on and held the Beavers to a field goal twice. More than that they forced five turnovers on the game, to ultimately win the TO battle as well as the contest.

As far as Osweiller goes, there is no denying he struggled, but he did lead his team back and earn a W. When his team was down 13-0, he registered back to back scoring drives to take the lead. What you have to like most is when faced with some serious adversity he found a way to lead and get his team over the hump.

My bottom line – It was definitely an ugly win, and it exposed some holes in this squad, but ASU is now 4-1 and has a chance to really take control in the Pac-12 South. This was not a shocking effort, and Dennis Erickson even said he thought it was coming. He apparently ripped the team, especially the offense, after a flat practice early last week. But the bottom line is they won. Even great teams show up flat, look at the dominant USC and Oregon teams over the past ten years, how many close games have they had when they were clearly the superior team?

ASU can learn from this effort in two ways – first don’t show up this flat ever again because it probably won’t end up with the same result; and second – even when you don’t have your best stuff you are still a good/talented enough team to grit out victories.

Moving forward

What scares me?

Osweiller. It’s a mixed bag on him. In one way I love him and have all the confidence in the world, but he’s also turned in two awful performances. The glaring issue I see is he’s staring down receivers, especially Aaron Pflugrad. He’s gone to Pflu in every key situation all year long and defenses are starting to notice. It becomes an issue on third downs because he stares down Pflugrad when he runs intermediate routes. The corner knows it won’t be a deep route, so he sits underneath, reads Osweiller’s eyes and breaks on the ball. This is exactly how each of Brock’s early interceptions took place.

Brock needs to show some trust in other receivers in key spots. He needs to develop some rapport with Mike Willie, Gerell Robinson or George Bell, and they need to show they can make the clutch catches. Have some success just a few times and teams will stop turning all their attention to Pflugrad. Then, go back to the Great White Hope!

Deveron Carr – He was pretty much abused by Markus Wheaton all game long. Carr turned in a solid effort against USC, but took a big step back against the Beavers. He was beat deep, committed stupid penalties and missed some tackles. He needs to find some consistency, or ASU may need to replace him with Alden Darby who has a knack for the big play. Either way, ASU needs to prove they can stop a decent passing attack moving forward.

 What I dig

 A couple guys are proving to be absolute game breakers on the ASU offense

Jamal Miles is special. I’ve been saying it for weeks, but every time he touches the ball it’s a potential touchdown in the making. His punt return in the second quarter was electric. He made three guys miss in pretty much no space, and then showed off how fast he really is. I also like how involved he’s been in the offense the past two weeks. Remember the Illinoisloss? He had only three touches. On Saturday he had six carries for 45 yards and eight catches for 62. Continue to get this guy the ball!!!!!!

Cameron Marshall has asserted himself over the past two weeks and has done it on a bad ankle. Want me to crunch some numbers? OK I will. In the last two games he has 39 carries for 221 yards and 5 td’s (5.6 yards/carry).  He was highly effective against Illinois as well before tweaking his ankle. This guy is better than many realize, (watch his first touchdown again) but because of ASU’s pass first, spread offense, he often is under utilized. Imagine what he would do in a power running scheme like Chris Polk at Washington? Noel Mazonne needs to continue to get him involved. He can run between the tackles, get the tough yards, and make the big play.

I’d like ASU to lean more on Marshall and Miles to take a little pressure off Osweiller. Osweiller can be great, but why make things more difficult than they need to be? Marshall and Miles are two great options on offense that involve very little risk. Continue to get them the ball!

Another thing to like is the defense making some plays. Last year they were dead last in the Pac-10 in forcing turnovers. Through two games this year they only forced one, but in the last three games they’ve forced 12. This defense has suffered a lot of injuries, and because of it has given up more yards and points than I thought they would. However, they still have a ton of speed and athletes and SHOULD be able to continue forcing turnovers. They can really fly around  and break on the ball.

 Coming up

 It’s a monster matchup at Utah this Saturday. A win puts ASU in the driver’s seat in the Pac-12 south and sets up a monster matchup the next week. Once again ASU will be the better team, if they play a mistake free game they will get the job done. Now go out and play a clean game please!!!!!

 Enjoy watching

 J