Halloween looms on the horizon and your Trojans are on that perch tomorrow in Utah where they can take complete control and drive towards the South Title. This title would provide the Trojans with a chance to right the loss to Stanford and Texas to a degree. But will it be Trick or Treat with this years football team? USC has shown it’s fans that they can put it all together for a quarter or two on offense. Imagine if they could string together a game. We have a future star at QB in J.T. Daniels but he is learning and with that comes steps sideways, backwards and forwards as we continue to see. Nothing surprising there at all. He has a wealth of weapons on the receiver front and imagine the Treat if we get the running game going.
I believe the KEY to success with this years edition of the Trojans is the running game. With it the sky is the limit. Without it we have only seen mild exposures to our true potential offensively.
In the beginning of the year we had huge issues on special teams. It wasn’t just in one area. We had a lot of learning and frustration on where the fix was going to come from. Lots of pressure on coach Baxter along the way. I for one believe we have come a long ways and today we are in far better shape with our special teams than at any point in the season to date. Nice work but work still to go!
Defensively we have to be ready for Utah. The Utes have been improving every week. Today, outside of Oregon, I would venture they are the team no one wants to play. They are solid. They come ready. In their small stadium they are fierce and have tremendous fan support. Our defense will have to play as they did last week. Four quarters of flying around the ball. Not one player each play but like last week in the Coliseum we saw the wild bunch with 3-4 players hawking the ball. This was will be huge and against the Utes we cannot have any lapse on defense. Clancy needs to dial it up and let the young players he has been grooming go full tilt. Attack attack attack!
Red-zone offensive play calling is still a challenge. We have no real expectation as we get in to the zone and stare at the goal line. We need to be aggressive and pound the line hard. Flare out to the RB’s to loosen up the middle but attack the line fiercely. Saturday in Utah will be that “Game” that dictates who will be playing in Santa Clara.
Fight On! Beat the Utes!