UCLA Post-mortem

Outside of one offensive drive and a few defensive stops, the Buffs played generally uninspired football.  The crowd reflected this, running out of steam in the 3^rd quarter as CU let the game slip away from them and Folsom became eerily quiet, the only sounds were the perky voices of the cheerleaders continuing their job to steady, soft patter of shoes filing out of the stadium.  Mercifully, there is no game next weekend, giving everyone some extra time off before ASU comes to town on Thursday, the 11^th.

§  We’ll start with the offense, since that is where the game began.  However, we will brief, just like that first three-and-out that many people in the stands completely missed as they weren’t even at their seats yet.  The Buffs did have the one touchdown drive, when they looked to be in a rhythm and moved the ball right down the field.  Outside of that, they were basically pathetic, with porous blocking, penalties, bad passes and dropped balls.  The offensive line is awful. The wide receivers are way too slow and were rarely open for Webb, who was running for his life, even when the pressure wasn't there. He can’t hit a crossing route period-if the receiver is moving away from him, he might hit him in stride, but going across the middle he is almost always behind and the receiver either can’t make the catch or gets crushed trying to reach back for it-they left a lot of yards on the field here actually. Lots of people calling for his job now and why not give Wood and/or a shot now in this hopeless season.  Without a line, the running game did basically nothing.  Powell fumbled early and got injured (I think), then Jones had some moments but too few and far between. Why on Earth were they still bothering to rotate Ryan Dannewitz in for Stephane Nembot when the game was out of hand?  Give that kid a chance to play, plus they were way more likely to be throwing when Danno was in and the defense had to realize that as well.  Too many plays were blown up before they got off the ground because they tip their hand with formations, tendencies and even motion (everyone moves inside on running plays-its really quite obvious sometimes the way they do it). They were 2-15 on third down. They were just a mess.  

§  The defense was not a whole lot better.  They did make a few nice third down stops, but the offense was never able to do anything with them.  More often than not though, UCLA was moving the ball with ease, stopping themselves with mistakes and penalties as frequently as the Buffs defense.   The Bruins still put up almost 500 yards of offense, and never looked to be in trouble or worried.  Brent Hundley beat them every which way and his supporting cast all contributed.  It didn’t help at all that the Buffs were terrible tackling.  They often looked confused and not ready for the play.  The defensive line is a huge liability as they put very little pressure on the QB.  However, they rarely rushed more than three or four and weren’t even very effective when they blitzed.  LB Paul Vigo, who had his best game against WSU, missed a lot of tackles and had a key penalty.  Greg Brown is in way his head and he really needs Ray Polk back for the ASU game for his defense to have any chance of slowing down the Sun Devils.

§  Special teams was the best area only because it wasn’t atrocious.  Darragh O’Neill is probably the team MVP and had another TD-saving tackle.  Kickoffs are terrible whether its Castor (can’t seem to keep the job) or Oliver (who kicked one out of bounds).  Although they didn’t give up a return TD, they lost the return yardage battle by a longshot.  UCLA punter has a booming leg and Crawley rarely had any room to even consider a return and has become quite adept at the fair catch, even in traffic.  However, I don’t understand why they didn’t once try to rush the punter with ten, go for the block, and just let Crawley fair catch it?!  He sometimes had five guys surrounding him when he caught it, and we appeared to have a “return” called every time.

§  Overmatched, outcoached, outplayed.  Should be the same story the next few games-ASU, USC, Oregon, Stanford-before it “eases” up with Arizona, Washington and Utah.  Let’s try to take some deep breaths Buff fans, this thing is far from over and the end of the season and early offseason look to be quite tumultuous as well.