It’s time we looked at that wacky bunch of teams out West.
Yes, it’s my Pac-12 predictions.
Pac-12 Preview
There’s been the expected chatter about how the Pac-12 will
be stronger, improved as a whole, etc. this offseason. But let’s be honest: it
will be a shock if anyone other than Oregon
and USC play in the title game. The Ducks and Trojans are simply the two most
talented teams in the league and both face favorable schedules. Outside of
their November clash in Los Angeles
that will likely decide only the venue of the rematch, neither team will see an
opponent at their level. This makes SC and UO the overwhelming favorites to win
their divisions and essentially play a BCS championship game semifinal.
USC has what appears to be the most formidable single challenger in-league with Utah , who the Trojans play in Salt Lake City . The Utes will have a strong
defense featuring future NFL DT Star Lotulelei and should trot out a much-improved
offense with QB Jordan Wynn returning from injury. Eight other starters also
return, including former JUCO gem John White at tailback and their top six – that’s right,
six – pass-catchers from 2011. This is an experienced team and the Utes will
once again miss Oregon
and Stanford from the North. I have Utah
pegged for about nine wins, so SC can’t take them lightly.
However, the Trojans should still take the South, as the
rest of the competition is pretty pitiful. UCLA has changed coaches (again) and
is still inferior to their cross-town rival. They return a lot of pieces on
both sides of the ball, (most notably the oft-injured signal-caller Kevin
Prince and workhorse RB Johnathan Franklin) but still. This is UCLA. When this
program decides on a direction, a long-term coach, or even a defined playing
style, let me know. Until then, I’ll expect to see what I’ve seen every year
for the past decade-plus: underachieving and mediocrity.
Then we come to Arizona
State Tulsa to double-digit
wins three times – but it remains to be seen whether he was a good hire for the
school at this point. ASU’s lack of returning talent (basically, just stud RB Cameron Marshall) combined with the coaching
turmoil could mean an ugly year. Like three wins ugly.
Yet that isn’t even the dregs of the South, as we still
haven’t looked at Colorado .
Thankfully, the Buffaloes don’t take on nearly the gauntlet they did last year,
when they faced a brutal 10 bowl teams (including ineligible USC) in 13
consecutive game weeks. That’s pretty much where the optimism ends though, as CU
returns almost nobody from the Pac-12’s worst team. Who’s the starting QB? The
replacement for all-everything RB Rodney Stewart? The team’s lone bright spot
was frosh WR Paul Richardson, who promptly tore his ACL in spring ball. Doug
Rippy is a good linebacker, but that’s about all there is to be excited about
on defense. Outside of an expected victory against FCS Sacramento State , Colorado
Now that we’ve run through the list of reasons why USC will
win their division, let’s look at why Oregon
will win the North. The Ducks are essentially in the same position, with no
true challengers, but the North is more balanced than its two-deep counterpart.
The bottom teams aren’t nearly as bad, though I don’t think the second-best
squad is as good as Utah .
The national assumption is that Stanford is once again UO’s
divisional foil, but I think too little is being made of the loss of Andrew
Luck. Yes, Stanford has recruited quite well and will continue to run people
over with a dominant line, probably to the tune of eight or nine wins. But it’s
foolish, disrespectful even, for analysts to continuously ignore how many of
the Cardinal’s shortcomings Luck covered for. Did anyone actually watch
Stanford last year? The team was simply not as good as in 2010, beating up on
an early slate of patsies and struggling against more talented teams like USC, Cal and Oregon .
The lack of perimeter speed on both sides of the ball was readily apparent and
that problem hasn’t been magically fixed this offseason. Make no mistake, this
team will be solid, but no one should be scared of them until replacement QB
Brett Nottingham proves what he can do.
From Oregon ’s
perspective, in fact, the most formidable division foe in 2012 could be Cal. Up
front, I’ll make my caveat clear: much of my prediction relies on the
development of QB Zach Maynard, who had a 2011 season best described as
erratic. However, even with Maynard at the helm and a lack of returning
starters, I expect a lot from the Golden Bears. Always a recruiting power, the
program has enough defensively to frustrate opponents and the skill players
offensively to score in bunches. Keenan Allen (Maynard’s half-brother) is an
elite receiving talent and the rushing game features a very dependable
committee of backs. The Bears also get Stanford and Oregon at home, the latter a week after the Ducks’
emotional game versus USC. With all that in mind, I think the Big Game will
decide who finishes second in the North this year.
What about Washington, who finished third last season? The
Huskies continue to crow that they’re “back,” not realizing how ignorant of
their own history that sounds. To be fair, UW is much-improved from the
dark, pre-Sarkisian days. The unfortunate thing is, Washington will probably be a better team in
2012. The offense lost several playmakers, but the defense will likely take a
big step forward to even things out. The problem is the schedule. The Huskies
travel to LSU in their second game, then later open conference play against Stanford , Oregon
The bottom of the division is rounded out by the States, Oregon and Washington .
I don’t think there’s a whole lot of separation between the two, so I’ll just
start with my closest team geographically. Oregon State has more or less collapsed since the 2009 Civil
War and Mike Riley has come under unsurpassed scrutiny during his second stint
in Corvallis .
On one hand, such regression is natural. OSU relied on a seemingly-endless
supply of forgotten talents and diamonds-in-the-rough during their heyday from
2006-2009. Eventually, their luck was going to run out and, even more likely,
other schools would begin taking a harder look at the guys the Beavers were
recruiting. That doesn’t mean the coaches (or the players, some of whom clearly
mailed it in the last couple of years) are blameless. OSU needs to get back to
playing classic Beavers football – fast defense, efficient West-Coast offense.
There’s enough young talent at the skill positions to do so, but the line is
still a major “if.” The defense should likewise be improved, but to what
extent? I think Oregon
State
Last (though possibly not last in the standings, for the
first time in five years!) is Washington
State Arizona ’s
Rich Rodriguez hire, but I LOVE Wazzu’s decision to bring on Mike Leach. A
perennial overachiever, Leach and his style have the potential to work wonders
in Pullman ,
particularly this year. WSU returns a great duel-threat QB in Jeff Tuel and an
All-American candidate in WR Marquess Wilson. The idea of those two in the Air
Raid should be enough to terrify Pac-12 defensive coordinators. With that said,
though, an overall lack of talent remains an issue and Leach was never known
for his defenses. Like Oregon
State
So with the choices for divisional winners obvious, the
question is whether the overall champion will be Oregon or USC. I’ve gone back and forth on
this many times, first thinking USC would sweep a pair of meetings, then
deciding on a split of some kind, then going with an Oregon sweep. The thing is
this: home field for the Pac-12 championship game depends on the outcome of the
first meeting. If the Ducks win in November, I can’t see SC winning the title
in Eugene . That
may sound silly given that the Trojans beat UO there last year, but for all the
bluster about how USC dominated the first three quarters (an irrelevant stat),
the hard truth is that Oregon should have won the game. The Ducks outgained (in
both yards and first downs) and outrushed (yards and YPC) the Trojans, who won
the turnover battle and got a hyper-efficient performance from Matt Barkley.
If that sounds familiar, it should – it’s very similar to
the Stanford game in 2009, when Andrew Luck fired dart after dart between
defenders and over fingertips to upset UO. Given a chance for redemption,
though, Oregon ’s
defense adjusted and crushed Luck and Stanford in the following two meetings.
The counter to this argument is that Barkley is playing with
much better receivers than Luck ever did, which is a fair point. Robert Woods and
Marqise Lee are future NFL players. USC’s O-line is just as good as Stanford’s
recent lines as well, and their stable of backs (which now includes Penn State
Offense isn’t what will decide these meetings, though. We
know both teams can score. The more important issue is how many stops each
defense can get. In that regard, SC is in a better position than Stanford. Oregon repeatedly
exposed the Cardinal the past two years with their speedy backs and receivers;
they can’t do the same to USC. Despite the NCAA sanctions, the Trojans pulled
in a number of athletes to run on the defensive side, and they know from being
scorched by the Ducks in the past (45 points per game since 2009) just what
UO’s playmakers can do in space. To be sure, this is top-five team, and it
wouldn’t surprise me to see the media rank SC number one in their initial poll.
Yet I still have problems with anointing the Trojans. Depth
is the issue that must be addressed first, because USC has little of it. The
addition of Redd will be a boon, sure. The receiving corps is elite, though a
bit of development from the highly-touted George Farmer would be nice. The team
doesn’t have a tight end, though. The defense is one or two injuries away from
panic-mode – star DE Devon Kennard already tore a pectoral muscle and could
miss the season. The safeties are great, but I’m not totally sold on the entire
secondary. This sounds like nitpicking, but they’re legitimate concerns.
Moreover, though, it’s the general feeling I have about this
USC squad. With all the raving from TV analysts, you have to wonder how many
people really watched the Trojans until that triple-overtime loss to Stanford.
The way 2011 began, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who believed in SC.
They beat an awful Minnesota team by two,
scraped by Utah , then got blasted in the
second half by Arizona
State Arizona
team. After a couple of solid wins, they blew the Stanford game, which got
people interested. With the new attention, they ran up the score on poor Colorado (six TD passes? Come on) and an average UW team. Then came the brilliant Oregon performance and
50-0 shellacking of UCLA, which for some reason got just as much acclaim (I
think some East coasters perpetually think UCLA is a top-25 team because they
haven’t watched them since 1995). It was an very solid end to the season.
Or was it? Yes, USC won their last four games. But three of
them were against bad-to-terrible teams. When I look at how commentators are
trying to extrapolate that finish to success this season, I get serious déjà vu
to the 2008 Georgia
team. You may or may not remember (it was news at the time), but Georgia entered
2008 as the preseason number one. Why? Well, they returned a flashy veteran QB
in Matthew Stafford and seemingly had all the pieces in place to make a title
run. More importantly, though, the Bulldogs had drawn considerable hype from
their hot finish to 2007, when they won their final seven games and blew out Hawai’i in the Sugar
Bowl. However, UGA flopped (relatively speaking) and went just 9-3 in the 2008 regular
season.
In retrospect, it’s obvious that many of the supposed
“quality” teams Georgia
beat at the end of 2007 were highly overrated. This particularly applies to
previously unbeaten Hawai’i , whose only win of
relevance was over the worst Boise
State Georgia still reaped the rankings
hype for 2008 until they themselves were exposed.
USC won’t suffer the same fate as Georgia (for one, their schedule
won’t allow it. Who else besides Oregon
is going to beat them? Notre Dame?). I do believe, however, that SC will drop
at least one game to UO. I think it could be the Pac-12 championship game. Chip
Kelly is a masterful offensive innovator, but he’s also underrated at making
adjustments following losses. I haven’t seen enough from Lane Kiffin yet to
think he can beat Kelly twice in one year.
Because I dissected USC’s chances of going undefeated,
though, I feel it’s only fair if I do the same to Oregon . You want question marks, you got
‘em. QB? Be it Bryan Bennett or Marcus Mariota (and it looks like it might be
Mariota at this point), you’re going to see a new man handling those shotgun
snaps this year. Both players add a running dimension Darron Thomas simply did
not, but both are also completely inexperienced. The running backs are
frighteningly good, but the receivers are just frightening. There’s a ton of
talent but very little production outside of Josh Huff, who has battled
injuries. Sometime this decade, UO needs somebody to step on the outside to
truly make this offense stretch the field. Even the usually dependable line
might be a problem if Carson York can’t return from his Rose Bowl knee injury.
The offense, long Oregon ’s
calling card, could be significantly muzzled this season.
The reasons for optimism for the Ducks are twofold: defense
and schedule. The D-line should be dominant, the linebackers elite. The
secondary is young but played several freshman last year, which generally pays
off. Then there’s the schedule, which is just a teensy bit soft. The first four
games are at home and after years of taking on at least one name opponent in
September, the Ducks decided to take it easy this year. In a perfect world,
this would allow the young QB(s) to gain confidence in the offense while the team
builds an undefeated record heading into the showdown with USC.
Of course, there’s also a very real danger in playing this
kind of schedule. No matter how well the team goes, no one will really know how
they are. Not unlike Stanford last year, Oregon
could go a long time without facing a serious challenge, which breeds
complacency. It could also make the team woefully unprepared for the Trojans,
who are not the only difficult opponent on the roster. The Ducks face the two
other teams most likely to win the North in successive weeks after playing SC;
first at Cal
(a house of horrors for UO in the past), then against Stanford. It’s
conceivable that Oregon
could lose all three.
Despite these very real concerns about the Ducks, the
Trojans are imperfect as well. It’s early and I may even change my mind again
once we see the teams in action, but for now I still feel most comfortable
picking Oregon to beat USC for the Pac-12 championship. I’m unsure of the
outcome of the first matchup, but on the big stage I’ll go with the proven
commodity. I’ve also roughly predicted the entire season for all 12 conference
teams with a margin of a few wins and losses. The results are below.
North
Stanford: 8-4 – 10-2 (projected 8-4)
Projected winner: Oregon
South
USC: 9-3 – 12-0 (projected 11-1)
UCLA: 5-7 – 8-5 (projected 7-5)
Projected winner: USC
Pac-12 Championship game: Oregon over USC
And that's it. Let the season begin!
