Coach Baird on Husky Football

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Back to Coach Baird on Husky Football

Locker Gives Huskies a Chance at an Upset

Trojans Hold Big Talent Edge

With the exception of the quarterback position, there is little doubt that the USC Trojans hold a distinct advantage when it comes to the overall talent on their football team. That is, of course, if you put stock into the recruiting ratings and rankings. For the past 8 years under Pete Carroll they have continually added top ten recruiting classes to their already talented team.

That talent, combined with Carroll’s proven leadership, has turned USC back into one of the premier college football programs in America. In my book they are easily right up there with Florida.

They are vulnerable, however, and that was proven by Stanford, UCLA, and Oregon State in the last few years when all three dealt them stunning losses. Could Washington be the next Pac-10 team to beat this juggernaut?

Consider this, all these losses happened on the road even though in LA that is just a drive across town. Stanford and Oregon State beat them early in the conference schedule and all three teams had less talent than did the Trojans. All three were big underdogs. USC has been beaten in conference during the Carroll era by teams that simply hung in there and slugged it out with them and won it in the fourth quarter.

Having stolen some of the Trojans’ brain trust, the Washington Huskies just might steal this game even though they appear to have inferior talent.

Stopping the run will be huge for the Huskies but the biggest concern would appear to be the match up between the Husky secondary and the Trojan receiving corp. The Huskies’ pass defense is 9th in the conference giving up 260 yards per game. Even though the Trojans will likely be using their back up quarterback, they do have a big receiver in Damien Williams who represents an obvious threat simply because he is so much bigger than the Husky defenders. Idaho proved that was the way to attack Washington’s defense and this looms as their Achilles heel.

The secondary will have to rise to the occasion but that also holds true for every other unit on the team if they are to knock off this Trojan team. If they do, then the Huskies will be able to say the program is finally coming back.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 12:15 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.