Check it out college football on the West Coast. This is Get Off My
Pylon, a look at the PAC twelve and more, part of the College
Gridiron Coast to Coast podcast network. Here's your host, Matt Zemi. Welcome
to the latest edition if you Get Off My Pylon College Football podcast is Matt
Zemmick Alex Blower has to be GoF going through a business schedule for him this
week, So I'm flying solo this week. And hey, so Conference Championship
Saturday in the PAC twelve in the Mountain West. Let's review these two games,
also look ahead at the bowls and the playoff. You know, obviously
we'll be able to look at the bowls even more on next week's show.
We'll get a preliminary look, but we start with PAC twelve in the Mountain
West Championship games. So, USC was up seventeen to three. It had
the ball at the Utah third nine yard line after a turnover after a fumble
recovery. USC's turnover differential this year over plus twenty, and so the Trojans
had a chance to get at least a seventeen point lead with a field goal
twenty one point lead with a touchdown. And you know, in terms of
covering sports, and it's not just college football, it's not just football in
general, any sport, when you have a chance to put the boot on
the throat, you need to do it. And it's not just a matter
of you know, seizing an opportunity in microcosm, but you don't know what's
going to happen for the rest of the game. You don't know what's going
to happen for the remainder of the competition. It's true in tennis, it's
true in golf, it's true in basketball, baseball. You don't know what's
around the bed. Like in a baseball game, if you don't get if
you don't score at least two runs, if the base is loaded and nobody
out up a run in the fifth inning, and then the sixth inning,
your pitcher gets hit by a comebacker, he has to leave the game,
and then then you have to go to your unreliable middle relief guy in the
sixth in the early seventh innings, and then the dynamic of the game has
completely changed. Or take for example, in tennis, you know you have
a break point to go up in the third set, take a two sets
to one lead and get back into the match. You don't. You have
a sitter up up at the net, but you net the volley, you
butcher the volley, you lose that point, you don't get the break,
you don't win the third set. Oh okay, you come back and you
win the fourth set. But then the fifth set your dog tired. And
you know, because you didn't win that third set, you could have won
the match in four sets. But then in the fifth you know, your
body barks, maybe tweak a hamstring, pull a groin, and that's all.
She wrote, on and on and on and on. There are times
when you can do something early in the game so that you don't have to
live with small margins later in a game, and if you fail, that
can make all the difference, and it certainly did for USC in this game
against Utah. Imagine if USC gets the twenty four to three lead, Imagine
if the Trojans go up twenty one points. You know, USC got a
fourteen point lead on Utah on October fifteenth, in the first of these two
regular season meetings between the teams, went up by fourteen but never went up
by three scores, and so the Trojans could have gotten that extra bit of
leverage, but they never did, and Utah came back, reeled in the
Trojans wanted at the very end. Now this game, Utah didn't need to
score two point conversion at the very end. The final score forty seven twenty
four, but the larger dynamic still proved true that USC was electric in the
first fifteen eighteen twenty minutes of this game. That was very similar to the
October game in Salt Lake City. And then you saw the uts you know,
pick themselves up midway through the second quarter. You saw the offense get
going. You saw Adalton kincaide graduate we get into the game more and more.
In this game, Utah's rushing attack was more prominent than it was on
October fifteenth. On October fifteenth, you tied through for over four hundred yards.
It wasn't quite the explosion in this game from the passing attack, but
still plenty of big plays generated in the passing game and a lot more in
the running game. Had the balance that Kyle Whittingham and offensive coordinator Andy Lovewig
want. And the other commonality with point of commonality with the October fifteenth game
was that USC just couldn't tack couldn't missed about twenty tackles in the first game,
missed twenty two in this one. So yeah, that's that's a that's
a pretty consistent theme from Alex Grinch's defense. And let's talk about Ox Grinch
for a little bit. Now. You can say that guys were in position
to make plays and they just didn't make them. And as far as that
goes, you know, just in terms of a specific analysis in microcosm,
that's true. All right, guys were in position to make tackles and they
didn't make tackles. Like that is correct. There there's no disagreeing with it.
But when we get into the weight that we assigned to various comments,
the weight that we assigned to various realities, you know, do we just
take that comment at face value and assume that, you know, good Grinch
actually coached a good game and it was just the players not making plays.
It's that's a little too simplistic because as much as a coach's scheme might have
worked or might have been right, what also matters is which guys are being
chosen to play, and also which guys are being put in certain positions,
like Max Williams was not in a good position. He was not suited to
take on Utah's tight ends. But that was a matchup that Alex Grinch was
willing to live with. Now you could say in return that hey, USC
could not have great options on defense, and that might be true, and
that is part of the larger conversation with USC and Alex Gringe. But nevertheless,
like did he settle on the best personnel for the various matchups and the
problems and the limitations that he faced in this game. Plus Dalton Kincaid destroyed
USC in the first game. Alex Grinch was rightly embarrassed by that. This
was a time to show that, you know, USC could actually learn,
that it could evolve, that it could do a lot more damage control against
the Utes, and fundamentally USC failed in that regard. So you give a
lot of credit to Dalton Kincaid, but you also say, you know what
I mean, if our guys were in position to make tackles and they missed
them. The fact that it happened a second time against the same opponent,
you know, in terms of the team Utah and also in terms of a
specific player, Dalton Kincaid, who did a lot of damage. You know,
it does speak to a limit in personnel, limitations in terms of what
USC was able to achieve on defense this year. But when it's the same
opponent in a second game, in a rematch, that also speaks to,
you know, the defensive coordinator not ultimately finding solutions. And we also have
to say on a coaching staff, any coaching staff in football, whose responsibility
is it to make sure that the defense tackles well? I mean, to
a certain extent, it's the head coach. Obviously, if the head coach
is a defense first guy, you would assign some more responsibility and significance to
the head coach in terms of teaching a defense to tackle. So to a
certain extent, that falls on Lincoln Riley. But of course Lincoln Riley is
not a defense first coach. He's an offense first coach. And so one
can reasonably say that Alex Grinch, more than anyone else on the USC coaching
staff, is responsible for teaching his players to tackle well, make sure that
tackling technique is where it should be. And after a season in which tackling
technique, especially in the second half of the season from mid October through late
November was lacking, you know, to see the tackling regress basically to the
same point that it was on October fifteenth against Utah, that would certainly indicate
that teaching technique in terms of tackling was not done to the level that it
could have been or should have been. And Alex sprinche has to wear that,
and by extension, Lincoln Riley has to wear that in terms of saying,
Hey, I'm riding with Alex Bridge, He's my guy at defensive coordinator.
I'm sticking with Alex Springe. Even though I could have hired other defensive
coordinators to join me at USC for the twenty twenty two season, Lake Riley,
in the eyes of many, settled for Alex Grine. And we went
into the season thinking, you know what, USC doesn't have the dudes on
defense. You know, it doesn't have the depth, it doesn't have the
across the board quality. And that's that's why people didn't think USC was going
to get to eleven wins. That's why a lot of pundits and prognosticators and
publications did not think that USC was going to make the Pac twelve Championship game.
This is why this season on a lot of levels. Was viewed as
overachievement for USC, precisely because there wasn't awareness that the defense wasn't all there
yet. It wasn't a college football playoff roster. This team did not have
a college football playoff level ceiling. In the end, that conventional wisdom proved
to be right. But it also doesn't mean that Alex Gridge gets a free
pass. I mean he didn't do a bad job this year. The defense
won the Oregon State game on September twenty, fourth, Week four in Corvallis.
The defense was excellent against Washington State in Week six are October eight,
shutting out the Cougars in the second half and allowing only fourteen points in that
particular. Games like, the defense had a significant hand in winning a couple
of very important games this season. That's a couple more games than we thought.
You know, it didn't seem as though the defense was in position to
win any game at any point this season. It won two, so you
could say that Alex Grinch still did a little bit better than what the preseason
expectations were. But of course, when you're one win away from the playoff,
as USC was, and the defense pulls that kind of clunker in a
big moment, and Utah absolutely dominates this game, totally physically superior from start
to finish. You're gonna get questions about Alex Scringe, and you should get
questions about Alex Scringe. And to be fair to Alex Scringe, we know
he wasn't inheriting a stock roster a loaded defense. So you know that that
is something that we all knew and that never changed over the course of the
season. But in many ways, at what point is Lincoln Riley satisfied with
the performance of his defense? At what point is it more about Lincoln Riley
accepting Alex Grnch and less about Alex Alex Sprnch himself. And this gets to
a fundamental question as us and stares at its off season. You know,
if Lincoln Riley was to let go of Alex Springe and I don't think he
will, and I think it's okay if he If he retains him for twenty
twenty three, I would say that twenty twenty three is a real prove it
or else moment for Alex Sprnch. But let's say that Lincoln Riley does let
Alex Brnch go some people would say, oh, it's a betrayal of Alex
Sprinch. It would be backstabbing. You know, Lincoln Riley has stuck with
Alex Grinch for four seasons. That is a lot of loyalty. That is
a lot of fidelity in a cutthroat profession. The idea that Alex that Lincoln
Riley has to keep Alex Grinch uh, instead of you know, lest he'd
be seen as you know, uh, you know and brutus you know at
two brute uh, you know, a real betrayer of a relationship that is
overplayed. Like Lincoln Riley has already given Alex Grinch more of a foothold in
this business at high level programs than many other coaches would have done. If
Lincoln Riley can find an opening in the coaching carousel to get a defensive coordinator
better than Alex Grinch, he should do it. That is his job.
His job is to win games. His job is to win national championships.
His job is to make college football playoffs. There is no uh, I
think ethic of loyalty uh in which Lincoln Riley is somehow beholden and morally obligated
to the idea that you know he has to stay with Alex Grinch for twenty
twenty three. I think it's fair if he does it, but I don't
think like he would be breaking any kind of sacred trust. And the thing
with Alex Gringe, I'm not saying he's a bad defensive coordinator, because you
know, he's been asked to clean up messes. He had to clean up
a mess this year from last year's USC defense, which was empirically much worse
than this year's. So like, he improved something that was bad, but
merely improving something that's bad, that's not the same as creating a great defense,
which he obviously didn't do, and that's that is the lingering question with
Gringe is that he makes bad defenses moderately better but not spectacular, and he
doesn't make defenses great. So he's in that limbo where, Okay, he
takes something bad and he makes it better than it was before, but he
certainly doesn't create an elite product. So he's not a bad coordinator, but
he's not an elite coordinator. And at USC, shouldn't you want an elite
coordinator, or at least someone who has conclusively proven that he's elite Alex Springe
could in the course of time become elite. But when do we get to
a point where we say, you know, he just doesn't measure up with
the very best. And we can't always say, oh he has limited personnel,
Oh he doesn't have the dudes. Just at what point is the Alex
Springe conversation point to change? At USC more on the pact of Tangship game,
this time from the Utah side. After this break, college football fans,
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two two think smarter at tickets Smarter. All right, So the Utah side,
Now, USC had a key injury in this game, which we didn't
know about until a few hours before the game. Andrew Vorhees, USC's best
offensive lineman was out. Now Utah of course no brand Quiefy on offense,
Tavion Thomas left the team and also on defense, Van Fillinger and Jonah Ellis,
two prime members of the defensive front. They were out. They were
not part of this game, so it's not as though Utah was working with
a fully loaded defensive line. But when the USC lost Andrew Vorhees, that
definitely even the things up in terms of the matchup between USC's offensive line and
Utah's defensive front and what happened Utah's what Utah had in terms of its backups
on the defensive front four was a lot better than USC's offensive line, particularly
backup Mason Murphy who got man handled at right tackle, dude having to fill
in there with Vorhees out. So Utah's backups were better than USC's backups.
And of course, when Caleb Williams got injured, you know, and his
mobility was limited, he needed a comfortable pocket in which to three USC's offensive
line before he's out not deliver that, But that is also a credit to
Utah having backups ready to play, having backups who were stronger, more physical,
more powerful than USC. And so that in many ways is the real
story of the Pac twelve Chamanship game. But Utah had better depth. Utah
had more physical depth. Utah what Utah has established steadily over time under Kyle
Weddingham. It was a better quality of depth further down the roster, further
down the depth chart than what Lincoln Riley was able to do in one year.
Now, make no mistake, Lincoln Riley doing what he did in one
year spectacular seven more wins than last year. But Utah was uniquely equipped to
expose USC's lack of depth. And that is really the true triumph of the
use that all the program building that Kyle Wettingham has done. It really paid
off in spades in this game against USC. Utah had the physical, the
culture, and the ability to rise up in big moments that USC didn't quite
match. Kyle Whittingham. You know, let's remember Utah lost the Pack twelve
championship game in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen, lost in twenty eighteen to Washington,
scoring only three points. Look where the Utah offense has come. Look
how far that that offense has come over the past four years. Utah used
to have a very unreliable offense in big games. And now that Utah offense
was extremely reliable in a big game. It was also very good against Oregon
and last year's Pack twelve Changship games. So we've seen the evolution of Kyle
Whittingham it wasn't always this way at Utah. Now, now the offense and
now the line play are much more reliable on both sides of the ball in
really big games. And that is why the US are back to back pack
twelve champions, clearly deserving of their place in a second consecutive Rose Bowl where
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So the Mountain West Championship, Now, the Mountain West had a brutal season.
And you know, the champion of the Mountain West in twenty twenty two
has four losses. That's the kind of year it was for the conference,
all right. There was no exceptional team, no team that you know transcended,
no team that was in the hunt for the Group of five championship,
which is won by Tulane, which is going to play a USC in the
Cotton Bowl. But a great story. Jeff Tedford has recently dealt with health
problems. He had to step away from coaching, so been through a tough
time personally not able to do what he loves doing. And then Jay Kner
injured for significant portions of each of the last two season. He was out
earlier this year when Fresno State lost to Connecticut and really hit rock bottom.
Both of those men battled back. Both of those men endured so much.
They went through the valleys, they went through the tough times, and here
they are on the other side of the mountain. Fresno State demolishes Boise State
led twenty eight nine at one point, finishes off a twenty eight sixteen win
in Boise on the blue turf to win the Mountain West Championship. Just a
triumph of the human spirit, triumph over adversity, and we throw that around.
It could be at cliche, but it's really true. For Jeff Tedford
and Jake Haner all that they've been through, They've been through a ton,
and they were both very emotional and very grateful on the field in Boise after
that Mountain West Championship win. So a rocky and difficult season for the Mountain
West, but a very satisfying storybook style ending for that program and for its
two leaders, the head coach Tedford and the quarterback Jake Hanner. All Right,
bowl games, just a few general thoughts. One the PAC twelve has
Oregon State playing Florida in the in the Vegas Bowl. Now that that seemed
to be a very interesting matchup, but then we've had Anthony Richardson, the
Florida quarterback entered the transfer portal, so that takes a little bit of the
luster out of that game. But it also means that Oregon State better win
that game. If you're going against a Florida team without Anthony Richardson, you
have to win that game. Well. Speaking of Fresno State and also the
two conferences that we follow and get off my pylon part of the College Greater
on Coast to Coast network, we have Fresno State and Washington State in the
LA Bowl. Now that is going to be a very interesting pre Christmas Bowl.
There are seven bowl games on December seventeenth. That might be the best
one of the bunch, especially with Anthony Richardson no longer being part of the
Vegas Bowl with Florida and Oregon State, so Fresno State Washington State, that
is a game you'll definitely want to watch. Let's remember that Jake Haner used
to be at Washington, used to be a Huskie, so he knows what
the Apple Cup is like. And now he gets to go against the Washington
State Cougars. Oregon in the Holiday Bowl against North Carolina. That could be
a fun shootout, and it does seem at Oregon quarterback bow Knicks is going
to be playing in that game. So Utah lands in the Rose Bowl against
Penn State. I love Utah in that game. Utah's defense should be able
to shut down Sean Clifford of Penn State. Utah has the much better quarterback
in that game with Cam Rising, So that's a game that I expect Utah
in the Pac twelve to take care of. Ucla against Pitt in the Sun
Bowl, that's a game that Ucla should definitely win. And Pitt quarterback Keaton
slovis formerly at USC He has transferred out of the program, so that so
Pitt is gonna be down a quarterback there. So you know, the Pac
twelve really has a lot of favorable bowl matchups. You also have Washington going
against Texas and the animal Steve Sarkisian coaching against the Huskies work which used to
employ him. That is going to be a very entertaining game. A lot
of offensive playmakers there. So you go up and down the list of Pac
twelve Bowl games the PAC twelve really has to like its chances in many of
them. All right, more on the bowl games next week, but that's
really the rundown for this week's show. I'll get off my pile. I'm
part of the College Grid aund Coast to Coast Network. Be sure to check
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All right, I'm at ZEMAC. I'll see you next week for a
fuller Bowl preview right here on get off my piline. We'll see you next week