Speaker 1: Check it out college football on the West Coast. This
is Get Off My pilone, a look at the PAC
twelve and more, part of the College Gridiron Coast to
Coast podcast network. Here's your host, that's Zemmo from the.
Speaker 2: Latest condition of to Get Off My Pilon college football podcast.
This is your host, Matt Zemick Get Off My Pylon
covering college football in the Western United States, part of
the College Gridiron Coast to Coast podcast network. Follow College
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to Apple, Speaker, Spotify the other places where you listen
to your podcast to find all of the College Gridiron
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Yards and Stripes on the Service Academy's Big Ten Paradigm
with Noah Drury, Florida Football Insiders with Jason Powers, and
of course Billy Napier fired at Florida Miami losing another
Merrio Crystobaul Special, Mike norvel In deep trouble at Florida State,
South Florida preparing to play in Memphis. Jason Powers has
a lot to talk about over at Florida Football Insiders
All Sports Discussion with the ACC Georgia Tech beating Duke
in addition to that Miami loss to Louisville. Plenty going
on in the ACC as well, So check out the
guys at All Sports Discussion. There's just there's something in
each corner of the country in this wonderfully diverse sport
of college football. With all the parody in the sport,
you know it's not the Alabama Clemson. You know it's
going to happen before the season starts. That's so twenty sixteen,
very different open ended sport this time. So you want
to be catching all these shows, capturing all these different
slices of the full college football experience at college gridiron
coast to coast. So you know, we hit our big
story several minutes into the show. First we do the
just the Quick Lightning ram overview of the previous weekend.
So in week eight we had in the Mountain West,
and like the Mountain West has just been such a
nothing burger this season, this past weekend we affirmed that
j Norvel getting fired at Colorado State. So a Norvel
did get fired, just wasn't Mike with Jay at Carlile State.
Eighteen and twenty six and four seasons. Yes, that will
get you fired. Will be interesting to see where the
Rams go from here. Such an active coaching carousel. You know,
at least we have at least ten jobs open, and
it's the middle of the season. Where are we going
to be at the end of the regular season, Like
we could have close to twenty five jobs come open,
and that means twenty five coaching positions switching hands. It's
going to be absolutely crazy. So j norvel out at
Colorado State and then undefeated UNLV undefeated no more. And
the Rebels didn't just lose, they lost by twenty five.
They give up fifty six points. You know, they gave
up forty eight to air Force, So that kind of
told you USC UNLV was begging for a loss. And
not only did it lose, but you know, Boise State
was favored by I believe twelve points covered very easily
in this game. So like UNLV was not an elite team.
I think we all knew that. And now it's official.
The Rebels have a loss. You have Boise State with
two losses, Like the chances of the Mountain West having
the Group of Five champion are virtually nil. It's gonna
come from one of the top dogs in the American
though it's notable that Memphis did stub its toe against UAB,
taking a little bit of the luster out of that
game against South Florida, and the loser of that game
is almost surely out of the mix. At least it's
going to be in pretty deep trouble, especially if it's Memphis,
because Memphis losing to UAB, that's a conference game anyway,
I'm not talking about teams outside the West, but just
to re reinforce the point about UNLV, UNLV is not
going to the playoff. Un l V, even if it
did manage to win the Mountain West championship, that that
ugly loss to Boise State, you stack that up against
the American champion. Whichever team that eventually turns out to be.
The American Conference is going to have the Group of
Five champ and the playoff representative. The mount West. Just
it's a year that's gone south in this conference and
before next year's restructuring. So once again, the less set
about the Mountain West, the better. Here on, get off
my Pilon, Stanford and Cal. The Western teams in the ACC,
they both won and Stanford over Florida State. Now, you know,
Stanford was a very big underdog in that game, a
double digit dog, and manages to beat Florida State outright,
and so you know it was it was said by
a lot of people who are watching that game that
a lot of Florida State players just seem to be
going through the motions, and Mike Norvell has lost this team.
It does make you wonder why Florida State didn't bring
down the hammer right away. Florida State is saying it's
going to review this at the end of the season.
Maybe that's just kind of giving Mike Norvel a bone
since Florida State went thirteen to zero in the regular
season two years ago. Maybe it's that it could all
just also just be the buyout math and Florida State
needs time to find out find a restructuring plan. But
you know, when you lose to Stanford, and you lose
four straight in the a SEC this season, and it's
now eleven of twelve for Florida State in the ACC
over the last two years under Norvell, it's pretty shocking
to see Florida State continue to be this bad. Stanford
was there, Stanford was ready for the fight for sixty minutes.
And Frank Reich has now multiple ACC wins this season,
you know, going to Stanford late at night, and Stanford's
ACC wins have come in these late games, late at
night on the farm in Palo Alto. You know, Frank
Reich has Stanford playing hard, and those kids could have
packed it in for the season under this temporary arrangement.
We know Reich's not going to be there next year.
All in all, Stanford, which looked absolutely horrible at the
start of this season, has improved and has shown that
you know, you got to take the Cardinal seriously, you
got to. You gotta take the trees with with some respect,
and Florida State didn't do that. Floria State gets an
L so a very satisfying win for Stanford, and a
lot of eyes were on that game because of Mike
Morvel's hot seat, and Stanford did not shrink in the spotlight.
The Cardinal continue to make this season not necessarily memorable,
but like although Stanford players can say, you know what,
we carried ourselves well with dignity, with pride. We kept
fighting the whole way. You know, general manager Andrew Luck,
who's gonna make a new coaching hire soon. He can
say that, like the spirit of the players in the
locker room, you know, has remained strong, and that's no
small thing going forward. And Stanford might have a small
core of players that can build around. There's obviously gonna
be a lot of portal changes to this roster, but
at least the culture seems to be in the right
place for Stanford. Cal and North Carolina, Oh my goodness.
If you watch that game late on Friday night, you
saw one of the worst games of the year. This
was absolutely atrocious football. You know, Cal almost lost to
Bill Belichick's horribly coached North Carolina team at home. Cal's
receivers are just an absolute disaster, and Jion kave Sagapolu
like he needs a massive upgrade with his receivers. Now,
this has been said, this has been written by a
lot of people. I'm kind of coming in late to
the party. I'm not going to deny that. Like I'm
certainly not first in line to say this, so I'm
not giving myself any credit. I don't deserve it. But
just being able to see this game extensively, Cal dropped
close to ten passes in this game. It was absolutely
wild that Saca Polo tele kept putting throws, you know,
on receivers hands. Now, were they always accurate? Were they
always thrown in just the right spot with exactly the
right touch? No, but there's still catches that should be made.
Those were catches that should be made. Almost every time,
it was the catch attempt, which was faulty more than
the throw. And yet just clang clang, clink clank again
and again and again. And so you know, if you're
looking this from at this from a North Carolina point
of view, you're saying, hey, the other side dropped close
to ten passes and we still couldn't beat him. And
it happened because North Carolina fumbles on the one yard
line in the fourth quarter. Cal recovers, So the Bill
Belichick nightmare continues. Cal's record is five and two, and
you know, clinching Bowl eligibility would make this a good
season for Cal. But boy, you look under the hood,
Cal has won some really ugly ducklings and has benefited
from its opponents being really bad. Like Cal is not
playing good football. No one would say that Cal is
playing good football. But Bill Belichick's North Carolina tar Hills
have set the bar very low this season. They are
one of the worst teams in the Power for Conferences
in the United States. So CAL gets away with one,
but hey, it's one step closer to Bowl eligibility. That's
a good thing. But CAL really needs to be better
over the course of this season. Like CAL has not
really put its best foot forward this season, that really
tells you something about the other teams CAL has played.
Moving along on get off My Pilon, we continue with
the Big twelve and this now we had a lot
of action here. BYU beats Utah in the Holy War,
and I thought BYU was the better team coming into
this game. And yeah, BYU was a three point five
point underdog. So boy, if you if you had BYU
plus three point five and on the money line, congratulations
to you. You made a smart bet. The thing about
this game is that you know, it's not as though
BYU was dominating people. If you listen to previous editions
of get off my Pilon, you know we talked about this.
BYU scrambling late to beat Arizona, come from behind win
in overtime. BYU scrambled in the second half to beat Colorado,
was down fourteen to nothing early, but managed to rally
like beat this BYU team is not dominant, you know,
it's not an elite team, but it is persistent and
you better be ready for sixty minutes against BYU. Utah's
two best performances of this season, uh and we alluded
to this last week came against a UCLA team that
was coached by Deshaun Foster, you know, before the turnaround,
under the interim staff tim skipper Jerry Neuheisel and defensive
coordinator Kevin Coyle. And we'll obviously have more on UCLA
in a little bit later in the show. But Utah
got Ucla when the Bruins were horrible because Deshaun Foster's
UCLA was absolutely horrible, as bad as it gets. And
then Utah's other really good performance, it's other, you know,
blowout win where everything rent went right and the Utes
did everything well came against an Arizona State team that
was missing Sam Levitt, and Arizona State without Sam Levitt
no bueno, Like that team just can't tie at Shoelace
as if Sam Levitt is not on the field. We'll
have more on Sam Levitt just a bit so Utah's
best games came against uniquely bad, uniquely weak opponents, and
so that did not seem to set up Utah well
for the trip to Provo and the rival game against
Bu Yu, and you know, BYU was the better team.
Utah briefly took a lead in the second half, but
it was all BYU down the stretch, and so it
reinforces that you know what Kyle Whittingham, ever since Cam
Rising not only left, but since Cam Rising got hurt,
like Devin Dampier was the you know, new transfer portal
quarterback who was you know, it was hoped in Salt
Lake City that Devin Dampier would be the answer, that
he would be able to get Utah back to the
top tier of college football, you know, and do what
Cam Rising had done. We're not seen it like that
BYU game was a real test of where Dampier and
the Utah offense are. You know that Utah offense was
shut down by Texas Tech in a high profile game
several weeks ago. So like this game against BYU was
kind of the second chance failed against Texas Tech. Well,
can you get it right? Can you bounce back against BYU?
Clearly the answer is no with Devin Dampier. So Kyle Whittingham,
who is a good coach, like he got Utah to
two straight Rose Bowls, that's never going to change. It remained.
It will always be a monumental feat Kyle Winningham is
a good coach. But you know, if we take a
forty thousand foot view of his long tenure at Utah
when he didn't have the quarterback, we go back to
Brian Johnson in two thousand and eight, that team which
beat Nick Saban in Alabama in the two thousand and
nine Sugar Bowl. If he didn't have Brian Johnson or
Cam Rising at quarterback, he has really ruggle to develop
the quarterback position to help out the defense. You know,
sac of Lake City, the Utah has missed, it has
whiffed so many times at the quarterback position. Uh. And
it just it needed that special guy. And only when
Utah has had that special guy has everything come together.
You think about Urban Meyer. Uh. You know, with Kyle
Whittingham on that staff as an assistant, you know Alex
Smith was able to put it all together for Utah
when the Utes do not have their great quarterback. And
that great quarterback seems to be only once every now
and then. It's not an annual thing. Only when Utah
has the great quarterback can the youtes fully max out.
When they don't have the great quarterback, they look very ordinary.
And that story continued against BYU. And as for BYU,
Kalanie Sataki, like the past several years, he has been
a better coach than Kyle Weddingham. Whittingham had the two
back to back Rose Bowl seasons in twenty one and
twenty two, but past few years it's been Sataki. He's
had the upper hand in that rivalry. BYU has been
the better program than Utah and that continued on Saturday.
So BYU, you know, now at the top tier of
the Big twelve for real, Like BYU is going to
be in that race until the end. That seems pretty
safe BYU, Texas Tech and also Cincinnati. And as we
turn to our next really big Big twelve game Arizona
State and Arizona State, without Sam Levitt mentioned it earlier,
gets gets its doors blown off by Utah as which
seemed pretty predictable because that's a hollowed out team. It
has no leg to stand on without Levitt. So Levitt
comes back and it's not as though he played a
great game against Texas Tech. This was a defense first, fistfight,
and you know Arizona State, Arizona State's defense was amazing
in this game. And you know, if you followed the
Big Twelve closely and you followed kind of the the
bigger games in this conference, and you were looking at
Texas Tech Arizona State and sizing up this matchup before
kickoff in TMP on Saturday, you knew that Arizona State's
injury reported red light. You know, the Declaration of Independence,
Like this was a long, long list of players who
are injured. It was, it was easily over a dozen players.
You know, Texas Tech had some guys out, and you
know Baron Morton, the quarterback, being out definitely had an
impact on this game. But like, it's not as though
Texas Tech can complain about injuries. Ariona State had this
extremely lengthy injury report. Having Levitt, though, really mattered, and
you compare that to Texas Tech not having Baron Morton.
That was obviously important, but still ASU's depth was really hard,
followed out a lot of starters, missing, a lot of
bodies in the infirmary, and so for Arizona State to
be this shorthanded at having to plug in this many players,
backup players at so many positions in terms of the
All twenty two offense and defense, and to find a
way to overtake Texas Tech. And you know, Texas Tech
scrambled late to take the lead. Arizona State could have wilted.
No Sun Devils come back. They have the answer. They
score at the very end and they beat Texas Tech.
And so massive win for Kenny Dillingham for all the
obvious reasons, right, Like Arizona State won the Big Twelve
last season, so you're obviously expecting to take everyone's best
punch in the conference this season. You don't have Cam Scataboo,
and he continues to crush it in the NFL with
the New York Giants, so you know how valuable he
was this Arizona State team. It's not as good as
last year. That's to be expected by like Arizona State
is certainly staying in the ring, and Arizona State continues
to win close games. Has won at least three Big
Twelve games by you know, under five points, won a
couple of twenty seven to twenty four games against Baylor
and TCU. Now this four point win over Texas Tech. Like,
even if Arizona State doesn't win the Big Twelve this season,
like the Sun Devils have shown a measure of staying power.
They've shown a considerable degree of resilience. You know, they
beat BYU at home last season in a really important
conference game. They now beat a Texas Tech team that
came in in this game unbeaten and you know, the
favorite to win the conference. So like Kenny Dillingham, if
people were worried that he had lost his fastball, he
showed at least against Texas Tech. No, he still has it.
And this Arizona State program is not cratering. It's not
falling off the map. They're you know, the injuries have
played a part, the loss of Skataboo has played a part.
So it's not this is not the very very best
Arizona State can be. But Arizona State is still I
would say, you know, achieving results which reflect a program
that is steadily good, is staying in contention in the
Big Twelve and is poised to remain relevant long term.
And if you followed Arizona State football in the history
of this program, you'll realize that's been the challenge that
Arizona State does come up with really good seasons once
every several years. You know. That was the Todd Graham
team which made the Pac twelve Championship game in twenty thirteen.
There was the Dennis Ericson team in two thousand and seven,
which many people thought should have gotten a BCS all bid,
but lost out to Ron Zook's Illinois team in that competition.
There was the Jake Plumber team which finished, you know,
the regular season number two very nearly won the nation
for championship. Ohio State beats Arizona State in the final
minute of the nineteen ninety seven Rose Bowl. So that
was one of the great ASU teams of all time.
But you know, great seasons have existed on an island,
and so ASU would do something really special one year,
but then it would all fizzle out the next five seasons.
So the challenge for ASU is maintaining that consistent relevance,
consistent quality what we're seeing this year. You know, again,
ASU might not have the trophies this year that it
did last year, but Kenny Dillingham, with his resourcefulness, is
showing that. You know, if he sticks around, and I
think you will that Arizona State's going to remain a
major player in the Big Twelve. That's really the value
of the win over Texas Tech. Obviously, the Red Raiders,
they're still in the hunt, and if Baron Morton comes
back healthy, they're probably still the team to beat in
the conference with their defense. But you know, b YU
and Cincinnati, Cincinnati a real surprise under coach Scott Sadderfield
who's no longer in the hot seat there. And BYU
coming off the win over Utah. Uh, it's pretty clear
that Texas Tech, BYU, Cincinnati, and I would add Arizona State.
That's those are probably the four teams most centrally in
the Big Twelve title race. You could add a few
others as well, but those four teams, like in mid November,
we're going to be talking about at least three of them,
if not all four, as frontline contenders for the Big
Twelve championship. All right, Now we go to the Big
Ten and you know, Oregon crushed Rutgers. Not a whole
lot to say, they're not like, nothing really newsworthy from
that one. UCLA over Maryland. Now, this was an interesting
game in that you know utile is able to win.
But this wasn't the offensive joy ride that we had
seen the previous two weeks. Previous two weeks, UCLA had
a twenty seven to seven first half lead over a
shell shocked opponent. Ucl just steamrolled in the first half
and was able to consistently do what it wanted on
offense throughout the game. This was not that UCLA trailed
Maryland ten to seven in the fourth quarter, Nico Iamaliaba
throws a pick six like this was a nightmare for
the UCLA offense in the first three and a half quarters,
but the defense kept the Bruins in the game. So
Jerry Newhisl, the offensive coordinator, has been getting the pub
over the past few weeks, and rightly so he earned it.
He deserves it. But this was the game for Kevin Coyle,
the new UCLA defensive coordinator who replaced Ikaka Malow in
that position earlier in the season. And so Kevin Coyle
now has his moment. So Jerry new Heisel really was
the star of the show. But now it's Kevin Coyle
who has a star turn. So it really tells you
how good Tim Skipper, the head coach has been not
only in selecting his new coordinators, but you know, part
of the job of a head coach is coaching your coaches,
making sure that the quality control is good in every department.
And so Jerry new Heisel was was the star previously.
But we're showing that Tim Skipper can field a really
good UCLA defense and that he and Kevin Coyle have
a really good relationship as well. And so you know,
UCLA's defense has held each of its last two opponents
under eighteen points, Maryland to seventeen and Michigan State the
week before to thirteen. So you know, Marylyn and Michigan
State aren't very good. And that's part of the conversation
with UCLA because obviously the Bruins now go up weight class.
They go to Indiana this coming week. More on that
game in a bit. But even though you can say
that Maryland and Michigan State are highly flawed and fundamentally mediocre,
if not bad teams, nevertheless, this UCLA defense did not
look very good at all in the first month five
weeks of the season. Are we really seeing a defense
that is emerging? Are we seeing a defense that is
not only not terrible but might actually be somewhat good.
I mean, you have to at least ask the question.
I'm not fully convinced, but you do have to at
least ask the question. Is this now a good defense? Like,
you know, more good than bad? Is it not just
a matter of shutting down weak and flawed opponents? But no,
this is actually a good defense on its own terms.
You at least have to entertain the question. But Indiana
is going to be the revealer of that. We can
we can, we can agree on that point. That Indiana
and then a few weeks later Ohio State, they will
reveal the true measure of where Ucle's defense stands. But
at least for now, UCLA being able to win a
rock fight against Maryland, a very low scoring game. You know,
if you had told me ut is going to score
just twenty, I would have said, is losing US is
losing this game. I mean, uc can't score twenty and win.
This team is not built to win that way. Kevin
Coyle's UCLA defense had a real surprise for a lot
of people. Uh, and that was it was just really
impressive how the UCLA offense struggled and struggled and struggled
VA with multiple turnovers. He had a bad game. Uti
could not finish drives. Uh. It was a very frustrating
night for this offense which just couldn't get out of
its own way. And you know, Ustilia had begun to
expect this offense to thrive. It would have been easy
for the team to sag its shoulders and really just
you know, lose faith in the larger collective effort. It
would have been easy to say, well, this is just
not our night. Things aren't going our way. But that
defense kept getting one stop after another, and then Iamaliaba
finally able to throw a touchdown pass for the lead
in the fourth quarter. Ustilla then gets an interception, tacks
on a field goal, gets a seven point lead, and then,
you know, unexpectedly, the UCLA defense, which had been doing
the heavy lifting all game when it gets that seven
point lead at the two minute warning at the end
of the fourth quarter, finally lets down its guard. Maryland
quarterback Malik Washington gets loose for a long scramble. It
sets up a time touchdown. So this defense, which carried
the load for this team through the first fifty eight minutes,
finally slips in the final two minutes. But UCLA gets
the ball back with close to forty seconds left, and
that was enough to drive down the field. Anthony Fries
a running back who had kind of been under the radar.
He had a fifty five yard touchdown run early in
this game. He gets another long run late. It sets
up a chip shot field goal with two seconds left.
And this UCLA team wins three in a row. And
it's not just the winning, And what really impresses observers
about any sports team is that you can win in
different ways, and you can win in the mud. You
can win when it's really a grind, when it's difficult,
when it's hard, and UCLA showed that. So it's not
just the tactics which have been so much better for
UCLA offense, defense, and special teams under head coach Tim Skipper.
He's also created a culture of toughness, like this is
a truly resilient group. The belief remains intact. The team
doesn't get up a total one eighty from the absolute
no shows under Deshaun Foster. The team just quit, did
not you know, finish plays. We got absolutely demolished on
both sides of the line at scrimmage. No heart, no fight,
and it has just been a total one eighty and
it continues in many different ways under Tim Skipper. And
now we go to this Indiana game where all right,
Ucla now plays a heavyweight. No more Maryland, no more
Michigan State. Penn State came in at number seven when
it played Ucla, but like this, this was an ordinary
Penn State team just in terms of how piece is fit,
in terms of how poorly it was coached by James Franklin, Well,
Indiana is none of that. The pieces do fit. You
have an elite coach at the top of his game,
Kurt Signetti. It's gonna be a Fox big noon Saturday game,
so publicity an extra spotlight for UCLA football. People are
going to be talking about Tim Skipper, They're going to
be talking about Jerry Newheisel is going to be talking
about Nico Iomliava. Here's a center stage moment. Let's see
what UCLA can do. And I would say, just in general,
no one's expecting UCLA to win, and Indiana's favored by
close to twenty four points. But if the Bruins just
make it a fight and they make Indiana really work
hard to earn this win, that would certainly move the
needle in the direction of you know, hey, Tim Skipper,
Jerry Newheiseel, Kevin Coyle, they should be retained by UCLA.
So this in many ways, like the audition for the
UCLA head coaching job is already underway, but like this
is now the really big test, as well as the
Ohio State game two weeks later. These two games they're
gonna determine. Really I would imagine what UCLA ultimately chooses
to do. If Skipper and his staff can do a
really good job against Indiana and Ohio State, that might
earn them retail as permanent head coaches. Will be fascinating
to see what happens with UCLA next. On our Big
ten West Coast Review and here on, get off my pilm.
The Washington Huskies, and you know, Jedfish has been mentioned
with the UCLA job. He's also been mentioned with the
Florida job after Billy Napier got fired. Well, it's really
hard to trust Jedfish right now, given that the Huskies
were dog walked by Michigan. And we talked about USC
versus Michigan a week ago and I said Michigan's not
that good. I stand by that Michigan is not an
especially good team. That offense is not consistent, that offense
is not especially potent. Wide receivers aren't very good. Brice
Underwood is a multi year project as opposed to a
finished product. And you know, most of that game, both
teams were struggling. Both teams were squandering scoring chances, both
teams were stepping on a race. And the game turns
around because Washington throws an interception deep in its own
territory and that just creates a snowball effect which enables
Michigan to break open a close game on the third
quarter and pull away for a win. That was you know,
it was comfortable in the end, but middle of the
third quarter like this was a toss up. And it
was a toss up not because both teams were playing great.
It's because both teams were playing poorly. It's a lot
like a tennis match. You know, neither player has a
good return of serve, so both players are just you know,
holding serve all the time, like the opponents might have
might have had a chance to break serve, but no,
his return is crap. And that's why a match goes
on and on and on, and it goes into five sets,
just no one can really establish any quality to separate himself.
That's what Michigan Washington was for the first two and
a half quarters. And it didn't turn based on Michigan
being excellent. It turned on Washington being bad and Washington
making the big blunders to turn that game negatively, you know,
against the Huskies. And so you have a reality with
Washington here. You know, Washington showed you know, some spunk
and some backbone and that comeback at Maryland a few
weeks ago. But like Maryland's blown fourth quarter leads three
straight weeks, I think that's more of a commentary on
Maryland than Washington. Washington scoring twenty one points in the
fourth quarter on the road to win a game it
trailed twenty to three. I think that says more about
Maryland than Washington. And that Washington offense was shut down
for the first three quarters of that game before the
fourth quarter explosion. And now you have Washington, you know,
getting shut down once again by Michigan. And let's remember
that Michigan, Washington got shut down by how State. Washington
against Michigan Ohio State just absolutely smothered on offense. Has
brought nothing to the table, scored three points in three
quarters against Maryland. Like, this offense has been consistently below average,
and Jedfish is supposed to be an offense first guy.
He's supposed to be a quarterback developer. If you're Florida
and if you're you Cla, are you really all that
impressed with Jedfish? You know, Let's keep in mind, Washington
got taken to the top of college football national runner
up two seasons ago with Kaitlin de Boord, you know,
working with Michael Pennix, took the Huskies to the pinnacle.
And so you know, when Jedfish came in, like one
of his most important tasks was maintain the standard of
quarterback play on Montlake. He has clearly failed to do
that last year with Will Rogers, now this year with
Demond Williams. Like this is supposed to be Jedfish's specialty offense,
quarterback play, the passing game. None of that's coming up,
None of that's a none of that, none of that
is rising to the surface as a strength of this
Washington team. So that is ample cause for concern. And
as we turn the page two Week nine coming up
this weekend, Washington hosts Illinois. It's another big game, It's
another major test of the Huskies. I think you have
to lean to Illinois in this game. Like Luke Altmeyer
and the Aliani. You know, they got their doors blown
off by Indiana and they also got handled by Ohio State.
But you know, Indiana, Ohio State, they're the top two
teams in the Big Ten and the top two teams
in the national rankings with Miami losing and falling out
of the top three. So you know, Illinois did beat
USC and Illinois has you know, shown some quality and
its other games this season. You know, a road win
over Duke also looks pretty good right now. So you know,
Illinois has shown me a lot more than Washington has,
and so it's less about Washington the full team. That's
a decent defense. You know, Washington's defense is not getting
blown off the field in any game it plays. It
actually held Ohio State, and Julian's saying to just twenty
four points, that's pretty respectable. This Washington offense needs to
step up like it's now or never. This Illinois game
is a now or never moment for the Washington offense
and for Jetfish, Like you got to produce. It's time.
It's late October. You have fooled around for the better
part of two months. You now need to help your
teammates on defense and get it done. And so it's
a home game, it's in Seattle. This is a massively
important game for Washington. And you know, whether or not
the Huskies make the playoffs, they're unlikely to do so, Like,
this is a pride game, and this is like, hey,
you know what, we might not be the best team
in the Big Ten, but like we deserve to be
in that top tier. We deserve to be in that conversation,
it's very important for Washington to win this game because
if not, where does Jedfish turn to and how can
he convince himself and the other people in the program
that Washington is heading in the right direction of Washington
loses this game to Illinois, it's a real mess. It's
a real mess for the Huskies and they will enter
twenty twenty six without a whole lot of confidence that
they can become a top tier program in the Big Ten.
All Right, last, but certainly not least, the featured story
you know of Western teams in the United States USC
because US he was playing Notre Dame. And we don't
know about the future of this rivalry, but USC Notre
Dame prime time under the lights in South Bend took
center stage. And as someone who covers USC regularly, you
know that I'm at Trodan's wire. I think what just
the immediate thought about this game, more than you know
that dumb trick play which failed, is that, you know,
USC just always seems to lose in this fashion. And
when I say in this fashion, like you can always
count on a Lincoln Riley USC team when it plays
a big road game against a good opponent, you can
always count on these things happening. Turnovers, really bad mistakes,
generally soft play and Lincoln Riley getting too cute with
his play calling. Like those things seem to happen in
every important moment for Lincoln Riley on the road as
a as a as the USC head coach. You know
USC's offensive line got blown out a year ago at Michigan.
You know the Trojans were soft. Other really big road
games this team is played, you know, like the defensive
line just can't do anything. You think of the road
loss to Utah in twenty twenty two. You know, the
defense gives up forty three points. I mean, every big
road game under Lincoln Riley at USC just goes in
the wrong direction. And the common threads, the points of commonality,
they're they're in the mix nearly all the time. And
when USC went to Notre Dame two years ago, offensive
line got absolutely trampled. Kaylev Williams had no chance through
a bunch of picks. You know, it's it's pretty much
always that same general collection of qualities. So in this game,
Notre Dame was without its starting center. He got injured recently.
This was the first game with the backup center, so
like it's not as though he had time. The backup
center had time to ease his way into the rotation
and get a rhythm. Note this was the backup center's
first game as the starter for Notre Dame this season.
All right, that's point number one, Point number two. CJ. Carr,
Notre Dame quarterback didn't play well. Like he was inaccurate
the running the running game, you know, making plays with
his legs. That was not an element. Like he was
just off. It was an off night for him. He's
been really good this season, but in this game he
was off. Notre Dame missed a field goal. Notre Dame
committed a lot of pass interference penalties Notre Dame. Notre
Dame could not cover Jacoby Lane. Now, Leonard Moore of
Notre Dame locked up McKayle lemon and that was a
very big and positive development for Notre Dame in this game.
But the other side of the field, the other matchup,
Jacobe Lane was too big, too tall, too strong for
his matchup in the Notre Dame secondary and so you know,
he kept getting open and when he wasn't open, it
was because Notre Dame was committing pass interference penalties. Notre
Dame was also missing one of its important defensive linemen,
Gabriel Rubio. He was out in this game, so that,
you know, should have improved the matchup for USC. And
you know, and in truth, USC's offensive line was not great.
You know, it wasn't able to hammer an order names
defensive line in the ground game. But the pass protection
was fine. Jade and Mayava had a clean pocket for
the vast majority of the night. He got pressured a
few times, but he was able to sit back and
throw the vast majority of the time. So many things
for USC should have worked really well in this game,
and at times they did, but then USC was not
able to finish drives bogged down in the red zone
zero of two on fourth downs, and what you saw
on those plays in the red zone and on fourth
down was one way or another, USC just making a
really bad mistake or Lincoln Riley getting cute with a
play call. You know, Lincoln Riley, he likes to stretch
defenses horizontally. He likes to make defenders cover the full
width of the field so that then he can go
vertically up the middle down the scene between the tackles.
But this was a game where just one reality was
very clear, they can't cover Jacoby Lane. So instead of
trying to do a run pass option or a fake
handoff and throw a flat pass to the tight end,
this was a game where Lincoln Riley needed to keep
it simple. Just have Jade Mayava drop back five or
seven steps, throw it to Jacoby Lane, get your first down.
It didn't need to be more complicated than that. But
he did the funky stuff with the with the read
options and the and the throws to the tight end
and trying to get you know, using fakes and play
action and sleight of hand and trying to get an
Notre Dame off balance. This was just not a game
for that. Notre Dame made good reactions and reads going
side to side. This was just about step settling down
in the pocket for my ava and throwing the ball
to Jacoby Lane because Notre Dame did not have an
for him And as much as the ball was thrown
to Lane us, he didn't really throw the ball to
him enough. And yeah, ironically, in the first half, Lane
drops a touchdown pass. He also drops another red zone pass,
so like he made some crucial mistakes. So he did
a tone for them with his touchdown and two point
conversion to take the lead. But you know, if Jacobe
Lane makes catches in the first half, USC is not
up twenty four to twenty one, it might be up
thirty one twenty one. As the game continued and both
teams left a lot of points on the field, both
teams squandered red zone trips, trips into scoring range you know,
inside the other the opponent's thirty five. Like, this was
not Notre Dame's best game. This was not Notre Dame's
best team under Marcus Freeman. Clearly, like you can see
why Notre Dame lost those two games early in the season.
This was not a heavyweight bout. This was more like
a middle wait fight with two flawed teams that were
leaving points on the field. They traded a number of mistakes.
I mean, midway through the third quarter, if you were
a fan of either team, you're you're just thinking, gosh,
we're gonna regret all the mistakes that we made in
this game. And from that point midway through the third quarter,
it was USC that made far more mistakes. In the
final fifteen to twenty minutes down the stretch, it was
USC making the mistakes. Notre Dame, you know, wasn't one
hundred percent spotless, but certainly made far fewer mistakes than USC.
Jade Mayava, who is excellent in the first half, and
this is a parallel to the Illinois game a couple
of weeks ago. Mayava excellent in the first half, but
in the third quarter, for whatever reason, you know, he
finally lost his edge, makes a couple of mistakes. And
once again, because USC's defense was not able to rise
to the moment. If the offense is leading points on
the field, it's hard to expect USC to win. This
offense has to be very close to perfect, and if
it's not, the defense is not there to back them up.
And I mentioned that CJ. Carr had an off night.
You would think that USC's defensive line would be good
enough to contain the Notre Dame ground game, not smother them,
but certainly not give up over three hundred yards. And
yet that's what happened. Notre Dame rushes for over three
hundred yards. Notably, Notre Dame ran the ball on third
and seven and later on a third and eight and
was able to convert, was able to get first downs
in third and long situations multiple times with the ground game.
That's just an embarrassment for USC. It's an embarrassing performance
and it points to Lincoln Riley once again his USC teams.
They come up soft in big road games against good opponents.
It's it's impossible to avoid this particular big picture note
about Lincoln Riley that he and Brian Kelly are basically
living parallel lives at this point. They both are several
games under five hundred against ranked teams. You know, they
both have gotten into the College Football Playoff a couple times,
but not with their current employers USC and LSU. You know,
Kelly did it with More Dame Riley did it with Oklahoma,
but neither one ever won a playoff semi final when
they did make the playoff, and they are both currently
loathed by their fan bases. USC fans definitely want Lincoln
Riley out, I can't blame them. LSU fans really want
Brian Kelly out, and I can't blame them for that.
Like they've they're both in their fourth seasons at their
current schools and no playoff appearances. And it's that playoff
drought is going to continue this year barring something improbable
for both teams. I mean, they both have to win
out and maybe also get help as well. Like the
chances are ninety eight ninety nine percent that both USC
and LSU will miss the playoffs this year. So you know,
you're not paid to be nine and three, you're not
paid to be eight and four. And yet Lincoln Riley
and Brian Kelly, who were hired, you know, a day
apart in November of twenty twenty one, and they both
left Cadillac jobs to go to other places. It's something
that's very rarely happened in the history of college football,
Riley leaving Oklahoma for USC, Kelly leaving Notre Dame for LSU.
Like who leaves Oklahoma? Who leaves Notre Dame when you're
doing well there, as both men were, But they did,
and you know, so USC fans as well as LSU
fans had a right to expect big things this decade,
and it just hasn't happened in either place. And so
you have KELLYLSU losing to Vanderbilt and then Riley and
USC losing to Notre Dame on the same day. And
so these two coaches hired one day apart four years ago.
Here we are. They both seem to kind of flame
out on the same day. Like this felt like a
final nail in the coffin for each coach. Now will
they be fired? Riley's not getting fired at USC. You know,
I do have more proximity to that program than I
do to LSU. And you have that twenty twenty six
top ranked recruiting class. US He's gonna give Riley the
twenty twenty six season because you know, you just have
some high end groceries coming in and so you're gonna
get They're gonna give the school's gonna give Lincoln Riley
the chance to coach up that twenty twenty six recruiting
class LSU. I don't know, but I know that if
I was in Baton Rouge, I'd say, you know what
Brian Kelly like, we never liked you. And I'm when
I say we, I mean the LSU fan base. I'm
not really talking about administrators, but LSU fans hate Brian Kelly.
They didn't like it when he coached their team. The
only way they were gonna like Brian Kelly is if
he won big, and he hasn't. So I think LSU
fans just the fan base has reached its limit with
Brian Kelly. They would love to see him go. And
whether LSU administrators see things the same way, I'm not
so sure. But in many ways it felt like, you know,
I've had enough of this. USC fans with Lincoln Riley,
LSU fans with Brian Kelly. It seems like a pretty
widespread shared sentiment in each of those two locations, and
so it's really striking how Lincoln Riley and Brian Kelly
have similar careers and similar trajectories on a lot of
levels at USC and LSU. USC season in tatters. The
only way USC can salvage the season is by winning out.
But winning out means having to go to Oregon in November.
Good luck with that one. I'm certainly not going to
take USC in that game. So us see another failed
season almost certainly under Lincoln Riley. That's part of the
picture for the Trojans. So you know, looking ahead to
Week nine, UCLA at Indiana is going to be a
game a lot of people are going to be paying
attention to. And it's not just because it's a Fox
Big noon Saturday game, but because you have Kurt Signetti,
the wonder worker of college football, guy who's just transcended
everyone's expectations by many, many miles, up against this interim
UCLA coaching staff that's worked wonders. But now the quality
of competition really rises for UCLA. It's going to be
fascinating to see what Tim Skipper, Jerry Neuheisel and Kevin
Coyle can do against the great Signetti and an Indiana
team which is number two in the country. So UCLA
is going to face number two Indiana and in number
one Ohio State in the next three weeks. We're gonna
get the measure of this UCLA team. The Big Twelve
race continues and Arizona State has stayed in contention with
that upset of Texas Tech BYU at the top of
the standings with with a great shot to make the
Big Twelve championship game. So that's going to be really
fun to watch. Oh I missed this in my roundup,
so let's just make sure we touch on this before
we go. Washington State had Virginia, was leading twenty to
ten on the road at Virginia in the fourth quarter,
the Cavaliers scored twelve points and the game winning play
was a tie breaking safety. That game was twenty to
twenty in the fourth quarter and Virginia wins it on
a safety. So a brutal loss for Washington State. But
if you've noticed, Washington State lost to Ole Miss on
the road by three points. Loses to a ranked Virginia
team on the road by two points. This team was
horrible earlier in the season, losing by forty nine in
North Texas. So quietly Washington State has improved. The wins
aren't coming, but the performance is Washington State might actually
be really good next season. The Cougars have made dramatic
forward strides over the course of this season. And then
Oregon State. All right, they beat an FCS team, Lafayette,
but hey, it's a win. It's the first one of
the season for Oregon State. So over there in the
two pack and the Pacific Northwest, some teams are showing
a measure of improvement. But UCLA, Indiana is going to
be the really big story in week nine. We're all
going to be watching the Bruins. Who thought that Ucile
football was going to have such a high profile position
a month ago, you know, when the Bruins were zero
to four and heading for you know, it seemed like
an oh to twelve season. So UCLA takes Centers State
in Illinois. Washington is also going to be a very
prominent game for the Big Ten in week nine, So
that just about covers it. For Get off my pilon
here at the College grid on Coast to Coast podcast network.
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then go to College Football College Gridiron Coast to Coast
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Stripes on the service Academies for All Sports discussion on
the ACC, Florida Football Insiders with Jason Powers, Big Ten
Paradigm with Noah Drury, who will have more on that
UCLA Indiana game for sure. Whatever slice of college football
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Get Off My Pilon we cover college football on the
Western United States. So that concludes our survey of Western
football free another week. This is Matt Zemeck. Thanks for listening.
We'll see you next week here on the Get Off
My pylone college Football podcast and the College gridarin Coast
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