Letters to the Editor
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Great game
"It's a no-brainer. Now, that's not taking anything away from Texas, which I have a feeling you were rooting for last night. They are a great team. But they would have lost handily last night had 'SC played smart defense."
I think it was more than smart defense though. Except on their first possession, USC was terrible in the red zone in the first half.
Overall though, SC has nothing to hang their heads about. They shared the title two years ago, won it outright last year and came within seconds of defending it this year. Great run. TX and USC battled hard to the end and SC came up short. People who claim one side "outplayed" the other don't know what they're talking about. This game was too close for all that. It reminds me when OSU beat Miami in the last great college championship game and some OSU partisans crowed about how they "took out" Miami. They acted as if a nail biting 2OT win, after Miami best offensive player got injured in the first QT and an legendarily atrocious late interference call against Miami was "domination".
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I Guess We'll Just Have To Wait And See
Spike24, in defense of the unstoppability of Young no matter what a defense does, you wrote: "You go all-out after Vince and get out of your passing lanes, he runs right past you."
But that's just it: USC, on every 4th or 5th down, did go "all-out after Vince" and guess what--they got him. As I said before, re-watch the game for yourself: whenever 'SC brought pressure Young was forced to scramble wildly with all his running lanes blocked, drop off a dink pass to a running back, or throw it for an incompletion.
That is pretty conclusive evidence that not only can Young be stopped by bringing pressure, but that he was in fact stopped by that pressure, when it was brought.
As I said, the facts speak for themselves.
I will grant you of course the fact that Vince Young is a tremendous athlete with great talent on a very good Texas team. But had 'SC played him correctly, the result would have been very different.
And if you still don't believe me after all that, let's wait until he gets to the pros and plays some defenses that know how to pressure a QB.
You'll see the results for yourself: he'll be forced to get help from his running backs to take the pressure away from him. (There's a reason great quarterbacks, no matter how good, don't win Super Bowls--you can always shut one man down. You've gotta have a great passer AND a great runner to beat the pressure, not to mention a tough defense. Just ask Super Bowl-less Dan Marino, Michael Vick or John Elway (who lost every Super Bowl he played in until Terrell Davis came along).
PS Thanks gang for the chat, it's been great. I have to jet.
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2nd guessing the game plan
Actually, the Zone Read is easy to stop. Ever wonder why they don't run those type of option plays in the pros? Way too slowly developing and the players are way too fast, big and talented for that stuff. More importantly they are better disciplined as players. A big mistake will get you cut.
On the college level, as King pointed out earlier it's easy to over power lesser teams but when the teams are more evenly matched schemes mean a big deal. Which is why some here are questioning why USC didn't change their scheme when they saw it wasn't working or, when they did try an occasional change, didn't use the scheme that was having some success more often (pressure). It's a fair question and not "insulting" to Young.
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Knee Down, mystery touchdown, let's clear our heads.
Ok, for one - even if they review the play and say Young's knee was down, the Longhorns have the ball 1st and 10 on the 11 - I think it's safe to say the Longhorns had at least a 50-50 shot at still getting a touchdown so it's silly to say they would not have had been down by 5 at the end of the game. In fact, if anything they would have gotten the touchdown and the extra point and been down by 4.
And, I totally agree with tbrandel; we have NO idea what the outcome of the game would be if the play is reviewed and he's ruled down at the 11. They might have fumbled on the next play. They might have gotten 7 points on the next play and gone on to win the game by 21 or not at all. Who knows. Every subsequent play and play call would have been slightly different, such that by the end, totally different outcome. chaos effect and all. So, let's stop acting as if we you change one play and everything else stays the same.
Anyway, seems to be a lot of "oh if only USC had done this" they would have won. How about UT not fumbling the first stupid time they touched the ball on the punt. Or the missed field goal. Or getting stuffed on 4th down at mid-field. Etc, etc, etc.
The game is what it was - let's just take it all as whole and not try to reconstruct the if this or if that. The whole of the game that we actually had was pretty damn good - let's not quibble so much about what might have been.
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Don't be a Grinch! :-)
"The game is what it was - let's just take it all as whole and not try to reconstruct the if this or if that. The whole of the game that we actually had was pretty damn good - let's not quibble so much about what might have been."
But, isn't that part of the fun!? Hashing it out, going over it while still realizing it was a great game.
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I'm no grinch!
Well, I don't mind analysis of the defensive game plan (like someone saying USC needed to put more pressure on Young) or Big Picture things, but the whole "if only they'd reviewed that one play" thing just seems silly. Especially early in the game, since as I said, everything plays out differently even if you change one thing.
Though I suppose you could argue that if USC had gone up 14-0 instead of Bush pitching the ball to no one in the first quarter... that might have turned things in USC's favor.
Anyway, I'm just reading a lot of "USC Should have won if not just for this one play here, or that one play there .... and as a Longhorn fan and UT alum (and of the least obnoxious UT fans, my USC-alum friend tells me) - I am starting to find it all just a wee bit tiresome. You know they'd have won if they could have stopped Vince Young from leading UT to touchdowns twice in about 6 minutes, that's how they could have won. :)
I do feel for any non-Longhorns in Texas (like say all the Aggie fans), because a great many UT fans will become quite insufferable over the next few weeks.
So, is the 2005 national championship (since the season was almost all in 2005) or is this the 2006 one? I ask because UT won the baseball title in 2005, so I think UT won the baseball and football championship in the same year, and that may be a first - but no one in the press seems to have picked up on it. (UT baseball is ranked preseason #1 for 2006 too, btw.)