In Reply to: UCLA/USC: The defense rests posted by Dr.Bruin on October 17, 2024 at 10:57:19
To see just how much energy you continue to invest into making exactly WHAT POINT?
How about this for a theory on our common opponents - UCLA football is a joke, the program's biggest fans know this, and our opponents who scout the program and watch tape of the games also know this. The quality opponents we have faced know quite well coming into the games that it would take an astonishingly bad performance to lose their games against us. Not only do the players not bring the same energy to the field when facing us that they do when facing a ranked opponent (which SUC was in the games you mention, SUC also has far more cache than we do even if they aren't ranked), but the offensive coaches of opposing teams are far more likely to call a more vanilla game that doesn't reveal any more than they have to.
After halftime against Penn St we were never really in the game, their play calling was pretty vanilla and they won comfortably. Against Minnesota, nearly everything went our way and at the end of the game the defense had an opportunity to win it and what happened? Wait, tell us all again what happened. Sorry, I didn't hear you, can you say that again?