For those playing the home game you may remember that UT was embarrassed on National TV 27-24. UT came in with homes of a run at the SEC and National title, UCLA quickly showed the country that it wasn't in the plans this year.
The Ducks made some changes this week. Coach Belloti has decided that highly sought after recruit Chris Harper would be better off as a wide receiver than a QB. Harper has seen a lot of action at QB but almost exclusively in the run game. Masoli (Soph) and Thomas (Frosh) have both been better through the air. I haven't heard yet if "permanant" means for the season or for his career. Everyone agrees that he is too good of an athlete to stay on the sideline so get him in while you can.
Roper will hopefully be practicing more and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a next week return. He was available this week but I'm glad they gave Masoli a chance. We may just need to do some rotating for a bit. This week off for Oregon should pay off in a big way.
We have got to find a passing game. As usual we were able to run the crap out of the ball, Masoli left a lot to be desired in the passing game. At the start of the 4th QTR Masoli had about 150 yards on right at 20 carries. This is a great job no doubt. But, what I saw in the 4th QTR made me sick. UCLA took a safety out of pass coverage and just had him basically sit and watch the QB, once Masoli ran there was Locket. On 1 occasion Masoli was able to absolutly level Lockett but I don't think it's going to take the rest of the Pac-10 long to figure out how to slow that run game down. If we can't manage some kind of a pass game we are through and my 9-3 hopes and dreams will be missed by a long shot! I haven't even started in on the receivers yet, the QB's have been so bad. My guys are still dropping balls and not making plays they should make. It's a wreck on offense right now. Since I live in TN I don't get to see many actual games, I was able to catch this game and I'm more worried than I was earlier in the week. If teams load up the box and put a spy on Masoli I think they will be able to slow the run game down enough to stop us from reaching the end zone. Over 300 rushing yards and under 50 passing yards is not what anyone would consider remotely balanced. 5 for 19 is not what you need out of your QB. I could keep going on here but I think you get the point.
The defense played well, not good or great. Good in the 1st half and not so good in the 2nd. We missed out on a ton of opportunities for big plays, I'm not exaggerating when I say we dropped at least 5 easy interceptions, maybe 2-3 others that would have been great plays. We have got to make the big plays. Our blitz packages were good and we were able to get to Craft over and over. We ended up with 6 sacks, Craft also rushed 15 times for 9 yards and many of those were forced scrambles that could have resulted in sacks but he was able to cross the line. Despite that Craft was able to light us up in the 2nd half and end with 288 passing yards. UCLA was only able to muster 62 rushing yards on 37 carries.
The 4th QTR hero was Legarette Blount with his awesome 69 yard run to pay dirt. This put the Ducks up 31-17 and sealed the deal. Although a nicely crafted UCLA drive late got them back to within a TD with 55 seconds left. The on-side kick came up short and Oregon won.
Overall I'm not happy with where the team is. We have to have a passing game, don't know if I mentioned that! ASU, AZ, CAL, Stanford and Oregon State are all better than UCLA in my opinion. If we play them like we played tonight we lose our last 6 games and go 5-7 overall (3-6 in the Pac-10). I'm serious about that, we need to play better!
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