The USC Game - Are we that good?

Unfortunately, despite winning 70-14, it was a rough week for the Ducks. We seem to be in a fight we can do nothing about. It appears as though Alabama will go undefeated and on to the national championship game. That leaves 3 other undefeated teams: Notre Dame, Kansas State and the Oregon Ducks. What we can't control is that USC and the Beavers both lost which will diminish our strength of schedule.

This year the Ducks haven't "seemed" to face much competition. Everything has come so easy that we are making teams look bad. But is it possible that these teams are good, we are just that good?

Let's take a look at a couple of games.

Ducks 49 Arizona 0
A complete domination of the Wildcats. Arizona has been able to beat OK ST, Washington and #9 USC this year. They lost to the Beavs and to Stanford by 3 and 6 points.

Ducks 52 Washington 21
Another game in which we completely shut down the Husky's. Washington handled Stanford and Oregon State, both Top 10 teams at the time. They played USC tight, ultimately losing by 10 points.

Ducks 43 Arizona State 23
More importantly in this game, the Ducks spotted AZ ST a TD 1 minute into the game and then the Ducks put up 43 in about 22 minutes of game time. With the starters in that game looked like men against boys. UCLA put up 45 on the AZ ST defense but it took them every second of 60 minutes to do so.

Even when looking at our game against Colorado, we were up 56-0 at the halfway mark. USC also blew them out, but it was 33-6 at the halfway point. Matt Barkley was still slinging the ball around in the 3rd QTR. We had our back up in during the 2nd QTR.

In a year where the question "who is #2" is being thrown around and we seem to be on the outside of that conversation.....A 40 point blow out over USC may be something that opens up some eyes. This will be a prime time game against an opponent everyone knows. The Trojans haven't done us any favors this year losing 2 games, but make no mistake, they have talent at every level at every position. We need to be on our game and I hope we run through them just like everyone else. I think we are capable of doing that.

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