Instant Analysis: Oregon-USC

The USC Trojans weren’t getting manhandled at the line of scrimmage the way they had been at Oregon State nine days earlier, but the mistakes that plagued Pete Carroll’s crew in Corvallis were still flooding the landscape in Los Angeles. Someone had to step up if a struggling team was to avert another agonizing upset loss.

In the first quarter and a half of Saturday evening’s Pac-10 encounter with Oregon, the Trojans—perhaps suffering a crisis of confidence after their shattering setback against the Ducks’ in-state rival—continued to make massive miscues, sabotaging anything and everything they wanted to accomplish against the team that knocked them off in Eugene last season. Against a prime conference foe, the Trojans—perhaps wanting to win too badly—littered the L.A. Coliseum turf with untimely blunders, causing a few boos to cascade down from the massive stands of the venerable old stadium. The large crowd on hand to see an easy victory by their gridiron heroes became manifestly uneasy, and one had to wonder if a one-week accident would morph into a terrifying two-week trend. Unless or until someone filled the void for the Men of Troy, the night against a crafty Oregon outfit, ably coached by veteran wizard Mike Bellotti, appeared headed for a tense and tumultuous fight to the finish line.

While Oregon built a 10-3 lead in the game’s first 22 minutes, USC failed and floundered. Multiple late-hit penalties kept alive two Oregon drives, one of which produced a touchdown. Quarterback Mark Sanchez botched a center-snap exchange, leading to a Duck field goal, while also missing a number of open receivers. The series of stumbles brought to mind the Oregon State loss, in which a number of personal foul flags, dropped interceptions, muffed punts, and other untimely mistakes put USC behind the eight ball. For a second consecutive week, the Pac-10’s premier program played the first 20 minutes as if in a fog of futility. Oregon might have lacked a healthy, top-flight quarterback as it strode into L.A. for this conference collision, but with the way the Trojans were imploding on their own, the Ducks stood a good chance of winning by merely getting out of the way and protecting the football.

But with roughly eight minutes left in the second quarter, and the Trojans in disarray, everything changed on a dime, as USC became USC again. In the midst of a teamwide freefall that demanded a poised performance from previously unproven performers, Damian Williams became the man who turned the tide for Troy.

At the moment when his mates were muddling through their share of messy moments, Williams—on a hugely significant 4th and 2 from the Oregon 34—got open on the left sideline, behind the Ducks’ out-of-position defense. Sanchez couldn’t overthrow this particular pass, and in a heartbeat, USC forged a 10-all tie with 7:47 remaining in the second quarter. The Coliseum crowd came alive, the boos left the building for good, and the negative energy disappeared from the Trojans’ sideline. What had been a body-snatched team became the Trojan Empire of College Football once again. After Williams made the biggest single play of the night, body-snatching turned into body-bashing, as USC rained down haymakers on the Ducks once they claimed momentum.

Sanchez, who would get dinged up in the second half and leave the game in favor of backup Mitch Mustain, found his touch on long balls, hitting Ronald Johnson on a 63-yard home-run play that gave the Trojans a lead they would never relinquish.

SC’s defense produced a turnover late in the first half, enabling the Trojans to establish a substantial halftime advantage of 27-10 when Sanchez hit receiver Patrick Turner with another touchdown strike.

Sanchez hit Turner on a 30-yard play that keyed another USC scoring drive, and at 34-10, the rout was on.

Instructively, Oregon’s early 10-point burst—facilitated in large part by USC mistakes—immediately ceased once the Trojans found their winning ways. Despite lacking the services of All-American linebacker Rey Maualuga, every defender in a dark red jersey combined to shut out the Ducks over the game’s final 41 minutes. It might have taken 19 minutes for USC to wake up, but once the Colossus of the Coliseum shook off the early ugliness on a cloudy evening in the City of Angels, college football’s left coast powerhouse began to play the way it expects to on a weekly basis. The result was positively heavenly for a revived—and also relieved—assemblage of athletes who bear the Southern California name.