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PAC 12 - How is it stacking up?

BlackNGold

BlackNGold

Club Member
It is early but there are already some surprises. Early in the season it is hard to get a handle on things because few teams have faced much competition. But there are some indications.

Surprises - Utah, Stanford, and Cal. Utah is probably the biggest surprise to date and they have played a couple of tough games. Their defense is really solid...we will see if they can keep it up. Stanford was questionable with an early season lost to NW but their convincing win over USC puts them as a force in the north. They are scoring points along with a tough defense. Cal has played a competitive schedule and has won two road games against P5 foes. Their defense also has improved...I doubt they will win the North and we will know more after the next 4 games.

Just who we thought they were - USC, UCLA, Washington State, Oregon State, - USC is loaded with talent but Sark will always leave a win on the field still going to be in the hunt to win the conference with a senior QB and talent. UCLA will probably win the South but have had key injuries and have a true frosh QB a legitimate top 10 team. WSU and OSU were expected to be bad and they look to fill the expectation. WSU win at Rutgers was probably the highlight of their season - Leach may be done. OSU is still struggling to find itself under Gary Anderson.

Disappointments - ASU, UA, UW, Oregon - ASU was suppose to be ready to become a top tier program, so far they look to be an okay team. Ditto for UA which looked bad against UCLA, maybe they are better than that. Both will be good teams but not great. UW is really struggling on offense which is suppose to be Petersons strength. Defense appears to be tough still despite the loses of key players. The Ducks seem to be a shadow of their former identity. Their defense is really bad - can they score enough to cover that weakness.

Too early to tell - CU. The Buffs have played the weakest schedule in the conference by far. They have been able to run the ball effectively against weak opponents - no so much against MWC teams. The weak competition leaves the Buffs with a 3-1 record but is this team really turning the corner or will they come to the bottom of the PAC 12 when they get into conference play.
 
Goff seems to impress more and more every game. I don't see how he doesn't go one overall in next years draft.
 
Nice summation. AZ and UO had a lot of mistakes in their blowout losses, but neither defense is very good and UO has no legitimate QB for that offense. Bercovici is really overrated. OSU is bad, but it's Anderson's first year, so I didn't expect much. Cal is much better...Sonny had the benefit of actually having some talent on the squad he inherited 3 years ago, something Mac didn't. Agree about Leach...this may be his last year, but I understand he some ridiculous buyout clause...but just heard something about that in passing. CU is still the big question mark like you said...they are bigger, stronger, faster and playing inspired D, but how do they line up against P5 competition? No idea, but we'll quickly find out Saturday night. All I know about the Buffs is we'd be a pretty good G5 team.
 
At this point CU fits in "just who we thought they were." Beat some weak teams, lost a road game. Listing them in a special category as "too early to tell" is just hopeful home team bias. Realistically, "too early to tell" could apply to all P12 teams at this point. I understand your perspective as I share it, but think you're rating through Buff-colored glasses.
 
aghcsm said:
At this point CU fits in "just who we thought they were." Beat some weak teams, lost a road game. Listing them in a special category as "too early to tell" is just hopeful home team bias. Realistically, "too early to tell" could apply to all P12 teams at this point. I understand your perspective as I share it, but think you're rating through Buff-colored glasses.
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Think its more, we beat a team we should have probably lost too. We lost to a team we should have beat. We killed two teams we should have killed. The games don't give us much info.
 
aghcsm said:
At this point CU fits in "just who we thought they were." Beat some weak teams, lost a road game. Listing them in a special category as "too early to tell" is just hopeful home team bias. Realistically, "too early to tell" could apply to all P12 teams at this point. I understand your perspective as I share it, but think you're rating through Buff-colored glasses.
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This.
 
Good groupings overall. I think it is too soon to tell on Arizona and Washington is struggling as expected though. Arizona is breaking in a lot on the OL and UDub was expected to take a step back this season.
 
FWIW - I am listening to the Rich Eisen radio show and he has Jim Mora on, while talking about the PAC 12 Mora said "How about Cal?... And Colorado is is really coming on"
So it sounds like we are at least not going unnoticed!
 
cufan141 said:
FWIW - I am listening to the Rich Eisen radio show and he has Jim Mora on, while talking about the PAC 12 Mora said "How about Cal?... And Colorado is is really coming on"
So it sounds like we are at least not going unnoticed!
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Sandbaggin SOB, at least he respects the double OT game last year.
 
cufan141 said:
FWIW - I am listening to the Rich Eisen radio show and he has Jim Mora on, while talking about the PAC 12 Mora said "How about Cal?... And Colorado is is really coming on"
So it sounds like we are at least not going unnoticed!
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Was this just a second ago? I am trying to find it on the podcast.
 
cufan141 said:
FWIW - I am listening to the Rich Eisen radio show and he has Jim Mora on, while talking about the PAC 12 Mora said "How about Cal?... And Colorado is is really coming on"
So it sounds like we are at least not going unnoticed!
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I'm not sure we went completely unnoticed last year...at least by PAC12 teams. They saw we were competitive on film etc. The media is usually a step behind.
 
aghcsm said:
At this point CU fits in "just who we thought they were." Beat some weak teams, lost a road game. Listing them in a special category as "too early to tell" is just hopeful home team bias. Realistically, "too early to tell" could apply to all P12 teams at this point. I understand your perspective as I share it, but think you're rating through Buff-colored glasses.
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That is actually funny because I doubt many think I have Buff colored glasses - in fact many have accused me of being too negative. I thought I had made it clear that my rating was based upon the fact that CU has not played anyone yet. I think every other team has played a P5 opponent and CU has not. As I said CU is 3-1 and has dominated 2 opponents and for the slaves to stats who will argue how much better CU is this year based on stats from those games. We will not know if CU can run the ball week in and week out against PAC12 competition until we see them play a couple of games in conference.
 
Just watched the ASU USC game. Another blowout due to big mistakes and turnovers. Neither team has much on D, but the O is pretty good for both. USC skill position talent is off the chain...wow!
 
ASU and Oregon are probably better than they showed. Things sort of snow-balled for them.
Cal is still unproven in my book. Improved, but not top 25.
Utah still needs to prove some stuff. They looked ordinary vs. USU (who lost their QB again), and they had some struggles with Fresno State as well until FSU started giving them the ball.
Oregon does have a QB, but he broke an index finger.

I think the OP has a good take, but I also think we've got more to learn here. A lot more to be written here.
 
Bufffan68 said:
Just watched the ASU USC game. Another blowout due to big mistakes and turnovers. Neither team has much on D, but the O is pretty good for both. USC skill position talent is off the chain...wow!
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USC has some of the best defensive talent in the country. They are still thin and won't be ramped up to full strength for another couple of years due to the recruiting sanctions. The coaching staff at USC is sub-par for that program too. They were stretching their abilities at UW, but they are not blue chip program level coaches. USC should under perform year-in and year-out until they get a better staff than Kiffin or Sarkisian. Oregon is another team that will continue to slide with their current staff.
 
The big blow out losses in the PAC12 were due largely to mistakes/turnovers, and lots of them. If we can keep them down to a minimum or to zero, we may be competitive in most or all conference games this year. Man...things really snowballed on UO, UA and ASU last week...very ugly.
 
Big Jim said:
USC has some of the best defensive talent in the country. They are still thin and won't be ramped up to full strength for another couple of years due to the recruiting sanctions. The coaching staff at USC is sub-par for that program too. They were stretching their abilities at UW, but they are not blue chip program level coaches. USC should under perform year-in and year-out until they get a better staff than Kiffin or Sarkisian. Oregon is another team that will continue to slide with their current staff.
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They've been off probation for a while now.
 
patebuff said:
They've been off probation for a while now.
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Very true. But the spigot did not turn on immediately, it was opened up over several years. Building up a level of quality and experience takes years...or so I've been told from a certain coach in Boulder.
 
BlackNGold said:
That is actually funny because I doubt many think I have Buff colored glasses - in fact many have accused me of being too negative. I thought I had made it clear that my rating was based upon the fact that CU has not played anyone yet. I think every other team has played a P5 opponent and CU has not. As I said CU is 3-1 and has dominated 2 opponents and for the slaves to stats who will argue how much better CU is this year based on stats from those games. We will not know if CU can run the ball week in and week out against PAC12 competition until we see them play a couple of games in conference.
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I like the topic, sorry for mistaking you for having a pro-Buff bias, I'm a little new around here. I was thrown off by the Buffs being put in a special category while they seem to have done nothing really surprising, and we're all trying to sort out Oregon and some others. Certainly I agree this Buff edition is very uncertain, maybe it will clear up a bit on Saturday, but if it's a close game we still won't know much about this team.
 
You know what guys? Any team can win on any day, almost. These days (unless coached by Embree and Crew) there is enough talent out there for any team to be competitive. We see upsets or near misses every Saturday. Then you throw in what an emotional and momentum driven sport football is and anything can happen.
We can beat the ducks this Saturday. We could get smoked? I think like mentioned above it comes down to momentum swinging plays and hold down on while creating turnovers.
 
I think we are finally in a spot where we could win any game we play. Most games we would be underdogs, but we have enough horses to pull an upset. I don't think the same could be said for the last five years.

I need to point out that while we could win any game, we can also lose any game. I guess that makes things exciting.
 
sackman said:
I think we are finally in a spot where we could win any game we play. Most games we would be underdogs, but we have enough horses to pull an upset. I don't think the same could be said for the last five years.

I need to point out that while we could win any game, we can also lose any game. I guess that makes things excruciating.
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fify.
 
patebuff said:
They've been off probation for a while now.
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Not really. The 2015 recruiting class was their first off of probation - so they are still down in numbers especially when you consider they had several key underclassmen go pro in the 2015 draft. It will be 2 more recruiting classes before they are at full strength most Saturdays.
 
aghcsm said:
Certainly I agree this Buff edition is very uncertain, maybe it will clear up a bit on Saturday, but if it's a close game we still won't know much about this team.
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You think so? If we can play well and keep it close, I think it will tell us we are definitely improved. I see improvement now, but IMO competing with the talent of the Ducks will tell us quite a bit, even if the quackers are in a funk right now.
 
Do people think USC has more talent than UCLA? USC seems to have missed the major injuries that UCLA received but it still seems close.
 
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