FOOTBALL

Discuss The USC-Cal Game

Why hasn’t Clay Helton been able to get performances like that more often in a weak Pac-12?

That’s the real question and why he should be fired.

USC routs Cal, 41-10. Is anyone nervous this game might change the outcome with Helton?

He will be favored to beat UCLA. What if he beats UCLA, 41-17? Will Mike Bohn fire him? Most people say yes.

I don’t think USC hired Bohn to continue this mess for another year.

But anyways, what are you thoughts on the game?

UPDATED: Justin Wilcox reaction: “I’ve never seen a receiving corps like that in this conference in 20 years. Our guys wanted to compete, but those guys went up and got it. The matchups are the toughest as it’s been. Never seen a collection of receivers like that before, you’ve got to give them credit.”

42 thoughts on “Discuss The USC-Cal Game”

  1. Easy…

    Hey Flow. How come no comments about all the TV shots of Garbers all night on the sideline and losing and smiling his ass off? Apparently Garbers doesn’t mind his team’s ass getting handed to itself. You can call JT out but not the opposing team? Defines why you’re a complete douche.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  2. Stephen Carr had a big impact on the game as he very successfully picked up blitzes and played well- despite not really running it well. Changed the game.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  3. all i can think of hear the words of new AD echoing: what do you expect from Hell-TON?
    “Finish strong”
    “Finish strong”
    “Finish strong”

    no way Bohn can fire him now.

    #ManOfHisWord

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Even you, Chaz, can’t be that ucla-stoopid. Helton’s gone. Even after USC blasts ucla’s ass outta the water next weekend. Have fun with Flow and Owns.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. Bohn talked about recruiting….putting people in the seats…

        Recruiting is 70 something, and attendance is the lowest in 20 years or more

        This is boiling down to $$, which means Helton has to go. They know full well he will never produce a top-10 program, particularly with current recruiting.

        Liked by 1 person

    2. Do you hear any of those 5* local high school players switching to SC because of this game? Nooooo! If SC is serious about being a playoff contender, and not just placating alumni, they are going to have to get the top local players. Part of the problem is the ambivalence of the new feminist administration: they need the football program to pay off the new stadium but they don’t want the sort of coach that would bring the football program back to prominence. Neither does the PAC-12 which wants a socialized league where California’s talent is spread across the western US and every team is 6-6 and every school shares in the TV revenues evenly. What has happened is that SC is the most penalty-plagued school in the league but also their opponents commit more penalties when they play SC. Many of the players on other teams come from LA area and when they play SC they revive high school grudges and want to beat SC. The cure for this by the PAC-12 refs is to throw out SC players at the start of each game. As if SC created this situation.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

  4. Gotta make a confession here…Helton is the first and only USC coach ever that makes me want him to lose…Yes, it incredibly includes the next week’s game against those dreaded bRuins…Let’s lose next week and get rid of this dreaded coach…Finally!!! Fight on!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

      1. I’ll reply to you with this question… Which would you choose? A nearly meaningless win against the gutties next week or a coaching change finally removing a lousy coach that would only give us 7 to 8 wins max every year with no playoff appearances or even no conference championships let alone all those stress-inducing ugly losses and ugly wins?

        Like

      2. Rusoviet – I am at the point where I can’t stand to look at the moronic photos of Helton that Scottie posts – but I can’t go against the players.

        Bohn, put us out of our misery and fire Helton a week from today.

        Liked by 1 person

  5. The offense is playing well. But if UM is available, you have to go after him with everything you have to offer. This is an opportunity of a century. You can’t miss it. With all the talent they have on this team, they are nowhere’s near making the playoffs, they won’t win the Pac-12 nor will they win the Pac-12 south. Their record will only be 8-4 and only 12-12 in the last 24 games, not to mention that they are 76th in recruiting. We have to move on to somebody else after this season.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  7. Cal is not a good team. We continue to play sloppy with too many penalties. You watch teams in contention for the championship game and we’re not of that caliber. Helton still needs to go no matter what the outcome of the Ucla game is.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  8. A win for sure, and not an ugly one. SC receivers as a group are the finest in the nation, and Slovis completing 82% makes them shine even more. Sad we cannot run the ball. The O line simply cannot open a hole to run through. Is SC that good or Cal that bad. I pick the latter, they in no way lived up to any hype whatsoever. One more week of the Helton era. See, there is a rainbow at the end.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. In all fairness, the Cal front 6 is stout–4 burly dudes up front whose only job is only to “take up space,” leaving the two all conference LB’s to record all the tackles. It’s their scheme. They’ve not been able to mount much of a pass rush all year.

      Wilcox called a decent defensive game, with plenty of stunts and blitzes, but he generally chose to “shut down the run game” and challenged the pass game to beat him. All this with a notoriously poor pass D this season? Most of the success against USC this year has been when the opposing D drops 8 into zone coverage, forcing Slovis (or Fink) to throw into tight windows. Wilcox’ mistake was not trying the 8 deep zone.

      Slovis and his receivers made SOOOO many 3rd and ultra long conversions. That’s the game last night

      Liked by 3 people

      Reply

  9. Although Les Miles was fired four games into his 12th season, he was still 9-3 the year before. So of course Clay Helton can still be fired, because it’s not always about the win loss record. If Mike Bohn doesn’t fire Helton, then USC will be going into the 2020 season without Michael Pittman, and Tyler Vaughns, who will have moved on to the NFL. Justin Wilcox said he’s never seen receivers like that in 20 years, well, that’s because he didn’t have the athletes to cover them. Oregon is the real deal in the PAC 12, and that’s the measuring stick that should be used to determine Helton’s progress, not Cal, or any other weak team in the conference.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  10. My guess is it gets down to the performance in a bowl game. If we finish 9-4 Bohn will give Helton thru next year where we have a good chance of winning the coveted Pac12 South and the Pac12 after getting demolished by Alabama. Helton said this team could be special in December and against a team that once they lost Brown and Garber was hapless

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  11. I sure hope he is fired– BUT he is a like a cat with 9 lives–EXCEPT he has 10.
    Clueless–If we miss on Meyers—Then who is really out there ?
    Herman at Texas is cooling off like last years romance
    Campbell at Iowa State always in 7-8 wins category
    Briles at Baylor ?

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Matt Rhule turned around Wake Forest and Baylor. He set up a recruiting network by hiring Texas high school football coaches as consultants.

      Like

      Reply

  12. I know we spend most of our energy deservedly bashing Gomer and his staff on this blog but I do want to make some positive comments about the game.

    1. Opie Harrell was right on about Slovis. He wanted him as the starting QB from the beginning (probably overruled by Gomer who is in love with Chuck n Duck). Slovis isn’t fast, but he moves well enough to buy time.
    2. Gomer can learn. He won a coin flip and correctly chose to defer thus enabling his team to have 2 consecutive possessions around the half. It took him 3 years to see this but it proves he still has a brain cell firing.
    3. Drevno might not be the greatest OL coach, but the OL is better this year than last. If only they can avoid the movement before the snap. The DBs are better too.
    4. I miss the contributions of Maui Mike and Pudly, who many times found more inside info than SW.

    That being said, Gomer needs to go after the UCLA game. Yes the team is slightly improved from last year but not nearly enough for the standards of the SC fan base. He might make a decent coach for a non-Power 5 school but to compete against Ala, Clemson, LSU, and tOSU his teams just do not pass the eyeball test.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Good points – agree with almost everything. Except the part about Helton learning.

      I think that we may be seeing Michael under a different handle…certainly hope so. Now if we could get Pudly back…

      Like

      Reply

    2. Well for you, the ‘O line’ may be better but I still see no real holes being made for any lineman’s dream come true – a solid running game to chew up time and wear out the opponent’s ‘D line’.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

  14. UM is our must target. The charade ends this season. Great athletes bailing a head coach out will never yield an elite program. CH is the opposite of a HC.

    Still can’t believe how badly Kal prepped to play us! Did they watch any film from our losses to BYU, Washington, ND, or Oregon? Drop 8 men in coverage forces us to run, which Graham Harrell loathes, and he abandons to force the pass. Didn’t they just do that the week before against Wazzu? Kal was then eaten alive by our receivers in single coverage, throwing everything in to stop our run with 6/7/8 in the box – which we gladly did. Wow. Add anemic production from their QB, as was not seen in our 4 losses, and you have the recipe for that trademarked Cal implosion. It’s no wonder Helton dumped Wilcox, even Helton could see how badly he schemed! And that is saying a lot.

    It’s not likely Chip Kelly will be so naive as Wilcox. We will get a bRuin team intent on running the ball like they did last year, and with Clancy’s penchant for single coverage and arm-tackling defense – especially after a relatively easy win at Kal – we could come in to that game overconfident and unprepared. Thank goodness we don’t have JT at the helm for the next one…

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Absolutely right TN! Chocolate Chip has forgotten more football knowledge than Gomer has acquired in his lifetime. Honestly, if the 2 coaches, I would rather have Show cause Kelly than Clueless Clay. Last year’s USC-UCLA game was indicative of how Chip viewed the film and schemed up a running attack and Clancy and Gomer never adjusted. In viewing next Saturday’s game as a win-win event. If SC wins, then we get the pride of boasting for yet another year. If the bRuins win, it will be easy for Bohn to finally act.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. Choosing between helton and show-cause chip is like choosing between Taco Bell and Jack-in-the-Box.

        With recruiting rank in the 70s, lowest attendance in 20 years, and a current HC who obviously should not have the job, even though NFL caliber players bail him out every other week, Bohn has to replace him.

        Liked by 1 person

    1. It used to be arguably the best game of the year in college football.

      The city would essentially shut down that Saturday. Virtually all of the best players in southern California would be on one squad or the other.

      Back in the day, the whole country watched.

      Now we have the village idiot vs. show cause chip.

      ucla pretends to care about college football. SC has been incompetent at managing its program for the last 10 years.

      Bohn, time for a change! Next Sunday! No matter the outcome!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. 67′ it is an excellent time slot (3:30 pm EST) and it is nationally televised on the legacy network ABC. There’ll be a solid turnout because this all bel-air tech has – next Saturday is all that matters to them – it is their BOWL Game. One bruin was quoted in today’s Times, that they were looking ahead when asked why they got blown out last night.

        Someone posted that Bohn may in fact keep Helton on through 2020….sad to says that is a real possibility.

        Coach Harvey Hyde noted what Petros saw last night when the camera swung towards the ‘suites’. There was USC AD Bohn and that $5 mil man Larry Scott. Hyde commented this morning on his radio show, trying to convince him why he (Scott) is worth what he’s paid.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Rusoviet – the 12:30/3:30 time slot is indeed prime. Best of all worlds is a win but with Helton being exposed nationally as the guy who shouldn’t be the captain of the ship, which leaves the door totally wide open for Bohn.

        With the talent on this team, they should blow out westwood. But my guess is that the spread will be around 8.

        Liked by 1 person

  16. I totally agree and would add: The firing should be done now. Nothing should be based on beating inept teams, Cal and UCLA fall into that category. I like Wolf’s take very much. Let us get on with it.

    Like

    Reply

Leave a comment