but how is mike riley a bad coach?

Losing to cal at home is always special

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Comparing scores is futile. We all do it, but at this point in the season, there has been too much fluctuation to gain anything by it. Utah lost to WSU at home, but beat USC. USC plungered WSU in Pullman. UCLA blew out ASU, but barely beat Colorado and Cal. UW blew out Cal and lost to WSU. Arizona beat Oregon, but lost to USC and UCLA.

Tequilla

I'm one of the last people that is going to cite transitive property for football - it's pretty FS far more than 81% of the time.

However, SO FAR this season, Cal's showing to be the best of what we'd consider the dreckfest teams of the conference (Cal, Oregon St, WSU, and Colorado). The conference as a whole basically has Oregon, then a large grouping of average to above average teams that have some kind of serious flaw to them (Stanford, UW, USC, UCLA, Utah, the Arizona schools).

So far, what we've seen from Cal is that they have played a few teams in the second tier of the conference. They should have beat Arizona and the UCLA game could have been a coin flip. UCLA has shown themselves to be behind what I'd consider the top end of the conference by how they got smashed by Oregon (just like everybody else is right now) and how they've struggled in games where they've been hit in the mouth (see Utah). Moreover, they've shown themselves to be very sloppy and have been lucky to pull out wins at Cal and Colorado. UW is far closer to Utah in quality IMO than Cal/Colorado - both have very good defenses, want to run the ball (w/ Shaq at RB that's in the same range of Booker for Utah), both have questionable at times QB play, and Utah an advantage in the kicking game. With the single exception of the ASU game, I'm not sure UCLA has played an impressive game all year. The game last night against Arizona probably qualifies as their best game of the year outside of ASU ... and that was an extremely sloppy game. At this point, I think you conclude that UCLA is a talented team that isn't particularly well coached, plays very sloppy and unfocused at times.

Regarding Arizona, what we know is that they want to play with a lot of tempo. I don't think that Soloman is a guy that is going to hurt you much with his down the field throws. So it comes down to controlling the running game and the short to intermediate passing game. The Arizona OL looks like it is turning into a massive problem for them as well. And, on defense, when they've struggled this year, they've struggled to contain the downhill running game in the 3-3-5. Shaq's got an ability to really cause them problems.

Point being that after yesterday there's a path to seeing this team having a successful end of the season. Each of these remaining games are winnable. The UW Defense is a Top 5 unit (when looking at offense, defense, and special teams units) in the conference. Expecting that they will play well should be expected against the teams that remain.

Moreover, for anybody with additional doubts, we've seen 2 very solid weeks in a row regarding culture change. Against ASU, there's no way that this team last year responds to being down 10-0 with the way that game was going. Yet, they get it back tied. Then against Colorado, we play like shit early and get down 10 earlier (2x) and respond. Moreover, this is a coaching staff that is showing halftime adjustments that are working - particularly defensively. In every PAC game so far this year w/ the exception of Cal where we only gave up 7 in the 2nd half, the defense has given up less points in the 2nd half than they did in the 1st half. As we continue to play close games the rest of the season, this is a positive to look at.

MikeDamone

Cal drove to the 1 inch line and dropped the ball untouched. Then fumbled again untouched and gave up. The results of that game were beyond meaningless
Every win and loss is beyond meaningless this season.

Peterman is putting in his system.

I really don't give a fuck this year. It's clear to me he can recruit ... there is clear development with key players ... and he is a proven winner.

I'll judge next more harshly and he better be winning by year three.

This is a meaningless fucking season.

18-20 games. Then we will know. Right now, it's looking like Petersen is the right guy.

PostGameOrangeSlices

Cal drove to the 1 inch line and dropped the ball untouched. Then fumbled again untouched and gave up. The results of that game were beyond meaningless
Every win and loss is beyond meaningless this season.

Peterman is putting in his system.

I really don't give a fuck this year. It's clear to me he can recruit ... there is clear development with key players ... and he is a proven winner.

I'll judge next more harshly and he better be winning by year three.

This is a meaningless fucking season.
18-20 games. Then we will know. Right now, it's looking like Petersen is the right guy.

The very fact that he gets pissed off at mediocrity is a good sign, and something that hasn't been seen on Moontlake in over a decade

chuck

UW hasn't beaten a 2nd tier team yet this season (Stanford, ASU) and got blown out by the only top tier team they played. We have one somewhat impressive win against a dreck tier team (Cal) and have struggled against the others in wins. I was happy with the response to the bad start yesterday and I agree it's a sign of improvement, but it was still a bad start and struggle to win against a horrible team. It's reasonable to expect that we will lose to UCLA and Arizona, and that continued struggles against dreck teams (WSU, OSU) could result in a loss.

2-2 is the probable outcome. 1-3 is as likely as 3-1. Actually it feels more likely.

I still beat for Pete and all but the team is what it is right now.

Tequilla

Chuck,

Your logic is the kind of logic that I really struggle with regarding what is reasonable the rest of the year.

UCLA went into Colorado and needed OT to win the game ... we go in and win by 15. UCLA got out to a strong start and faded. We got out to a slow start and got stronger as the game progressed.

We killed an upper dreck tier team in Cal. UCLA struggled to come out with a win there.

Arizona needed a 36 point 4th quarter to beat Cal in a game that they were badly outplayed in for most of the game.

I agree that with our QB play it's hard to feel confident going into ANY game. However, we played Stanford more or less even without any QB play that day. Going into the year we would have thought that getting Stanford early was a good thing. In hindsight, probably better if we would have got them later in the year. ASU we were right there playing with our backup QB in terrible weather conditions. And quite frankly we didn't play good enough defense (particularly tackling wise) to give ourselves a chance at Oregon. I'd say it's unlikely that we're going to get blown out of any remaining game this year. To me, that's a massive positive.

chuck

Teq,

You're doing the same thing over and over and it seems valid in writing. I'm going by what I see from UW. What I see is an inept, easily out-schemed offense and a defense that looks good but doesn't do quite enough against better competition.

UCLA has a ton of ways to beat you on offense. The best bet is to abuse the fuck out of Hundley but that's easier said than done. Our front 7 seems to wilt against mobile QBs...a artifact from the Wilcocks era. Eventually the secondary play and tackling break down and the floodgates open. I wouldn't be surprised if the Bruins offense has a day similar to the Ducks against our D.

Arizona is just a road game against a team that thinks it is good. That alone is an obstacle. I don't see anything about them that says UW can't beat them, but I also don't see anything about them that says they should beat Oregon yet it happened.

The loser hasn't been scrubbed out of this team yet. The struggles against bad teams are an obvious result of establishing a new program and losing key skill players. The even worse struggles, and losses, to the good teams are a bigger hurdle and I won't predict that to turn around until I see it.

Tequilla

I absolutely agree that our QB hasn't been good - it's making our offensive scheming look like shit at times as we try to find any kind of spark to get us going. Moving Shaq to offense IMO is giving us the ability to have a running game - which is making the passing game a little bit earlier for Miles.

Forget the preseason schedule at this point since we were breaking in newbies in the secondary, the only team that has done shit against us offensively has been Oregon. Our inability to make tackles, combined with the turnovers, was just flat out piss poor.

It's easy to talk shit about the defense, but the numbers aren't backing it up. We've had opponents score over 20 points only 4 out of 9 games this year. ASU got into the 20s due to an INT in the last 2 minutes of the game. We've already played offenses as good as UCLA and Arizona.

As with most of our games, it will come down to turnovers and the ability of the offense to create just enough to give us a shot to win the game.

TierbsHsotBoobs

I didn't read a word of Tequilla's bullshit in page 2 of this thread.