UW went down 1 on poll

TierbsHsotBoobs said:

FremontTroll said:

Baphomet said:

DerekJohnson said:

For some reason I'm just not concerned about Arizona at all.

I hope the coaches are. I'm not convinced our passing game is going to be all that great against Pac 12 caliber DBs, and even though we finally broke 200 yards rushing, it was against Portland Fucking State.

Arizona doesn't have Pac 12 caliber DBs...or LBs...or DL...

Based on?

Three members of their DL rotation including two DTs are listed under 250 lbs...one is a former walk-on. They basically never get any sacks or even pressure from this unit. In their old 3-3-5 scheme the DL was basically just supposed to occupy blockers while Scooby Wright and the other LBs and Safeties flew around the field (it didn't work they fired nearly their entire D staff.) The DTs had two tackles against Hawaii and nobody on the DL had a sack.

The LBs have experience but are all either a. slow b. small or c. both. One of them is Michael Barton who couldn't see the field at Cal. If you can't play on Cal's D you are not Pac-12 caliber. Cody Ippollito is basically a slower and fatter Cort Dennison. Paul Magloire and DeAndre Miller are actually pretty good.

At safety you have Tellas Jones and a bunch of lightly recruited underclassmen who don't have any experience. Jones was injured against BYU and hasn't played since.

At corner you do have some experience- experience getting routinely roasted by Pac-12 WRs. DaVonte Neal is very athletic but can't play corner. McCall won't be able to keep up with Chico or Ross.

FremontTroll said:

This fiction that we don't have any information about UW because we haven't played anyone is ridiculous.

That isn't the message, at least from me. Even earlier in this thread I think we've shown we can beat Arizona rather easily, say 34-17 (actually, I think easier than that). We have not proven that we are a top 10 team though. Sure, some others who are currently potentially ranked too high have struggled against lower tier competition, and we haven't. That is good for us, but beating up on patsies really isn't the same as hanging with the big boys. Once we do that then we will have arrived. It is clear we are not complete dreck based on what we've done so far. That is good, but insufficient.

Edit: It is also worth noting that in a retrospective maybe things will be more clear on where we are today based on the results we have today. Maybe Rutgers will turn out to be a better team than we realized and beating them down was very meaningful. In the meantime they are unproven. Uncertainty is uncertainty. It does not mean we are good and it does not mean we are bad. We may be good but that is uncertain.

Mad_Son said:

Dennis_DeYoung said:

Mad_Son said:

DerekJohnson said:

For some reason I'm just not concerned about Arizona at all.

This team has not proven it can hang with the best, but Arizona is far from the best. I don't think we'll have any trouble with them.

As an undefeated team, we have not beat a mid-tier team on the road since '01.

What makes a team mid-tier? I get there have been cultural issues that have perpetuated a dearth of mental fortitude, just want to understand where that statistic comes from.

A team that finished in the upper half of the Pac-12 or a team like BYU that isn't great, but doesn't suck. I mean, it was a subjective judgment... for instance, I don't count beating a shit tier SYR team on the road when that team went on to get blasted in their own conference. Actually, I had the year wrong. It was '98 the last time we beat a decent team on the road as an undefeated (the Reggie Davis play).

The thing I'm fascinated by is ON THIS BORED, where everyone knows we shit the bed constantly, people are too stupid to recognize that the problem is more than just losing to TOP TIER TEAMS.

The problem is getting beat on the road like a drum by every team we play.

EVEN IF we lose to Stanford and Oregon, beating Zona on the road as an undefeated team would be a big step forward and something we haven't done in a long time.

The reason why it's important that we do it while we are undefeated is that it's a sign that we are dealing with expectations. Every time we go on the road and have any sort of expectations (save beating dog shit like HAW, SYR and ILL) we fold.