After the strangest, most deflating season of the Pete Carroll Era, there are many things that need to improve for USC to return to its old, BCS-bowl self in 2010.
Not the least of which is the head coach’s tendency to be stubborn.
Let’s be honest. For all the wonderful traits he demonstrated in his spectacular, seven-year run to excellence, Carroll can be hard headed. We’re talking pound-your-noggin-against-the-wall hard headed. He makes a decision, and then he stands by it, come hell or Sunami-sized water. At times, it is almost as if he is saying: “I don’t care if I’m wrong. This is the way it is going to be.”
Never has that been more evident than in the perplexing case of Allen Bradford.
The status of the 235-pound junior tailback has been a mystery to members of the media who regularly have attended practice the past couple of years. From Monday through Friday, the kid has been a runaway bull in afternoon drills. He has looked like Ricky Bell incarnate, a bruising, power runner with surprising breakaway speed. Rarely does a practice go by when he doesn’t break at least one long run.
Yet, come game days before this season, Bradford was nowhere to be found. Why? You could never get a straight answer, and I should know. I probed everybody on the coaching staff from Carroll to running backs coach Todd McNair to now-departed Steve Sarkisian. All of them darted around the question like Reggie Bush in the open field.
Finally, this year, with the shattering injury to Stefan Johnson and the continuing doghouse residence of C.J. Gable, Bradford was elevated to back-up tailback. He couldn’t be first team tailback because long before Carroll forged his embarrassing man crush on quarterback Matt Barkley, he bestowed the same honor, albeit more subtly, on Joe McKnight. Forget the fact McKnight, though obviously gifted with terrific open field ability, is not geared to run between the tackles. A certain stubborn head coach was determined to prove Joe could be an every down back, even to the detriment of the team.
To his credit, the still fumble-prone McKnight has done better than many of us expected. He has even managed to squeeze out 1,000 yards this season, although much of it grudgingly. But because of his smaller, 190-pound frame, he is always dinged up. Forget the fact he would be much more suited to be a complimentary Bush-type runner-receiver. Pete wanted him to be his featured back, and that was that.
Then a funny thing happened in the UCLA game. Bradford went in when McKnight was once again injured, and his jarring runs set up both of the Trojans’ offensive touchdowns. Only when the jumbo-sized junior was ratting between the tackles did the USC offense, as well as the Coliseum crowd, seem invigorated. Only when he presented a constant threat to power on the ground for first downs did Barkley and the passing offense perk up, the way they did on the drive that led to the TD to make it 21-7 against the Bruins, probably the second best pressurized drive of the season after the classic fourth quarter excursion at Ohio State.
You couldn’t help but wonder if this season would have turned out differently had Carroll and the always controversial newcomer Jeremy Bates emphasized Bradford, an excellent offensive line and a power running game as the foundation on offense. How much heat would that have taken off the young shoulders of Barkley, allowing him to throw more play-action passes against defenses that would have to be preoccupied with the running game?
Barkley is absorbing a lot of the hits for this disappointing 8-4 season, and it hasn’t been his fault. It is one thing to ask a true freshman to start at quarterback. It is another thing to ask him to carry the entire offense. No true freshman has ever done that. John Elway didn’t. Carson Palmer certainly couldn’t. Asking Barkley to do it was unfair to him and unfair to the rest of the team.
Ah, but along came the final Saturday of the season, and after what happened against UCLA, it seemed almost preordained that, given the fact McKnight still wasn’t 100 per cent physically, Bradford might finally get his shot at carrying the ball 20 to 25 times vs. Arizona.
Incredibly, though, it never happened. McKnight, clearly not at his best, still started, and Carroll allowed the entire, sleep-inducing first half to dredge by with Bradford allowed to carry the ball only once. That’s right, once.
Almost by default, Carroll went to the powerful junior in the second half and again the offense came to life with Bradford averaging six yards a carry (to McKnight’s 3.9). He scored one touchdown and seemed on the verge of doing even more damage in the fourth quarter when Carroll decided to go back to McKnight at tailback. There was some talk of Bradford injuring a knee, but when asked about it afterwards, Allen said he “tweaked” the knee a little, but it was no big thing.
The bigger point here is that the considerable talents of Bradford were basically wasted in a season when the Trojans never did establish anything resembling an identity on offense. What were they trying to be? A finesse team? A balanced team that couldn’t really throw or pass consistently? Certainly, they weren’t ready to commit to becoming a power running team like, oh, say Stanford.
It goes back to Carroll’s stubbornness. It’s been the same with Taylor Mays, who somehow managed to forge a fine career at USC while basically playing out of position. At 230 pounds with 4.3 speed, he should have been the perfect hybrid safety/linebacker, roaming the field to make plays at strong safety, the way Troy Polamalu used to. Instead, Carroll, deathly afraid of getting beat by a bomb, made him the center fielder on defense and ordered him to play deep. Real deep. Like 30 yards deep. The result was that the Trojans rarely did succumb to a long touchdown pass, but they also failed to take full advantage of the prodigious skills of Mays, who almost certainly will be utilized at his proper position in the NFL.
Don’t get me wrong. The Trojans never would be in a position where excellence has come to be expected without Carroll. He has done so many things right in his brilliant run, this is not meant to place all the fault for this disappointing season at his ever-active feet. But at the same time, he has to be accountable for what has happened. He got most of the credit for the winning, it is only fair that he take his fair share of the blame for the uncharacteristic losing.
In retrospect, two of the team’s four losses this season cannot be debated. Defensively, where some major changes also have to be made, USC was overwhelmed by both Oregon and Stanford. But the loss to Washington and this final defeat at the hands of Arizona both could have – and should have -- been avoided. This should have been a 10-2 team heading to a respectable bowl, not an 8-4 team barely able to imagine playing in a lower-tier game.
It all begins where it started, with a head coach who has a long off-season ahead of him to rethink what he needs to do to get his still-prestigious program back on track.
It won’t be easy. But the best place to start, Pete, is to admit that even someone as smart as you can be wrong on occasion.
Steve Bisheff is a longtime sports columnist in the Southern California area and the author of "Always Compete", a recent book about Pete Carroll and the 2008 season.
