Pac-10 Week 4 Power Rankings

by user Deuelio

1. USC– I have no idea why Lane Kiffin won’t turn the offense loose. Booty completed 24 passes for just 186 yards, but had a bunch of dropped passes. Emmanuel Moody has emerged as the next great USC tailback, but losing Jarrett for 2-4 weeks could be huge. The defense is big, fast and nasty. Still on top until someone takes them out.
2. Cal – Leapfrogs Oregon by virtue of the shellacking they handed ASU. Longshore is emerging as the best sophomore quarterback in the conference, and their skill positions are scary good. Defensively, the Bears are fast and are getting better every week. They pressured Carpenter into four INT’s, and knocked him down time and again. If not for a Someone forgot to mention to the Bears that their season started at Tennessee.
3. Oregon – Home to the conferences best offense. Oregon’s wide open spread attack is tough to stop with guys like Jonathan Stewart and Dennis Dixon running wild. The defense is shaky and injuries haven’t helped. The Ducks will likely play in quite a few 45-38 type games. Stewart has emerged as one of the conferences top running backs and Dixon, despite a lack of TD passes, is emerging as the perfect quarterback for Oregon’s offense.
4. ASU – Still #4 despite the shellacking at Cal. They’ve still got good players but they also have serious flaws. Carpenter is under a ton of pressure, both mental and physical. Koetter didn’t help him by flip flopping on the starter spot and putting more pressure kid who has only made about seven career starts. Cal harassed Carpenter all day, knocking him down and picking him off four times. The ASU defense needs to improve as their next two games are against Oregon and USC. Otherwise they could be staring at an 0-3 Pac-10 record.
5. Washington – Knocks off UCLA at home for Willingham’s biggest win in Seattle. Stanback is turning into a poor man’s Vince Young. The coaches have clearly turned the game over to Stanback as evidenced by him accounting for 248 of Washington’s 249 yards of total offense. In the same way Mack Brown let Vince win games for him, Willingham has decided to let Stanback win games for the Huskies.
6. UCLA – Olson has looked like a guy that hasn’t played football in three years lately. With a 16-0 lead against Washington, UCLA and Karl Dorrell went completely vanilla and conservative and watched as the Huskies outscored the Bruins 29-3 to pull out a 29-19 win. I predicted Dorrell to be on the hot seat, but in reality he probably bought himself some time with his year last year. UCLA just doesn’t have the horses to compete with the upper echelon, and an early season loss to lower tier Pac-10 team could be devastating. Hopefully they can beat Notre Dame though.
7. Washington State – Not sure who this team is right now. They were competitive with Auburn for a half before getting blown out. They’ve beaten Idaho, Baylor and now Stanford since. I was never sold on Alex Brink under center but the team keeps winning games. The Cougs play USC, OSU, Cal, and Oregon in their next four games. After that series, we should have a clear indication of where the Cougs will fit in the big picture. My guess, somewhere near the bottom.
8. Arizona – Stellar defense, bad offense. My disdain for Mike Stoops leads me to root for whoever Arizona is playing. Had the Wildcats been able to take advantage of the many errors USC committed, they could have won that game. They don’t appear to be well-coached and they make too many mental mistakes. That defense will keep them in games though.
9. Oregon State – A lackluster win at home over Idaho moves the Beavers to 2-1 on the season. The “1” of course was the 42-14 shellacking at the hands of Boise State. Yvenson Bernard is still a terrific running back. Joe Newton is still a terrific tight end. Unfortunately Matt Moore is still Matt Moore and the defense still has an aversion to stopping people. It all adds up to a long final season in Corvallis for Mike Riley.
10. Stanford – Ouch.

Date

Mon 09/25/06, 12:30 pm EST