Utah, Arizona, and Oregon State Moving Up in Week 4 Pac 12 Power Rankings
Saturday Blitz Pac 12 Power Rankings Week 4
8. USC Trojans, 2-1 (1-0), Idle Last Saturday
Obviously we are all still severely disappointed in USC after such a bad loss to Boston College two weeks ago coming on the heels of a 13-10 upset victory over Stanford. How could a defense be so good one week and struggle so much the next week? The answer is that the defense was never that great to begin with.
Stanford moved the ball on USC’s defense quite a bit, but they consistently self-destructed in USC territory. It had little to do with what the Trojans’ defense did, and that has to be taken into account. Steve Sarkisian has issues with his front seven, and the offense still simply comes and goes. Neither factor is great for the team going forward, and that’s why it’s so far down on this list today.
USC will have plenty of chances to gain back some of the respect it lost, with Oregon State, Arizona State, and Arizona as the next three teams on the schedule. But for right now, all we have to go on is how it looked against a Boston College team that never should have been able to compete with them. Because of that, we had to dock them down to the bottom half of the Pac 12 for right now, even if they are much better than that.