Dear Mr. Football: Does it take a fluke — a gift from the football gods — to break a 16-game losing streak?
A: I was standing on the sideline at Oregon State’s Reser Stadium on Oct. 27, 1979 when the Beavers trailed John Elway and Stanford 31-23 with 1:15 remaining. The Beavers had lost nine straight. Had the football gods not spread a bolt of unexpected karma on the woebegone Beavers, that streak would’ve reached 24 by 1981.
That unexpected and shocking bolt of football lightning made it possible for Arizona to now owning the longest losing streak in Pac-12 history.
Here’s what happened: Stanford, which had tied No. 1 USC two weeks earlier, took a 24-7 lead. The game was over, right? Stanford coasted. But OSU kept battling and scored with 1:15 remaining. It went for a two-point conversion to tie. Amazingly, Tony Robinson made a diving catch to tie the game at 31.
On the ensuing kickoff, Stanford’s Rick Gervais caught the ball at the 1-yard line. He mistakenly thought he was in the end zone. He took a knee. Safety. OSU won 33-31. Alas, it would then lose 14 more games in succession.
Dear Mr. Football: Whose record did Arizona break when it lost its 16th straight, at Oregon?
A: It broke OSU’s 1990-91 record of 15 straight. The Beavers of ’91 also needed some help from the football gods to break that streak. They won 14-3 in a rainstorm at Oregon’s Autzen Stadium, as a significant underdog in the season finale. The Ducks were awful, completing a numbing 11-of-36 passes and missing three short field goal attempts.
Former Stanford coach Rod Dowhower, victim of that 33-31 loss at OSU in 1979, probably defined the process for a team like Arizona to end its streak. After the game in Corvallis he said: “When you’re fighting for your life, as Oregon State was, you don’t have anything to lose. You risk anything, gamble all the time, like they did with all those fourth-down plays. We played a little soft and it cost us.”
If Arizona is to beat UCLA, it’ll need the Bruins to play as ineffectively as they did in the second half earlier this season in losses to Fresno State and Arizona State.
Dear Mr. Football: Is Chip Kelly’s lack of success predictable since leaving Oregon?
A: Kelly’s .452 winning mark in the NFL is actually about average for the 10 Pac-12 head coaches who jumped to the NFL. Here’s how the Pac-12 coaches fared (and are faring) in the NFL:
Stanford’s Jim Harbaugh, 44-19-1 (.690)
Stanford’s Bill Walsh, 92-59-1 (.609)
USC’s Pete Carroll, 158-106-1 (.598)
USC’s John Robinson, 75-68 (.524)
Kelly, 28-35 (.452)
Oregon’s Rich Brooks, 13-19 (.406)
USC’s John McKay, 44-88-1 (.333)
ASU’s Darryl Rogers, 18-40 (.310)
OSU’s Mike Riley, 14-34 (.292)
ASU’s Frank Kush, 11-28-1 (.288)
With the exception of Riley and Brooks, all of those coaches largely out-manned college football opponents. Not so in the NFL.
Robinson, Brooks, Harbaugh, Walsh and Riley all returned to college coaching but only Riley and maybe Brooks experienced more success in Act II.
Dear Mr. Football: Why has Kelly struggled so much (13-23) at UCLA?
A: At Oregon, Kelly was not only blessed with the talent left over from Mike Bellotti’s 14-year Hall of Fame career, but also with the UO’s surge as one of the leading brands in college football. He was in the right place at the right time.
Yes, he deserves much credit for his up-tempo, no-huddle system, one from which he profited the way Rich Rodriguez did at West Virginia from 2001-07. But that Oregon track-meet approach has been solved by defensive coaches the last decade.
Kelly is an acquired taste. He can be dismissive and reclusive. He’s not for every school, especially those in smaller college communities who need their football coach to reach out and interact with the community.
Kelly’s not a celebrity recruiter like Pete Carroll was at USC and remember this: When Kelly left Oregon, the Ducks were put on a three-year NCAA probation and Kelly was given an 18-month show-cause penalty for what the NCAA termed illegal recruiting activities.
Dear Mr. Football: How come Arizona has been slow to become renowned for blitzing and sacks under defensive coordinator Don Brown, who is, after all, Dr. Blitz?
A: Brown’s defense has six sacks to date. The transfers he brought to campus such as Western Michigan’s Treshaun Harris and Vanderbilt’s Kenny Hebert have combined for 39 tackles and one sack.
This isn’t easy. Often, it comes down to god-given physical dimensions.
“To rush the passer,” Brown said this week, “you need the ability to run fast and have long arms. God graces you with those things.”
Brown has five of his former players, pass rushers, on NFL rosters: New England’s Josh Uche, Chase Winovich and Cam McGrone, and Kansas City’s Taco Charlton and Mike Danna. All played for him at Michigan.
God graces a football coach at Michigan with NFL-ready bodies. Not so much at Arizona. The Wildcats have eight players on current NFL rosters but only three full-starters: Tennessee defensive back Dane Cruikshank, Tampa Bay tight end Rob Gronkowski and Patriots kicker Nick Folk. Houston interior lineman Roy Lopez has played roughly 50% of the snaps for the Texans.
It’ll take time for Brown to get and develop more Josh Uches and Taco Charltons.
Dear Mr. Football: How important is the number 20 to Jedd Fisch?
A: Arizona hasn’t scored 20 points in its last seven games. Any Power 5 football team can expect to go 0-12 if it doesn’t average, say, 25 points a game. To have a winning season, you’ve got to average 30 or more.
The UA’s seven games of fewer than 20 is historically bad, as you might expect. Only Mike Stoops’ first UA team, 2004, also with seven straight games under 20, can match it. Before that? The UA’s teams of 1962, 1964 and 1965 all had streaks of at least seven straight games under 20.
The worst scoring period in UA football history was 1957-59, when the Wildcats went 19 consecutive games without reaching 20 points. Somehow they won six of those games. But that was during the so-called “dead ball” era of college football.
UCLA isn’t a powerhouse. If the Wildcats can run the ball as well as they did at Oregon, controlling tempo and the line of scrimmage, Fisch will have a reasonable chance to end the 16-game losing streak.
Quarterback Jordan McCloud is the absolute key, and it goes beyond limiting his interceptions. The Bruins will surely squeeze the field on McCloud, daring him to throw deep, and try to prevent him from escaping the pocket to generate offense while throwing darts in a short passing scheme.
But if McCloud improves, I think it’ll be close at the wire.
UCLA 31, Arizona 27.
