5 Thoughts for December 7, 2015 (all about football)

1. PAC-12 Championship: 461 all-purpose yards by Christian McCaffrey, means that McCaffrey just beat Barry Sanders' record for total all-purpose yards in a season. If he doesn't win the Heisman, something's wrong with the system. Those 461 all-purpose yards also happens to be more (offense + returns) yards than USC had in the game (453 yards). McCaffrey beat USC, period. Once he'd gotten past that first level of defense, he was pretty much gone.
2. USC Football: It's easy to point the finger at Justin Wilcox, especially when the 'jumbo package' on defense consisted of bigger linebackers instead of extra linemen (for reference, in 2013 Clancy Pendergast's base was two tackles and two ends, and his heavy package was three tackles and two ends). It's even easier to wag the finger at Justin Wilcox, when you realize that he was given a redo on his defensive scheme against Stanford, and did even worse. But Cody Kessler shares some fault for not trusting his receivers when covered on deep passes, willing to take the dump-off pass, instead. Likewise, Helton probably shouldn't have called Kessler to run into the flat for a throwback in their 2-point conversion attempt, right after Kessler ran into the end zone on the run-option; the guy was already lumbering around at about a 6-second 40 yard dash. All around, it was a very poor performance by the Trojans.
3. USC Football, part II: As expected, Clay Helton released several coaches, and none of them are surprises. The four coaches who lost their jobs are defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox, secondary coach Keith Heyward, defensive line coach Chris Wilson, and offensive line coach Bob Connelly. If you watched this past season, these coaches were in charge in areas of the game where USC struggled mightily, with either scheming, technique, or both. You're USC; you don't give up 461 all-purpose yards to any person, no matter how good they are, and you don't give up 6 passing touchdowns to any quarterback. If you're like me, you're surprised that Heyward was shocked that he lost his job, given that at the end of the Oregon game, he told the media that he had no idea what went wrong; if you don't know what went wrong, it seems unlikely that you'll be able to correct it.
4. Steve Sarkisian: Sark fired off a lawsuit to recover money from USC, after being fired less than two months ago. I understand the "why", but it seems that Sark just kicked himself out of the Trojan Family for life; the NCAA may have forced USC to drop Reggie Bush from the family, but the family never rejected Reggie Bush like it is primed to reject Sark. Reading the lawsuit, it seems to me that his lawyers are handing USC a separate for-cause reasoning for Sark's firing: By his lawyers' own retelling, USC's gig is a high-stress job where championships and wins are of the utmost importance, and Sark knew he was failing the job -- which he claims is the cause for his alcoholism; in essence, Sark knew he would be fired because he'd failed to produce wins (coming off the embarrassing loss to Washington). But here's the problem for Sark: How can he win a lawsuit claiming a disability, when he was the roadblock to his own recovery? More than that, how can his memory of the events be trusted, when he was drunk at the time that he showed up on campus? If he drove himself to the campus, drunk, it would be the nail in the coffin of his lawsuit and any remaining sympathy from all Trojans. 
5. Seattle Seahawks: Even though Jimmy Graham is a great player who gave the Seahawks an added dimension in the passing game, it seems very clear now that trading Max Unger for Graham was a bad decision. The experiment with Drew Nowak at center came to a close, and the offense has dramatically improved with far fewer sacks and much greater efficiency on 3rd downs. With Graham out for the season, Luke Willson proved to be more than an adequate replacement at tight end. When we look back at the season, you can already tell that the Seahawks got their 2015 draft and undrafted free agent picks spectacularly right: Tyler Lockett, Thomas Rawls (undrafted!), and Frank Clark are doing exceptionally well as rookies. The blowout game against Minnesota in Minneapolis is the sort of game that could scare the rest of the NFL -- was that the sign that Seattle's officially gotten its groove back?