Offensive line fails to carry its weight

By Scott Bair
Daily Bruin Reporter

The UCLA offensive line weighs in at a collective 1,473 pounds.
Logic would suggest that people of that size would be difficult to
push around.

Pushing those big men around was the difficult task given to the
USC defensive line for Saturday’s contest against UCLA. The
Bruins made USC’s job get a lot easier when these five
gargantuan men simply imploded.

On passing plays, the UCLA offensive line is supposed to make a
pocket for quarterback Cory Paus to throw from. When the offensive
line does not do its job, the pocket implodes on the quarterback,
who either has to scramble to throw the ball early or take a sack
for a loss of yardage.

Four times in the first half and five altogether, Paus was taken
down before he could get rid of the ball. Paus, who is not a mobile
quarterback, was forced to run with the ball two times because the
pocket collapsed on him again. Even when Paus was able to get the
ball into the air, he was getting hit. There is no official
statistic that tallies how many times a quarterback gets hit after
a pass, but were such a statistic for Saturday’s game, the
number would be in the dozens.

“There was a lot of pressure on the quarterback, and
because of that we couldn’t generate any offense,” UCLA
head coach Bob Toledo said.

The running game did not fare any better without support from
the offensive line. The two-headed running back monster of Akil
Harris and Manuel White Jr. was not very ferocious on Saturday. USC
held UCLA to a mere 28 rushing yards in the game ““ the lowest
Bruin rushing output against USC since they notched 23 in 1956.

“At times it was very difficult for the offense to
execute,” Paus said.

The skill players take the blame for the lack of offensive
firepower, but a fire can’t start without a spark. That spark
comes from a quick push off the line to open a hole for a running
back or sustaining the pocket a second longer so the quarterback
can make an accurate pass.

The UCLA offensive line could not provide that spark on
Saturday.

“I’m not going to make any excuses for what happened
out there today,” UCLA center Troy Danoff said. “We
were well-prepared, but we put forth a bad effort and had a bad
game.”

Consequently, an average Trojan defense had its way with a Bruin
offense that never quite got moving, producing USC-opponent season
lows in first downs (10) and total yardage (114).

“The offense was totally inept,” Toledo said.

One of the big reasons the offense was inept and immobile was
because its 1,473 pound horse wasn’t pulling its weight.