I still demand at least a 9 - 3 season with a win over $c. The Rice game was horrible but I'm not ready to write our boys off or lower my expectations because of one uninspired game. Conversely I won't go overboard with praise after we dominate UW. It was one game. If this pattern of play continues then yes we are in trouble. Thats not going to happen. We are going to be fine. 11 - 1! Beat Southern Cal. Down with Jon Booty. GO BRUINS!!!

EXTREME!!!

Maybe you need to lay of the BOOZE,dude.

Its good to know that you'll stand behind the team, "Through the good times and the great times"-Philly sportswriter commenting about T.O.

At least you can look past the positives and bring out "Unbias real look at the bruins"-Sarcasm

Blahblahblah is all I'm hearing from your post, do you have anything positive to say about this team....ever.

Making fun of/Bashing Bruin fans who like to look to the POSITVE side of the coin is unfair and wrong!!!!!

If the bruins get 9 wins and beat SC I'll be sure to hand you some WATER TO DRINK.

GO BRUINS!!!

Come on, it was a "walk through,"  - a dress rehearsal for the real season which begins with the Washington game, same as was the Utah game.

 What you don't want to see is a team too emotionally high against a non-descript opponent, then coming out flat against the next-scheduled conference rival.  This teame should now be primed and ready for a top effort in a meaningful game.   No team can be "up" and sharp every week for 12 games.  It is to their benefit the Bruins took the week off, including Saturday.  Find a better story-line, next time.

I graduated UCLA in '78 and discovered this site during last year's BB season. I've thoroughly enjoyed the postings, especially the film clips.

While everything was positive during the Bruins' title run, the onset of the FB season has created a much different atmosphere on this board.

There is no dispute that the Rice game was a major disappointment. My biggest gripe is that KD's teams have been unable to build on well-played games to gain some momentum and instill a winning, dominating attitude among the players. It was hard to believe that post-game quotes from players indicated their attitude that they took Rice too lightly. KD must not allow this to happen simply because his team is not good enough to take any opponent too lightly. They can only become good enough by stringing together solid efforts on both sides of the ball -- something KD's teams have yet to accomplish.

That being said, I believe that some here are overreacting. They have only played two games. If they played like this in Game 5 or 6, that's another story. Let's give them a few more games before pronouncing a wasted season.

That's all for now for this "newbie." I hope to be a regular poster to this very informative and entertaining site.

Nobody called it a wasted season.  NOBODY.  Nobody demanded Karl be fired (well, except for DD, but that's pretty explicit in his name).  Please stop using that straw man.  

The Bruins played a horrible football game.  They were critiqued rather harshly, by me and others.  People began to complain about the criticism.  Everything is fine.  Okay, a disagreement.

If the Bruins play a very good football game, Karl and the team will be roundly praised, as they were against Utah.  That's how it works.

That's it.  That's what happened.  Many people are concerned that Karl will be another perennial 8-4 football coach.  Others are not.

Please, everybody.  We're all Bruins here.

As usual, a well thought out and articulated post.

Obviously the loss against Rice was bad news. It seems like we just let ourselves go and even gave a chance to a team which we should have completely blown out. There were no positives to take from this game.

But the one thing that we have to hope about this game is that it serves as a wake up call, much like the SC basketball game last year. We lost to an inferior team, but that just made our team play harder and we ended up with a great season.

We did make the 9 wins & beat SC expectation from Dorrell and that goal is still plenty alive. Hopefully our team wakes up to their potential and rallies together after this poor showing and shows us what they're made of. I'll be doing my best to help by being at every home game. GO BRUINS!!!

I think you are overemphasizing this poor performance. I've been thinking through this on BRO

First, you are really discounting the defensive effort.  I think this is the lowest total yardage (maybe points)in 2 consecutive games in like 20 years for UCLA.  That's good no matter how bad the opponents.  Than you consider that much of the rice yardage came on 2 plays, and that we continually turned the ball over to get them good field position and putting the D back in in quick change situations, and the performance really does look amazing.

Next, on the offense.  3 factors are the new clock rules and the turnovers and the injuries along the OL.  Rice game planned well by gambling everything on taking away the pass.  Running eats up a lot of clock and relies on wearing down the opponent as the game goes on.  When you continually turn the ball over you score even less and you don't wear the opponent down.  So even though we dominated yardage wise the T.O.'s stripped the effectivness from the running game. And the new clock rules magnified the time lost.

Finally, the pass pro and to a lesser extent the run game was hampered by Sutherland and Lanis being out for portions of the game. you need a group of OL that has worked together to pickup the crazy blitzes.  

Positives: the OL can run it, at least against rice.  Given how well they opened holes, they can probably run decent against most of our opponents.

The D is good.

Even on bad days Ben maintains enough composure to throw some nice balls.

Negatives:
if we don't decrease the T.O.s, we will lose a lot.

The OL and Ben need to work more on blitzes and quick hitters.  That's not surprising this early into an OL.  OLs take time and luckily we have the schedule that will allow them to learn.

bad playcalling-if we were playcalling to score max points rather than work on some things. I think Svoboda was working on OL basics.

Special teams-this is the one unalloyed negative.  Coverage and return units sucked.  

bottomline: I think the clock rules make a grind it out running style more risky because you don't have time to make up for turnovers or early fizzling drives and the game is too short to wear teams down.  So it will be a good strategy for undermanned teams to take away the pass and hope for a few breaks.  I predict you will see a number of close shaves and upsets as teams understand this.  I am worried about the special teams and OL  breakdowns, but at least the OL breakdowns can reasonably be attributed to injuries and inexperience. From various people I do not think motivation was the problem, which was my first worry.

I am an overly sensitive parent of a young man on the scout team (who works his butt off with 8 hours of football per day, plus classes for the likelihood of no reward beyond love of football and the school).  I imprudently criticized this website for what I perceived was a lack of support for the team and the program -- imprudent because I am a newbie. I provide all of that only as context to say that I appreciated every word of the moderator's post above, and the dialog and all of the comments which follow.  It is a heartfelt and meaningful dialog.  It cuts to the heart of the issue of what we should be as fans, and it is extremely well done.  Applause and keep it coming.  Respectfully, converso.

GO BRUINS!

26 - 16 against Rice, in the 2nd game OR THE 5TH game of the season, is not acceptable.  We know we're all bruin fans here.  But some of us expect more from the football team.  If anyone thinks 8 - 4 is good enough, then the Rice game isn't a big deal.  But i'm sorry, i've been watching a team across town beating the snot out of people, taking no prisoners.  If we want a tough powerhouse of a football team, KD and the rest of the staff better look at some teams like Texas, Florida, Ohio State, Notre Dame and SC . . . they wouldn't beat Rice by only 10 points, and they certainly wouldn't look as sloppy as the bruins did against them.  I think Washington is a HUGE game, let's see what they can do on the road.  I think they'll be ok.  If they can increase the intesity and play like it's Utah and NOT Rice, they'll be victorious!!