Bumped from the diaries. GO BRUINS. -N

cross-posted from DumpDorrell.com

Below are this week's Guerrero Grades.  For those who are new to DD or are coming back after a hiatus, we have been using Dan Guerrero's own words to assess Dorrell's performance during the season.  Here is what Guerrero said he expects this season:

"The important thing this year," Guerrero said, "is that we don't beat ourselves, that we play with consistency, that we're an excellent second half team and that we improve as the year progresses."

As we will continue to do throughout the season, here is our assessment of Karl Dorrell's performance yesterday against Washington with Guerrero's clear points of analysis in mind: 

1.    
2. We don't beat ourselves.  Grade: C.  2 Turnovers, 1 INT - there should have been more, 4 fumbles total - 1 lost, 10 penalties that either stalled UCLA drives or helped Washington drives, 1 penalty negated a punt return for a touchdown. The turnovers gave Washington 14 points and kept the game close. Were it not for Keyes INT return for a touchdown and Slater's kickoff return for a touchdown .. we would have lost this game. Think about that.  
3.    
4. Play with consistency.  Grade C.  This team came out flat in the first half.  Sure they put some yards on the stat sheet but they stalled or failed to put points on the board when they needed to, committing drive stalling penalties on nearly every drive in the half.  The drive with Markey's big 66 yard run in the 1st quarter ended quickly thereafter. Why didn't Dorrell go for the end zone on the very next play ..  drive a stake in their heart?  The second half we clicked more on offense and special teams, fortunately we had big plays.  On defense we let up in the second half, once again giving up a ton of points (21 in the 4th quarter) to the 7th best offense in the conference.  Inconsistent, otherwise a better grade here.
5.    
6. Excellent 2nd half team.  Grade B.  We have to give credit here because the team came out and won it in the second half. As we said prior to the game, even though we think Dorrell can't adjust at the half with any confidence, we knew that if we were close this team would come out and win it by sheer will alone.   Clearly, though, we needed the big plays to do it, as Washington kept it close by scoring 21 points themselves.  With the poor play of the defense, we can't give Dorrell an A here.
7.    
8. Improve as year progresses. Grade C.  Obviously we won, which is an improvement over last week.  However, we see this game like the BYU game or the Rice game last year.  Washington was the Pac-10's worst team 2 years ago and only improved to the second worst team last year, and they put up 31 points on us.  They have only 1 player who accounts for nearly ALL their offense. Their stats on both offense and defense are among the worst in the conference.  Yet they were in the game down by only a touchdown in the 4th quarter, twice!  The defense put up better yardage-against numbers, but Washington had far too much time, and had their QB been able to throw a decent pass he could have hurt us.  Our pass defense is still exposed.  We still don't see any improvement.