It’s probably a good thing that Saturday’s football
game against Oregon won’t be shown on live television.
That will save us all from having to watch all of those classic
close-up shots of UCLA coach Karl Dorrell with his blank,
expressionless looks.
At first, I thought these were the facial expressions of an
even-keeled man, someone who doesn’t get too high or too
low.
Now it’s clear that Karl is just confused.
Less than 48 hours after declaring his dedication to Matt Moore
as UCLA’s starting quarterback following the Bruins’
31-13 loss to Washington State, Dorrell did an about-face and named
Drew Olson the starter for the home finale at the Rose Bowl.
Bad move.
Dorrell overreacted after Moore has struggled in the past three
weeks to get reacclimated to the starting role. Against WSU, he
fumbled twice and threw two interceptions, giving way to Olson in
the fourth quarter.
“Matt has done some good things for us offensively, but he
hasn’t been as consistent as we would hope that position to
be,” Dorrell said.
But that’s because the UCLA coaches put him in a bad
situation with the plays they called. While they were overly
cautious with Olson, they were overly confident in Moore.
“Oh Matt!” the masses cried.
Moore is the quarterback the coaches and fans wanted all along
““ the big-time gunslinger who would save the team from
eternal blandness.
So Dorrell and offensive coordinator Steve Axman opened up the
offense, calling for more passes on first down and overall deep
balls to be thrown.
The problem was, Moore got into the haughty habit of forcing
balls into double coverage and holding onto the ball too long in an
attempt to avoid the rush.
Moore has struggled, but I say stick with him. Let the lumps
that come with the learning period continue.
By flip-flopping the quarterbacks as a false show of shrewdness,
Dorrell is telling both Olson and Moore that they will always have
the quick hook and that neither will ever be able to completely
feel like his job is safe.
This will allow this quarterback controversy to fester for years
to come.
“Oh Drew!” Dorrell now purrs.
In the short term, this move might be good. Olson, after all,
provides consistent boredom, which, judging from his 5-1 record as
a starter, including a four-game winning streak, might just lead to
some more winning.
“Drew has a lot of starts and probably has a better feel
of what we are trying to get accomplished on offense,”
Dorrell said.
But like I said, he’s boring and has had a lot of time to
prove himself as such.
After Moore was knocked out of the season-opener in Colorado,
the shotgun marriage to Olson began, and there wasn’t much
bliss that came with it.
Run, run, incompletion was the running joke in the press
box.
The least Dorrell can do right now is allow Olson the
opportunity to run the real offense ““ you know, the one that
has been kept secret all this time.
Look out Oregon! Look out USC!
In any case, what’s done is done. Olson is now the starter
that will attempt to allow this UCLA team to save face ““
something it hasn’t been able to do by the end of a season in
a long while.
Obviously Dorrell must know something that we don’t,
right?
Oh please. He had better.
Leung was a football beat writer in 2002. He can be reached
at [email protected].