And let’s not forget that he’s throwing to two top wide receivers (a 1st and 2nd team preseason All-American) who do most of the damage after the catch and can turn a 5-yard pass into a 50 yard touchdown. For instance, in week 1 against Hawaii, USC had 224 yards after the catch, and 138 of those were by Marquise Lee.

Barkley is good. He’s not great, and is more of a product of those great wide receivers.

I’m not impressed. You shouldn’t be, either.

Klein looks to have the inside track based on performance to date and remaining schedule. Smith has already been shut down by a couple of good defenses and Barkley still has Arizona State, Oregon, and Notre Dame.

That doesn’t take into account the simple fact that another great athlete could easily step up in the second half of the season and make the “front runners” irrelevant. This award is still wide open, but some of the favorites did nothing to separate themselves.

Manti Te’o (Notre Dame) didn’t help his chances by getting zero tackles against BYU. BYU?

Braxton Miller (Ohio State) didn’t play very well against Purdue and left the game in the 3rd quarter.

De’Anthony Thomas (Oregon) had 29 total yards of offense and was overshadowed by teammates in the blowout of Arizona State.

Just for fun: Smith’s QB rating of 248 in the ‘eers shootout against Baylor seemed ridiculous at the time. In USC’s rout of Colorado Barkley’s QB rating was 319. In 2 1/2 quarters of play. Shows what a good QB can do when the competition isn’t very good and means very little.

BTW, the “experts” at ESPN still have Smith as the front runner, Miller 2nd, and Klein a distant 3rd. The preseason favorite Barkley? He’s 8th.

Everyone’s also overlooking Mississippi State. They’re undefeated, and ranked 12th as of now. Bama has them next week, and they could be one of those teams that sneaks up and plays spoiler.

It was easy to blow off the defensive inadequacies against Baylor and Texas because, somehow, we managed to win. The last two games however, exposed the offense as lacking in more than one area. I’m no coach but it is quite obvious to anyone who has eyes what many of the problems are. I’m listening to the post game as I type and the head ball coach says there is nothing wrong with the scheme, that the coaches haven’t forgot how to coach. He did everything buy say, “our guys stink”. He played 9 freshman today, 6 of our regulars were out or playing hurt, but that’s no excuse for our lack of quality depth. That’s a problem when you come to a league that goes non stop with offense.

Geno put the offensive woes on himself trying to deflect criticism of the team, after making an ass of himself last week calling a reporter’s question as “stupid”. He is now out of the Heisman conversation and now maybe can concentrate on rallying the team for what might be a decent finish and a minor bowl. I really feel badly for the die hard and loyal fans of this team because they live and die with the team. It is embarrassing to be in the limelight and do well for the first several weeks only to fall flat on your duffs in front of a national TV audience. I predicted an 8-4 season and can only hope that there is enough character is this team to achieve that.

I keep thinking about Oklahoma and completely forgot K-State would have the edge there. Tennessee is playing us relatively close right now, and Florida just bowled over South Carolina (congrats on that–I’m banned from commenting on John Taylor’s threads because I criticized him last week). Right now, it’s still anyone’s title game.

K-State could run the table and with no conference championship game to worry about
could be a real player to be in the BCS championship game.