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Brooks: 12-Pack Of TOs, Barkley TDs Bury Buff
LOS ANGELES - In a college football season where every weekend seems to brew a perfect storm for Colorado's beleaguered defense, Saturday's storm in the Los Angeles Coliseum was more perfect than most.
How does a quarterback get more perfect than 19-of-20 for 298 yards and six touchdown passes in just over a half?
If you're Matt Barkley, you work next week to avoid that lone incompletion. And Saturday's miss, for the record, was a drop by one of his running backs. Shame on you, Curtis McNeal.
If you're the Buffs, you look to the heavens and say a prayer of thanks that you're done with Barkley, that he's moving on to the NFL and can't carve you up like he's done now for two seasons.
Saturday's surgery was all but complete after one half, with Barkley throwing five of his TD passes and completing 16-of-17 for 269 yards as he and his Southern California offense frolicked to a 33-6 lead. He took three snaps in the second half, completed three passes and called it a day.
If USC coach Lane Kiffin had wanted this one to really get ugly, he would have let Barkley go three quarters. No point, really.
Wherever Barkley ends up in the NFL, he might not end up with any better pair of receivers than he has at USC. "I can't imagine a better pair than that," CU defensive coordinator Greg Brown said of Robert Woods and Marqise Lee, who had a dozen TD catches between them entering Saturday afternoon's game. They left the Coliseum with five more, Woods snatching four to set a USC single-game record.
For Barkley, the Buffs stumbled in at just the right time. In a 24-14 USC win the previous weekend at Washington, the Huskies hounded Barkley mercilessly in the second half, allowing only three-of-10 completions for 66 yards. His 167 total yards were his fewest since his sophomore season, and Heisman Trophy talk was proceeding very nicely without him.
I don't know if Saturday's performance works him back in that conversation because, well, it came against a CU pass defense that now has allowed 27 TD passes in seven games against only three picks. It's a little like a senior roughing up a freshman, which is exactly what happened, with Barkley and Woods and Lee going after first-year CU corner Kenneth Crawley...more |
