Pete Carroll Supports Jeremy Bates...Defends Play Calling

Not that I am very surprised with this but with all the chatter about the conservative play calling on Saturday Pete Carroll makes his position known...

Carroll on Sunday defended the decisions of play-caller Jeremy Bates, who became an immediate topic for Internet message-board vitriol the second Erik Folk kicked the game-winning field goal for the Huskies.

Carroll backed the first-year quarterbacks coach, noting that the Trojans started two games with first-year freshman Matt Barkley and the Washington game with Aaron Corp, a third-year sophomore making his first collegiate start.

"He's working well with the development of our young guys," Carroll said of Bates. "I don't disagree at all with what we've done. We're trying to move forward and not expose them as the factor in the game."

But quarterback play was a major factor in the Trojans' narrow victory at Ohio State and the loss at Washington, which dropped them from third to 10th in the USA Today/ESPN coaches' poll and from third to 12th in the Associated Press media poll.

Well, obviously Bates is going to be the target of scrutiny when you look at how badly Corp played. And of course Pete Carroll has to put a positive spin on things so that he doesn't lose what little confidence Corp may have left.

But I stand by my comments from after the game. Aaron Corp has been in the system for three years...We have been led to believe that he was a stellar QB. We were led to believe that he made better decisions on the field in regards to making reads and protecting the ball yet what we saw on Saturday could not be further from the truth.

The excuse that Corp was never "explicitly" told that he was going to be the starter doesn't fly with me. If he wanted the job so bad then why not assume that with all the discussion of the game plan and first team snaps that you are getting that the job is yours, at least for that week...stake your own claim, grab the bull by the horns...insert cliche' here. But go out and leave no doubt that your the QB to lead this team. Otherwise all the chatter about being ready and such is just lip service.

My only concern was that SC did not try to spread the field against the worst passing defense in the Pac-10. I said that was the one of the keys to the game and that SC would establish the pass to set up the run...that never happened. I can see why SC wanted to establish the run, I am fine with that, but once UW adjusted by stacking the box SC should have poked, prodded and probed the UW secondary to keep them honest. Heck, even if you chuck it down the field and it gets picked off it is a hell of lot better field position then having our punter send it down field.

I disagree with one statement in this article...

"We have limited ourselves some to bring our guys along," Carroll said. "There's some necessity in there to make sure we're making good positive movement and not taking chances we don't need to take in tight games."

Why?

With Corp in the system for three years and with little change to the playbook I really don't know how you "bring our guys along" when they supposedly have won the starting job until they were injured.

I could care less how critical it sounds but you can't say the guy is our guy or that this is his time or that he has earned it only to have the kid fall flat on his face and then say we are bringing him along. Why knot just lower the expectations out of the gate so we won't be so shell shocked when see this type of performance.

Either he has it or he doesn't...

</rant>