Washington at USC

To be completely honest, there is absolutely no reason that USC should not completely dominate this game, especially with Jake Locker out due to a broken thumb, but that does not mean that there are not things that the team needs to work on. First and foremost should be the tightening up of the passing game. Sanchez needs to find his rhythm and confidence a his recent showings against teams that aren't considered among the absolute worst in the FBS have been unimpressive to say the least. Sanchez needs to check down and find the underneath route and bail out options and not lock on to receivers or constantly have that big play mentality, I say leave him in for as long as possible an d force him to make his reads as he will need that extra boost going into a very important game against Cal next week.

This game will also serve an important purpose of easing Will Harris (or possibly Marshall Jones) into the strong safety position after Kevin Ellison suffered a torn meniscus. Luckily Ellison will likely be back for the trip to Notre Dame, but until then USC has to play Washington, California, and Stanford. While two of those teams are fairly mediocre in the passing game, the bears pose a serious passing threat whether they choose to play Longshore or Riley. Thankfully Ellison's replacement will get some solid starting experience before going into next weeks game.

Finally USC must remain focused and fired up for this game. I do not think that something along the lines of the Stanford game will happen again, but a failure to come out and put on a dominating performance could really harm USC in the eyes of the pollsters. With the media's focus on big time match ups like Texas at TTU and Florida/Georgia I doubt this game will receive any national attention, so like it or not the box score matters in this one. We have already seen how a dominating defensive performance was overshadowed by a poor offensive performance against Arizona, so hopefully the Trojans need to come out and assert themselves at home against a team that is likely fired up and looking for a win after their coach was essentially fired mid season.