USC Had Cougars on Run

No one, least of all John Robinson, was calling it a turnaround. Or even an omen. Or even a hint that the previously lifeless Trojan running game was breathing fire again.

But the fact is that USC, with a football game on the line at Washington State last Saturday night, ran the ball effectively and consistently enough to win, 29-24.

The Trojans ran for 148 yards, 124 of them on the game-saving last two drives.

And so the coach, a man as responsible as anyone for the “Tailback U” nickname USC has borne the past couple of decades, finally threw down the gauntlet to his team.

He had been watching one poor rushing performance after another since Sept. 14, when USC ran for 314 yards against Oregon State.

Tuesday, Robinson said he challenged his team at halftime in Pullman.

“At some point in the first half, I just decided I’d had it,” he said.

“The last two years, we had Keyshawn Johnson here, and he allowed us to do a lot of things. He enabled us to maximize our talent. He caught a hundred [actually 102] passes last year, and I think about 70 were for first downs.

“We felt we were gradually going to move our run game into a potent force, but obviously it never happened.”

And the USC passing game this season hasn’t frightened anyone, either. USC receivers were dropping anywhere from three to six balls per game and quarterback Brad Otton was headed to a record for sacks.

At halftime, USC would run the football, he told his team--effective immediately.

And it did.

It employed the run game almost exclusively to take the lead twice.

In a five-minute drive beginning near the end of the third quarter, Delon Washington and Shawn Walters, on pitch plays, were suddenly ripping off seven- to 13-yard gains, finally going up, 23-17, on Walters’ one-yard score.

Washington State took the lead, 24-23, on its next series, but again Robinson issued the same command on the final drive: We’re running the football, period.

USC moved 83 yards in 13 plays and averaged 5.0 yards per carry, Washington finishing the drive with a 17-yard cutback run for the final touchdown.

The previous version of the Trojan offense would have called for the team’s youthful, speedy receivers running downfield, with Otton scrambling for his life.

Not this time. Otton threw one incomplete on the first drive, then threw four times in the last drive, three of them for first downs.

“Coach tore into us pretty good at halftime,” guard Chris Rymer said. “He called us a bunch of babies. And he said: ‘We’re gonna run the ball, no matter what.’ ”

Last summer, in preseason training camp, Robinson said this about his ideal team in a perfect world: “When your offensive line allows you to have a dominant run game, then you can take a team apart with a relatively small number of passes.”

Until Saturday, when they started with a season run average of 4.0 yards per carry but averaged more than five in the last two series, the Trojans were statistically among the worst running teams in the Pacific 10.

Robinson had decided to become his cartoon image of a run coach.

“Run coaches are short, ugly guys who chew tobacco,” he said.

“When a run play doesn’t work, they yell: ‘Run it again!’ Pass coaches are guys with nice haircuts, nice clothes and are often called ‘genius.’ ”

That last line was a not-so-subtle needle at an old friend, Bill Walsh.

So why did it all come together late Saturday night?

“We got both tailbacks running hard, we got a surge of energy, we were starting to wear them [the Cougars] down and people blocked,” Robinson said.

OK, so it wasn’t Charles White averaging 6.2 yards per carry his senior season, Ricky Bell gaining 347 yards against Washington State in 1976, O.J. Simpson carrying 20 times in one quarter in 1968, or even one of Marcus Allen’s 11 200-yard rushing games.

What it was was a football team taking a small step in the direction its coach wants it to go, even though Robinson himself was careful to call it no more than that.

“Don’t anybody lose track of what I’m saying,” he said.

“What I’m trying to say is we want to run the football, but we want to have balance and we’re going to throw the ball too.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Rushing to Destiny

Game-by-game look at USC’s rusing offense

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Date, Opponent (Result) Car Yds Avg TD Aug. 25, Penn State (L, 24-7) 34 138 5.0 0 Sept. 7, Illinois (W, 55-3) 41 154 3.8 3 Sept. 14, Oregon State (W, 46-17) 33 314 9.5 3 Sept. 21, Houston (W, 26-9) 35 92 2.7 1 Oct. 5, California (L, 22-15) 28 102 3.6 0 Oct. 12, Arizona (W, 14-7) 46 77 1.7 2 Oct. 19, Arizona State (L, 48-35, 2OT) 24 90 3.8 1 Oct. 26, Washington State (W, 29-24) 45 148 3.3 2 Totals 286 1,115 3.9 12

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