Column: College football mailbag: Times could be a-changin’ for fragile Bruins

Each week during the college football season, national analyst Chris Dufresne will burn a timeout to answer questions and exchange opinions. You can email him at chris.dufresne@latimes.com and reach him at @DufresneLATimes on Twitter.

Unbuckling the mailbag:

Are the Bruins done, Chris? Say it ain’t so!!

Tom Vento

Come down from the ledge, Tom. The Bruins are 3-0, ranked No. 9 nationally and can’t possibly lose until Saturday night at Arizona.

This has already been a brutal season for UCLA’s defense, which has lost three starters before the start of Pac-12 Conference play: lineman Eddie Vanderdoes, cornerback Fabian Moreau and linebacker Myles Jack.

Eli Ankou and Matt Dickerson have filled in nicely for Vanderdoes, and Moreau’s loss can be somewhat offset by Ishmael Adams’ return this week from suspension. What a timely and fortunate jurisprudential coincidence!

The loss of Jack stings because he never had to come off the field. That makes it tougher to catch the Bruins defense in a substitution transition. Jack could take on 240-pound running backs, cover receivers and also become your featured tailback in short-yardage situations.

Injuries are a sad fact in football. UCLA could play Notre Dame this year in the Kerlan-Jobe Bowl.

Kansas State lost quarterback Jesse Ertz for the season. And don’t expect a sympathy card from Mississippi. The Rebels were 7-1 last season, still in the thick of the playoff chase, when star receiver Laquon Treadwell raced toward the end zone for what appeared to be the go-ahead touchdown against Auburn.

But inches short of the goal line, Treadwell was grotesquely bent backward on a tackle and fumbled the ball into the end zone. Mississippi lost the game, lost Treadwell for the season and finished 9-4.

The big question for UCLA is how it responds. Notre Dame has lost five starters but hasn’t seemed to miss a beat.

The Bruins are a deep team, built to win this year. They still can, but not if they start using injuries as an excuse.

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How mature is it to expect an 18-year-old to throw for 300 yards every game? Like most reporters, you missed the real story. UCLA has a ground game.

Mark Capelli

I never expected Josh Rosen would throw for 300 yards every game. I actually expected him to have occasional bad games. The good news is, UCLA beat Brigham Young in spite of Rosen’s wobbly performance in his third college start.

Starting a true freshman at quarterback costs you, at least, two losses. UCLA got lucky and cheated defeat. The Bruins did a very smart thing in turning the second half over to its ground game. It will have to win more games like that in Pac-12 play. Rosen is a talented prospect but is still playing with training wheels.

One problem with young, confident kids is they think they can throw the same passes in college that they threw in high school. Matt Barkley had 14 passes intercepted as a true freshman at USC. In college, the passing lanes close fast.

“I think it’s just being a freshman,” UCLA Coach Jim Mora said after Rosen’s three-interception night. “It’s fighting through some difficult times and adjusting to the speed of the game and the size of the players.”

Whether Rosen can do that and lead UCLA to the Pac-12 title remains to be seen.

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Nice reworking of the Bob Dylan line: I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.

Roger Lundquist

I’ve got a junk drawer in my brain filled with Dylan lines, obscure Nolan Ryan statistics and even my high school locker combination.

I think George Carlin called these “brain droppings.”

Dylan line example: “You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat. Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat . . .”

That might sound to you like a great line from Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” I’m thinking: How could I work that into “TV Games to Watch” for the Friday paper?

The line from “My Back Pages” came Sunday at 3 a.m., as I was writing my UCLA-BYU column for early-morning Internet posting. My computer crashed at the Rose Bowl so I had to drive home and write the story.

I was just thinking of how much older quarterback Josh Rosen looked in the opener against Virginia than he did in his third game against BYU.

That Dylan line is one of my favorites.

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He was so much older then — he’s younger than that now. I guess you had to wait a long time to use this one. . . . Nice.

Brian Cole

Other Dylan lines I might consider working into my college football coverage:

Nick Saban to Alabama fans: “You’re going to miss me when I go.”

Baylor and Texas Christian after finishing fifth and sixth in the first four-team playoff: “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”

UCLA after being mathematically eliminated from the Pac-12 South race: “It’s all over now, powder blues.”

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Any idea which coach made the brilliant decision to put Starks in for the “gassed” Perkins? Is that a Mora, Mazzone, or Polamalu decision?

Jim Stryker

I posed that question to Chris Foster, our inimitable UCLA beat reporter, and he said running backs coach Kennedy Polamalu handles the rotation during games. So it was his brilliant decision to rest Paul Perkins on UCLA’s game-winning drive.

It took guts to sit Perkins, who had rushed for 219 yards in the game. But Perkins had also carried 26 times on a humid night at the Rose Bowl. “Paul was tired, that was really it,” Mora said after the game.

Polamalu turned to Nate Starks, who carried four times for 60 yards, including the go-ahead touchdown with 3 minutes 21 seconds left.

Perkins obviously wasn’t the only player gassed on Saturday night. So were several players on BYU’s defense.

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It’s time to dust off our “Don’t Blame Sark” article. I have a feeling you will be needing it a few more times this year.

@BalzacSportz

I’ve cleared my calendar for November 2016 to play the “blame Sark” card. I’m not going to do it in September 2015, after one hard-fought loss to Stanford.

I think USC, after opening against two Sun Belt Conference teams, got shocked by the physical pushback it received from a quality Pac-12 opponent.

Stanford played out of its mind. Coach David Shaw finally decided to open up the playbook and stretched USC’s defense like a piece of taffy.

What a concept!

The surprise was how easily Stanford’s offensive line moved USC’s supposedly improved front seven. Then again, Stanford’s senior-dominated O-line is the closest thing you’ll find to the NFL at the college level.

USC’s game at Arizona State is huge. Right now the pressure is on defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox to find a scheme to stop Sun Devils quarterback Mike Bercovici, who passed for 511 yards against USC last year at the Coliseum.

That game, remember, ended embarrassingly, with a long pass named after a prayer.

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Thanks for showing us your ignorance of Southeastern Conference schedule rules between divisions. How many spots up the poll will you move USC?

Johnny @JNEREBEL

You appear sensitive to my joke about Georgia and Alabama playing this year for the first time since 2008. I remarked the schools were legally bound under the SEC’s “Halley’s Comet” provision, which states SEC teams must play each other at least once every 76 years.

The scheduling “rules” between divisions are the result of the SEC’s being a 14-team league but playing only eight league games.

It creates situations where top SEC programs can go years without facing each other during the regular season.

Not sure what any of this has to do with USC, but I moved the Trojans down 11 poll spots this week to No. 19.

chris.dufresne@latimes.com