Pain? What Pain? Barkley Back As USC Quarterback
Matt Barkley is starting Saturday, and the coaches are going to help him out by calling better plays, they promise.
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COLUMBUS, OH - SEPTEMBER 12: Matt Barkley #7 of the USC Trojans celebrates a first quarter touchdown against the Ohio State Buckeyes during the game at Ohio Stadium on September 12, 2009 in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)
Well, that didn’t take long.
One game — one ugly game — without freshman quarterback Matt Barkley and Pete Carroll is going back to what worked. Carroll announced the move Wednesday saying even though Barkley does not look 100 percent he will be under center for the game against Washington State.
And Barkley is going to be given chances Aaron Corp wasn’t last weekend — play caller Jeremy Bates said he would open the playbook up. A week too late, but better late than never.
It is no secret what USC wants to do — win games this year running the ball and playing good defense, and those two things should be enough to beat a struggling Washington State program.
The problem came last week when one of those things — the running game — stopped working as Washington stacked everyone but the cheerleaders in the box to stop the run. USC needed to make a few passes and force Washington to adjust. But conservative play calling and an underwhelming performance from first-time starting quarterback Aaron Corp led to another ugly Trojan loss.
Barkley has not been the answer to everything, but he projects a certain confidence, And while the winning drive against Ohio State was almost all on the ground, when Barkley needed to make the one big pass to keep the drive going, he did.
Plus, clearly, Carroll has a confidence in Barkley he does not in Corp. Last week, Carroll never told Corp he would be the starter, never pulled him aside and treated him like a man. Carroll said it was because he waned Barkley to keep working hard to recover, but the result was Corp didn’t ever really know his role and that couldn’t have helped his confidence.
This also means no Mitch Mustain — the third string quarterback who was 8-0 as a freshman in Arkansas then transfered to USC but has never really gotten off the bench since — will still not get a chance. Regrets? He may have a few.
