Report from the Rose Bowl: San Diego State vs. UCLA By Will Osgood –Football Reporters Online

Report from the Rose Bowl: San Diego State vs. UCLA By Will Osgood –Football Reporters Online

If you only watched the first quarter of the San Diego State UCLA game on Saturday night, you would’ve thought the Aztecs are going to challenge for the Mountain West title this season, and that UCLA is going to go winless. But the reality is that neither of those events are going to happen. The Bruins’ play in the final three quarters assured us of that.

Being in the Rose Bowl on Saturday night gave me a unique perspective on what was otherwise not thought of by most college football fans as a big game. One could see that UCLA is a much more talented team in year two under Rick Neuheisel, and that his style and schemes are beginning to pay off. Of course, next week in Knoxville the team will have a nice little test on national television to show just how improved they are.
Regardless, Saturday night there were a few athletes that stood out, and proved 2009 will be a breakout year for their NFL stock.

The truth is that even wildfires could not stop players such as Brian Price, Alterraun Verner, Reggie Carter, Luke Laologi, and Vincent Brown from making their presence known early and often. And that is only a list of upperclassmen. UCLA sophomore safety Raheem Moore picked off three passes on the day.

Two of those three passes were thrown up in the face of pressure by SDSU Redshirt sophomore QB Ryan Lindley. And who caused that pressure? Brian Price and Reggie Carter. Price, a junior defensive tackle, left the game for a series early in the game, but came back to terrorize Lindley and give Carter and other linebackers countless opportunities to hit Lindley and shut down the running game.

Carter, the middle linebacker, did a wonderful job of getting his defense aligned properly to San Diego State’s multiple formation West Coast Offense. Beyond just aligning properly, Carter had six tackles, and pressured the quarterback on a number of blitzes.

Also contributing largely for UCLA was Alterraun Verner who proved to be an elite special teams player when he returned a blocked kick 70 yards for a touchdown. He also recorded two tackles and had zero missed tackles, a large improvement from a season ago.

For San Diego State, Vincent Brown proved that despite being a junior, the NFL is a very real possibility even this year, although I’m definitely not advocating he leave early. He looked quicker than most of UCLA’s defensive backs, save Verner, although the two rarely went one-on-one (crazy to me given they were the two best “speed” players on the field). Brown regularly beat his man to get open, and even caught a 78 yard touchdown pass on a play where Lindley just threw it up and let Brown run under the ball. Brown beat the UCLA coverage many other times and finished with five catches for 139 yards and a touchdown.

Finally, SDSU linebacker Luke Laolagi, was swarming the field all day, putting pressure on Kevin Prince on blitzes and showed great athleticism and instincts when he picked off a pass and returned it over twenty yards in the second half.