Pac-10 Blue Chip Scores

I had a lot of trouble with the formatting of this article, so I just had to put the information into excel and made some jpeg files out of the information which look blurry on the blog, but will be clear if you click on them. Mike Lombardi came up with this blue-chip formula to determine how much talent is on each team in the NFL, but I only follow former Pac-10 players and wanted to see how our conference would look applying the same scoring system. The outside linebackers account for 2.5 more points than the middle linebackers, which makes sense for the NFL where most teams are using a 3-4 defense, but the majority of teams in college are still using a four man front and the middle linebacker can impact the game more than an outside linebacker - think Casey Matthews of Oregon and Vontaze Burfict of ASU. I was also concerned that the red chip secondary players received the same 7.5 points as the blue chip players. There are many talented players in the NFL secondaries, but in college there aren't that many cornerbacks and safeties that would make as big of an impact as many of the blue chip players at other positions.

 

 

Arizona has a total of 80 points with a good mix of offensive and defensive players, with points coming from both the skill positions and in the trenches. Arizona State only has 30 points with 22.5 of those coming from the defensive side of the ball, so don't expect them to be lighting up the scoreboard any time soon. Cal surprised me with 82 points, but Tedford has recruited as well as any coach in the conference not named Pete Carroll.

Arizona	Points	Arizona St	Points	Cal	Points
Nick Foles	12.5	Lawrence Guy	7.5	Mitchell Schwartz	10
Adam Grant	10	Vontaze Burfict	7.5	Cameron Jordan	10
Ricky Elmore	10	Omar Bolden	7.5	Anthony Miller	7.5
Juron Criner	7.5	Thomas Weber	7.5	Matt Summers-Gavin	7.5
Colin Baxter	7.5			Mike Mohamed	7.5
Trevin Wade	7.5			Bryan Anger	7.5
Robert Golden	7.5			Mychal Kendricks	7.5
James Brooks	7.5			Sean Cattouse	7.5
Nic Grigsby	5			Kevin Riley	7
				Shane Vareen	5
				Marvin Jones	5
				Chris Guarnero	5
				Derrick Hill	5

Oregon brings 82.5 points with strength in the trenches. I think Casey Matthews is more valuable to their defense than the 7.5 points he's allotted, but Paysinger received a higher rating in the formula and evened out the same number of points I would have given them combined. Oregon State has a lot of skill players, but without much depth in the trenches their team only accounts for 55 points so this tells me that they should be relying on the big plays this season. Stanford brings almost all of their 67.5 points on the offensive side of the ball. Chris Owusu probably would have made the list as the next red-chip wide receiver, but he gets 7.5 points for his kick return abilities.

 

Oregon	Points	Oregon St	Points	Stanford	Points
Bo Thran	10	JacQuizz Rodgers	7.5	Andrew Luck	12.5
Kenny Rowe	10	James Rodgers	7.5	David DeCastro	7.5
Spencer Paysinger	10	Joe Halahuni	7.5	Chris Owusu	7.5
LaMichael James	7.5	Stephen Paea	7.5	Chase Beeler	7.5
Carson York	7.5	Lance Mitchell	7.5	Delondo Howell	7.5
Casey Matthews	7.5	Justin Kahut	7.5	Ryan Whalen	5
John Boyett	7.5	Michael Philipp	5	Jonathan Martin	5
Talmadge Jackson	7.5	Alex Linnekohl	5	Owen Maracic	5
Jeff Maehl	5			Andrew Phillips	5
Mark Asper	5			Shane Skov	5
Brandon Bair	5

 

UCLA will be carried by their defense and special teams this year, but that's two thirds of the game so maybe they'll do better than the 8th place finish the media projected them for. Still, they are only bringing 45 points to the table and having a kicker be the most dangerous weapon on your offense is never a good sign. USC is stocked with talent throughout the roster so it's no surprise that they are the Leader of the Pac with 84 points in the blue chip scoring. The Washington Huskies totaled 42.5 points and will be relying on a strong passing game to win some games for them, but there's not much talent on the offensive or defensive lines.

UCLA	Points	USC	Points	Washington	Points
Akeem Ayers	10	Tyron Smith	10	Jake Locker	12.5
Kai Forbath	7.5	Butch Lewis	7.5	Mason Foster	10
Rahim Moore	7.5	Kris O'Dowd	7.5	Desmond Trufant	7.5
Jeff Locke	7.5	Jurrell Casey	7.5	Jermaine Kearse	7.5
Sheldon Price	7.5	Shareece Wright	7.5	Chris Polk	5
Nelson Rosario	5	Malcolm Smith	7.5
		Michael Morgan	7.5
		Matt Barkley	7
		Nick Perry	7
		Ronald Johnson	5
		Stanley Havili	5
		Chris Galippo	5

 

Here's all of the team points in alphabetical order and these are pretty consistent with my conference predictions which were posted a month ago.

	Points
Arizona	80
ASU	30
Cal	82
Oregon	82.5
Oregon State	55
Stanford	67.5
UCLA	45
USC	84
Washington	42.5

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