Los Angeles – Top-ranked Southern California and No. 11 UCLA meet Saturday, and a major key will be how the No. 1 quarterback in the nation performs. The year he’s having is off the charts: 2,909 passing yards, 30 touchdown passes, only three interceptions. His team is having one of its best years in history.
Oh, yes, USC’s Matt Leinart also must perform well.
Gotcha, didn’t we? Yes, Leinart, the most famous college football player in America and the defending Heisman Trophy winner, may not even be the best quarterback in his town this year.
While Leinart was named first-team all-Pacific 10 and won the Johnny Unitas Award, his numbers take a back seat to UCLA senior Drew Olson, who leads the nation in pass efficiency (172.50). His school-record 30 TD passes are tied for second nationally behind the 32 of Notre Dame’s Brady Quinn. Leinart hasn’t exactly fallen into the sea. He’s fifth in pass efficiency at 161.9 with 3,217 yards, 24 touchdowns and seven interceptions.
So has Leinart actually been playing second fiddle instead to Olson?
“What’s fun with that question is Matt’s done a great job, he won the Heisman last year and is a very good quarterback and Drew came from nowhere,” UCLA coach Karl Dorrell said. “He came from no expectations of him having the year he’s having and now we’re asking who’s the best quarterback in L.A.”
At the start of the season, there were questions whether today’s top-ranked quarterback in the country was even the top-ranked quarterback on his team. In UCLA’s 24-21 Las Vegas Bowl loss to Wyoming last December, Olson tore his anterior cruciate ligament.
“It was the first time I’ve never been able to get up on a football field,” Olson said Tuesday. “Your career goes in front of you. It’s definitely not a fun feeling.”
He was already known as the Bruins quarterback who couldn’t win big. Entering this season he was only 14-12 as a three-year starter. That left him not only to battle back from a serious knee injury but also with questions from a growing band of impatient UCLA fans upset about the castle USC was building across town. Olson sat out all spring practice and watched hotshot transfer Ben Olson (no relation) and career backup David Koral compete for his starting job.
“As a coach, you have to move forward in case the scenario didn’t work out,” Dorrell said. “He assured us. He said, ‘I’ll be ready.”‘
Miraculously, he was. A family doctor who, coincidentally, is a medical consultant for Drew Olson’s rival and former boyhood dream team, the California Bears, operated on him. With an injury that normally takes up to nine months to heal, Olson, who put his rehabilitation program into overdrive, was ready the first day of camp.
“I’m not really surprised,” tailback Maurice Drew said. “He was in the training room every day doing everything and helping Ben Olson and David Koral in the offseason. It helped him learn the offense and he got a better grasp.”
It’s a good thing Drew Olson was ready, because Ben Olson wasn’t. He showed plenty of rust from his two-year Mormon mission to Calgary, Alberta, and Drew Olson reclaimed his job soon after fall workouts began. Ben Olson has thrown four passes all year.
In the meantime, with a sizable lift from running back Drew, Drew Olson has carried UCLA from a preseason pick of middle of the pack in the Pac-10 to 10-1 overall and 6-1 in league entering Saturday’s showdown at the L.A. Coliseum.
His mastery of the complicated West Coast offense should be blueprinted and sent to Lincoln, Neb. Inside the opponent’s 20-yard line, Olson has thrown 19 TD passes and zero interceptions.
“That quarterback has just been remarkable,” USC coach Pete Carroll said. “He’s playing like an NFL guy who’s been around a long time.”
Comebacks are nothing new to Olson. At Piedmont (Calif.) High School near Oakland, the son of a former UCLA rugby captain made a couple of prep All-America teams, but his hometown paper didn’t even name him all-county. After Olson started five games as a freshman in 2002, Dorrell arrived and made him split time with Matt Moore, who eventually transferred to Oregon State.
Even today, while Leinart finds himself in Hollywood’s gossip pages, Olson can go into the Westwood Starbucks and order a double latte without having to sign someone’s coffee-stained napkin.
“I enjoy the streets of Westwood,” he said. “I have no problem there. I’m not in (Leinart’s) status. I’m not even close.”
Want to bet? Look it up. Better yet, tune in Saturday.
