Pac-12 Football Worst Offensive Units: Stanford Passing, Oregon State Running, Colorado And ASU Anything

Moving from defense to offense in analyzing conference football's strongest and weakest links (Earlier posts: strongest defensive units, weakest defensive units), this particularly category is not the one you want to be in this year in the Pac-12. You're pretty much in the minority if your team doesn't have any offense, and it's not a good place to stand out. Basically, your team doesn't want to be in this category at all this season, because if your defense isn't elite, the rest of the Pac-12 could very well run all over you en route to 40 point routs.

Ted Miller of the ESPN Pac-12 Blog handed out position previews for each of the conference members going into this season, and he's fairly spot on. Evaluation of the conference's weakest offensive units came as followed:

After years of going unbalanced up front, Stanford has an unbalanced offensive roster. The Cardinal have a lot of adjusting and coping to do without their star quarterback, their star tight end, and their star offensive linemen. The Cardinal are probably going to have to be effective at running the football a lot, because otherwise they'll have to put the football in the hands of an unproven quarterback with unproven wide receivers. The tight ends are still here, but this is no cake offense for a green college quarterback to run. We shall see.

Oregon State has the opposite issue. The Beavers are going to have to learn how to win football games with Sean Mannion making plays, because their run blocking was hideous last season and the running backs weren't much better. The Beavers had horrible injury luck, so there's hope for some regression to the mean, but this is a clear weak unit in a conference full of potent offenses.

And then there's the Colorado Buffaloes and Arizona State Sun Devils, offenses that are practically crying out for help like puppies with sprained ankles.

No idea who the starting quarterback is? Check! Unproven offensive lines? Check! No clue who's going to be catching your football going into the season? Check! If ASU didn't have Cameron Marshall and a run-oriented offense, there would practically be nothing at all to like about either of these offenses in an offense-heavy conference. Both of these teams have issues, and they're going to be laid out for all of us to see by the first week or two of the season.

P.S. Washington State can't pass-protect (again), but their offense will be accelerated to get the football out quicker, so this shouldn't be as much or a problem as previous seasons.

Which unit has your vote? Cast it!