Well I’ve seen two games in person at Memorial Stadium in 2005 and neither of them have been pretty. Thankfully, both have been wins. Here’s my analysis of the 35-20 victory over Illinios:

The bears started this game on a good note, scoring a TD on a dominating first drive. Things were looking good! But then the Illini did the one thing they could do to win the game: control the ball. They went on a 6 minute scoring driving that mostly utilized the option. It was clear from the pre-game press conference quotes that Tedford didn’t quite know what to expect from Illinois. They had a new coach and are rebuilding. It was also clear 5 minutes into the game that Tedford hadn’t expected the option (for the football novices out there, the option is a run play that includes the possibility of the quarterback running the ball (it’s his “option”)). The Cal defense just wasn’t ready to face this archaic offensive (in both ways) play. Illinois used it all the way into the endzone to tie the game at 7 a piece.

The Cal offense came out for their second possesion VERY flat. Why, nobody really knows. It might have had something to do with the fact that they’re used to their defense getting them back on the field quickly, but instead spent a LONG time watching Illinois ground out that TD. It might be because Ayoob doesn’t think he looks as good in the blue home uniforms as the white away uniforms. No matter what the reason, 3 offensive plays (again, in both ways) later we were punting away. The worst part about this wasn’t the lack of scoring, but the fact that it only gave the defense a minute or two to talk over how it was going to defend against the option.

That allowed Illinios to grind out a second, option heavy, nearly 7 minute TD drive that lasted into the 2nd quarter. By the end of this drive the defense was looking really tired and possibly worse, really confused. Illinois was mixing in some creative passing plays to their already effective option attack and it all had the Cal defense scratching their heads.

This was the first moment this year I was worried we might lose. At all the other moments when the opposing team had scored or made good progress, I had faith that we’d make the necessary adjustments. This week, I just wasn’t so sure. While I had hope, we looked so tired. In addition, we were missing a lot of tackles. Our previous two opponents were much smaller teams. Maybe we just couldn’t bring down these big corn fed Big-10 conference (the name is no coincidence) players. Our only hope was a long offensive drive to give the defense time to rest and to talk about what adjustments to make.

1:34 seconds later, we were punting again and I was REALLY worried…

But then something happened, something that would change the game. Cal tried putting their pass defense guys on the line to bump the recievers off the line.

You see, the big wrinkle to the option that Illinois ran is that most of the time the option is run out of a run offense with, at most, 2 wide receivers. Illinois was running the option out of a 4 wide receiver “spread” offense. The Cal defense was respecting the pass threat and hence wasn’t putting the needed pressure to stop the option. But what Cal didn’t realize was that those receivers were mostly decoys and we didn’t need to give them that much respect. What we needed to do was play man-on-man bump-and-run pass defense and spend the rest of our energy stopping the option. Of the three remaining series that Illinois had in the first half, only one did they make any progress (it resulted in a field goal). It just happened to be the one that Cal tried backing off the tight pass defense.

So at half time, hope was on the rebound. While there were still many questioned to be answered, like where the heck our offense had gone and why did Ayoob suck even after they strong performance at Washington last week, there were many things to be hopeful about, like the fact that our run offense always is stronger in the 2nd half and that we finally seemed to have a hope in stopping the option. All that was needed was the right adjustments in the locker room, a good pep-talk and supportive fans.

And that’s exactly what happened. Halftime score 7-17, final score 35-20.

Looking forward, I still have lots of confidence that we’ll win our next two games against New Mexico St. on the road and Arizona at home. Neither of these teams look too intimidating and I doubt either will have a wrinkle that confuses us more than the option did. What was very clear in the too close for comfort victory over Illinois is that this team has a lot of talent. We had so many injured players on the sideline that we should have been asking FEMA to step in (not that it would have helped). But the backups played surprisingly well. You could tell that the team as a whole was very well rounded athetically and ready to make big plays. Additionally, my words last week about the strength of our running game and the value that has in the 2nd half proved to be true yet again and am sure we’ll use it to our advantage in the coming weeks. Finally, this team is learning something new every week and is getting better every week. My hope is that by the time we get to the meat of our schedule in October, we’ll be ready to stick it to them!

Go Bears!

Well, after solid performances by UCLA and Oregon, both beating teams in the top 25, they should join USC, Cal and Arizona State (who all won this week) in the top 25. I can’t think of the last time that has happened. We’re looking pretty strong as a conference! 8 out of the 10 teams won this weekend. In fact, even Arizon didn’t look bad seeing as how they played pretty well in their close lose to #12 Purdue. The only team that REALLY let the conference down Stanford who lost to the utterly pathetic UC Davis (see below for the ragging).

UPDATE: Yup, UCLA is 24th and Oregon snuck in at 25. Cal is up to 13th.

Well, it looks like Stanford has decided that they needed to replace Washington in the prestigious position of the Pac-10 toilet bowl because they STINK!

How can you lose to UC Davis? That’s just amazing to me. And it’s not like UC Davis is good, they were 0-2 coming into the game and a division II team that is just now making the transition to I-AA, which is well below division I-A where the rest of us play. UC Davis is so bad, they’re probably going to lose to Sac State (yeah, that team we spanked 41-3) in the Causeway bowl (or whatever they call it).

But if that wasn’t bad enough, 14 of the 17 points Stanford scored were directly from turnovers. Yes, you read that right, the offense only scored 3 points… Against DAVIS. And if THAT isn’t bad enough, Stanford only racked up a total of 180 yards… against DAVIS. And if you wanted to give some credit to the Stanford defense (they did score 14 points after all), they gave up 408 yards… against DAVIS. And if you wanted to think that Stanford started the game poorly or were unprepared for a certain offense/defense and just couldn’t recover, no they were up 17-0 mid way fairly late in the 2nd quarter. Then then allowed 20 unanswered points by DAVIS.

We’d better win the Big Game against Stanford this year. I won’t be able to sleep for a year if we lose to a team that got spanked by UC Davis.

I don’t think anyone will be sad to see it go… However read the story.

Funny stuff.

For those too lazy to click: “Pope Benedict, Successor to the Prince of the Apostles and College Football Expert, moved quickly to quell general fan nervousness about the legitimacy … of the new pollsters.”

I was out of town this weekend, but thanks to the miracle of Tivo, I was able to watch the game Sunday evening (and in 2:30 as well). It’s never the same to see a game on TV as it is in person because so much of what is really happening is off screen, but I feel I can give a reasonable analysis of the Bears performance and the outlook for the future.

First, the most important thing we learned is that Ayoob is going to be just fine as a QB. Some try to suggest he had a slow start, but going 0-3 on your first 3 throws is not unprecedented and two of the throws were pretty respectible but dropped by the WR’s. The interception was just bad luck on a bad bounce (on an admittedly underthrown ball). 17 for 27 and 4 touchdowns (and just the one interception) is pretty good. In fact, in my opinion, he looked even better than those numbers. He had great mobility in the pocket, escaping a number of would be sacks, and made good decisions.

Next, the running game looks to be a lot like last year, Marshawn Lynch or no Marshawn Lynch. Nobody can debate that Lynch is a great RB in the making, but I was pretty impressed with the running games of both Forsett and O’Keith. As with last year, the strong offensive line only gets stronger as the game rolls on, opening up big running lanes for our backs. This was a key to last years success because it allowed us to control the game when we were ahead and to force the opposing defense to give up big plays in their attempts to stop us from pounding our way back into the game when we were behind. I think this will be a key to success again this year and I’m very optimistic about it after Saturday’s performance. I mean, we were just trying to grind out the clock and ended up running it in for a couple more touchdowns.

As well, the run defense of the Bears looks VERY strong. Everyone was worried that they’d be the weakness of the defense this year, but after the last two games of giving up about 75 yards each game, I think they’re going to be more than OK. In fact, I’m more worried about our supposedly stout secondary than I am about the run defense. As much as they’re pretty good 90% of the time, that other 10% they seem to give up some pretty big plays.

So, with all of that positive news (minus the shakiness in the defensive secondary), what’s the outlook? Longterm it is hard to tell, but I can assure you the next few weeks look pretty good. Any team that has trouble against Rutgers and takes a while to get rolling against San Jose St. (both at home I might add) is going to be just about as good as Washington… yeah that team we just laid the wood to. So next week at home should be a victory against the TKO’ed (as in fighting poorly) Illini. The following week we’re on the road against New Mexico (it appears we can’t field two football teams in this state) State. That should be a bloodbath of epic proportions. They’re 0-2 right now losing to UTEP and getting spanked by an unranked and supposedly mediocre Colorado. Finally, three weeks from now we’ve got Arizona at home who’s loss to Utah was pretty weak and their victory over Northern Arizona was nothing special. Again, this team is probably not much better than Washington.

But the big question mark for the future is: Just how bad is Washington? Everyone knows that Washington is picked towards the bottom of the Pac-10 this year, but are they just ordinary Pac-10 bad or are they extrodinarily bad? If they’re just ordinarily bad, then the outlook looks good. Every Pac-10 team is strong enough that when you blow them out, it’s a positive sign. However, a couple times in a decade, you get an extrodinarily bad team, one that blowing them out doesn’t mean much.

That is what could make Saturday’s victory less convincing than it seems.

Until after the game that is…

I just wanted to give anyone who cares the link to the map of what regions of the country ABC will be showing the Cal vs. Washington game at 12:30 PM on Saturday. Basically, if you live in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, the western part of Montana or the southwestern part of Wyoming, you’ll see the game. If not, you’ll be stuck with some other stupid game.

OK, I’ll get back to my regularly scheduled Catholic topics of discussion soon. But for now, consider the blog renamed: As we watch the Cal Bears.

In any case, as I predicted (see the post title), the Bears are up to 16th in the AP poll and 17th in the Coaches poll from 19th and 20th respectively. As I said, most pollsters don’t get in depth coverage of all the top 25 teams, particularly those lower in the polls and also those on the west coast (that ‘ol east coast bias). As such, Cal’ s mediocre performance and loss of its starting quarterback are completely irrelevant to the polls. All that matters is Cal 41, Sac State 3.

Plus it’s hard to lose ground when the likes of Oklahoma and Auburn lose to nobodies (TCU and Georgia Tech respectively) and Boise State is put back in its place (i.e. not worthy of a ranking) by Georgia. We leap frogged all three of those teams. We also leap frogged Texas A&M who lost to a respectable Clemson team.

However, one team leap frogged us: Arizona St. after beating up on Temple.

OK, I’m worried this may end up being a weekly post…

Nevertheless, Ayoob did enough in practice on Monday to convince Tedford that he could hit smaller barns than on Saturday. Let’s hope he can actually hit the wide-open wide-receivers next Saturday. For those who care, the game will be televised on ABC at 12:30 PM PDT on the west coast. I’ll be trying to block the game out of my mind while enjoying myself in the mountains with Wendy and the boys. I’ll Tivo it, not so much to watch but to be able to get the real story on plays and occurances that never seem to get mentioned in the newspaper articles.

I was at the Cal Bearts game yesterday and as a fan who has sat through the good years and the bad years, I think I can offer some good insight into their play and their outlook for the season. I’ll post in list format, starting with the good news:

-The defense looked surprisingly strong. There are those who will discount their performance because it was only against Sac State need only look around the conference at the scores this weekend. A lot of powder puff teams put double digit scores against good Pac-10 teams. The reality is that when you’re team puts up 40+ points, you’re likely to have a more relaxed “don’t give up the big play” mindset. The Cal defense shut the door all day long, applying good pressure and having mostly good pass coverage (minus one should have been a touchdown, boy did we get lucky, coverage failure). Even the 3 points were not given up easily and a couple of lucky plays were key to them getting in field goal territory. Heck, we only gave up 121 yards through the air and 71 yards on the ground. Even against Sac State, those are stats to be proud of. In my opinion a lot of questions were answered on defense and in a good way.
-Nate Longshore (the starting QB) played as advertised and it is clear why he got the starting job. While there were some jitters, overall he had good arm strength, good decision making skills and fairly good touch. In fact the only area he didn’t live up to the hype was in lower leg bone strength… such a shame. More on this later.
-The wide receiver core looked good. They were running sharp routes, finding the seams, and they were FAST. This is one of the fastest receiving cores I’ve ever seen at Memorial stadium. Actually, I’m almost as excited about this crew as I was about the duo we had last year. In some ways it is even better as we have a lot more depth, so the 2005 equivalent of Lyman going down the USC game won’t be nearly as devestating.
-Marshawn Lynch (the main running back) lived up to the high expectations and definitely seems able to be a every down back. In fact, he seemed to get stronger as the game went on. Along those lines, I think his intensity to start the game was a little low. Tedford had said that the coaching staff had been telling him to know when to give up so that he doesn’t cough up the ball when he has no chance of making extra yards. I think part way into the game either he and/or the coaches realized that you can’t keep that man on a leash because he seemed to step it up a notch. The only question mark I saw from that point was his ability to rush inside the tackles because he didn’t do nearly as well as I would have hoped, especially against a division I-AA team. Supposedly, run defense is one of Sac State’s strengths, so lets hope that’s true and that the offensive line was having first game jitters.
-Now things start to go downhill from here… Particularly in the first half, the offense didn’t seem to be in sync. As Tedford said, it seemed like they hadn’t practiced in two weeks. I suspect this is because it was the first game for a lot of players and there were a lot of jitters. I suspect that between the experience of playing in an actual game and Tedford taking them out to the woodshack tomorrow at practice, this’ll be cleared up by next week.
-Ayoob, the highly touted JC transfer quarterback, STUNK. I mean he couldn’t hit the side of a… there’s got to be a witty thing besides ‘barn’ to say here. In any case, the good news is that his decision making skills were good and he was more nimble in the pocket than Longshore. One has to believe that he threw the ball better than that at his JC college, so there is hope. However, some players can not make the adjustment to the next level if nothing else because they crack under the increased pressure. Let’s hope that’s not the case here. But let’s not minimize the fact that a two man quarterback controversy should be solved when one of them gets injured. When the third guy is all of sudden the new quarterback of controversy, that speaks to how poorly Ayoob played.

So overall, outside of the quarterback situation, I’m encouraged. They’ll still be some growning pains, but with Washington (even Wilmingham can’t save us), Illinois (we need overtime to beat Rutgers), New Mexico State (can we really field two football teams in this state?) and Arizona (it can only go up from last year) on our schedule for the next 4 weeks, I think we’ll be able to work out those kinks before our first big challenge at UCLA on October 8th.

So all that remains in the quarterback situation… ugh.

I have a tendancy to slam columnist when they’re idiots. But I don’t want to give the idea that I don’t like columns. Case in point, this column was great. I particularly like humorous columns!