Cal's 28-9 loss Saturday at Washington State was disappointing at face value, as it drops the team to 3-2 overall and 1-1 in the Pac-12, but perhaps even more frustrating is that it came despite following an offensive formula the Bears were fairly confident was their best approach.

Going into this game, the Cal offense had found a decent chunk of the playbook that worked successfully even if the scoring outputs weren’t fantastic outside of the 49-point outburst against Arizona. Figuring out a team's strengths and weaknesses is part of what soft scheduling at the start of the season is supposed to provide.

So, the Bears did exactly what they should do and ran through that catalog on Saturday afternoon. But instead of finding success, they found stagnation for much of the day.

Let’s look back at the Notre Dame game for an example.

With just under 6 minutes to play in the first half, Cal dialed up this man-coverage beater for a big completion to Jeremiah Hunter.

The goal of this play is to do two things:

Against Cover 3 -- pick on the outside cornerback. If he runs with the slot fade, throw the hitch. If he sticks on the hitch, throw the slot fade.

Against Cover 1 (pictured) - -Throw the slot fade against press man, the nickel (N in diagram) won’t have the leverage to properly defend the route unless he guesses correctly or starts the play in off coverage (this is an important detail).

So, Jack Plummer makes the right decision here and rips a beautiful ball to Hunter for a huge completion. It looks awesome and the result is fantastic, so the Bears add this one to the rotation.

Well, Cal pulled that one out of the catalog again this past Saturday at Washington State.