7/19/2017 football Edit

Bear Essentials: Devante Downs

Nam Le • GoldenBearReport

Golden Bear Report

The final installment for this year of our Bear Essentials series is today, this one featuring linebacker Devante Downs.

At this point, it’s become a long running meme that I believe in Devante Downs. I have beat that drum every offseason since he arrived from Washington, to an audience that is now deaf – or at least, poking fun of me -- to the rhythm.

I am the boy who cried playmaker. And I will be the boy who cried playmaker again.

There were a litany of excuses that prevented his breaking out these last few years: it was the depth chart, it was him not being quite recovered from his high school ACL tears, it was him still learning the position at FBS speed, and it was him not taking to Kaufman’s largely conservative style of play (more on that one later). Granted, when the list is this long, perhaps that is only hiding the reality that he may never break out at all, but I’m willing to roll the dice again triple Downs. If this defense is to show some improvement under the new defensive-minded regime, they’ll need Downs to play a large part in that.

We covered athletic-but-probably-still-one-year-away linebacker Cameron Goode earlier in the Bear Essentials series, because Cal needs effective edge rushers and has for nearly a decade. Downs can play a crucial role in that, though, if he is being deployed up the middle – he has incredible downhill and space potential thanks to legit two-way athleticism that Kaufman didn’t have the luxury (philosophy?) of using himself. I still believe that Downs’ best usage is a lot like this clip here and from some of what we saw in the spring game in 2017, but don’t have cut up for you at the moment:

Send him in the A-gaps. Simplify his job, keep him clean, let him attack without thinking, and you can have a player who does something no one else on the roster can, because he’s also the biggest one of backers, fit to man the middle anyway. He has all the skills to be a difference maker. This is the best chance to make it happen.

Really, I chose to do this series by skipping the obvious candidates like Looney or a Bowers, because we know the season leans on those pieces. In a year that is already projecting as bowl-less at the moment, it only gets more dicey if one of those pillars underperform. But if we can get anything from these guys? The Downs, the Goodes, the Enweres? Those are the guys that make the difference in the margins. This roster has a place that they can uniquely fill if they are ready to do so.