Cal Football Countdown: 50 Days, Drop 50
When this offseason series began -- and we are now at the halfway point of that series, if you can believe it -- Trace and I each claimed certain days, or certain topic ideas, so you had to know that Day 50 was my first round pick.
Yes. *Of course* I'm writing about that old Dykes-era meme that somehow ended up running in the SF Chronicle; and as we ask ourselves if the Bears can #drop50 this year, knowing that the answer is no, this is going to be a pretty short article.
Just kidding.
Let's break this into three parts, shall we?
I. Why they (probably) won't #drop50 --
Well, this begins with what we saw last season, and I don't mean the massive ineptitude on that side of the ball that culminated in the Cheez-It Bowl. Rather, think back to October 20th. when Bears faced the equally inept defense of Oregon State -- rating out a whopping 126th out of 130 FBS teams according to Bill Connelly's per play efficiency metric -- and still only put up 49.
This is no easy thing, despite the ease with which those Bear Raid teams accomplished the feat.
Scoring 50 points often requires a perfect confluence of gridiron events, beginning with the game state. This number is often overkill in a general sense -- hitting half a century in a game is correlated with something like 99% victory expectancy, but so too, is hitting 45 or 40, and for the notoriously risk-averse profession that is football coaching, that difference between 42 and 49, or 49 and 52 does become a mitigating factor. With a few minutes left in the game and 50 points in sight, most coaches will opt to simply run out the clock, for fear of running up the score, or risking injury.
Even if the game state allows for this possibility -- let's say it's a shootout, for example, or a statement game -- it still requires almost flawless play to achieve on the 12 to 13 average possessions you have in a game. In that aforementioned 2018 OSU matchup, for example, Cal had 11 possessions and scored on 6, with a 7th opportunity bungled by way of goal line fumble. Those small things make a difference in reaching the total, and that's including the fact that Bears also went +1 in turnover margin in that one.
You'll notice that this reasoning hasn't yet touched yet on the team itself, which you know well enough. While anything is possible on Saturday afternoons and I gleefully await screenshots of this article sent back to me if the Bears do reach the magic number, we're basing this prediction around an offense that, in its most generous interpretation, has plenty of room to grow and plenty of new faces with whom to grow with, and in its least generous interpretation, might have a ceiling of merely not awful this season. Neither of those interpretations translates to "should score 50 points" this season, to say the least.
Why they could #drop50 --
We've covered this somewhat in previous columns in this series. There are some reasonable Good What If scenarios that would have to come into play here, including the improvement of the wide receivers, the emergence of Mac Castles, the effectiveness of the new coaching shuffle, and of course, Chase Garbers. If this does happen, it'll be because most of these things hit at once, during the same game. Either that, or something weird happens, like the other team commits 3 or 4 turnovers that are returned for scores. Even that still isn't a guarantee sometimes. (You may remember the Bears were gifted this against Colorado with 5 TOs and a 21-0 first quarter lead, but finished with 33 overall.)
Who (if they did) would they be most likely to #drop50 on? --
The likeliest option is always the annual "C game" FCS opponent, just because the talent and physical disparities tend to be the largest in that matchup. Put another way, if you have troubles against FCS teams, it's often a bad indicator of the season to follow, with only occasional exceptions. Now, specifically because that game is against UC Davis this year, I would love nothing more than to dunk repeatedly on my girlfriend's alma mater, and I'm willing to bet Burl Toler might enjoy the same. Davis, for what it's worth, was pretty middle of the pack for FCS teams, ranking in the 60s nationally in yards per play allowed as well as touchdowns.
Next to Davis, the likeliest other option is North Texas for similar reasons -- non Power 5 roster, etc -- followed by Oregon State again, which, while welcoming some immediate help in the form of transfers, is returning most of that personnel again. Experience matters, but so does the quality of that experience.