Cal's offensive line situation went from bad to worse as coach Justin Wilcox announced Saturday night that veteran right guard Matthew Cindric will miss the rest of the season with an undisclosed upper body injury.
"He'll be out for the rest of the season, unfortunately," Wilcox said. "He's an extremely tough guy. He got injured early in the game last week and really didn't mention it and just played the entire game, and unfortunately it's an injury that needs to be repaired and will miss the rest of the year, but he is a warrior of a person."
Cindric, a fifth-year senior, started the first three games at center before sliding over to right guard for the next three.
"That's a big loss. Just a great human being, a great person, great offensive lineman. So yeah, we're feeling for Cindo and we wish he could be out there for us," quarterback Jack Plummer said.
To patch things together, Brayden Rohme moved into the starting lineup at left tackle, Ben Coleman slid over to left guard, Brian Driscoll manned center as usual, Sioape Vatikani started at right guard and T.J. Session was at right tackle.
The Bears gave up 12 QB pressures overall, per PFF, and 5 sacks while the run game also struggled to get anything going behind the unit as the running backs averaged just 3.4 yards per carry, led by DeCarlos Brooks' 43 yards on 10 carries. Jaydn Ott managed only 38 yards on 14 attempts.
Per PFF, Session yielded 6 of those pressures while Rohme was charged with 3. Rohme (41.4), Vatikani (40.1) and Session (33.8) all graded out poorly from PFF, with especially low marks in pass protection, while Discoll (63.9) and Coleman (59.2) were graded more favorably.
"There's some good and some things we need to improve upon," Wilcox said. "We need to protect the quarterback, there's a couple more runs in there where we probably could have caught some creases. I thought they competed hard, but you know again, effort and toughness and competitiveness is a requirement, pre-requisite to perform well, but we didn't perform consistently enough. We've got to continue to make strides, so we'll work with them again starting Monday."
Quarterback Jack Plummer put a positive spin on the performance of the line.
"I thought they did at times really good at blocking the box and freeing up some lanes for our running backs," he said. "There was a couple times where we were getting 6 or 7, 8 on runs and that's really efficient, so I thought they did a good job with that. And at times they were really studding them up there at the line and giving me some time to throws. So we'll just keep building. Those guys are good players and they care. Yeah, so they get shuffled around, but I think they'll mesh together and we've still got a lot of football left."
