Cal has reached the final stages of training camp and its preseason work with less than two weeks to go now until the season opener against UC Davis on Aug. 31. The Bears have gone through 15 practices up to this point and will head up north for a couple days as they work off campus for a couple days before settling in for game prep.

Our last mailbag was a hit, and so reporter Matt Moreno is back to answer more questions from our Golden Bear Report subscribers after getting an opportunity to see the second scrimmage on Saturday.

Matt Moreno: The offensive line feels like the biggest concern right now heading into the home stretch of the offseason. The quarterback battle gets the headlines, but the reality is that the Bears are in a much better spot this year than last training camp at the position. If the quarterback is going to be under pressure consistently, it might make who is taking the snaps less important. That is being a bit dramatic, yes, but the quarterbacks have been under a good amount of duress throughout camp. That resulted in double-digit tackles for loss and most of those were also sacks.

The point you bring up is absolutely something I’ll admit that I thought about at one point in camp. I think it’s natural to look at the added work load of the offensive coordinator role for Mike Bloesch and come to that conclusion. However, he still spends most of practice working with the offensive line group, so I don’t think you can make that direct correlation as it stands right now.

He does a good job of delegating duties and isn’t hovering much with the other groups throughout practice. So, I don’t think the coordinator duties are taking too much of his time away from the team on the field. Maybe things behind the scenes have changed in terms of how much meeting time he can dedicate to his specific group, but I’m not buying that one just yet.

I felt like the offensive line made improvements last year, and he is still teaching his same fundamentals and techniques to that unit. That includes some players who now have a year under their belt of learning from Bloesch.

The coaches would probably point to correctable mistakes as the culprit, but it feels like more of a talent issue with this year’s roster. There are probably only eight players, at most, right now who could step into a game for the Bears that would not make the coaches at least a little uneasy. Only seven of them have been able to practice most days in camp.

It speaks to the uncertainty of the portal and transfer process. Coaches simply don’t know what they have until they get the group on the field. Adding Barrett Miller last year solved a lot of problems, and there just hasn’t been anyone quite like that as a newcomer on this roster.

There is still time to make progress but it feels like the offensive line could be a concern throughout the season.

I mean, you have to give the defense credit as well. The defensive line has looked improved in camp, and there have been some new wrinkles within what Peter Sirmon is doing to generate pressure and cause confusion.

False start penalties have popped up a few times in the scrimmages, and there has been a good amount of pre-snap movement by the defense that has caused some confusion for the defensive line from my perspective.

There haven’t been a ton of situations where an offensive lineman is getting outright beat. It’s happened, to be sure, but a lot of the pressure is being generated by the defense forcing breakdowns up front.

The speed on the outside has also created some issues as well with a big portion of the chaos being created generating from the outside linebacker position. David Reese and Xavier Carlton, especially during Saturday’s scrimmage, have both been able to disrupt plays and get in the backfield often.

So, for the offensive line, it will come down to understanding where pressure is coming from but also just being more prepared to deal with speed at the edge positions.

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