It's Big Game Week, and here are five things to look for as Cal takes on Stanford Friday.
1) It’s still the Big Game – Mathematically, there’s still a way things play out for the Bears that would allow them to win the conference. So, there’s still that.
But, beyond any hope of salvaging their (slim) hopes at a Pac-12 crown, I think it’ll be a pretty big indicator of how this team is feeling during a pretty pivotal moment for Justin Wilcox’s tenure. This is one of the rare times that things haven’t clearly been moving in an upward trajectory:
2017 – The team finishes 5-7 with a disappointing loss to Devon Modster at the Rose Bowl, but smashes Washington State in the Smoke Bowl, gives then No. 5 USC all it can handle, and comes within a late interception of upsetting Stanford. This is year one of an intense transition between being offensively-minded, to defensively-minded; disappointing not to take a trip for December football, but understandable.
2018 – A 3-0 start is canceled out by 3 consecutive losses by way of turnovers at Arizona, then blowouts against UCLA and Oregon is about as low as it gets for Wilcox. Frustration is starting to boil within the fanbase here, until he produces an expected win over Oregon State, a scrappy one over Washington, and comes close in an upset attempt of Wazzu, to set the Bears up in a do or die scenario: win one of either Stanford or USC to return to postseason play, the first since 2015. He (memorably) does this, and despite the losses in the Big Game and the no-longer-named-that Cheez-it Bowl, Wilcox is still fairly considered on an upward trajectory. One that leads the fanbase to openly wonder if changes are needed on offense, but an upward trajectory nonetheless. (Wilcox shuffles the offensive staff, but does not let anyone go.)
2019 – At 8-5 and his first bowl win, plus most of the team returning the next year, the stage is set for the Bears to take the next jump forward. Disappointment rears its head in the middle of the schedule, but that much is understandable. Chase Garbers is injured. Wilcox signs an extension that offseason.
So, all of this is retrospective is to frame the stage for this statement -- they haven’t taken that next step yet, and likely won’t this year. That’s what makes the Big Game, still Big, beyond the tradition itself.
Winning out the rest of the season, something that begins here, would help recoup much of this lost good will, and at least continue to present the optics and perception of the program as stable. Even plateauing at an above average level wouldn’t be that bad.
Losing out, spiraling into a previously unthinkable 1-5, or 2-4 type campaign would be…meaningful. I am not sure it would be disastrous – Cal Athletics is too cash-strapped and indecisive to fire Wilcox til after a bad 2021 at the earliest -- but it would certainly be meaningful, no matter how much slack is given for freak scheduling and COVID accidents (and again, Cal has experienced on the worst end of this, compared to many of their peers).
2) Anything less than catastrophic levels of special teams play – In Monday’s column, I detailed six critical errors in this phase made that swung the game for Oregon State; each helped lead to a shortened field, and each resulted in a touchdown drive for the Beavers on an afternoon when they did nothing on possessions that begin in their own territory.
I don’t expect special teams to win the game. But it’d help Cal immensely if they could return to their trademark “kind of mediocre” in this regard – that’s one less variable they have to try to control:
Undoubtedly, this is impacted by COVID and such. It’s still not great, Bob.
And it doesn’t need to be! Cal wins last week if they just don’t make one or two of those special teams errors.
3) Pressure Davis Mills – He started last year’s game, so the Bears know him well; they picked him off twice and Mills helped secure the win with a couple of airmailed balls of his own.
This season, Mills has missed one game due to a false positive on his COVID test, but he’s still managed 60 total drop backs, and what we notice here is a big drop off in his effectiveness under pressure.
2019 Under Pressure (Per PFF): 66 grade; 17 of 39, 333 yards (8.5 YPA), 4 TD, 2 INT – 61 of 271 (22.5%)
2020 Under Pressure (Per PFF): 38.4 grade; 3 of 11, 26 yards (2.4 YPA) – 14 of 60 (23%)
2019 When Blitzed (Per PFF): 77.9 grade; 30 of 51, 494 yards (9.7 YPA), 7 TD, 1 INT – 62 of 271 plays (23.8%)
2020 When Blitzed (Per PFF): 54.3 grade; 8 of 24, 61 yards (2.5 YPA), 1 TD – 25 of 60 (41%)
Why is this?
Well, a myriad of reasons:
A) Walker Little opted out of the season, and Henry Hattis transferred to ASU, giving them two less experienced guys at the position.
B) Stanford no longer has Colby Parkinson to throw it up to, and the current set of Cardinal TEs are their least impactful in quite some time. What that means when they’re covered by Kuony Deng and company remains to be seen, but at the very least, the quality of tight end isn’t Ertz and company at the moment.
C) Simply put, no safety blanket exists anymore. We mentioned this in the run up to last year’s Big Game, but Stanford no longer at the moment has that same, singularly transcendent offensive player to lean on in crunch time, when one normally existed at running back or tight end. This year, the closest would be Simi Fehoko, who is a good player, but not nearly at the same level as his forerunners at the skill positions.
4) Intentional Run/Pass Split –
There’s enough evidence through both of Stanford’s games so far that they might be vulnerable against the run, after giving up 446 yards on 85 carries (5.25 YPC). The good part is that those numbers lead to them being 11th in the conference. Not as good – Cal is 12th.
With at least the three of Craig, Daltoso, and Curhan out due to self-isolation protocols, plus the uncertainty of Mike Saffell’s availability this week as of writing, I’m not sure the correct way to state this is to run the ball massively. You’re still going to be down a lot of your first choice guys, although all of Stanford’s top guys against the run this year have been in the back 7, with Thomas Booker, Thomas Scaffer, Dalyn Wade-Perry, and Jordan Fox (their four most active guys in run defense up front) have posted below average to downright poor PFF grades this year.
Instead, what I’m going to say is this – Stanford is also near the bottom of the conference in yards per attempt, at nearly 10. This too, has been impacted by opt-out, since the Cardinal are without Paulson Adebo.
Having a healthy balance of each will be good on Friday. You gotta have the your greens at Thanksgiving too.
5) The middle of the field – We made the case earlier that the Cardinal tight ends are dramatically worse than usual, but so too, are the Cal linebackers (outside of Cameron Goode). Tattersall looked better against Oregon State, but has still allowed catches on 6 of 10 attempts for 51 yards and a touchdown; Deng (the bottom ranked player on PFF by a significant margin, something that also matches the eye test) has nearly double that at 107 yards on 6 catches. There’s a big issue in the middle of the field right now, both at the safeties level and with both inside linebackers, compared to last season, when it was Evan Weaver’s heroics to force a slight overthrow deep, Jaylinn Hawkins picking off a Davis Mills prayer, and the combined efforts of everyone to gum up a final run by Scarlett that allowed the Axe to return to Berkeley.
These aren’t the old times anymore. For either of these teams.