Five Things: Utah
Well. Let's get this over with.
Limit Efficiency - W - Held a top 25 SP+ offense to 3.8 YPP. They converted 40+% of 3rd downs, but that's more than acceptable performance.
Bye Week - L - I don't know what they spent the time on.
Healthy - L - By virtue of having Modster on the injured list, it's hard to say this is a win. If something happens to Spencer Brasch, it's Robbie Rowell time.
Establish Some Run - L - Dancy did not look right, and Chris Brown had only one explosive run on the afternoon against a very movable front.
Begin Rolling - L - Uh.
1-4
Right now, it is hard to map out a path to winning in Salt Lake City. Granted, I've written that before too -- against Washington and again against Oregon, both games that the Bears played stronger than expected or outright pulled the upset in, but this one feels different. For one, they had a few more linemen still healthy, a couple more wide receivers available, their first string (and second string) quarterbacks actually fully available, and they weren't in the middle of a three game stretch that might derail the whole season.
I suppose that's for two, three, four, and five as well.
But, nevertheless, this column promises five things to look for during the game, so here they are:
1) Tyler Huntley?
The Utah senior was injured last week during the ASU game, and despite his own press conference insistences that he'll play for sure against Cal, it'll still be something worth watching all week. If he can't play, the Utes will turn to either Drew Lisk or Jason Shelley, who together combined for 2 of 5 passing and 20 yards. The best chance for the Bears will obviously involve Huntley taking the week off to rest...but if he plays, then they'll want to try to get pressure on him with their base four:
When under pressure (72 dropbacks), PFF charted Huntley as 31 of 53 (58.5%), versus 43 of 59 (72.9%) when blitzed, with fairly similar yardage and TD:INT totals for each situation. One way to read this data would imply that most standard blitzes are well prepared for by Huntley, but that things going unplanned -- meaning Cal winning with the guys up front straight up -- can at least force him to pause a beat.
On one hand, Utah's given up 4 sacks on the year.
On the other, the Bears got to Jake Luton pretty frequently, and he was only sacked a few times on the year entering the game. What I'm trying to say is that this isn't the matchup most worth worrying about -- especially not after the Bears already slowed Justin Herbert, who will likely be the best QB they face all year.
Running back Zach Moss is their other big ticket offensive player, and the matchup between him, Weaver, and Kuony Deng will be in the spotlight all evening, especially if Huntley doesn't play. Utah will likely get extra conservative with Lisk or Shelley behind center, content to win the war of attrition. (If that sounds familiar, it's probably because it's been our MO as well, after our Wilcox-inspired rebrand as #Westconsin.)
2-5. The Offense
Is it cheating this week? I mean...not really?
Seeing what Utah did to a much more talented Arizona State offense last week -- Jayden Daniels was, as Sam Darnold might put it, "seeing ghosts" to the tune of 4 of 18 passing and 25 yards; that's not a quarter, folks, that was the whole game -- makes me deeply dread the prospect of how Cal might look, with no Brandon Aiyuk or Eno Benjamin to speak of.
How fitting that the horror comes on Halloween weekend.
I know it's not really fun to talk about, and it's even less fun to have to note, once again, that there are no cards left to be played. There's no redshirted player waiting to be burned at a skill position, and we're already through all of the offensive line's backups. Plus, we are approaching a sample size nearing three years and can count on one hand the number of really truly good games Beau Baldwin has called while in charge of the Cal offense.
If you're looking for some semblance of a good sign, you could argue that Utah defensive coordinator Morgan Scalley won't have a ton of tape of Spencer Brasch to tear through...only to quickly remember a line far less physically talented than that of Bradlee Anae and Leki Fotu sacked Modster and Brasch 9 times. Guessing they may not have too much trouble figuring out what to exploit -- and several of those sacks were just straight up losing as a big on big, being physically manhandled at the point of attack.
ASU did get Benjamin over the century mark, and it would appear promising that Brown might punch through, but that's somewhat misleading, since 50 of his yards came on two carries. On the others, he was 14 for 54, averaging 3.85 yards a pop, making for an extremely low Success Rate. The Sun Devils punted on 5 consecutive drives to start the game, and the sixth was an interception before half. I wish I could tell you it got better for them, but it did not. (Although maybe I guess it did, since they did score points in the second half.)
So, all of this is a long, roundabout way of explaining that Brasch/Modster will have to lead the offense into some things that they didn't come close to doing against one of the worst defenses in the country last week. It did happen before. It could, conceivably happen again on Saturday -- football is weird in that way.
But damn if they don't have a tall order ahead of them.