Five Things: Washington State
Last time:
1) Tyler Huntley – L – He did not look even remotely hampered by the leg injury two weeks ago, and found open receiver after open receiver. (Credit to the Utah skill position players for being better than anticipated.)
2-5) Offense – L – The less said about them, the better.
0-5 is enough for the worst loss in quite some time, but after a bye week, the Bears are back in action against Washington State, welcoming them back to Berkeley and hoping to re-live their upset win from 2017.
Here are the five things that’ll mostly have to go their way if they want that to happen.
1) Take -- I don’t know how they do it each year, but watching a Mike Leach QB throwing for 70% completion and 35+ TD passes is the college football equivalent of a Tokyo subway schedule. You can set your watch to it, now that the latest of these guys is Anthony Gordon, who is averaging over 400 yards through the air and has 32 TD passes at the 2/3rds mark of the season. (That’s even higher than celebrated contemporaries Gardner Minshew or Luke Falk.)
Gordon makes one of the two stiffest tests remaining for the Takers, who have played mostly pretty well, but not up to the world-beating quality many – including myself – would have hoped for entering the season. The drop in interceptions this season, you can figure is somewhat context dependent – but the drop in passes defensed, at nearly 1 a game down to 4.63, places the Bears as a fairly disruptive secondary (#44 in the country in passes defensed per game) compared to elite (#25) last year. For a team that needs to win all the margins and extras to have a chance, one less playmaking opportunity hurts.
They’ve had two weeks. Let’s see them make something happen.
Another thing worth looking at here: Traveon Beck (if he’s healthy) and Trey Turner will be called on a lot against Washington State’s multiple receiver packages. How they hold up will play a big role in determining this game.
2) Bye Week 2: Electric Boogaloo – Regardless of whether Modster or Brasch is the QB, now that Mike Saffell is close to returning things should look somewhat better. Brasch played pretty decently when he got the chance against Utah – the coaches even took advantage of his skillset to roll out from time to time -- and if the coaches go with him again, the true freshman will have a beatable defense in front of him that’s allowing 6.42 YPP.
The hope is that with another two weeks of preparation, that they’ll have more to show for it than they did against Oregon State.
3) Chris Brown Jr – The game got away from Cal quick against Utah, so while Brown looked decent and healthier at times, it was hard to really let him shine. Getting the run game on track is a dire need for the Bears, who have had to play more plays on defense, and rarely been able to move the ball with any consistency whatsoever – they haven’t seen a 3.7+ YPC performance from RB1 since Week 2 of the season. (Dancy rushed for 38 on 9 carries against ASU, if you’re wondering.)
4) Special Teams? – These have been a tough couple of weeks for Greg Thomas, who whiffed one against Oregon State and two against Oregon the week before that, and it’d be nice to get him back on track headed into the final stretch of the season.
In truth, Cal’s performance in this category has been largely okay at best all year, but watching them make any plays in the return game would go a long way. This team needs yardage in any form, and at least in this phase, there might be a handful of potential vulnerabilities:
· WSU has only allowed 4 punt returns all year, but they’re also one of only two Pac-12 teams that have allowed a TD on punt return.
· They are also the only one of two teams in the conference that have allowed a kickoff return for a touchdown.
· Both occurred in the whacko-bananas 67-63 game won by UCLA.
5) This One Counts – Well, they all do, at this point – but what I mean here specifically is that if the Bears can flip this one as 8 point underdogs, it’d go a long way toward evening up the now unfriendly bowl math, as ESPN’s FPI projections have Cal has a 5 win team at this point in time.
Human computer Trace Travers has pointed out the last time the Bears even beat two of the three California teams was 2009, and that’s the task ahead of them if they can’t upset the Cougars. At a time when USC and UCLA are both rebounding, and Stanford has KJ Costello back, it’d be pretty suboptimal to have to rely on this scenario.
The mindset going into this one has to be treating it like a must-win game.