The Novel: Texas

I. Intro

There's an old sports adage that Father Time is undefeated.

I've always hated that saying. One, because it's point blank obvious, and two, it usually forgets that Narrative ranks a close second in the division by playing a similar style – both, dreadfully hard to shake, use patient, long term game plans, preferring to lurk just in view until the opportunity to strike with full devastating effect presents itself.

But Narrative is not Father Time.

Narrative has a flaw, a fatal weakness that keeps it from achieving a perfect record.

Narrative is a human creation, which can be rewritten, edited. Even scrapped all together.

What you want me to say is that Saturday's 50-43 victory over number 11 Texas was a complete revision of the Cal Football Narrative, that it will prove to be a watershed moment and the first of many, many steps forward under Sonny Dykes.

I want that so desperately to be true. I want this introduction to be a loud, sweeping declaration that the Cal Football Narrative is over, that we are finally, finally freed from old, familiar sinking dread and the expectation of heartbreak, free to feel and expect the coming of something else. Success.

We all do. But this is not that intro. This is not that column. There is much season left to be played before we know what Saturday really meant, games that will ultimately make the difference between this being A win, and this being THE win.

I don’t think it even matters which one it ends up being, really.

This was the type of scenario that the Cal Football Narrative has long conditioned us to expect we would lose, especially given the kind of opponent, the stakes, the style of the game – which makes actually getting it feel all that much more monumental, all the more cathartic. Truthfully, we can enjoy Saturday without worrying about what it means in the larger context right now, and independent of any down the road, because for a brief moment, we lived outside ourselves, not in the familiar place that is “almost was”, but in the foreignness of “actually did”.

No matter what happens after this – whether Sonny Dykes leads us to Pasadena or not, however his tenure ends, and whatever this season holds – nothing can ever ruin Saturday, which lives as a memory that can shelter our darkest days, and a well we can sip from to soothe the most painful defeats to come.

In a sense, I think that's what made, what makes this win so impossibly wonderful -- because it offers, for the first time in this era, the potential to mean so much more down the road, while at the same time, not needing to mean anything more than it already does.

It was a night of perfection. No plurals are necessary.

II. Other Thoughts

In the lead up to the game, I began to feel oddly upbeat despite our underdog status -- I mean, a win would have been fantastic, a strong performance would have indicated the season was not yet dead, and of course, a loss was expected. That, my friends, is a little thing called playing with house money...and we went ahead and cashed out.

In order for this to turn into something significant -- and now that I'm out of the Intro and back into the analyst mode -- the Bears still need to win against Arizona State next week, a team that also has a strong rushing attack and automatic short yardage package. They may be gettable, but it’s another late night game in the desert, which has traditionally been a weird place for us. It would be unsurprising for us to come out with a bit of a hangover, and Cal should guard hard against that week.

The path to a strong first half seemed closed after San Diego State, and it is WIDE open again. To guard against the difficulty of facing the back six teams, it’s crucial to go at least 4-2. That’s back on the table again. 5-1 is possible too…

…and something more, if we are ready. This is a wide open Pac-12 season, and if Cal plays their best 60 minutes on game day, you can make a reasonable case that we can beat anybody except maybe Stanford or Washington. Maybe even both of those teams, really. That’s what we’re dealing with – a slate of flawed conference opponents, who will be likely favored, but eminently beatable all the same.

Recently, I've been using "Saturdays are for the Bears" as a phrase I really like -- inspired by my good friend Josh Toyofuku's incessant Barstool Sports references -- and I was told that the marketing guy for athletics really likes it, so we're all going in with it as a game day thing. SATURDAYS ARE FOR THE BEARS, Y'ALL.

I didn’t think we’d win – only Avinash Kunnath gets full credit for this in the blog community – but I did have a feeling: "Weird things happen when you can score points, though, and we can score some points."

III. Offense (Outstanding, or A+)

Jake Spavital basically called a perfect game. Maybe he heard us after all.

No, but seriously -- it was a beautiful, beautiful game plan with clear identifiable focuses to take advantage of a very fragile, inexperienced Texas defense: stretch the field from side to side, throw misdirection and work against their aggressiveness in the form of screens, dumpoffs, and ball fakes, and then hit the Longhorns when they overreacted. I cannot remember a Tony Franklin game that had clear intentionality, let alone one with such beautiful, intuitively called sequences. Spavital hit Texas with not just the one-two, but three, four, five, six, and seven – each play working off of the other, hitting the right notes with decisiveness and discombobulating the Longhorns at exactly the right time, but especially on the first drive and the ultimate go ahead one. Those were master classes in playcalling – reminders that people believed Spavital could be a head coach as recently as two years ago. His time in Berkeley may not be all that long, because once he rebuilds his standing, programs will come a-callin.

The 2 point conversion? That was set up off the plate immediately prior, when Davis Webb took a zone read across the goalline. So obviously, Texas has to consider the threat of the quarterback run…which is why you fake it and hit them with the reverse, instead. Got the defense flowing one way, then, wham. Chad Hansen runs it to the corner, and you’re not beating him there.

There are a few things to nitpick at from this performance, and I’ll include them for the sake of being thorough, but they won’t detract from the grade. We came in knowing we’d probably have to score some points, and score some damn points we did. Seven of seven TDs (one for every punt or turnover on downs!) inside opponent territory is flawless.

Hand claps for running the dang ball. Doesn't matter that it wasn't totally effective, really. We at least tried to do so and kept it as an option. It wasn’t about averaging five, six yards a pop – running the ball, continuing to run the ball, and keeping the run in the playbook was a way to establish confidence and calm. Abandon it too early, and you show panic. You show you think you need to play catch-up ball to win. We did the opposite. They tapped out, blinked before we did. The tougher team really won on Saturday.

A week after Davis Webb threw three interceptions -- two of which were of the backbreaking variety -- he followed up with sheer brilliance – mistake-free ball, with only two throws that he probably got away with. We haven’t had a quarterback play like that for a long time. (Hey, since last December is a long time, okay?)

Give a raise to whoever discovered the former Idaho Stater, Chad Hansen. There was a part of me that was still skeptical about Hansen before Saturday. How would he perform against a Power Five secondary, whose athletes all matched him on paper? The answer to that one, it would appear, is just about the same -- Hansen ran after the catch, snagged balls out of traffic, showed perfect body control, blocked hard. I’m all in. #HEISMANSEN #BILENTNIKOFFHANSEN

Clear effort to include Melquise Stovall in the game plan this week – more on that in a second – but he and Demetris Robertson’s one touch showed why we’re so excited about the duo. You cannot teach the kinds of moves they have with the football, the way they shake in space and know where to be. You can’t.

There’s this quote from an anonymous scout who was evaluating Patrick Peterson back in college that kind of applies: “We can teach technique. Only God teaches instinct.”

Not much Vic Wharton this week, and Bug Rivera took his place on punt return. I don’t think it was on the injury report, though. Curious. Patrick Mekari also reportedly did not play, if you’re wondering.

Veasy’s three catches and general contribution really started to remind of a more athletic Stephen Anderson. He was a bigger threat deep and after the catch, but did some similar dirty work, including lining up in the backfield in McMorris’ spot, at one point.

Vic Enwere can now join famous Cal affiliates like DeSean Jackson and Kaelin Clay for dropping the ball at the absolute worst possible time, although the best Texas would have been able to do was tie the game. It all worked out. The less said about this, really, the better, and the ultimate result -- getting the ball back for kneeldowns – deserved or not was actually the preferred one anyway, since we could run out the clock and minimize any chance of wackiness.

It appears that every single one of the Cal running backs is capable of surprising me -- over the past two years, Khalfani Muhammad has grown substantially in my eyes, and this year, it's Vic Enwere asserting his own effectiveness. He's got some flaws as a player still, including a tendency to stop his feet and only one real gear and all, but he played a great game. A tough game.

Khalfani Muhammad ran well all night in kickoff return, and I thought he would have gotten at least a few more carries. No complaints at the results, though.

The offensive line struggled at a lot of points, but played with a metric fckton of guts. Both tackles had a tough time on the edge with Texas’ speed, and then there were all kinds of issues generating consistent holes, but at the end of the day, they won more times than they lost, and knowing their struggles, Spavital covered up with those screens, backs in motion, etc, and when we had to throw deep or wanted to, they stood up and gave Webb the time to do so. It all worked out in the end, and I’m still pretty pleased overall.

Two specific wrinkles to highlight, among others: Cal cooked up some stuff to try to attack Texas and generate one on one matchups – meaning they really will trust our guys against any guys, especially when our guy is Chad Hansen – including the sprinkled in use of an empty, five wide receiver set that had not appeared all year yet.

They also dressed up a lot of plays with misdirection motion from Stovall, which started on the first drive, and ended up being something the Bears would draw the whole game off of. Later on, they’d motion and fake it to him, or throw deep from the same look and situation we threw short in earlier…just great work.

IV. Defense (Acceptable-, or C-)

They are who we think they are. They are clearly vulnerable in the middle of the field – and small even when they are not – they will spend the rest of the season facing teams that will attack that weakness mercilessly.

Here’s the thing…it may not matter. Like I tried to emphasize last week – they only need to make enough stops to give the team a chance to win by scoring, which is our ethos, and they did that, come hell and high water. I was actually expecting that we would need an onside kick at some point, but the defense was able to be in the right place to generate some extra possessions of their own, one on a bad ball by Buchele, and another on a tip that went right to Chibuzo Nwochka. That latter one, combined with the fact that we fumbled several times and recovered all of them, makes me think that lady luck was with us on this night. I’ll take it.

We didn’t make any super successful adjustments to stop Texas, which runs somewhat contrary to popular belief – I’m not saying there weren’t any, because Scott and I go over a few in particular on this week’s THE POD IS ON THE FIELD, but had there been any of serious significance, the Longhorns would not have had an increased yards per play in the second half (up from 6.1 to 6.6). Instead, what the defense did was hang on, capitalize on Texas errors, and wait for the Longhorns to make their own critical mistakes, whether it be by drop or penalty or Sterlin Gilbert simply having a meltdown and getting away from the run.

Seriously, if he runs, and keeps running, this game probably goes differently, because the extra men in the box that we placed – or would have placed, rather – in response would still be too small to really slow any of their backs down.

Still, that – all of the above – ended up being enough. They did not need much more than that, and I still find the performance to be inspired – we had bad matchups everywhere against their offense, battled, battled, battled, and did enough to come out with a win.

In the passing game, the secondary was fantastic. There was only one real coverage bust, which is more than acceptable with the size and speed we were giving up. They also tackled well, pushed hard on screen actions, and didn’t give up any yards after catch, so I’m good with everyone who contributed.

I’m singling out Josh Drayden in particular, who stepped in to play for Darius Allensworth when he was out, and I liked what I saw from him in limited glimpses – he was matched up with a much bigger receiver than him, but was active and game for contact too, despite his size.

It also helped that Buchele seemed off even early on. Might have been freshman nerves. Who knows?

Tackling issues were a little less obvious this week – although still apparent, particularly at the linebackerp osition -- because they were at least grabbing the ballcarrier and hanging on for dear life or getting run through, versus missing and allowing a ton of yardage after. Texas had to work for everything, because there were always several guys around the football, which was a welcome change.

The defensive line – led, as always, by James Looney, who participated in nine total tackles and did the things that are tough to see without tape -- recorded three sacks in 90 plays, which doesn’t seem like a lot, until you realize that they recorded a couple more official hits and had some of their pass rush opportunities reduced due to quick game thrown by Buchele and Swoopes. It was consistent, though, and even though they continue to struggle with the run, it was still something. Pressure and confusion played a key role late in keeping Buchele uncomfortable, anyway.

Evan Weaver’s contribution was his first sack! He played pretty sparingly after that, though.

Khari Vanderbilt seemed largely in position and without major mistakes – same with Rubenzer, who is a scrappy little ball magnet and has been probably the surprise of the year on defense so far. I’m not the biggest Rubenzer guy, but he’s played really well, and full of heart, too.

Really, really nice to see Devante Downs come up with the two final stops. Hopefully he can build off of that as the season comes on.

A lot of different bodies played – including walk-ons David Anderson and the aforementioned Chibuzo Nwochka -- because of the tempo and the number of snaps Texas was able to put off, making this literally, literally a team win.

V. Unofficial Other Stats

[1] – In two games against Texas, we’ve been as evenly matched as can possibly be, going down to the wire both times. Saturday could have easily gone the other way, if we’re being honest – on a per snap basis, we played each other to essentially a draw, same as San Diego State, which means we could have gone 1-2 instead of 2-1 pretty easily.

[2] - Serious improvement in the defensive explosive category, which was unexpected. The last two games, Cal has allowed an explosive play almost one out of every five snaps, but cut that in half and made Texas work hard in a bend but don’t break style – an acceptable strategy at the college level, where a larger number of plays directly correlates with the likelihood of amateur athletes making a mistake.

[2] – Surprisingly also a season high in explosiveness percentage from Cal, too. It doesn’t really feel that way because they weren’t going for long touchdowns as often as they did against SDSU, but they were able to create more consistent chunks of yardage this time.

[3] – Texas screwed themselves here – a total of five Longhorn drives (three resulted in a punt, one was a missed FG, one was a made FG) were ruined directly due to self-inflicted mistakes and penalties, usually of the holding or false start variety. Those negative gains account for essentially the entire difference between these two teams in regards to this stat. We managed to largely avoid negative gains and put ourselves in good situations to convert and keep moving.

[4] – Not much to note here with Power situations. Cal will likely end up losing most of these on defense all year with their given personnel, and winning some of them on offense. Enwere had a strong short yardage game on the sheet in going 3 of 4, but I would have still preferred Muhammad on a couple of these looks, including that 4th down in the 1st quarter. He runs with greater urgency and burst, while Vic can be stopped if you grab him before he’s really downhill.

[5] – We averaged over a touchdown per trip inside the 40, which is pretty much unprecedented and is another feather in his/Spavital’s cap for the week. Meanwhile, Texas messed up just enough of its own opportunitites by settling for three field goals.

[6] – This stat is why I attribute the defensive success more to Texas beating themselves more than anything we did specifically. The turnovers that we created were great and all, but there wasn’t enough disruptiveness happening at any level beyond the DBs. Fortunately, Texas derailed first.

Ultimately, this game was lost for Texas in several areas, all of which occurred before the missed fumble call – the kinds of areas we talked about last week that the Bears needed to avoid and that good teams win consistently: turnovers, points per trip inside the 40, and avoiding ill-timed mistakes.

This week, things went our way.

This week.

VI. Special Teams (Exceeds Expectation, or B+)

We’ve seen some bad, bad special team games the last four years. This, luckily, was not one of them, and it may have ended up making all the difference. I’m not kidding.

Plus:

· Khalfani ran into real, legitimate holes opened up by his blockers, consistently gaining positive yardage. He finished with an average of 28 yards per return, and thus far, has an average of 27.46, which would be the best mark of any returner in the Tommerdahl era behind Trevor Davis in 2014 (an inflated mark due to one really, really good game).

· No Texas returner ever got loose, really. Both punt and kick return for Texas got bottled up and our tackling was pretty good – and you know they did for sure when you realize Beito only had one actual touchback. The rest, they were able to return and got nothing doing, thanks to our coverage units.

· Dylan Klumph flipped the field multiple times with two 50 yard punts, and two punts that landed inside the 20. All in a day’s work. Glad to see he’s taking being Crying Jordaned well.

· No need for Matt Anderson.

Minus:

· The blocked punt for safety, which Scott swears was intentiona. I have my doubts, but acknowledge that 1) it was much preferable to giving up a touchdown, and 2) that the safety made the halftime lead possible, because without it, Gilbert doesn’t feel emboldened to go for the kill shot – they had a chance to take a 40-28 lead. A score after the half would have made it essentially out of reach. Not so fast, said Luke Rubenzer.

· No Matt Anderson :(

VII. Closing and Other Tweets