The Novel: UCLA

I. Intro

Cal was scheduled for their homecoming game this week, which might have been deeply confusing to many diehards.

When home is down the road from a Dr. Pepper commercial, set in the neighboring town of 5-7ville, known best for its chief export of playing flat in defining games, it’s hard to look at this 37-7 shellacking as a homecoming.

You have to have gone somewhere for it to count as a return, although I suppose if you’re stretching the definition, maybe backward counts.

After another 3-0 start – this one, accompanied by a bye week to mark the accomplishment! – the increasingly offensively-challenged Bears have managed to largely fumble away their hopes of becoming a bowl team already, a strangely impressive feat when you consider they began the month halfway toward a postseason game to begin with.

Losing on the road to a beatable opponent, as they did last week in Tucson, was an unexpected treat to Arizona in itself – a fun-sized W, if you will – but the Bears outdid themselves for UCLA, by delivering up the whole bag of candy to a previously winless team.

Sometimes, field imitates life, and with the offense already a Choose Your Own Adventure of silly outcomes that eventually end up in the hands of the opponents, just about the only thing left to give away at this point is the game ahead of us. Oregon State stands as the lone probable win on the back half of the schedule, and that is a prospect getting less probable with every passing snap.

Right now, for Cal to take the proverbial next step as originally hoped, will require the tall task of knocking off several favorites, which, while not impossible, feels exceedingly unlikely when the team is routinely being outscored by opposing defenses and asking their third quarterback of the year to throw the ball 40 times a night.

And should they claw their way out of the town’s borders for a December weekend in, say, Tempe, it still might not be enough to stave off increasing frustration in the fanbase, which saw many a Blue and Gold clad folk – those who decided to attend, anyway -- leave in droves late in the third quarter. Most of that frustration is rightly centered around the offense, where nearly all the skill players have regressed, and a group of five returning linemen whose continuity may have been overestimated, but some too, is aimed at the lack of development with, or coherence to the quarterback rotation.

These are deep issues that the team has proven incapable of progressing through so far, and they are the deep issues that are keeping us where the intro began. 5-7ville.

I can’t tell you it feels good to be home. Not when we might be moving to a worse neighborhood before too long.

II. General Thoughts

THEY WERE WINLESS AND REELING! COME ON! Not that they were all chopped liver and the schedule was tough and all that, but this was another game that Cal absolutely had to have not only for bowl contention, but also just to establish themselves in the Pac-12 supremacy. After last year’s loss against them – when Rosen wasn’t playing! – to miss out on a bowl, this could have been redemption. Instead, we went even further in the other direction, which is immensely disappointing.

I’m more than okay with starting to discuss the offensive staff’s future here, but I don’t think I’d put any of this on Wilcox yet. I know that it’s vogue to be the first one on the Fire [X] wagons, but programs rarely make the reckless move to do such a thing – yes, even teams where the coach goes 1-11 his first year – so directing your ire that way feels like a moot point. They’ll give Wilcox the chance to fix this, so 2019 is essentially a given. Plus, I feel like he’s earned the right to a little more time. There’s been enough progress.

That being said, if you’re growing more disillusioned after these last two must win games…weren’t, that’s a very fair reaction to have. Wilcox’s units might not be the ones directly responsible for the losses – win and lose a team cliches be damned – but the buck does stop with him in terms of preparation, which there was a decided lack of each of the last three weeks.

As far as QB goes, whatever upside that McIlwain brings seems definitively outweighed at this point by his crippling lack of ball security, which, once again, turned a game that was once within reach – 13-0 at half! 20-7 halfway through the third! – into two interceptions, two fumbles, and the final 30 point deficit. There were a couple of problems involving wrong reads in the run game at key points, and team isn’t built to play catch up ball.

While I suppose McIlwain might represent the best chance of “catching up”, his inconsistency as a passer helped the offense get in a hole in the first place. Two of those drivekilling drops were thrown behind the receiver, for example, and the coaches did a generally okay job protecting McIlwain, they did fail to help him out by using him as a runner or any of the misdirection stuff until the second half. Only once they started with some of the motions to mess with keys, and the option looks did the ball begin to move.

There’s nothing wrong with playing conservatively and with ball control for a defensively oriented team, but you have to score when given those opportunities. When UCLA pulled back ahead at 20-7 and Cal blew the next 4th and 1, the game was essentially over because of all the possessions they had wasted.

Like against Oregon, Laird ran fairly well but didn’t get a chance to. Chris Brown was the same – promising in limited stint for a game that got away too quickly. Jeremiah Hawkins also brought a surge of explosiveness in limited touches, but getting those chunk plays will still be a struggle the rest of the year. Simply put, there needs to be a game-changer on the way, and I’m not sure they're in the pipeline. Hawkins is as close as we’ve got, so that was promising at least. Continuing to turn the offense over to him, Brown and Remigio might be one of the silver linings going forward, because I’m not sure how much else will be the same in 2019.

Despite the two early sacks of Thompson-Robinson, on passing downs, Cal didn’t do an effective enough job of harassing him. 13 of 15 passing without any major mistakes, and the handful of rushing for first downs was enough. It was, in some ways, an eerie model of what we hoped the Bears would do Saturday – control the game on the ground, make good plays on defense.

They’ve faced Oregon already, and they have one more Myles Gaskin to go, plus Bryce Love, but man, Joshua Kelley might be the best back we face this year. Not only was he thoroughly untackleable one on one, his knack for squirting forward and falling ahead was truly enviable, since it’s what has lacked in Cal's own run game, mostly. It’s not often that the two middle linebackers lose matchups this season. Respect for him, even in the frustration.

With the way Cal played against UCLA, the defense was pretty acceptable overall – despite a lack of Havoc or difference making plays, they did limit the Bruins to a 5.0 YPP, which was fine. That they ended up scoring 30 points was also in part due to luck on the UCLA side – they recovered a fumble inches from the sideline and had a touchdown drive spurred down by a third down conversion that was tipped in the air! – and a couple of short fields.

There was a large lack of difference-making plays on defense, particularly up front on the defensive line after a few flashy plays early, save for the 22 tackles for Kunaszyk, who allowed a few receptions in the pass game around him, but jeez. What a performance.

[1] Based on this measure, you would think that the game was closer than 30 points. For all of the Joshua Kelley domination, this wasn’t too far off – we produced the same chunk yardage as them. The problem was everywhere else and staying on schedule, as evidenced in [2], where they faced a significantly longer third down. I believe Bill Connelly’s data shows that the dropoff between 3rd and 5 versus 6 is the most significant, because it stops becoming a run-possible situation.

Other than that, the only two things to mention here are the thorough whupping we received at the line of scrimmage, where UCLA pounded us in Power situations, and also up front, where Keisean Lucier-South and Krys Barnes got all but one UCLA’s TFLs between them. That bulk that UCLA had up front really manhandled us. (No mentions about my son, please.)

Points per trip inside the 40…well, the less said the better. That’s the second worst since I started tracking this stat – only UW in 2017, when we scored 0 points on 1 trip and had one explosive play on 52 total, was worse.