I. Intro
Before they took the field at the Rose Bowl on Sunday morning, the Bears had not played football against another opponent in 321 days.
Needless to say, it showed – there were five sacks, innumerable missed tackles, and a 2.9 yards per play average that would get more than one Cal student grounded if it were posted on their high school report card; all part of a 34-10 shellacking that took quite a bit of shine off of what was the most anticipated season in a decade, and with every assumed known playing poorly enough to throw all projections out the window.
I have never used this space as a way to recap the game, of course. Why would I, when you could get that much anywhere? (But if that’s what you want, you should know it started okay, and went poorly. There. Moving on.)
Instead, I am far more interested in using this space to tease out nuance, and to contextualize the results within a large interpretive framework; and here, I acknowledge it is exceedingly easy to see these results and become discouraged about the trajectory of the season. I won’t blame you if you feel immediately motivated to add this as the latest pearl in a necklace of broken promises, joining 2004, 2007, and so many others; especially when the game looked like it might be a Cal blowout early. Jokes flew effortlessly across the timeline after the interception by Bynum, and the community was absolutely soaring at that point, only to have everything – and I do mean everything – collapse after that, in a fashion that felt eerily familiar. This was the “how it started, how it’s going” meme of games, if there ever was one.
But I will offer this, too: the Bears faced about as difficult of conditions as any team will for a season opener - 48 hours notice for a new opponent, an entire positional unit missing for two weeks of practice, and a 9 AM start would confound most teams, not just one that has a new offensive coordinator on top of that.
The path for Cal’s Rose Bowl (or at least New Years' Six, since the Rose Bowl is a CFP game this year) dreams in this pandemic-shortened season was always to aim to be perfect, with a little room for error – 5-1 through the first six games could get it done, as long as the results break right, and that can still very much be possible, despite getting steamrollered in Pasadena. Every Pac-12 team has had moments of incredibly poor play so far, and that’s good news for the Bears, who will face a Stanford program currently taking on water fast in two weeks, as well as the once again feisty but flawed Oregon State up next.
So, the Bears can still bounce back from this. That’s the main takeaway, I think: what they do under slightly more normal conditions – i.e. a regular week of practice, normal preparation time, and not missing an entire position group – should be more insightful.
Unless that game is canceled too, forcing us into yet another last second matchup we didn’t plan for. In which case, nothing matters.
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If it helps, it might also be comforting to view this season through a “bonus” lens, in the sense that:
a) we’re lucky to even have football of any kind in this moment
b) because we’re not playing a full, or normal schedule, that the significance of this year’s results are somewhat dampened anyway, which is what some have argued about baseball and basketball.
c) weird things are inevitable over this seven game slate, partly because the world is as weird as its ever been.
d) the players are getting a chance to reap the fruits of their off-season labors, when we thought it might not happen at all
I have found some relief in realizing how fleeting, rare, and unpromised these moments of community are. There’s no law that says football must continue. So the fact that we’re here right now, finding ourselves frustrated with the game result, is a taste of normalcy I’m extremely grateful for, given everything else. Your mileage may vary.
II. Offense
I think it’s fair to say it wasn’t an inspired debut from Bill Musgrave. The Bears showed some formational diversity than we saw under most of Baldwin’s tenure – some under center stuff, some commitment to empty, some trips in tight with the line, but the result was largely the same as most of his predecessor’s: large periods of nothing going whatsoever, little imagination or risktaking, a troubling lack of adjustments, and alarmingly lethargic, especially once down 17. Despite having no current look at Musgrave, UCLA seemed extremely prepared for whatever Cal wanted to try to do, particularly when throwing to the right side of the field, where they went 2 of 5 for 2 yards on the afternoon. (By comparison, the Bears had 15 targets to the left side of the field, and 12 to the middle. Not much work anywhere, but it does indicate how).
On Garbers: Part of what we had banked on coming into the season was Chase maintaining his post-North Texas form, when he ate a shitload of Chick-Fil-A, traveled to Ole Miss and simply ripped through the Rebels, then every opponent following. It became clear fairly early on that this was not going to be the case on Sunday: he had trouble with his touch and zip on even short screens, and was lucky not to be picked off more than once. Like he did early in his career, Garbers looked somewhat gunshy and hesitant when put in situations where he needed to run, plus took some questionable shots down field when they weren’t necessary - I’m thinking here most of his 4th and 3 50-50 ball to Makai Polk in the end zone, when any three yards would have done. He will need to play better going forward. We all know this.
The new look Cal offensive line also played poorly, between the two Mettauer penalties, the sacks, and nine tackles for loss. This, and particularly the situation off the left side, was extremely discouraging, because there were no injuries to point to, either – these were the five players the Bears had pretty much been counting on starting from last season…but you can also cut them some slack because they didn’t have true defensive line to practice with for the last two weeks. Again, next week, against Hamilcar Rashed Jr and the Beaver front, will say far more.
For those curious, PFF assigned pressures as follows:
3 to Mettauer
3 to Curhan
2 to Craig
2 to Garbers
1 each for Moore, Saffell, and Daltoso
Chris Brown never had a chance to get going, Damien Moore (don’t sleep on him) had a couple of solid moments, but they lost the opportunity to run the ball when they went down 17, so not much to write home about here from the backs. If we’re looking for small positives, all of them look like they’ll be more of a factor in the pass game under Musgrave, as they took 7 targets between them.
Extremely rough day for the wide receiving corps, which did not win down the field once against Jay Shaw, Obi Eboh, or Mo Osling in any significant fashion, Collin Moore’s 26 yard reception notwithstanding. Heading into next week, you’d like to see if Hunter, Baker, and Lee (who appeared at the end of the game) are ready, if only to keep other options open. This might also be a victim of no install, but there were no significant motions or shifts whatsoever either; nothing that allowed Cal some level of disguise on offense.
III. Defense
I don’t know what I can say here except tremendously disappointing. While the offense was unknown, a lot of the defense wasn’t – and outside of Evan Tattersall, Erick Nisich, and Craig Woodson, everyone had played in some meaningful capacity last year. It seemed fair to expect no significant drop off in performance, although they weren’t without concern.
Complicating this, of course, is the fact that Chip Kelly’s offense is hard to come up against unprepared, between the tempo and the misdirection. On short notice, it’s not exactly a fun team to try to play against, even though they had the Bruins largely bottled up whenever they weren’t busy missing tackles.
Ah, yes. The tackling. Tackling was always going to be a worry in this shortened season, and we saw why very quickly – after missing 15(!) tackles last year, the Bears followed that up with 17(!!) in this edition of the Cal-UCLA rivalry.
Pressure was there at times, although not as much as anyone would like – PFF counted 11 times that DTR was “under pressure” out of 31 dropbacks, but only one sack. Several others, as I’m sure you know, went unsecured. DTR didn’t run nearly as rampant downfield as he did in the 2019 game, though.
We’ll start with BRETT(!), who was one of the very, very few bright spots on the defense, disrupting and getting at least somewhat consistent burst off the ball from the nose position. The problem was getting anyone behind him into the correct gap, more than anything he did individually wrong. His grand debut at end will have to wait for at least one more week though, when Aaron Maldonado and Stanley McKenzie become available. Truthfully, I thought the line did fairly well with what they had available. The majority of UCLA’s rushing stats (106 of their 244; Cal gave up 3.8 yards per carry through three quarters) came late, when the Bears were facing down the impact of a massive play differential, tempo, and missing depth at defensive line.
While Kuony Deng didn’t have any noticeable issues getting pushed back against the run with his new weight, he did struggle to get himself in the right place to make plays, a few of which would have stopped drives completely. Evan Tattersall looked slow to react at times in the pass game too, which could be a function of his inexperience more than anything. Per PFF, he allowed 5 of 6 pass attempts for 48 yards, including a touchdown.
Not a banner day for Elijah Hicks either, who flashed positively by preventing two touchdowns from the safety spot, and then again in a bad way, a lot. PFF credited him with four missed tackles on the day, and while he’s been spotty at times (notably the USC game last year), but he’s always been better than this.
Individually, I felt the cornerbacks played fairly well in coverage, with Daniel Scott overall – not only were UCLA wideouts largely limited on the afternoon, they also nearly came up with two picks on their own. PFF assigned responsibility for the long Dulcich catch to Anusiem, but I’m not entirely sure that that’s correct, because UCLA switched the releases to free him and he carried the vertical on outside leverage, expecting help to come from the inside. Looked to me like Hicks slipped on the pick up deeper down the field.
IV. Unofficial Advanced Stats
[Explosiveness] – The Bears did, honestly, a decent job keeping things in front of them. Much of the explosives UCLA produced had more to do with missed tackles than them simply overpowering the Bears player for player, and they still only averaged a fairly normal 5.5 YPP for it. A few made plays and this game looks different, although Cal probably still doesn’t pull it out even with better tackling. They simply couldn’t get anything going of consequence, and last year’s issue of “long third downs due to unproductive 1st and 2nd downs” is still the same.
[Havoc] – Well. You know.
[Power] – It’s really a testament to how well the DL played to get those stops, knowing that they were really struggling in the back end.
[Yards to Go on Third Down] –
Cal vs UW 2019 - 8.6 yards to go on 3rd down
Cal vs UNT 2019 - 8.1 yards to go on 3rd down
Cal vs UCD 2019 - 8.8 yards to go on 3rd down
Cal vs UCLA 2020 – 8.5 yards to go on 3rd down
So, the Bears can win games when the offense is this bad, and have (although. The defense just has to execute dramatically better, with almost no room for error. It felt pretty suboptimal to not come away with a touchdown on the blocked punt…but little did we know that was just the beginning.
Other not so fun fact: this YPP is the worst the Bears have produced since the Utah game in 2019, when Spencer Brasch was stepping in for Garbers, although they produced about 5 other games with ~4 YPP in 2018, too. (I wasn’t joking when I said it felt Baldwin-esque.)
V. Special Teams
Nothing really of note here besides the massive block to open the game that the Bears turned into only three points. Sheahan, Longhetto, and Christakos all performed as hoped for in their debuts. The game was obviously not lost on special teams.
