We thought we should go senior by senior and take a gander at their Cal career.  Some photos.  Some videos.  Some stats.  And if HydroTech has any personal stories of his time with the team, he'd share them.  We start with Nate Longshore.

This site has often been accused of adoring Nate Longshore.  "J'Accuse d'Longshore" was often the rallying cry of our detractors.  Maybe.  Depending on what I actually just said there, it's unclear to me.  I took Spanish in high school.

The point is, if you hate anybody speaking positively of Nate Longshore, I suggest you stop reading.  Immediately.  I LOVE NATE LONGSHORE AND THE REST OF THE LONGSHORE IMMEDIATE FAMILY PLUS A SMATTERING OF HIS COUSINS!  Didn't I tell you to stop reading immediately.  You never listen to me, do you?

via www.natelongshore.org

TwistNHook:  I know that a lot and I mean a LOT of ink has been spilled on the negatives of Nate, none of which has been spilled at his sadly neglected blog.  But in this retrospective roundtable, let's try to remember the good times.  The great times.  Like the Oregon 2006 game or the Oregon 2007 game.  Or, hell, even the Oregon 2008 game.  He seemed to have a knack for playing great against Oregon all throughout his career.  We should have taped an Oregon jersey to all the Miami players.  In 2006, he helped engineer a whupping of them.  In 2007, his play wasn't as good, it being on the road and all, but he still helped guide the team to victory, no matter how slim.  And in 2008, he came in for an injured Kevin Riley and threw the ball surprisingly well considering the elements.  The weather was crazzy that day, but he managed to move the ball and again guide the team to a solid victory. 

So, what are your positive memories of Nate Longshore?

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Still reveling, two days later.  Before I wax sentimental about Mack and Follet and Felder and all the rest, let's start with the hilarious.  Ordinarily I don't pay much attention to the video board announcements at halftime, but the first one caught my eye:

"Watch the Fake, Alamar!" -- Your friends in QQ

I was so stunned by the simple brilliance of the message that I froze, paralyzed with laughter for 30 seconds before I thought to snap a picture. By the time I recovered it was too late and the message was gone forever.  If anyone was quick enough to grab a shot, or if anyone knows the identities of the brave young alums who paid for it, please post it here.  I only wish that they had paid for an extra dozen words or so, in order to clarify that you can defend fakes with more than 10 players on the field.  Hopefully Alamar learned his lesson after the Maurice Jones-Drew game in 2005, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Ahh memories.

Happier times, for my sake:

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Not too much to say about this one.  The 2008 Washington State Cougars gave up 58 points or more six times in their thirteen games...and still managed to beat the Huskies.  This Husky team, in other words, is really, really bad.  In fact, a lot of the Pac-10 is really bad this year.  Cal finished the year 6-3 in conference which was only good for 4th place; that's because the bottom four teams (UW, WSU, UCLA, and ASU) were a combined 0-16 against the top 4 teams (the next two teams, Arizona and Stanford, are only 2-6 against the top, so the bottom 6 teams have only 2 wins in 24 games against the top 4).  Aside from USC, none of the other top 4 teams (OSU, Oregon, and Cal) are particularly great; the bottom of the conference is just that bad.  I had only seen the Huskies against UCLA and in the last 5 minutes of the Apple Cup, so while they looked bad, they weren't awful in comparison because they were playing teams almost equally hapless.  I went into today's game with a sort of morbid curiosity, like someone investigating a car crash, wondering what the Huskies would look like against a decent team.

Can't...look...away

via d.yimg.com

The result was four first half turnovers by the Huskies and 311 rushing yards (yes, that is a three, you are reading this correctly) by Jahvid Best.  The betting line started at Cal -33, which seemed, um, high.  I couldn't believe when the line actually went up during the week, ending at -35 or -36.  Cal won the game by 41.  How do you beat a 36 point spread?  Grab four turnovers and take a 31-0 lead at half.

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If you missed the first part of this analysis, you can read it here.

Also, we've started again with that posting.  Check it:  Interview with Gary Tyrrell, Women's B-Ball Primer.  Beastmode. Top25.  Eating The Enemy.

Addendum added at the bottom of the post (Again)

You're probably thinking: another post on The Failed PAT Conspiracy? 

Yes, another post.  You see, after making my first post, I felt rather unsatisfied with myself.  I felt unsatisfied because I still was wondering what the heck happened on that play.  I like to think I am a some-what knowledgeable football fan.  Sure, I don't know a lot - I mostly just know the basics and use colorful photoshopped pictures to stun and dazzle the readers (TwistNHook Note:  I like shiny photos). 

But I like to think that I know enough to figure most things out.  I am, after all, not an idiot (although most idiots rarely realize they are).  I've been known to throw out a few "stupid arguments" here and there, but I did graduate from Cal (some may doubt this considering my posts are full of bad grammar, run-on sentences and repetitive wording but that's mostly because I don't have lots of time to proof read my posts and I want to keep my blogging efforts more of a hobby than a chore), and I am in some sort of post-undergraduate education program (culinary school! wooo!!!).  So I like to think I have slightly more brains than Dub-ya and can figure things out.

But after writing the first post on The Failed PAT Conspiracy, I was unsatisfied because I felt like I hadn't figured things out.

Originally, I had concluded that nothing in the film really convinced me that Longshore had gone rogue and called a fake-PAT play. 

In the words of our Beloved Great Uncle Leader Friend TwistNHook, whom I share the same sentiment:

There is certainly a chance that Nate Longshore decided to call a fake all by his lonesome. And either told nobody or told everybody and they all rolled their eyes and ignored him. But we just don’t have a lot of evidence to prove this besides something said in some place that nobody can read. And we seem to have a lot of evidence that points in the other direction.

Those who have claimed that Longshore did this all by his lonesome are, essentially, the prosecutors and have the burden of proof. They are not even close to fulfilling that burden of proof. My mind is open to the fact that maybe Longshore did do it. But what evidence is there?

The only evidence that Longshore did go rogue and call a fake-PAT was a rumor, and the mere fact that he bailed out despite getting the ball down on time.  However, that's not enough.  As TwistNHook said in his wonderful legalese, the rumor believers are like prosecutors and they haven't met their burden of proof.  They hadn't even met the lowest burden of proof - which TwistNHook tells me is a mere preponderance of the evidence (dontcha love having a lawyer around to tell you these cool little things?). (TwistNHook Note:  What does the word preponderance mean?)

Stacked against this rumor was (in summary) the fact that the TEs didn't go out, the fact that the ball placement was slightly off, and the belief that going rogue is very unlike Longshore.

In the end, I wasn't convinced by what I saw on film that Longshore had gone rogue, but nor was I convinced that he absolutely didn't 100% go rogue.  I was caught in-between, but more towards the side where I didn't think Longshore went rogue.

However, three things still bothered me about the play:

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ADDENDUM ADDED at the bottom of the post.

Good friend of the Marshawnthusiasts, Avi (aka "Bears Necessity"), thought it might be worth my while to take a look at something that happened during Big Game - specifically the failed PAT attempt. 

When I first saw the game, I really had nothing to say on the issue other than it looked like Longshore got spooked and bailed out. 

However, now I feel like I need to weigh in on the issue after being informed that there are rumors floating around on the internet that Longshore called his own number and decided to fake the PAT against orders of Tedford:

Nate told the tight end to go for the end zone and he would throw him the ball. Unlike the Levy incident, this audible occurred when the Big Game still was on the line. There are other distinctions from what Levy did as well.

and in another post by the person who said that:

There is more to the fumbled extra point in the big game than meets the eye.

The post above was also edited to apparently take out more sensitive information:

Last edited by XXXXXXX;  Yesterday [December 1, 2008] at 11:04 PM. Reason: too much non-public info

So what the heck happened on that play?

Also, we've started again with that posting.  Check it:  Interview with Gary Tyrrell, Women's B-Ball Primer.

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As you can tell from these photos I took, it was hard to observe much of anything.

I've never sat up there for a game, but I feel pretty confident that Tightwad Hill has a comparable view of Cal Football to what I had in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Saturday night.  Anyway, Hydro has already covered much of what I would have to say about the game, but here are a few thoughts of my own:

 • Phantom Touchdown II?  I couldn't say for sure.  I don't know what you guys who watched the game on TV were able to see on the reply, but I'm sure it was a darn sight better than what I could see from my seats.  And I've got better than 20/20 vision, so I really feel for all the people sitting near me without excellent eyesight.

I can say that the in-stadium replay angle wasn't really conclusive; I remember it being mostly behind the receiver, where his body shielded us from seeing whether the ball hit the ground or not.  It was definitely questionable, and I would have liked to see some other angles, but if that's all the evidence Tedford had to go on if he was deciding to challenge, I can see where he might have hesitated.  Of course, by the time I got a text from a friend watching back home saying "Totally not a catch on that TD...", the extra point had long been kicked.

I will commend the LA Coliseum staff for consistenty showing replays in the stadium, even after questionable calls where the home team might have benefited from an oversight.  I've been to more than a couple stadiums that refused to show a replay precisely when the visiting crowd wanted to see it most (Arizona comes immediately to mind), and their accomodation was much appreciated, especially given my distant vantage point.

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Or, perhaps more appropriately, Shivering in Victory.  The associated press calls this game "Berkeley's worst game-day rainstorm in a decade."  I'm not sure if it was any worse than last year's USC game, which was definitely colder, but it was close.  Regardless, I feel a lot better now than I did after USC last year, and I doubt any Cal fans are complaining about the win.  And besides, RemorsefulBruinBabe reports that the ESPN crew gave a nice shout out to those of us who toughed it out in the rain: "If you are still in the stands right now [~45 seconds left in the game], you are a great fan."

There were 8 turnovers in the game, not including a snap out of the endzone for our long coveted safety (finally!  it seemed impossible that the refs could call anything else, but I was holding my breath and looking for a flag).  It was a pretty volatile game with a number of rapid, intense swings, especially in the second quarter as the teams tried to out-turnover each other.  Yet the biggest play of the game wasn't one of our four (!) lost fumbles, or even Worrell's huge interception at the end of the second half.  In a game full of huge plays, the biggest was a 5 yard false start.

via www.dkimages.com

He's no Ed Hochuli

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"If you multiply Tha1 by any integer, you get that integer."  via www.fearthebeard.org

Well, we've taken a look at many teams' stats over the past few weeks.  With the bye week, it seemed prudent to take a moment and actually LOOK at Cal's numbers.  There's been a lot of perception of stats, so let's see what the stats actually are. 

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So last week against ASU I saw something which caught my eye.  In the past 4 years or so that I've really started to study and analyze the Cal offense I saw the QB do something I've never seen them do before.  I saw a Cal QB create-a-play at the line of scrimmage.

You see, I've said many times before, Cal QBs cannot do their best Peyton Manning impressions (meaning they call any play they want at the LOS or create-a-play at the LOS).  QBs in the Cal offense are allowed to change the direction of runs, allowed to choose between the run or pass play on option plays (where the offense goes to the LOS with two plays in mind), and is allowed to audible to pre-selected plays which are packaged jointly with the personnel and formation on the field. 

But on Saturday against ASU, I am pretty sure we witnessed Longshore doing a Peyton Manning-esque create-a-play at the LOS. 

Let's have a look.

Above is the pre-snap look.  Cal has 11 personnel on the field (3 WRs, 1 TE, 1 RB).  Longshore is in shotgun with twin WRs to the open side of the field along with the TE ("open side" = the side of the offense with more field).

[Author addition post-publishing:

dballisloose asked a very good question in the comments:

Why do you always start off by saying “Cal has 11 personnel on the field”? How many did you expect them to have? I say, if there are 10 or 12, go ahead and mention it ;-)

I’m sorry, I guess I haven’t explained this before, but when I say “11 personnel” I don’t mean 11 people on the field.

Personnel packages are given numbers which correspond to how many RBs, TEs, or WRs, are on the field.

The first digit corresponds to how many RBs are on the field. The second digit corresponds to how many TEs are on the field. The number of WRs is implied. Thus 11 personnel = 1 RB (first digit), 1 TE (second digit), (3 WRs implied). 12 personnel = 1 RB, 2 TEs, (2 WRs implied). And so on…

When Cal is on defense, you can see the coaching assistant on the east sideline put up a yellow card with such numbers alerting the defensive players on the field of the offensive substitutions and what offensive personnel package the offense has on the field.]

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PreGame

For the OSU game last year, I went onto the field for pre-game warm ups.  Snapped some good photos and potentially jinxed my beloved UC Cal (GO FIGHTING GOLDEN UC CAL!).  So, I was nervous returning to the scene of the crime.  What if the team lost in emotionally devastating fashion again?  I even wore the same shirt that I wore for the OSU game.  WHAT WAS I THINKING!?!?!?!?  Besides, yknow, that for some insane reason "My off the field actions can affect on the field action." 

But I did it for you, the reader.  I was willing to jinx the team and potentially cause myself to cry all to bring back some photos for you guys, SO YOU BETTER LIKE THEM.  Triple Los Sigh!

Honestly, you don't even have to get onto the field to get close to the team.  If you stand by the North Tunnel, players are running in and out all the time.

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