Bowl eligible! The two sweetest words in the English language! Or not. Either way, picking up the win over OSU was sweet. Even though Oregon State is not the greatest team of all time, Cal has struggled mightily with them the last few years. Beating them, no matter, what is a huge bottom line. Becoming bowl eligible, avoid a second straight losing season, these are all key things for Cal. I know that it might seem like a low bar, but before the season, many people had 6-7 wins as a reasonable expectation. We are meeting expectations for what was perceived as a rebuilding season.
Again, thanks for all the great comments. We had tons of people turn in report cards. A note to please leave a handle if you want your comments used. You can still vote without a handle, but if you don't have a handle your comments will be sadly left behind. How sad! After the jump, check out the grading this week and all the great comments. GO BEARS!
Pass Offense
Category
Average Score
Standard Deviation
..609
.134
Rush Offense
.889
.092
Pass Defense
.691
.121
Rush Defense
.886
.099
Special Teams
.499
.190
Coaching
.765
.118
Overall
.804
.127
Win likelihood vs Stanford
.332 (-7.1%)
.234
Berkelium97: Not bad, not bad. Per the usual tradition, the running game and the rush defense earn the highest scores of the week. Pass offense was passable (see what I did there?), as Maynard did just enough to manage the game.
Special teams continues to earn the lowest marks. Is there any way that Genyk will renew his contract with the Bears? I'm guessing not. As bad as special teams are this year, imagine what it will be like with Forza Tavecchio and Bryan Anger are gone. Dark days lie ahead, Cal fans.
Speaking of dark days, our probability of notching the upset against those wretched lobsterbacks has dropped 7.1 points. We probably underestimated them when we made our preseason predictions. I know I certainly did.
Now let's move on to the fun part...well, all of this post is the fun part.
Editor's Choice Awards:
Have Your Pi and Eat it Too:
Our lone editor's choice award this week goes to Heyalumnigo (BEARS!), who gave special teams a delightful grade of 0.314159.
Next up we have the usual set of awards, the Old Blues and Tedford's Sunshine Pumpers.
Guess who's back to reclaim the throne as king of the Old Blues? That's right, SoCal Oski! After taking a week off from report cards, everyone's favorite curdmudgeon decisively took the top spot. After the top two Old Blues, everyone gave the Bears passing scores this week.
|
Tedford's Sunshine Pumpers |
Net Score, Percentage |
| 1. oskiwow |
6.02, 86.0% |
| 2. CalBear91 |
6.00, 85.7% |
| 3. coolingfan |
5.95, 85.00% |
| 4. Old Bear 71 |
5.85, 83.6% |
| 5. prd74 |
5.80, 82.9% |
| Old Blues | Net Score, Percentage |
| 1. SoCal Oski |
3.01, 43.0% |
| 2. Smersh | 3.70, 52.9% |
| 3. tradingbear |
4.39, 62.7% |
| 4. 1988goldenbear |
4.40, 62.9% |
|
5. hk_bear |
4.56, 65.1% |
.055
The Voice of Reason
Total Deviation
1. SierraBear
.016
2. HydroTech
.039
3. mathghamhain
.043
4. hardtobeacalfan
.049
5. Flag Guy
BIG WINNER!
SierraBear obliterated the previous best for lowest deviation (.027, held by tburke27). Great work!
Hydro claims another spot on this award list. He makes the rest of us mods so proud.
Flag Guy, are you the guy who holds the Cal flag at games?
Now let's hear your thoughts on the game. Did you enjoy the final regular season game away from Memorial? Are Beaver fans really the nicest in the conference?
Gameday Experience
San Mateo Bear - "Great day at AT&T Park!
- Great weather
- Found a street parking spot with no meter
- Score 3 tix at $20 each in front of the park
- Sat with friends in the lower area of View - best seats in the house
- Sofele was a monster
- The Bears won!!!!!!!!"
crazedfan - Another beautiful evening by the bay. Aside from the Washington State game, the weather was as good as you could ask for for all the home games.Maine Mode - Thank you to PRD
golden oso - Suck it furd!
calbandbassdrum - "no rain today means no miserable cal band! although iono if i can speak for everyone.
heyalumnigo - Was at the nyc cal bar. Pretty good showing. Fun place to watch a game. Good food. Lots of tvs.
halftime show went pretty good, indie show was pretty good choice. "
fuzzywuzzy - "Pac-12 refs = A Pack of angry honey badgers, geez...
Other than that, and not-so-great special teams, today was a good day for the Beaver to Die. Nice weather, only one interception, (whatever), and the backs are back! Thanks for the tribute to the Vets.
Plus, the formerly feared, slippery, sneaky beaver has turned into a smelly and sloppy beaver. Time to rebuild that dam.
Good sports day all around - we won, Furd lost and looks beatable, ASU defintely looks beatable, Junior Dos Santos can really hit, and Penn State played harder than I thought they would."
Yosemite Golden Bear - Was at home during a pseudo baby shower (we are adopting). We had the game on during the party and into the evening as folks left. I was stoked to see Cal be a little hard on the Beaver. And now let's beat the 'FurdBTown85 - Because the game got picked up locally, I DIDN'T have to watch it at a sports bar with a bunch of OSU dorks...WHEW!!!
Jacobs - A big thanks to my alumni friends who dragged me from the student section to a place where I could actually see most of the field most of the time!
1988goldenbear - Justintv ROCKS!
sims - I watch these games from 3500 miles away and it hurts to see so many empty seats in the stands. SF stadium be damned. Makes me feel like no one on campus gives the proper level of shit.
puresilence - A blast. Crowd was really into it (especially with those fun penalties called against us). It's one of the closest experiences to a true home game, save for the inability to hear our band.
yg - Thank you Seniors!
rocksndirt - my game day experience was a bit odd. watching on computer and being interupted every 5 mins by someone needing something...and trying not to swear at the computer.
hardtobeacalfan - it's a good thing we played at at&t since we never beat the beavs in berkeley!
Pass Offense
storky - Bad Maynard is kept under wraps if he isn't asked to throw. Let's get out to early leads against every team from now on!
tradingbear - "Maynard still unable to make accurate throws, both short and long. It seems Tedford has realized the limits of Maynard's capabilities.
Congrats to Mike Calvin! 2nd week in a row with big feel-good play-of-the-week after Kapp's TD last week."
Ursus Aureus - Some good passes, esp to Calvin on the TD throw, and over the middle. Better job done of getting many players involved. Maynard is making the right read on the long throws but execution is a problem/non-existent. INT was one such throw. There was another throw to Marvin where a little more air under the ball results in an ins-stride catch and Marvin walking into the endzone. Good mental toughness post-INT which was nice to see (Didn't see him miss easy throws on screens etc...)sacman701 - Very good apart from the one pick. Maynard was generally accurate and threw a few lasers, and some of the incompletions were intelligent throwaways. If he can regularly play 90% as well as he did today, we will be in good shape.
UncleSam22 - Maynard did was required to win the game, which is to say he hit his intermediate and short passes to move the chains and avoided the back breaking turnovers. Nothing too spectacular, but when the running game is rolling like it was, the passing game only needs to keep the D honest.
CalBear91 - Wasn't much, and didn't need to be. Maynard played smart and careful, and we won with the horses on the ground. Utah won today with their QB making 5 passes, and Maynard sure topped that, but without needing to force balls. A great game plan that won today and bodes well for the future.
1988goldenbear - Horrible pick, then Zach made some good throws, like the dart to Calvin. Thank goodness the run game was do good, it took all the pressure off the pass offense.
golden oso - Suck it furd!
bigdruid - "Can't complain about a 68% completion percentage. One fairly terrible underthrown ball that was picked on a play that had Jones behind the defense. We were so dominant in running that we never really had to force much in the passing game, and it showed.I thought OSU did a good job bringing a defender upfield in certain formations to take away Maynard's ability to roll out to the left. I expect to see more of this from future opponents since that's our bread and butter."
Run Offense
Maine Mode - Is Coach M. really this good or was Coach Marshall really that bad? The OL hadn't had a dominant game like this since the 2009 Big Game. Isi Sofele has been our most improved player over the course of the season. If we cut down the OL penalties against Stanford I am optimistic about making a game of it.
Truman Hugh - ISI SOFELE!!
BTown85 - Isi was a GOD tonight. Well done, my diminutive friend. Tons of credit goes to the OLine when they weren't holding anyone. GREAT blocking but CRAP on the penalty front. Good thing we didn't NEED those three TDs that were called back.
JustBear - "We scored about 10 TDs on the ground, but 5 of them were called back for holding penalty on MSG and 4 of them for holding on Galas.
Except for all those penalties, great run game."FromCToShining(Blue)C - YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!! Isi gets over 1000 yards (not to mention nearly 200 yards in this game), CJA has a 100-yard game, almost 0 tackles-for-losses, and tackles getting broken left and right? Runblocking was pretty good and our RB's were playing like men possessed. What was there NOT to like? OK, I guess I didn't like all those penalties. CJA got robbed of 2 great TD's. Runblocking does not mean holding!
puresilence - Awesome. Isi is a beast running all over the place. It's great to see that we are continuing our tradition of solid running backs. I'm excited about CJ too. He showed a great ability to run through tackles a la Lynch. It's a pity that there were some rushing tds called back.
Ursus Aureus - "A thing of beauty except for those ohh so annoying holding penalties. Sofele is tough as nails and the Oline seems to be getting big holes open. His 56 yard scamper came from such a hole. CJA is getting more comfortable doing things a Cal RB needs to do (catch ball out of the backfield, line up at WR once in a while). Very encouraging signs here.
I don't know how important those holds were in turning the RBs lose but getting O Line to not hold is place for improvement I suppose."koalaballa - Spectacular! More please. Could not be happier to have 1000 yards rushing and a stable of backs behind Isi ready to bust out at any moment.
golden oso - Suck it furd!
swamphunter - First real satisfying game on the ground since sometime last season, I'm sure. Two backs with at least 100 yards? I approve!
bigdruid - So, I'm really torn here. I dropped our score a bit because we were so schizophrenic - all the backs ran really well, and at times the OL was blasting huge holes. But then late in the game there were a ton of OL penalties - jumping offsides, holds that called back two CJ TDs (Galas was called on two plays in a row!?!). I can't complain about the outcome - we ran all over OSU, and Sofele was, dare I say it, a beast. But those penalties by the OL will kill us against the rest of the teams on our schedule.
minesweeper - Love the way Isi has grown this season. Dude is tough as nails and has exceeded all my expectations.
Pass Defense
sacman701 - Generally good. The pass rush was good. Coverage was soft at times but more often they were in position to either play the ball or hit the receiver immediately.
UncleSam22 - Save the last drive of the first half and the game, they looked pretty good. Still not as dominant as the run D, but the INT on the goaline was a pretty heads up play.
GoldenBear91 - Good enough against a solid QB. Kept them at or below their average and prevented big plays. No touchdowns through the air tells you all you need to know about our pass defense.
Yosemite Golden Bear - Pretty good overall. The final stats look decent for OSU, but a bunch of those yards came after the game was in hand.
ScuttleDuck - That pick near the end zone was just nasty.
tradingbear - Good hitting. Don't mind the PI penalties that much.
FiatSlug - "I wish these guys would wrap up and tackle. Williams and Anthony both had plays in which they tried to get cute and ended up sliding off their man, who promptly got yardage for first downs.
Also, DBs have got to look back for the damn ball. Mannion was picked twice, but he could have been picked at least two more times if the DBs would only look back and play the ball.
Critically, Cal came up big with 3rd down stops on incomplete passes. This fact alone helped to raise Cal's pass defense rating."
alpha1906 - "sunshine day
everybody's laughin
sunshine day
everybody seems so happy today
it's a sunshine day"golden oso - Suck it furd!
crazedfan - Slightly disappointing. James Rodgers was the only receiver they needed to worry about and he had a decent little game.
San Mateo Bear - Mostly ok, but the OSU QB honestly didn't look all that great. Seemed like Williams was giving a lot of cushion to Rogers, luckily the OSU QB missed him often enough.
Run Defense
hardtobeacalfan - we were outstanding but the beavers have an abysmal running game.
UncleSam22 - Totally dominant performance. OSU got nothing going in this aspect and the run D forced them to totally abandon the run in the second half and just focus on the pass. A few more performances like this could get us a few more wins.
Jacobs - So close to negative total yardage! Run defense rocked!
ScuttleDuck - Our run defense looked like it did against Oregon, but without all those 70-yard touchdown runs.
tradingbear - Guyton stepping up. Kendricks fast and hard-hitting as usual.
FiatSlug - "You know that the run defense did a good job if OSU went to the pass predominantly, even on 3rd and short. The run D also allowed only two runs of over 10 yards (14 yds each).
The run defense came up with a big fumble recovery on 3rd and goal for OSU late in the game. It effectively sealed the game because Cal's lead remained 14 points and then became 17 points after a time-consuming possession resulted in a FG."
golden oso - Suck it furd!Flag Guy - Considering I have recurring nightmares abut Yveson, quizz etc, I think the best thing I can say about the run d is that Im not quite sure what the beaver running backs names are.
Special Teams
Maine Mode - There were no blocked PAT's, so I guess that's an improvement. Losing Coley for the season might be a big problem for our already under-performing kick-off coverage. He and Will Kapp are the only two who have looked good on that unit.
JustBear - Tavecchio missed another PAT, and it wasnt even blocked. Anger smash on first punt, but the next 2 were really short. We gave up 40 yards return on first kickoff. Genyk must be fired.
80bear - Another missed extra point? Someday that is gonna hurt. Need to limit those returns and get some kicks into the end zone.
sims - I called the Tavecchio missed extra point, but my friends weren't impressed since they said it was essentially a 50/50 shot.
ScuttleDuck - Giorgio Tavecchio ends his last home game in Giorgio style -- missing another extra point.
oskiwow - Eh. Kickoff coverage to start the game wasn't good and another missed PAT. The kickoffs also seemed to be short (only reaching the 10 yard line or so). Still, Tavecchio was 1 for 1 on a short field goal, which we can't take for granted.
golden oso - Suck it furd!
heyalumnigo - Ggggiiioooorrrggggiiiiioooo. Good thg the missed pat didn't hurt.storky - The missed extra point, and the coverage on the opening kickoff were the two bad marks, otherwise they were unremarkable. But unremarkable is what's asked of them, so they did poorly.
fuzzywuzzy - KO coverage needs work....what's up with the special point kicks?
hkbear - continual extra point fail is a sign of systemic issues in blocking assignments and low trajectory on the kick. how this doesnt get sorted out in practice, i will never understand. on the bright side, we did have a few good plays (e.g. recovered muffed punt and failed OSU fake punt) that may have been more of a result of the beavs' ineptitude rather than our own awesomeness, but i'll take them nonetheless.
Coaching
hkbear - there werent any decisions that i can remember that left me scratching my head so that was good. i did like that the coaches saw that we were consistently able to run the ball, and basically ran it down their throats in the second half - havent seen that in a game yet this season.
FromCToShining(Blue)C - Hard to tell when our players were just executing out there. However, I'm getting extremely tired of our special teams woes and all the penalties. What the hell is going wrong? Why can't the coaches pound some more discipline into our players' heads, especially those of the offensive line? FIX IT.
yg - Pendergast should get some credit for dialing up a crucial goal line stand.
1988goldenbear - Great scheme, I bet coach was happy to dial up run after run instead of praying that Zach doesn't turn it over. What is up with all the penalties? 3 td's called back. A bunch of bailouts for OSU's offense too. So undisciplined.
Jacobs - Tedford seems to be shedding some rust. Just let the qb run enough to be seen as a credible threat. Defense rocks. Did I mention that defense rocks?
calbandbassdrum - gave maynard easy ones to throw at, although his INT was just horrendous so that's not on the coaches. ran with something that worked (lolol) and stuck with. obviously we saw something we liked. props to the coaches. but about those penalties... MUST. COACH. THEM. DISCIPLINE. ARE YOU KIDDING ME O-LINE. you make gaping holes for RBs to run but after you do you just hold onto the defensive front?! STOP THE TROLLING
golden oso - Suck it furd!
cjwethers - PENALTIES. Not sure if this is on the coaches or the players, but well-coached teams typically don't commit a lot of them.
San Mateo Bear - Good decision to go with run game. Good red zone schemes on D. BUT - all those penalties point to a lack of discipline. What happened to the Tedford that focused on the details and a well-disciplined team? Will we ever have decent return schemes for punts again? Or kick-off coverage?
Overall Performance
rocksndirt - only one stat matters.
SoCalOski - "Very disappointed. I know I'm the crotchety cynic, but I don't think my disgust with the Galas / Summers-Gavin penalties is due to my lumbago or propensity to shake my fists at clouds. I don't know whether it's still a MARSHALLLLL hangover with these kids, or if they are just not able to dial in the focus. But it is just aggravating. Top it off with a dose of consistently craptastic special teams play, and you can see why I'm a cantankerous old blue.
Even with that, how the hell did we lose to that stink-pile formerly known as the Normal School? Honestly, even playing as sloppy and dunderheaded as we did today, we still were never in danger. So how on earth do we get stomped by the clowns in that lame blue?
Ugh. At least we don't *have* to win against the furd or the pornstars to be bowl eligible."
puresilence - Solid, but still a lot of mistakes. However, I'm happy that we finally stopped that losing streak against the Beavers and that we're actually bowl eligible again.
koalaballa - "Can't say enough - when our team runs the ball well, everything clicks, and mistakes just go away. Even consecutive penalties negating CJ Anderson's touchdowns. I feel so bad for the guy! They should have just kept letting him punch the ball in.
Great work against a team that we traditionally fall apart against.
If only Stanford could play the way they did today against us next week! Imagine being 8-4! I'd say that's a huge succes.
Too bad our conference doesn't make any sense."
oskiwow - Great senior day - seems like everyone got in on the action - Calvin with the first TD to start the rout, Kendricks with an INT to end the game, Cattouse with some big hits, Guyton and Owusu each with a sack. What a satisfying win. I hope this reverses the recent downward trend that began with the Riley Incident. Go Bears!
calbandbassdrum - 15 PENALTIES? OVER 100 YARDS FOR THEM? WHAT. THE. HELL. the early season penalties haunt us again.... THREE touchdowns (maybe more, don't remember) negated by holding calls. that won't fly by Furd and ASU.... needs great amount of work
tradingbear - Mannion looked good. Cal is performing well on defense and sporadically on offence, but upside is limited by our mediocre QB. Needs a change..
storky - It's nice to play a bad team like OSU.hkbear - good overall and even better that we are bowl eligible. finally showed that we can do some damage with the run - but it just shows you how this team lives and dies with the play of the OL. i dont know why, but i have been much more frustrated with this year's team vs. last year and yet we somehow still made a bowl (thank you presbyterian!).
Flag Guy - I LOVE the way we have been able to run the ball lately, I feel like Isi is really coming into his own. Generally Im pretty happy about the team, but I am worried about the pass offense making plays in the tough games ahead.
cjwethers - Yay. We got into the Toilet Bowl. Now how about we go and make it a respectable season against the Furd?