Cal v. Washington Football 9.24.11 Report Card

A lot of comments and passion this week.  Obviously, the big thought was the play calling at the end of the game.  But you, the readers, left a lot of great comments regarding all aspects of the Cal-UW game.  It seems like people were satisfied with the run defense, offense, and special teams.  But they also had a lot of problems with pass defense, coaching, and just the overall performance in the general.  

Either way, you can see excerpts of the readers' thoughts after the jump.  Plus, the grades!  For so many years, you got graded at school, isn't it great to finally be able to grade something or somebody else????  Thanks to all the readers who filled out the forms.  We appreciate all of your awesomeness.  GO BEARS!

 

Category	Average Score	Standard Deviation
Pass Offense	.682	.134
Rush Offense	.594	.146
Pass Defense	.363	.187
Rush Defense	.724	.155
Special Teams	.549	.240
Coaching	.534	.220
Overall	.572	.152
Win likelihood vs Oregon	.168 (-8.67%)	.178

Berkelium97:  These are some remarkably high scores for a loss.  Overall, these scores are much higher than any of our losses last season (even the Arizona and Oregon losses--probably because we had no offense whatsoever in those games).  It is refreshing not to lose by an obscene amount to a decent team on the road.  It's just too bad we could not steal the win.

The large deviations on coaching and special teams indicate that opinions were all over the map for those two.  I personally did not think special teams play was that bad (I think I gave around a .8 or so), but it's tough to give a high score to "Overall" when the result is a loss.

Despite the fact that we are more or less where we expected to be at this point in the season (3-1), we suffered a big drop in confidence for the Oregon game.  Our feathered fiends now have nearly an 85% chance of winning!

No Editor's Choice Awards this week.  Much like last year, respondents generally tend to be too depressed to submit fun report cards.  I can't blame you, though if any week deserved a Keenan Allen Fan Club award, this was it.  90 yards!

Instead, we only have our usual set of awards.  We begin with Sunshine Pumpers and the Old Blues.  It's funny: the highest and lowest scores are almost identical to the highest and lowest scores for the Colorado game.  Yours truly was 6th among the Sunshine Pumpers (I just missed the cut!).  Is anyone shocked that someone named "Tedturd" had the lowest score of all?

Tedford's Sunshine Pumpers	Net Score, Percentage
1. CalBear91	5.40, 77.14%
2. mrjpark	5.40, 77.14%
3. BTown85	5.30, 75.71%
4. blackandblue(andgold)	5.21, 74.43%
5. UncleSam22	5.11, 73.00

Old Blues	Net Score, Percentage
1. Tedturd	2.00, 28.57%
2. mpeters10	2.85, 40.71%
3. Scuttleduck	3.15, 45.00%
4. SoCal Oski	3.25, 46.43%
5. coolingfan	3.30, 47.14%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Voice of Reason	Total Deviation
1. rollonyoubears111	.052
2. ikoolykedat	.079
3. GBB4188	.082
4. npyoung35	.084
5. sacman701	.092

 

Next up we have The Voice of Reason for those whose scores most accurately reflect the group scores.

With so much variation in how people felt about the game, our winners did not have to be that close to the average score to earn an award.  In fact, none of these would have made the top-5 last week. 

 

 

Now let's see how you all felt about the game in words. I bet many of those words will revolved around "Sofele," "Anderson," and "red zone."

Gameday Experience

 

CalBear91 - I was there and it was a good game. Not sold out, and not Autzen by any stretch, but fun. One of the nice moments was before the game Tedford and Sark hung out quite a while at midfield just having fun. Cal fan turnout was only OK, but Seattle is a long trip. Husky stadium is pretty lame, with the track around the outside.

TexasHaterforlife - Even though I missed the 1st Qtr, It was a good game to watch. It held excitement all the way to the end. Rag and harp on the team some for missed plays and questionable play-calling, they were competitive until the end. think about the last two times Cal played at Washington and at least this team showed heart. I'll take this loss, on the road at a hostile environment, over any of the losses we had last year.

bamboobanga - drank my sorrows away at bears lair

Bigdruid - Husky Stadium was LOUD on that last drive, but we almost got it done. Really nice to have a game up here in Sept for a change.

beson - Form got deleted with all my insightful comments. Doooooooooooooooom!

prd74 - A very even match. Thought we had a chance to win up to the very end. Time for us to learn from our mistakes, get better, and Beat the Ducks in 3D!

thatsshady - Moved to New Hampshire recently. No Cal fans I know here, no couch, no table, but thanks to the wonderful world wide web and a nice enough cal fan, I have a stream to watch the game on.

JABear - They love to talk about Price. I don't feel like he's any better than Maynard.

coolingfan - My first game on the actual TV, as opposed to PRD's stream! It was an entertaining game, but it sucked that we came out losing.

 

 

Pass Offense

GBB4188 - The fourth game of season is when one expects to no longer see drive killing drops on easy balls. Props to Marvin Jones for some fantastic play, however.

mrjpark - Pretty bad. I think a lot of it was Clancy's fault. They played well on 1st and 2nd downs, but it looks like we do the whole "Don't fix what ain't broken!" thing and continue man coverage into 3rd and longs. If we just play safe defense with safeties playing zone help up top, we don't give up nearly as many conversions as we did today.

SoCalOski - "Honeybadger just throws it. He doesn't give a shit. Oh look, my guy is double teamed, Honeybadger just launches that throw right there. A receiver just got separation and wants the ball in stride, but Honeybadger just throws it high so the receiver has to jump. Honeybadger doesn't give a shit.

But even with that, Honeybadger can still be pretty badass."

beson - Doooooooooooooooom!

Oskicisco - It's no longer easy to analyze the passing game. For the past few years we could point to Ayoob / Longshore / Riley / Mansion and see how their awful performance cost us the game... I would always complain that if only we had semi-decent QB we would have won the game. Well Maynard is that guy and he did all he could to bring us a W today. Sure, he got a case of the happy feet in the 4th that made some of throws erratic, but how many critical drops did we have today? How many times did the coaches not use Maynard's strengths or have him throw to the best receivers on the field? Speaking of which, how good are Marvin Jones and Keenan Allen? Can we please just throw to them every down?

YleeXoTee- Only one unforgivable way to throw that final ball, and thats out of bounds. Even if you don't throw the ball well you give the receiver at least a small chance to make a play if you throw it short, to the right, to the left, too high, too low, even backwards would have more of chance of something positive happening. (and a better ball on the throw to the 2 would have resulted in a TD as well),

rurata - The drops and underthrown/overthrown passes really killed us. Usually the O-line was able to buy Maynard some time to pass, so that was good. Also, Maynard didn't give up an interception while converting a lot of 3rd and longs. Marvin had two amazing catches at the sidelines. There were still some bad errors made though. Galas again caught Maynard off guard leading to a fumble, Maynard just completely lost grip on the ball on one throw leading to another fumble, and Schwenke (Schwartz?) stepped on Maynard's foot resulting in a lost play. Not sure what can be done, but these are definitely things that shouldn't be happening.

 

 

Run Offense

ikooleykedat - We had a bit more pass plays, but for most of the game, we had considerable success running. The GLARING issue is on the goalline and short yardage situation where we struggle to get a good push.

beson - Doooooooooooooooom!

Oskicisco - "Isi had a solid game today, it was not his fault that he was playing in the goal line offense at the end of the game. Isi, it's not your fault. IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT.

CJ was not as dominant today... But, we run him three times (or three QB sneaks), we score the touchdown at the end of the game, and then lose when we don't convert the 2-point conversation as Maynard overthrows Allen on a fade route. "

CalBear91 - Impressive. We ran pretty much at will it seemed. Lots of long gains. Got more from Sofele than I expected. Play calling at the end was bad though.
Willis Chong - "If we had run CJA or CDB on the last drive of the game, I would have rated them higher. Isi got yards, and the beginning of the game, our O-line seemed to be gelling. Then we stopped using the run game EXCEPT for Isi up the middle. Mr. Tedford, that never works. That's why you run to the outside or run a fly sweep. If he's like Quizz, USE HIM LIKE QUIZZ.

When everyone said that Isi was really hard to tackle, I wonder if that's just a product of our defense not tackling well."

Texashaterforlife - I'm not going to say the O-line is weak, but still seems to be the area needing the most improvement. Also really starting to think CJ Anderson should getting more touches, as in 50-50 with Sofele. I also think Washington D-line came through at the end because of the home crowd, their defense did improve.

 

 

Pass Defense

Texashaterforlife - PASS DEFENSE NEEDS WORK!!!

beson - Doooooooooooooooom!

Willis Chong - "Do we have more cornerbacks or safeties that we can play? I think except for Steve Williams, our DBs suck. If not suck, then just bad enough to give up every big play I've ever seen. That pass to Polk was a backbreaker for sure.

Barkley to Woods will be haunting me until play improves."

sacman701 - Again this was the team's Achilles heel. Pass rush was better than against Colorado, but still weak. Again everyone but Williams struggled in coverage. On the play where Holt got stuck with Polk deep the announcer pointed out that the TE took one of the safeties away, but Holt still should have gotten some help. I can't imagine that the play was drawn up with no deep safety on 3rd and 12.

prd74 - With CP's high risk defense, I would have thought that we would have put more pressure on the UW QB. Seemed like their pass protection had no problem dealing with our front line.

CalBear91- How many long throws did we give up? And that long ball to Polk? We lost because of their passing for long gains. We stuffed their run, and they didn't dink and dunk us, they beat us with the long ball.

fuzzywuzzy - Uh...ALAMARRRRR. Oops, wrong coach. Did we lose the game on a pass to a running back? Not a great evaluator of the secondary, and I thinky our DB's actually did ok, they just outschemed us a few times.

UncleSam22 - Pass defense played well enough to keep the game close, but they still seem a little too loose and susceptible to make a big difference in a really close game. The Polk touchdown out of the backfield just killed a great chance to get a stop and drive for the lead. Additionally, either Price is really slippery or there were some major issues with wrapping up for sacks. He seemed to wriggle out at least 4 or 5 times. That needs to be fixed.

 

 

Run Defense

 

Whohah - Stout and strong in the middle. Did give up some yards as Pendergast shifted to a pass-stop gameplan. TACKLING TACKLING TACKLING.

blackandblue(andgold) - Surprisingly enough, the run defense was actually as solid as ever. Polk never really got anything going, it just didn't matter because our pass defense never stepped up.

UncleSam22 - The run defense looked really stout and did a pretty good job against a good running team. Seemed like the D-line was getting a good push and clogging the lanes so that Polk had little or no room to run.

JABear - Pretty good containment, but gave up the occasional big play, which is a big no-no.

thatsshady - Played a great game. Did what they had to do. I haven't looked at any stats but I feel like their longest run was under 15 yards, and I'm going to guess their yards per carry was under 4. If true, those are great football numbers.

beson - Doooooooooooooooom!

Texashaterforlife - Cal held Polk to less than 100 yards rushing, If it wasn't for that touchdown pass to him, we could say we really took him out of the game. Then again, if it wasn't for the TD pass to Polk, Cal could have won it with a field goal.

ososdeoro - Polk is a really good back, and we did a number on him. Possibly to the detriment of the pass defense. But if you have to pick your poison, stopping the run first is a sound strategy.

Oskicisco - Dominated as per usual. Holding Polk to only 60 yards rushing is no easy feat. I think the stat during the game said he had 5 games in a row of 100 yards or more. If only somebody covered him on that 70 yard touchdown pass.

Wyfind - Where was it? Washington, for most of the game, steadily marched down the field quite easily on the run, especially the outside pitch.

 

 

Special Teams

 

ikooleykedat - This would've been rated a 1 if the Italian Stallion was not perfect in his XP and FGA. ST coverage continue to give me heart attacks and flashes of MJD running through for TDs still haunt me to this very day.

Scuttleduck - Any time Tavecchio ties a personal record for extra point percentage, I'm okay.

Wyfind - Thank you Tavecchio for making decent kick offs and making all of your PATs/FGs. Starting from the Presbyterian game, I find myself cheering louder at the PATs and FGs made than the touchdowns.

beson - Doooooooooooooooom!

bigdruid - "I guess I need to just accept the fact that Tavecchio is never consistently going to get his kickoffs inside the 10 yard line. Giving them the ball on their 40 before half, then on *our* 45 after the half just *killed* me.

Most of UWs kickoffs were returnable - it's a shame we weren't able to bust any good returns. Welcome to the Pac-12, Bigelow."

UncleSam22 - All PATs made, which is certainly a good thing but the kick off coverage still seems really loose. The kickoff out of bounds did not help anything, but it seemed like the ST played better this week than we've seen all season.

 

Coaching

 

Jacobs - I have a cunning plan: I will run Sofele on a short yardage play towards the end zone. Probability of success: 0.001%...

fuzzywuzzy - THis loss was more about executing than playcalling

mpeters10 - Why did Tedford accept the holding call when it was gonna be 4th and 1? That call ended up costing us 7 points. Why not run a rollout option with Maynard on 1st and goal? And why wasn't CJA in the game instead of Isi?
boomtho - Great play calling for 95% of the game... but terrible play calling at the most key moments. A slant to ISI on 4th down? Swing pass to CDJ? The entire series inside the 5? Terrible.

mrjpark - I thought the coaching was great until the very last three plays. Really? Sofele? JUST POUND THAT SH*T IN! I'm honestly REALLY pissed about that last drive because we had it. Their defense was on their heels, and then we decided we wanted to lose.

nedbear - I think Tedford was the only person in North American who didn't think EVERYONE in North America knew Tedford was going to run Sofele at the goal line. The only thing that works in that situation is the tight end pass.

Tedturd - We are now in the fourth game of the fourth year and Tedford continues to break the mold for college football by finding a way to lose while having much much much better talent than the opposition (look at the NFL players from CAL). He can recruit, he just has no idea how to coach. You have a very good and VERY MOBILE quarterback and do not roll him out with a run pass option. Sarkasian continues to beat Tedford like a drum. Between USC and Washington, I don't know if Tedford has ever beaten Sarkasian

beson - Doooooooooooooooom!

 

Overall Performance

 

beson - Doooooooooooooooom!

coolingfan - Disappointing, yet encouraging at the same time. We have not had an operational offense for years, and this offense looks, finally, Tedford-like. Now our defense needs to keep up to provide good balance.

blackandblue(andgold) - Cal at times shot themselves in the foot, and at other times simply got beat. While the offense may have played phenomenally for the majority of the game, the pass defense didn't do what was necessary. There were too many moments when we should have had a sack and didn't. Or we were covering a guy and just didn't drive. I hope we don't make these same mistakes against Oregon or we will get shut out. If we manage to bottle them up like we did last year, however, I'm actually pulling for the upset. I think it's a very reasonable idea.

whohah - This is a Bears team that's much more competitive than the last several years and that last drive showed some heart. But still -- losing games on the road in painful fashion. Are we a better team than the Huskies? On the whole, maybe -- but we certainly didn't show it for two-and-a-half quarters. Until there's some semblance of consistency in the pass defense and offense, fuhgeddabout making the Pac-12 championship game.

SoCalOski - "Converting one of those earlier red-zone possessions into a TD instead of a FG and we likely win this game.

Play a more solid pass defense and we likely win this game.

Have Maynard be a bit more honey and a bit less badger, and we likely win this game.

No critical brainfart drops by receivers and we likely win this game.

Ugh."

rollonyoubears111 - "I predicted a loss with Washington putting up 30+ points. I think I know what I am talking about...

Oregon will destroy us with 40+ points
SC will destroy us with 40+ points
Luckfurd will destroy us with 50+ points unless they show mercy and put in backups for play time at the half
ASU et Brosweiler will get 30+ points
WSU will get 20+ points- but their defense seems to be improving up front...
The UTes will get 30+ points on us...
It's gonna be an ugly season folks.

Our defense is NOT solid like most people talk about. It's not.
Galas needs to quit the wild shotgun snaps.
Our redzone offense needs to improve! These FG's remind me of the Riley era (circa 2008-9)when we couldn't make a TD.
Don't use Isi in a single back or GL formation if you're running it.
Unless they fix the secondary, we're gonna lose every game. It wasn't that our guys were even there and they made a great play- these guys were finding holes! Sorry to be a downer. I'm just fed up with being a Cal fan.
"