Vincent S: I'm going to go by feelings for this week. Based on my gut feelings, I leaerned a little bit more about how I felt about this team. For example, I have realized now that every single time a running back touches the ball, my heart does a little skip until I realize that no, we have not fumbled the ball this play. Fumbling used to be very rare for Cal; in fact, we fumbled so rarely that the few times we did clearly stood out to me. Case in point: 2008 Oregon, when Jahvid Best ran halfway across the field and fumbled the ball in the rain, basically resulting in a punt. Now, I can't remember a game where we haven't fumbled.
Also, Coach Tedford came up to the student section after the game and clapped us up, but then waved goodbye. I definitely got a little sad at that gesture.
Berkelium97: I always joke around about our inability to cover tight ends, but these past two weeks have been abysmal. 9 of the 27 TD passes we have given up this season have been to tight ends. It's the same story every time: tight end is initially defended by the LB, runs a route which takes him out of the LB's jurisdiction, then catches the TD pass when no safety help arrives. Whether it's the LB's fault or the safety's fault doesn't matter--it needs to be fixed. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me nine times, Clancy better start looking for a new employer.
I was looking forward to this game mostly to see how Bridgford would fare. I was very disappointed. He seems to have a better pocket presence than Maynard, but that's about all he does better than Maynard. His throws were routinely off target: his short passes trailed slightly and many of throws to receivers running along the sideline were uncatchable. You'd have to be 7 feet tall with a 54" vertical leap to catch those. At least twice he threw into triple/quadruple coverage. Hopefully he does better next week.
Finally, why do we still run the zone read? Does anyone actually think Bridgford is going to get more than 2 yards if he keeps it?
JahvidKnowsBest: Those costly interceptions were real momentum shifters. Without that one pick, if we score on that drive, the game is tied in the third. Penalties were also costly.
TwistNHook: It is interesting that there is this split between people on how they perceived Bridgford to be.
Let's look at the numbers.
| PASSING |
Cmp-Att-Int |
Yds |
TD |
Long |
Sack |
| Bridgford, Alla |
9-21-2 |
113 |
1 |
22 |
1 |
| Totals... |
9-21-2 |
113 |
1 |
22 |
1 |
Based solely on the numbers, that is not good. I don't want to blame this solely on Allan Bridgford, because there are many cogs in a working offense. But 9-21 for 113 yards is just plain not that good. If Cal is going to be Oregon State this weekend, they are going to need to do better than that with the passing attack.
Ohio Bear: Obvious negatives are obvious. We lost by 42 points at home. Sure, we were competitive for 2.5 quarters, but you know what? That's not good enough.
There was some positive to be taken from Allan Bridgford. But there's plenty of negative there, too. We saw why Zach Maynard was the firmly entrenched starter. Though I liked Bridgford's apparent confidence and command of the offense, we saw him struggle with accuracy. We also saw a not-so-quick release and throws that floated rather than zipped. It was discouraging to think that we didn't have more out of our backup quarterback when so many teams in the conference seem to go to their backup and not skip a beat.
We also saw more of the same negatives we've seen all year: penalties (8 of them -- too many) and turnovers (3 more). We needed to play perfectly to have a chance to beat the Ducks and we were far from doing that.
TheBuckeyeBear: We didn't capitalize on having so many calls going our way, and instead committed a bunch of penalties and let the game unravel.
Re: penalties- as a fan, you always think the ref is wrong when your team gets flagged for something, and are jubilantly morally superior when the other team is flagged. This is probably unfair and inconsistent. But, earlier in the game, a lot of calls were going our way. We should have capitalized on that opportunity to score points (OFFENSE!) and keep the other team from scoring (DEFENSE!). Instead, we let the game unravel and were playing if not dirtily, then at least sloppily.
Re: second point- Oregon is a fantastic team to watch (especially when they're not playing our team). We kept injuring their players, so they didn't get to put up 70 points against us, and now who's going to represent the conference!?
Unclesam22: One of the primary negatives that I saw was our abandonment of the run when the score was 24-17 and we were driving to try and tie the game. We'd just had a drive where we ran the ball down their throats and instead of doing the same we just started throwing it around and ended up with the INT.
Bridgeford was a mild negative just in that he never really seemed to get into a decent rhythm. I thought he played ok, but definitely did not show anything that proved that he should have been playing all along. I did think that it was a huge negative that he really struggled making passes to the sidelines (laterally) since those are what compose a large part of the Cal passing attack these days.
And finally, if it was indeed Tedford's final home game, I see that as a major negative. I'm as unhappy as anyone with the current state and apparent direction of the program but I still admire and respect Tedford. He may not be the most charismatic guy but he exudes class and always seemed concerned about developing young men over and above everything else. I'll definitely miss that and that's hard to think about.
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