Cal Football vs. Washington Report Card - Crashing Back to Earth

Berkelium97: Despite the atrocious display on the field this past Saturday, Sam and I had a good time with these report cards.  There's something about adversity that brings out plenty of entertaining creativity from the lot of you.  First let's break down the grades.

Not surprisingly, Goff and the passing game earned their lowest marks of the season.  Our running game wasn't much better.  I was rather surprised by the defense grades.  The pass defense was much higher than I expected while the run defense was much lower.  We allowed a season-low 2.92 yards per carry to a decent Washington rushing attack and kept a team from scoring a rushing TD for the first time all season. And yet you all averaged giving the run defense a 45%.  You all would make great professors at Cal.

You know things went badly when the special teams unit earns the highest grade of the week.  Coaching and overall were the two lowest grades.  Despite the pessimism following the game, our predicted chances of a win against UCLA climbed slightly.  Had we won, I'm sure the predictions would have been considerably higher in light of UCLA's recent struggles.

Now let's hand out some awards.  We have plenty this week.

Editor's Choice Awards

That's right, we have multiple editor's choice awards.  First we have the Dear Abby Award for the individual who put the following into the "name" field of the report card:.

I think my girlfriend is a living curse every time i bring her to a Cal game, and am seriously considering going alone next time to test her juju. No victory for 4 straight years when she is present. What should I do?

Well, CGB readers, what should he do? (Or she, I suppose.  We at CGB support all kinds of couples as long as they read our site).  I've added a poll to the bottom of this post so you can weigh in on this dilemma.

Next we have the Cookie Monster Letter of the Day Award for BlockyTBear.  Apparently Blocky wanted to honor the defense by grading each unit with a letter beginning with D.  This did not work out so well.

I'd expect this from a Ducks fan, but we at Cal know our ABCs.  Please re-submit your report card next week.

Now we move onto our traditional awards.  The team lost this week, so we'll begin with the pessimists.

Sonny Yikes

Well, there's certainly a theme this week.  I think #EXCRETEUS is Latin for #Drop2.

Next we have those who viewed the game through rose-tinted glasses.

Sonny Delight

100%?  ಠ_ಠ

Otherwise the Sunshine Pumpers are the only ones who gave the Bears passing grades this week.

Next we recognize those whose grades were closest to the community average.

The Voice of Reason

This is the second time ososdeoro has finished atop the Voices of Reason.  Congratulations on being so reasonable after such a frustrating loss.  sacman701 has been all over the place in the awards this season.  The two-time Sonny Yikes winner adds a new trophy to the collection while slaphancock adds a Voice of Reason to a Sonny Delight award earned earlier this season.  Finally we have CoBears and our good friend whose girlfriend may be cursed.

Now let's turn it over to Sam and your highly entertaining comments.

Sam Fielder: I have to say, you all are much snarkier/funnier when we lose.  I'm not sure what that says about us as a fanbase, but the customary gallows humor that I was accustomed to after last year returned this week and you all delivered the goods.  Really, you're the best.  Never change.  Onto the comments!

GameDay Experience

slaphancock: Watching this game was like stubbing your toe, pretending like it doesn't hurt, and then noticing from everyone's shocked faces that something is wrong. Looking down you notice that it's actually a snake bite, and just when you're thinking, man that's bad, you trip over the snake and it starts to ingest your leg slowly. Waving your arms you call for help, but all of your friends are slowly also turning into snakes, a la James Earl Jones in Conan, right? At some point you just let the snake eat you, which, for me, was early in the fourth quarter, and then its not so bad, cause, hey, at least your toe doesn't hurt anymore.

sf-gigantes: It was awesome. People were loud. Most of the students stayed to the end! I think we need some new traditions to improve the experience, though, because all we have are a few generic cheers.

Jacobs.: Being a graduate student in the student section is always an interesting experience. The end of breathalyzing students has resulted in much louder cheering (when the students show up halfway through the first quarter) but is accompanied by a need for simpler car stunts. After suffering through the first half, my long graduated friends rescued me from sunstroke and took me over to the quiet shade on the other side. Thought: either get some giant sunscreen or let the visiting team smolder under the Berkeley sun!

coolingfan: Was at the game (my first game of the season, probably last, as I would be traveling out of state for most of the fall). Win or lose, I was expecting some offense and moments of cheer. It was a valid assumption given what we did in the past 5 games, but unfortunately, that never happened in this game. There were few times the audience was excited, but in all cases we were either inches short of the goal line or had penalties taking the gain back.

It was pretty frustrating and discouraging.

But being back on campus for the first time in a long while was awesome. I wished I could be a student again.

PRD74: I have grown to love this team and was expecting great things when the day started.  Unfortunately by the end of the day this team had a poor outing (understatement).  Is this going to be the norm for the rest of the season?  I sure hope not.  What the team put its fans through today was something that reeked of a bad Groupon crapfest.

#Drop7: We did it! Yay!

KABAM intern: 7 points? That's 7 times the KABAM, baby! Go Bears!!!!!!!

TKE Prytanis 79: Despite the loss, a very nice day at memorial, and the crowd stayed in it.

Yosemite Golden Bear: At least they looked good in that uni combo.

YoungBear: Get some damn cell towers

WEARENOLONGERTHENORTH…: WEARENOLONGERTHENORTH…

Cruidzoid: The left tackle (#64) is terribad. He whiffed on a good number of blocks, leading to several Goff sacks. The left guard isn't great either. I don't know if Steven Moore is the starter or if he's the backup, but the oline performance needs to improve drastically if we're going to #drop60 or have the strugglefest of an offense like last year.

Did UDub corners/safeties cover our deep routes well? I noticed that we were mostly playing dink and dunk, rather than airing it out.

I think my girlfriend is a living curse every time i bring her to a Cal game, and am seriously considering going alone next time to test her juju. No victory for 4 straight years when she is present. What should I do?: Drove from LA to watch. After our first fumble i began to slump deeper and deeper in to the hard gold bench of kablam. Even the single TD we managed wasn't enough.

Pass Offense

hardtobecalfan: Goff was off. Was lucky not to be picked off in addition to his multiple fumbles. O-line was horrid. NO passing TD's.... I hope that's not indicative of our Pac12 future.

NinjaNed: Goff messd up early and I'm not sure if he was able to compose himself for the rest of the game. The WR looked scared when catching the ball. It's hard to blame them though when they were getting lit up by the Washington secondary.

dbroman: Goff was off, he still made some great throws, but could only sustain 1 drive, and couldn't hit anything long.

iwastherefortheplay: Poor pass blocking, linemen getting pancaked, backs not picking up the blitz on a check-release, Goff holding the ball too long, Goff not seeing the psr pressure. Goff looked off again today. Receivers able to grab balls not thrown well though. Lasco as usual running in beast mode. We had receivers open in deep routes, but for the most part it didn't seem like we were looking at them, or maybe the defense knows if they cover tightly the deep routes until he reads them as covered then they release the receiver and help under. Seemed like we had alot of receivers running in the same area as well - not well spaced.

CoBears: At the point where a sure 7 for California became 7 for Washington, went from exciting to devastating. When our 4th down stop of Washington got us back the ball at our 28 ready to tie it up, our fumbled exchange, followed by the quick strike, took it from devastating to sickeningly devastating. The other two touchdowns in the first half by Washington, and our inability to move the ball consistently, were maddening. I can't believe this is the same team that has been so efficient and effective on offense the rest of the year.

Run Offense

sacman701: The RBs averaged about 4 yards per carry, which isn't bad. Goff's egregious fumble on the sneak drags the overall grade down.

sec119: I don't understand why we kept going to the run when we needed quick scores.

Lucky1715: Why did we abandon it so early? Lasco is still looking so much better this year. He's worked hard and I trust him to get us where we need to go.

Rose Bowl Oski: Lasco continues to shine, but everything else was meh.

Oy! Oy! Oy! Old Bear 71: Shoulda b/c sure Coulda if only they Woulda

Pass Defense

crystallogrober: Not bad, If you consider that the offense gave up one touchdown and put them in position for two more, then the defense really only gave up one genuine scoring drive, and gave up 0 touchdowns in the second half, and only 1 FG. Pretty decent.

dishonor on your cow: This pass defense has one unique skill: make the opposing quarterback, no matter how pedestrian, look elite. Pass rush was good but the secondary looked more lost than ever.

osodero: It's a long day when the defense outplays the offense. And other than the 84 yard bubble screen, that's what they did.

F*ckTosh: When you have a # 88 in at safety, something is drastically wrong. Couldn't they give him any # between 49-1 instead of his wr # of 88? That just screams "throw it to the side that the 4th string converted wr is playing at!"

Nor-Cal Scott: Best game of the year. Only issue was the one long 86yd TD by Ross. Considering the constant rotation of the young kids I was happy. The future should look bright for this squad.

Run Defense

Jacobs.: I am so proud of how the Cal defense never quit and refused to die. Giving up a total of 3 points in the second half? Wow!

RhetoriCal: You know, if we're gonna give up decent yardage to the option for a first down, the least I want to see is the QB taking a hit for it.

I think my girlfriend is a living curse…:Our tackling looked almost as bad as last years. There was one run play where UW broke 3-4 tackles and almost ran it into the end zone but was brought back on a penalty on UW. Just about lost my lunch on that one.

iwastherefortheplay: 111 yards rushing. Not bad this week, especially since Scarlett was out and Piatt later in the game. Piatt was replaced by Patrick Worstell, outside receiver who plays SAF since camp. Overall, not a bad performance. Kept Cyrus Miles' running in check too which is good.

SchwinnBear: This is what surprised me the most. P12 network depicted a graphic that demonstrated UW's rushing attack focused heavily on the middle of the field and yet we never adjusted to properly contain the threat. The run defense, for being so stout in the past few games, had a let-down where they were being gashed because they couldn't make the stops necessary especially when the runner was caught in the backfield. H/T to Piatt (i think?) for the sack though..that was fun to watch

Special Teams

justbear: Yay another blocked FG attempt! Need more return game.

fuzzywuzzy: #sincewhendoweblockpunts

Nor-Cal Scott: Cole does not get enough credit for his punting skills. 3 inside the 20, a long of 59yds, and only 1 touchback on 6 punts. Brian Anger Who?

Calwins!: They did their job for the most part.

hardtobecalfan: Blocked FG! Best part of our game.

Dishonor on your cow: Used all their luck last week and they were still somehow the best Cal unit on the field. A blocked field goal and great punt return coverage made up for unremarkable returns.

Coaching

puresilence: Baffled why we didn't go for it more on 4th downs down by multiple scores.

CoBears: Our inability to move the ball should have led to some changes in what we were doing, though I'll say that virtually nothing seemed to be working for us today. I'm less concerned about the coaching than I am about Goff's use of Slippery Stuff on his hands.

fuzzywuzzy: #notetoselves,killpregame#hype

beson: I think the TFS breaks down when the other team can get a pass rush and the DBs can press cover. I haven't seen any counter to this in the TFS system. Screens don't work because the db's are too close to the line, going over the top doesn't work because the QB doesn't have enough time. I think teams will follow UW's plan and the Bear Raid will begin sputtering the rest of the way against better teams.

SchwinnBear: Offense: Glad to see some adjustments (Dink and dunk) but was not impressed by the complete inability of the offense to get going after playing in some high scoring affairs. This defeat, surprisingly enough, should be hung on Sonny Dykes and TF for not making enough adjustments to get our offense going.

Defense: Kaufman has done some serious work with less tools than most teams have, but I was concerned at many whiffed tackles I saw. I thought that after we fired Buh, we would return to proper and simple tackling form, but that training, if it happened, seemed to disappear. This hopefully will be a place that will get some serious improvement over the coming week

ST: Well-done...'nuff said.

Mitchgobears: Completely unprepared and no necessary adjustments at halftime.

BlockyTBear - Let's play a game, words that start with D to honor the Defense.: DUHMED

Lucky1715: I really like and respect our coaching staff. I [personally] believe that their focus was more on developing the players and their basic technique and such over the past off-season. And, they've done an incredible job.  That said, I think that they themselves would have given themselves a poor rating in many areas. The players seem to get a little over confident at the beginning and allow themselves stupid mistakes. Unfortunately, this starts to build and steamroll into bigger issues.

Overall Performance

@HoneybadgerVida: zero

#EXCRETEUS: Nam Le curse

fiatlux: BEAT THE BRUINS!!!

HEY UCLA!

GET YOUR OWN COLORS!

GET A REAL BEAR!

GET YOUR OWN DAMN FIGHT SONG!!!!!

and

EAT MY SHORTS!!!

thatf*ckingsucked: it f*cking sucked

PRD74: THE CAL BEARS FOOTBALL PROGRAM IS NOT READY FOR PRIME-TIME. Cal fans have put out a ton of time and money to sit and watch these games in Memorial Stadium and to have even one of them result in the flat, uninspired mess we were subjected to against UW sucks. Flunking your written driver's test, forgetting to zip up your fly, and the Cal Bears play against the Huskies - all on the same level.

pfffffffffffffffffffffffft: pfffffffffffffffffffffffft

VermontBear: The defense upped their game, (giving up only 3 points in the second half), and they were without their best DE, Scarlett, best safety, Lowe and best corner, McClure.

thetownie: Sad. A winnable game against an average team partially fumbled away. Where was the BearRaid? Is this a sign of things to come?

BlueandGold: The fumble return was the game thats a fourteen point swing thats just hard to come back from

Oy! Oy! Oy! Old Bear 71: Our sturdy Golden Bears kept the fizz and fight right to the finish. Felt like a game even when we were doing the bouncy balls stuff. The score was not a real indication of the game itself. It was more like a one TD loss in the playing of it. The score was actually a measure of how much bad juju the Bears were meted.

I'll be geared up and tuned in next week, to shout out for all of south Florida to hear, "GO BEARS, BEAT ucla!!!"