Cal vs. Oregon State Report Card: Cal loses in heartbreaking fashion on the road... again

Berkelium97: Remember how over the past few weeks I’ve been talking about how pass offense is always the highest-graded category? I have a strong feeling that’s not going to happen this week.

12% for our woefully ineffective pass offense. Did I jinx that category by always talking about how it always earns the highest grades? Am I the reason we had the fewest passing yards in the Sonny Dykes era? You know what? NO. Y’all are the ones who give pass offense such high grades. If anyone jinxed us, it’s everyone who dutifully filled out report cards over the past few weeks (pls keep filling them out thx <3).

At the opposite end of jinxed was the run defense score, which may be the lowest score I have ever seen in the 8 seasons we’ve been doing these report cards. Andy Buh and Steve Marshall would be proud.

Despite all the agony and rage Cal and Oregon have inflicted on their fanbases over the past week, our predictions of a win haven’t changed much since preseason. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Now let’s move on to the awards. Per tradition, we’ll recognize the pessimists first because we lost.

Sonny Yikes

Today we are all Sonny Yikes.

Sonny Delight

Yes, everyone. Even the Sonny Delight crowd.

Fun fact: every one of these scores would have qualified for the Sonny Yikes award last week.

Finally, we salute the voice of reason against the backdrop of one of the most disappointing losses of the Sonny Dykes era.

The Voice of Reason

sacman701 and BearOnAMesa make return visits to the VoR leaderboard while Pacific Chief takes top honors. Grades were all over the place this week, so our VoR winners have much higher scores than usual.

Numbers can only express a fraction of our angst and frustration, so let’s see how you all felt with words. And maybe pictures if anyone submitted some ASCII text images. Just a suggestion for next time...

GoldenBearsBandwagon: As the saying goes, new week same stuff. Whew. Let’s see what people have to say after this disappointing result against Oregon State.

Gameday Experience

Sacman701: I don't like the Beavs' all orange uniforms. Too much orange. But at least they wore their colors.

Wiata78: Simultaneously watching the Giants lose while at St. Stephens in Mt. View. DirectTV only so I watched the Bears on my iphone. Would have been nice to have fellow Bears fans. But I did have Giants fans to commiserate with.

JustBear: Can we play all games at home next year?

FrmrG8r: Waste of a Saturday night

Poor preparation, bad execution, sorry effort

Too little, too late against a really bad opponent

Moosehead: It was really frustrating watching Davis Webb be gutted by a what was a non-existing pass defense. I am wondering what happened with Cal's practices that caused something like this to happen. It was also really demoralizing watching Cal's Defense get neutralized by Oregon State's rushing attach. Originally Oregon State's Offensive Line was very weak. I just don't understand why we could not have handled them.

DavisWebMoreLikeSpidaWeb: um absolutely horrendous we were so bad chad got injured davis webb more like spider web was absolutely horrendous the dude decided to just be a sandbag, sub 200 yards with passing 0 touchdowns and 1 interception for an offensive scheme like hours and you cant even come in clutch last second, maybe im being too mean but im not a spider

Broden_Duff: Was looking for a reprieve from watching 13 years of anguish descend upon my ducks, but got the most Cal game I've ever seen.

Bigfield22: Worst game of the Dykes regime. How do we still tackle this poorly after 3 years? Literally no improvements made, might need to look into the NFL ranks for a good DC.

F College Football!: Fourth quarter's ours! Too bad it's the only quarter we play. Toughest team wins? Yes, it shows.

Sup_doe_library: Corvallis is where Cal Bowl Aspirations go to die...

Pass Offense

ironiCALly: There was a pass offense? Heartbroken about Hansen's injury.

DondeesLooNey?: Wow. This was all on Webb. He really was off. I mean, from the 2nd half of the Utah game to now, our passing offense has been mediocre to terrible. I hope we use the bye week wisely. Hope Hansen is ok.

Hardtobecalfan: worst i can remember in recent history. and hansen got hurt :(

BearOnAMesa: Unrecognizable, except it wasn't. It was just every complaint about Davis Webb rolled into one at the same time.

Harmonpreservationsociety: Davis Webb was a shade over 50%. He was off just about all night, missing some easy throws. Webb went for the homerun ball too many times. Our receivers had a hard time getting open. Teams are sniffing out the bubble screen - perhaps the A&M fans were onto something.

Bigfield22: The injury gives Webb a little reprieve, but this is now the second (ASU) big game situation where we saw Webb dissappear.

Bearturd: Let's face it Webb is terrible. When the money is on the line this guy folds like a cheap tent. For the apologists saying he was injured, was he injured against San Diego State when he missed a wide open Hansen for a winning TD then threw a interception. Was he injured against Arizona State when he threw two interceptions to lose the game. Same pattern last night when they could have won the game he missed open receivers and settled for the losing field goal. They shoul play next year's future QB now. but then again ther is no future.

SuperEQ: Well... Webb finally came back to earth for a whole game.

He was NOT the QB we've seen all season. Just could not connect on a deep ball. Don't know if he was forcing throws, nervous, or Beeve St schemed him up... but UGH!

I thought for sure he'd win the game on the last drive or in OT with a bomb TD... never happened. Really needed Chad in those drives. Hope he heals quick.

HydroTech: Worst pass offense I've seen in years. It was just about inept as you can get.

Christopher_h: There's news that Davis Webb had a hand injury, and I really hope this was the reason his accuracy was off all night (and that he heals up in no time, obviously). Davis Webb has had some picture perfect throws throughout the first 5 games of the season, but he looked off all night against the Beavs. In previous games, he sometimes has made poor decisions to throw it in spaces he shouldn't have, but this is the first game I've seen of him where the ball didn't go where it was supposed to go, and that was really concerning. He averages 400+ passing yards per game, but was limited to 113 against OSU-- you'd expect that sort of drop-off if Cal was playing Alabama or something, but the Beavs are no 'Bama. I'm hoping Webb and Hansen heal up quickly, because we are in big trouble without our passing game.

Run Offense

Sf-gigantes: Looked decent, but they weren't even pretending to defend against the run. They sold out against the pass all game.

CoBears: Good. But too predictable in OT.

DondeesLooNey?: Why didn't we do more? Imagine if we had run more in the 1st half. The game would have been completely different. I blame this on the coaches. They should have seen that Webb was ineffective and committed to the run fully, and thrown sporadically to keep the defense from stacking the box.

Sacman701: Watson and Muhammad shredded the Beavs once we figured out that we could run but couldn't pass.

707bear: Should have run every play. Not joking.

CALiforniALUM: If only we realized that we could run as effectively as them, we could have scored a little more in the first 3 quarters.

PRD74: Our RBs are studly. Looking good for the future.

DavisWebMoreLikeSpidaWeb: run basically carried us. muhammad is a stud. Watson is a stud. These two folks put us on their backs and carried us to overtime especially when the pass offense which we are known for failed to even start up because of our masterful spider

Tailgate Tommy: A few outstanding plays. No consistency.

Mitchgobears: If they are going to give you the run, TAKE THE RUN!

Pacific Chief: Run the ball more.

Bearturd: Very talented set of backs who are a joy to watch. Too bad they don't have better coaching.

Nor-Cal Scott: Don't get too excited folks, it's OSU. I'm sure the Ducks will be running the ball on us like this too.

SuperEQ: Well well well, there was ONE good aspect of this game. Amazing performance by the Oline and Kal and Tre. What a joy.

Webb and Co complete a few passes, this would have been the performance of the year.

HydroTech: Run offense saved Cal. Should have ran the ball more and earlier once it became apparent Cal couldn't pass the ball.

Christopher_h: Khalfani Muhammad and Tre Watson stepped up admirably in the face of our sputtering passing game, and a lot of credit goes to them for making big plays when we needed them, especially by getting Cal to overtime when we were down 17 points in the 4th quarter. My only issue is why we didn't start running the ball sooner, when it was clear that Webb wasn't able to make the throws he usually makes.

Old Bear 71: Got it done eventually

Pass Defense

DondeesLooNey?: Zero. Time for our defense to eat some humble pie and not overlook anyone.

Sacman701: A few minor lapses, but mostly pretty good. Granted OSU's passing attack is horrific, but we held them to 85 yards on 24 attempts and got a pick 6.

JustBear: Well not much to defend, but good job.

BearOnAMesa: Garretson is clearly a green quarterback who's more of a threat running than passing. We handled his throws well but utterly failed to account for his legs. Fitting end to the game.

FrmrG8r: Another week of making most of our tackles in the secondary. Never really tested by a poor throwing team.

CALiforniALUM: Wasn't really tested all game. Congrats on the pick 6.

Harmonpreservationsociety: We barely gave up any passing yards because nobody should bother passing against this defense.

Pacific Chief: Our corners are actually pretty decent. Losing Rambo hurts...a lot. Rubes played terribad all around.

Nor-Cal Scott: 2 INTS. Garretson might be the worst QB in the conference so, again, don't get too excited.

Ghost of Tedford: At least the D did one thing good

HydroTech: Cal defensive coaches respected the OSU pass offense too much. Cal needed to commit its safeties to defend against the run a lot earlier rather than committing them to pass coverage.

Christopher_h: I'm going to need to rewatch the game, but most of my thoughts on this aspect were that OSU QB Darell Garretson sucks and can't hit the broadside of a barn, as opposed to our secondary playing particularly well.

Sup_doe_library: Did Oregon State complete more than 5 passes? Adequate play here--but the truth is OSU didn't need to pass. Just hand the ball off to Nall. Or a concessions stand employee.

Run Defense

Sf-gigantes: This is what I imagine it'd look like if a college team lined up against an NFL team: solid execution on one end, and players who have no business playing at that level of competition on the other.

Sacman701: Unforgivable. Line got no push, LBs were mostly clueless and were unable to get off blocks or tackle on the rare occasions they faced the correct way, and safeties were atrocious. Only gets a 0.05 instead of a 0.0 because we got two stops after Nall got hurt.

Hardtobecalfan: made nall look like a heisman winner

BearOnAMesa: Don't. Just, don't. Looked 2013 bad out there.

FrmrG8r: Just when you think things can't possibly get worse, we give up 474 yards to Oregon State. I repeat, 474 yards rushing surrendered to Oregon State. This is the perennial doormat in the PAC12 and they didn't even punt until late in the fourth quarter. Tackling remains abysmal.

Moosehead: Our run defense did not show-up for this game. Why is it so hard to read blocks and tackle the runner. Physically we more than matched up with Oregon State. This is the one area that we have to man-up. As a team we can not let opponent after opponent just run-over us. We probably could have won the game if we prevented Oregon State's Quarterback from scoring due to our players being out of position. If Cal does not have a winning season this will probably be the reason.

NinjaNed: Honestly, with no push up the middle, it's hard to stop the run. OSU was lining up in 4 WR sets, which only left 2 LB in the box to fill the holes. With a big running back, a pulling guard, and a good O-Line, of course you're going to get a million on the ground. If Nall didn't get injured, the game wouldn't even be close.

CALiforniALUM: We looked super flat - no energy. Feeling like we came out of the Utah game without an edge. This team is horrible in tackling. Even when we get there, we hit high and get no leverage to bring the ball carrier down. I blame that on the coaches. For some reason we seemed to get lured into over pursuing and losing our discipline against ORST. A few well timed misdirection plays really killed us.

Harmonpreservationsociety: Once again they took a BIG FAT DUMP right in the middle of the field. Our front was blocked into oblivion, and our tackling was right out of a junior high flag football game.

DavisWebMoreLikeSpidaWeb: Oh god. Oh god. it's gonnnaaa beee a long season fam. a very very long time. just like OSU's time of possession. this is gonna happen pretty much with every team i feel and sonny needs to fix this. our run defense seems to have taken 500 miles of steps backward after the Utah game. the fact that OSU's quarterback sealed the win with a 10+ yard run is embarrassing.

Tailgate Tommy: It's okay to tackle hard. It's okay to hit the ball carrier - even below the waist. It's okay to get BOTH arms around his legs and make him fall over. It's called "tackle" football.

Bearturd: This has got to be a joke question. What defense? We are in the 6th game of the year and no one can tackle. A total lack of basics. Can anyone explain to me Kaufman's defensive game plan or scheme?

Do CAL fans understand that have been more sightings of UFO's than CAL linebackers. Let's face it, the Utah game was not a inproving defense, but just a aberration.

HydroTech: Kudos to OSU for blocking and executing well, but Cal could have helped itself by committing the safeties to run support a lot earlier in the game rather than protecting against a non-existent OSU pass threat.

Christopher_h: Awful. Abysmal. Baffling. Cal's front-7 got dominated by the worst Offensive Line in the Pac-12. Can I still call them a "front-7" if it didn't even seem like we had 7 men there? As I said previously, Darell Garretson is awful, and has overthrown his receivers all season (or forced his WRs to jump 5 feet in the air and reach 3 feet behind them to make some sort of acrobatic grab). Cal made Ryan Nall look more like Royce Freeman. I don't mean to knock Nall, but he was running through holes so large that Cal might as well have laid out a red carpet for him to run on. It makes me worry about how Cal is going to look when we run into some NFL-talent at RB, like Royce Freeman or Christian McCaffrey. It's one thing when a talented RB is able to evade or power through tacklers, it's another thing entirely when we don't even have tacklers in the same zip code.

I don't know why we didn't stack the box and force Garretson to beat us through the air, because there's no way he could have done it. In some weird way, I tried to rationalize it as a logical gameplan by Cal, so that they wouldn't pull Garretson early for their superior backup QB Conor Blount.

But no, there was no trickery there. Just an awful defensive gameplan that made no sense. No jedi mind tricks here.

Special Teams

ironiCALly: Fake Punt! Show me more.

DondeesLooNey?: Terrible. Robertson muffed the punt a few times, and we had inexcusable lapses in judgment at other times. Anderson was wobbly, but got us into OT.

Sacman701: Not the reason we lost. Anderson hit his FGs to keep us in the game.

FrmrG8r: Other than a muffed kick return, a partially blocked FG and a bad roughing penalty, this unit remains fairly solid.

CALiforniALUM: The muffs should have been handled by having the player sit - yes I'm talking about you Robertson. We don't need home runs every kickoff or punt, but we need solid positional play.

Harmonpreservationsociety: Excellent call and execution of the fake punt.

DavisWebMoreLikeSpidaWeb: Matt anderson did a great job. Keep it up. with two field goals in clutch time to give us any shred of hope is stupendous.

Ghost of Tedford: When ST's are the highlight of the game you know it was a bad game

SuperEQ: Great Fake Punt. Clutch FGs

Old Bear 71: Muffed ko was bad.

Coaching

Sf-gigantes: I'd have gone for the onside kicks late to try to win in regulation, but from a strategy standpoint there wasn't a whole lot to complain about. I just wonder how many times it'll actually continue to pay off to gamble on the defense late.

ChairmanMeow: What did they do all week?

Ballboy: Good use of time outs in the 4th quarter.

ironiCALly: Why did you leave the Bear Raid at home? Tired of the lack of preparation on road games. Really wish the energy in the 4th quarter could be present in the 1st quarter. But more importantly, after four years, I expect a better defense. Extremely disappointed, and concerned about the long term future.

Sacman701: The offense was a bit slow to go over to the run, but in the second half we did a better job of springing runs when OSU expected us to throw. Defensive game plan was incomprehensible. OSU is an utterly one-dimensional running team, and we were playing them like they were UCLA. We should have sold out to stop the run and forced Garretson to try to beat us with his arm.

Wiata78: The team was not well prepared. Didn't last year's team also have road troubles? On the other hand, quite a comeback in the 4th quarter, so give Dykes some credit there.

Lithiumsorbet: Didn't come out to play. Classic trap game and got trapped.

BearOnAMesa: Coaching? What coaching? Coaching failed to adjust at the half and remained skittish about committing to the successful run.

FrmrG8r: Nice fourth down calls. It took far too long to recognize that OSU was completely ceding us the run. Should have put seven in the box earlier.

Moosehead: There is still some work to be done. The problem is that it is not the same coaches situation in each game. Today on Offense it was Webb not being able to connect with his receivers. In order to dominate on Offense (like during the Tedford years) we need to both excel with both the pass and the run. The Defense's problem still lies in tackling and playing off blocks.

NinjaNed: It seemed to me that the coaches had a game plan that revolved around OSU trying to match up with us and making it a shootout and winning on offense using Robinson's speed and Hansen's 1 on 1 ability. What I think happened was, OSU's read exactly what we were going to do and stopped it (which isn't hard, since it's the same every week), and we had no answer because all we needed to do was "just execute". OSU brought out trick plays, misdirections, QB runs, and all we did was screens. I give props to the staff to go away from the pass when running was effective, but how many of those plays were Webb's audible into one? Coaches need to plan better against any opponent, not just the ones we're supposed to lose to.

707bear: Consider removing Spavital's playcalling duties. Some of the worst I've ever seen. Also, defensive coaches are unnecessary at this point. Fire them, or at least stop paying them. Having no one couldn't possible be worse.

CALiforniALUM: Felt like our offensive game plan was not there most of the night. Took way too long to figure out that running the ball was going to be more productive than passing. I can't recall if we had a single blitz, or not, or even a few stunts or other things to mix it up on defense.

Fiatlux: This might be the worst defensive game plan I have ever seen. I don’t blame the players… I blame Clancy, I mean Gregory, I mean Kaufman. We’ve done this over and over through the years… face a team with a totally questionable QB and then give him the time to get in a groove which them opens up everything else. Let’s keep bringing 3 guys and then be surprised when their line opens holes… Hell, I could pick up 5 yards on some of those plays.

We were just coming off a game where the defense was on the field for almost 100 plays - HUNDRED PLAYS and you think you want to do the bend don’t break again??? You don't think they're going to be tired? Worn down??? Idiocy, imho. Bring the house. If they beat you they beat you, but to play that soft d that just keeps the defensive players on the field forever, it’s unfair to them. This is almost entirely on Kaufman.

F College Football!: Too many mistakes and penalties. And they just got straight out strategized.

Bearturd: Normally, you would say fire Dykes, if for nothing else just watching that defense. But looking back at Cal's AD's track record, we would just get another total stiff for a coach. In my opinion, what ever pay goes to defensive coaches is like stealing. Do these defensive coaches walk around the practice field drinking coffee with a thumb up there rear ends.

They made no adjustments to their QB running wild all night long. Everyone in the universe knew he was going run up the middle in OT except for our wonderful Defensive Coordinator. Enough said!!!

Gary Andersen's first Pac-12 win: The A.D. needs to start figuring out how to pay for firing Dykes and hiring a quality coaching staff, even if they aren't going to make a change this year. Of course, what they'll do is go into penny pinching mode due to the deficit from the stadium debt and give the football program almost no chance of helping reduce that deficit.

HydroTech: It took the Cal coaches way too long to realize that: (1) Cal's offense should have run the ball more and a lot earlier in the game than it did; and (2) Cal's defense needed to commit its safeties to run support a lot earlier in the game than they did. When Cal finally did start committing its safeties to defend against the run, Cal actually started limiting OSU to shorter runs. This was a pretty bad coaching job, in my opinion. It them far too long to realize what they needed to do to produce results.

Overall Performance

Sf-gigantes: This was an awful, awful showing. It's clear at this point that something has to change on the coaching staff because it's year 4 and this defense looks like 2013.

ChairmanMeow: Utter. Absolute. Trash. Is anyone else tired of being the conference doormat? How many records have opponents set against us? How many bad streaks have people broken on us?

DondeesLooNey?: What is there to say, but a total disappointment? Yes, we gave OSU a little bit of a scare at the end, but it would have been shocking if we had won this game. We shouldn't have won the last game against Utah, and we shouldn't have won this one either, so fair is fair. Webb needs to improve his timing and throws that he's somehow lost.

But as far as entertainment value, this game was pretty entertaining to watch. Would have been far better for us to have won, but hey.

Hardtobecalfan: great job scoring 24 in the 4th after i thought we were totally out of it. but we webb was so out of sync with receivers and the defense was so horrid in the first 3Qs that the entire game leaves a bitter taste.

Wiata78: Late in the game, someone said the passing game should get better as we regress to the mean. Maybe the whole game was a regression to the mean. Still pleased that the team never gives up. Bowling is looking pretty iffy.

JustBear: Im kinda satisfied when we tied the game. Didn't really care anymore if we win or not.

BearOnAMesa: There are two reasons we had a shot in this game: the running game, and OSU's lead RB going out with and injury. Defense was atrocious.

Next game we'll find out if Cal is only good at home or only good against ranked teams.

FrmrG8r: Really flat which was a huge disappointment. A total inability to stop anyone's run game makes it hard to see who else we can beat.

CALiforniALUM: Hard not to credit the comeback to tie, but it almost felt like the team was acting like it had won the game at the end of regulation. We didn't have the same urgency or execution in OT. Overall I'm not too worried, mostly because we aren't expected to win the Pac12. I still think this team can knock off anybody and Oregon and Stanfurd and looking very possible this year. With UCLA losing their QB tonight, we might also get a chance there for a W as well.

PRD74: This team positively sucked for most of the game, but that being said, they did not give up. I will not give up either. Can't wait until we beat the Webfeet in our house.

Harmonpreservationsociety: We got beaten by what is considered the worst team in the league by a wide margin. Coinflip games are fun against good teams, but not against the dregs.

DavisWebMoreLikeSpidaWeb: We are bad. We aren't good. Our quality wins are becoming less and less valuable as time passes. Texas seems to be in the gutters. I guess we can still rejoice over Utah. We can't beat bad teams ESPECIALLY on the road. We can't win games we're supposed to win. Our rushing defense was atrocious against a pretty bad team. We could not get our touted "high-power" offense to even start up. Davis Webb is pretty atrocious under pressure/clutch time. Our defense is a HUGE problem that needs to be fixed. I don't know how it's gonna be fixed though. Sigh, it seems there is a long road ahead for us golden bears. But I think that's the best part of being a Cal fan. Every game is a toss-up. I think the best thing to do now is to be optimistic and hope for the best in our next game against Oregon and hope Stanford gets pummeled by Washington State tonight. Sighgoo

Fiatlux: I don't care that it went to OT, you get a .1 BECAUSE YOU LOST TO OREGON STATE!!!

I'll say this, this team does not give up. That was a pretty awesome comeback... just a bummer it didn't quite happen. If that final snap would have just been a couple more inches off....

Just so disappointing tho.

SuperEQ: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Proves we can literally beat anyone and lose to anyone.

Seeing Furd and Oregon and Ucla crash and burn has me still optimistic about our bowl chances. I think we go 3-3, maybe 4-2 the rest of the way.

We are a WAY better team at home on Turf.

I wouldn't be shocked if we ruined UW's season.

Go Bears

HydroTech: This was a game that Cal still could have won, and should have won, despite Davis Webb's thumb injury, had the coaches done a better job making in-game adjustments and figuring out what they needed to do to be more productive on both sides of the ball. This game was a coaching disaster not just because of that, but also because the team seemed to lack focus. This was a truly disappointing game to watch after last week's win. Every time it seems like Cal is ready to turn the corner and be better than a margin team, it shows that it's not ready for it.

Old Bear 71: I stayed up late in Florida to watch because, you know, I'm old and I watch the Bears when I can, especially when they are two TD favorites.

But that was sheer agony. Until the fourth quarter and then it was worse when Webb missed wide open Robertson.

Then it got worse yet when it looked like we only had seven guys on the field for the 3rd & two which OSU surely would PASS, or something, but certainly would not run, because that hadn't worked for them at all.

Aggghhh.

Thanks for stopping by. Cross your fingers for a better performance at home in 2 weeks, and hope to get some more responses from you then.