Dumping my thoughts on the first game here (sorry for the length!):
I was impressed by Plummer. He’s not perfect by any means (he missed on several deep shots and some out throws came out too late) but he throws with zip and had unexpected escapability. In several plays he went through his progressions well and found the open man. If he stays healthy, I expect we will be very pleased with his overall performance. He reminds me a lot of Dave Barr. I would take that.
The OL was meh. They got better as the game went on, but there were few plays where they looked dominant and mostly looked merely adequate. This will obviously be an issue against better defenses. I’m not sure how much they will improve, we might just have to deal with it and match play calling to it.
As others have said, Ott was very impressive but I was really surprised Moore didn’t play more. Was he hurt? I also don’t like the lack of imagination in the run game, just boring turn and hand the ball off tackle. How about some pitches? With a back like Ott getting him outside more makes sense but they didn’t do that a lot. At some point Ott is going to have a Javhid Best like run where he just hits a hole and takes it to the house - it’s been a long time since we’ve seen that. Just stay healthy, kid.
What is with not getting Terry into the offense? Was surprised he wasn’t targeted once that I saw. He may not be fast but he’s a big target. Latu had some nice catches and Mojarro had a great first down catch. But we will need more production from our TEs this year IMO.
The new WRs looked good. I really liked Mavin Anderson’s TD as he showed a lot of speed and quickness. He needs more targets. Hunter played well and he got great separation on his TD catch. Sturdivent was fine but I always come away expecting more from him as our highest-rated WR recruit. And Young had a nice game, which was good to see. All in all, a great start.
Special teams looked ok, but I expect under Wilcox we will never have a great return game. He just doesn’t see the value in it compared to not making a mistake. FG kicking and punting looked great and coverage teams adequate.
Our pass rush, which I’ve said several times I doubted, looked non-existent at least from our d line. We did have a lot of 3-man fronts though, which surprised me and very little blitzing. Very vanilla. I think they will need to get creative to generate pass rush using targeted blitzes, which of course brings risks to it. But we just don’t have - steel yourselves - an apex predator type player (sorry everybody) at least that I saw. It’s an issue that will likely cost us a couple of games.
LBs looked ok, Sirmon the best of the lot. They weren’t particularly electric though and there was no evidence of an Evan Weaver type maniac (God, I miss him). I think they will be very good but they need to be more dynamic IMO especially in tackles for loss.
I thought the secondary played well with the two picks being obvious examples (Earby looks special) but Scott’s and Woodson’s play was great all around. Woodie did whiff on their big TD run though. Need to shore up on tackling and tackling angles a bit.
I thought the play calling was ok, definitely pretty vanilla (although for a Wilcox team, isn’t that always the case?). I’ve seen exactly one game where we really opened things up - last year’s big game, with trick plays and things we don’t typically do, and that was really successful because what d coordinator doesn’t look at our film and put 8 in the box and play tight to the line man-on-man coverage? More creativity might loosen that up a bit and make other staffs at least have to think a little bit. Maybe it’s coming, but then I’ve thought that for 5 years and it never does. At least they took a few more shots down field but not with a lot of success though. We shall see I guess.
On the plus side, they were aggressive at the end of the half and were rewarded with an important FG going into the locker room. Plummer looked especially good running the hurry-up offense - file that away and make good use of it maybe even during the main part of the game? So un-Wilcox though.
I was impressed that the team rebounded from their absolute debacle of a start on offense. That bodes well as last year’s team may have done the el foldo. I have to give credit to Wilcox for that as undoubtedly he had a hand in keeping them focused.
All in all, it was a good game for Cal. After a week of some unnamed posters putting up threads on people predicting us to be upset or that Davis had their best team ever, we took care of business and got the W by 21 points. Clearly we have some things to work on, but there were some positives in this game that were nice to see - decent defense, getting TOs, good FG kicking, and Ott, Hunter, and Plummer all played well. And the team showed some resiliency. So all in all, I’ll take it.
I don’t expect this team to be awesome or anything and I expect they will simply be overwhelmed against teams with more talent like SC and ND, but I have an inkling that they may be less likely to lay an egg than prior teams. I expect we will win between 5-8 games depending on injuries and how the season plays out, but if I had to guess I’d say 7 wins plus a decent bowl game, which would be a nice season for us. I’m hopeful, which is both a good and dangerous thing as a Cal fan.
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