Special teams had a nice game other than the punt block of course. Coverage was good, a couple of returns were effective, and Matt Anderson continues to excel.
As I mentioned last time, I'm growing into really liking Rubenzer. He has a decided nose for the ball and this team desperately needs to win the TO margin. His pick was a big turning point in the game and it was good to see his wheels on the return as it has been a while. I also like his fiery nature - lord knows, our defense needs it!
Enwere played great, other than of course his monumental, only-could-happen-to-Cal, brain fart.
Hansen is a stud and appears to be non-defensible. 'Nuff said.
The rest of the WRs were great, too, although I still for the life of me don't get why DRob does not get more touches. I know he almost fumbled, but his one play was electric. Get him the damn ball!
Spavital had a great turnaround from SDSU and called a very nice game. Much improved run/pass balance and his call on the 2-point conversion was brilliant. Also, as I have often recommended, he is better focusing on a smaller group of skill players to play more meaningful snaps and get more touches. Well done.
The defense played with heart in the second half and made the stops required to win. It's hard to praise any unit that gives up 300 yards rushing and 40+ points (and will likely continue to do so all year long), but the mantra has to be, give the offense one or two more opportunities than the other guy and see if we can eke it out. Last game it did not work. This game it did.
OL had their best game so far and in particular had improvements in run blocking, which so far has been their biggest weakness.
Davis Webb played as good a game as any Cal QB has in any game, perhaps ever. After looking tight last game and making some glaring errors, he played with composure and made some incredible throws - the two TDs, one to Veasy and one to Hansen were absolutely beautiful. No picks, he used the middle of the field more, no bad sacks, and he acted and played like a real leader - a grand improvement over Goff, who always seemed somewhat removed from it all. Even more importantly, he has played better in each and every game, which bodes well for the future. He will likely have at least one stinker (most college QBs do) and I always worry about injury given how often we throw and our plan to use him as a runner in the red zone (great TD run BTW - love it), but so far he has been everything advertised and then some. Count me as won over.
TO differential. As long as we keep this on the plus side, I like our chances much better in any game. If we lose the TO battle however, we can lose to anyone. This is the most important stat for this team and it is critical that we focus on it, as we appeared to in this game (e.g., Enwere getting more carries as he is less of a fumble risk, less all-or-nothing throws, etc.). Great job in this game.
Negatives
Run defense. I mean really, can we stop making every runner look like Walter Payton or Earl Campbell? Probably not considering how bad our LBs and tackling in general are. We may just need to live with it.
Still don't get why we are so very vanilla on defense ALL the time. I get it that we want to emphasize execution and bend but don't break, but just call one blitz just to break up the monotony, willya?
Lulls in the offense in the second half. Not sure what is causing these (maybe just the natural ebbs and flows of a game), but we could have put this game and SDSU away with more consistency in execution and possibly better adjustments at the half.
Again, we need to use DRob (and Stovall) more. Pretty please. With sugar on top. I'll even throw in some honey, too, if it would help.
Bad penalties that were all preventable. These almost cost us the game. We need to clean these up especially on defense. The last thing we need to do is give the other team's offense even more yards for free.
Dykes' call to go for it on 4th and 1 inside our 40 in the 1Q. He let his frustration get the better of him because of a potential bad spot (he needs to stop spending so much time whining to the refs) and made a bad decision there.
Obviously the punt block and goal line fumble were huge gaffs. The latter is so ridiculous I'm just amazed it's ever happened let alone so often. Could you imagine if we had ended up losing because of that? Dykes may have had a mental breakdown...
In conclusion, even a negabear like myself had to be happy with this game's outcome. I think Texas is overrated, but still, beating a top-20 team on national TV is a big deal and the team and coaching staff should be highly commended, especially as they all could have folded up after losing last week. Returning to my nega side, I'm not yet ready to say that this team has turned a corner or back off my 3-9 prediction, and do completely woe that if we had a Utah-type defense (instead of a MAC-type defense), we might actually compete for Pac-12 title this year given how no one in the conference (or the entire country for that matter) looks unbeatable, and most typical bigwigs look awful (SC and Oregon come to mind). As it is, with our defense being what it is, we are not likely to blow anyone out, and any game we win will almost surely be an Arena football-style outcome. As such, every game will be a carnival ride - after which we might cheer or throw up. All of the future games depend heavily on taking care of the football, doing just enough on defense to give our the offense opportunities needed to outscore the other team, and keeping Davis Webb healthy. If we do that against ASU, we will win. If we don't, we'll lose. You could pretty much say that about every game from this point forward (although I still don't like our chances regardless against elite coaching staffs like UW or Stanford). That's as much a mea culpa I'll give to the posi-bears! Long story short, color this nega-bear happy (at least this week!).
