Good and Not So Good, Game 2

hessebear · Sep 12, 2015

Good

Last-minute drive at the end of the half was done to perfection and was the turning point of the game. At the time, I was worried about not using a timeout, but the coaches went with the up-speed tempo rhythm, which was brilliant.
Darius White and Darius Allenworth both had fabulous games - great run support, reading short passes to perfection, great coverage. These guys like look the real deal. Cam Walker also had another good game.
Ball hawking continues. Two picks and what could have been at least another 3 more. I can’t remember the last time a Cal defense was around the ball so much, which bodes very well.
Goff did not have a perfect game - he made several bad throws (his interception was amongst his worse throws at Cal) - but he was calm, steady, and relentless. When he needed to be great he was great. The throw to Hudson was a thing of beauty.
Run defense looks to be solid like last year
Great defensive adjustments. Using the secondary more aggressively on run support and blitzing, taking the middle of the field away deep after getting burned there on the first drive, and mixing and matching personnel well. SDSU has a pretty awful offense, but their RBs are good and needed to be stopped and big plays needed to be prevented. Mission accomplished.
Lasco played very well. He reminds me of J.J. Arrington with maybe a bit more speed. I was not high on him in the beginning, but he now is probably my favorite player and may be our most important player behind Goff (I hope he's OK BTW - we'll need him next week).
Two great runs by Enwere – one on a critical 4th down and his very nice TD run
Another low-penalty game. 50 yards may be a bit too much, but all in all, a pretty clean game.

Not So Good

As we did often last year, we started out flat and took almost an entire half to get going. Unless we get more consistent out of the starting blocks, this will come back to haunt us against good teams especially on the road.
It's kind of like beating a dead horse, but our special teams play was poor yet again. Not sure what can be done here, but I'm sure something needs to be done even if it requires using starters more. Matt Anderson played like he was hung over. Beyond the terrible miss on the FG and kicking a kick-off out of bounds, what drives me most crazy is his distance (or lack thereof) on kick-offs.
Several game management decisions were not great, especially not going for it on 4th and 5 on the 18 - please don't live and die with the kicking team this year!
Pass blocking was still only average. Goff was only sacked twice, but that is two times too many especially since he gets rid of the ball in like 2 seconds every time.
Pass rush was OK, but still will need to be better against good passing teams
3rd down execution was poor all day long. 2 out of 10 is just not going to cut it against the big boys.
Pass coverage by the safeties is still a bit soft. WRs looked to be open a lot, only SDSU QBs being were horrible prevented more completions.

In summary, this is the kind of game good teams win, and the way good teams win them. Stay patient, stick to your strengths, and be confident you will finish strong and overcome them in the end. I’m starting to buy into this team (all right, LB, mea culpa, my prediction was off, although I’ll bet you were sh*tting bricks in the first half!), but next week is a really important game for several reasons. It’s the first road game, against a perennial powerhouse (having an off year, but still they have the athletes to cause trouble), and we will be favorites, meaning we’ll have expectations. I can’t remember the last time a Cal team won all three non-conference games, so this is huge. Our next three games are critical to the season as all are winnable and we’ll likely be favored in all three – and considering we then run into the Utah, SC, and Oregon buzz saw, we need to win a minimum of 2 and hopefully all three to set us up for a successful year. Going into Provo at 5-0 against a good team, but one missing their starting QB, sets up really well for us. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves; let’s focus on Texas big time. Nothing would be sweeter than kicking the Horns while they are down.

BTW, is any other Rival Bears going to be in Austin and maybe want to hook up pre-game?

tanaka7 · Sep 12, 2015