San Jose Mercury: Cal football: Examining the implosion

Link.

By Jon Wilner

Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 7:10 am in Cal. Went running with Buzz and our buddy JB last night. JB attended both Cal and Notre Dame and is a passionate yet reasonable fan of both teams. When I mentioned Wednesday’s column in the Merc about Cal’s slide, he said he hadn’t seen it.  In case that’s the case for many Hotline readers, here’s the column after a quick early-morning cut-and-paste job. Yes, it mentions the conservative playcalling that I blogged about earlier in the week, but it also gets into some other reasons for Cal’s back-to-back losses:  In eight stunning, perplexing days, Cal plunged from the brink of No. 1 in the nation to fifth in the conference. From a national title contender to the outskirts of the Bowl Championship Series standings. From a Rose Bowl favorite to a Sun Bowl wannabe. And from 5-0 to … a three-game losing streak? Four losses in five games? A late-season collapse? The Bears are only now into the heart of their schedule. Having lost to unranked Oregon State and UCLA, they visit No. 7 Arizona State on Saturday. Two weeks later, it’s USC, then trips to Washington (cold, wind, rain) and Stanford (smart, plucky, resurgent). “We’re a couple plays away from being undefeated,” Bears Coach Jeff Tedford said Tuesday. “It’s disappointing to be where we are right now.”

The reasons for Cal’s plunge are numerous and somewhat unsatisfying. The list starts with quarterback Nate Longshore’s sprained ankle, which kept him out of the OSU loss and appeared to limit his effectiveness against the Bruins. The defense has been wobbly (no surprise there, given all the playmakers Cal had to replace). The Bears are mediocre against the run, not very stout on third down and last in the Pacific-10 Conference in sacks. Turnovers have played a gargantuan role in Cal’s fortunes — none in the win at Oregon, three against Oregon State and four against UCLA.  And yes, the play-calling was conservative Saturday. During the crucial stretch that began late in the third quarter and ended with the Longshore interception that was returned for a touchdown, the Bears ran on every first- and second-down play. This included runs on second-and-eight, second-and-18, third-and-18 and second-and-six, and it contrasts dramatically with the run-pass split in the first three quarters. On the possession that ended with Longshore’s interception, Tedford called for running plays on first and second down, setting up a third-and-five pass the Bruins were waiting for.  “Oh yeah, we’ve seen that a couple of times,” UCLA defensive coordinator DeWayne Walker said. “As a matter of fact, we’d just watched it (on Friday).”

Asked Tuesday about the play-calling — in particular, the Longshore pass — Tedford said: “We’d have to be really bad in the running game to abandon it. But you need to mix it up as a play-caller. Do I go back and think, ‘Should I have done this?’ No question. I’m not going to call a perfect game … “I’ve been awake a lot wondering if (the Longshore pass) was the right call. I heard comments that they had the play scouted. But that’s football.” That’s football might explain Cal’s eight days of hell, but not its half-century of frustration. Ask Old Blues about the October slide, and they’ll say simply, That’s Cal. Perhaps there’s something to that — not that Tedford’s program is snake-bitten, but perhaps there’s something bigger at play than a sprained ankle, a tepid pass rush and too many second-down runs. Year after year, the Bears have headed to Los Angeles with a lot on the line, and year after year, they’ve come up short. Under Tedford, they’re 0-3 at USC and 0-3 at UCLA. Never have they been wholly outmanned by the Trojans, and their talent is always commensurate with UCLA’s. Every game has been close — the outcome decided by a play here, a play there.

And yet each time, the Bears have failed to make the big plays or have made the bad plays — from fumbles on special teams to interceptions in the red zone. During Cal’s six winless years in Los Angeles, UCLA has been beaten at home 10 times and USC has been toppled in the Coliseum by Stanford. You’d think that Cal, which has had arguably the second-best program in the league over that span, would have broken through once — if for no other reason than chance. Maybe there’s something about being a Cal football player, or the type of players the Bears recruit, or the pressure of playing in Southern California, or something else entirely –something that cannot be explained. And yet, despite their October plunge, the Bears (5-2, 2-2) are not out of the Rose Bowl race. It has been all of 10 months since a team made the Rose Bowl with two losses in conference play (USC), but the climb to the top of the standings will require help.  The Bears need Oregon to lose again, they need ASU to falter, and they need UCLA to stumble at least twice. Oh, and they need to regroup emotionally, get Longshore healthy, find some answers on defense, hold on to the ball and run the table. Given all that, winning out might be the most unrealistic component of Cal’s Rose Bowl equation.