Jahvid Best will enter the NFL draft.

Can’t say I’m surprised, but it’s always sad to see those stars leave early. I wish him great success.

More thoughts from Ken:

I wish him the best as well and am similarly as unsurprised.

I worry a great deal about his future in the NFL with his injuries and his style which didn’t seem to have as much success when matched up against players with speed (and all the players in the NFL have speed). But here’s hoping he’s Cal’s next example of good play in the NFL following in the recent footsteps of Lynch, DeSean, and Rodgers.

For those who haven’t heard, Tedford announced at the Press Conference on Tuesday that Best will not play in the UW game. This actually surprised me. He hasn’t had any concussion symptoms for multiple weeks and his sore back is a lot better from what I’ve heard. But I think it’s a sign of just how careful Tedford wants to be with Best after such a horrific fall.

I’m pretty confident he’ll be back for the bowl game.

Jahvid Best seems to have sustained a concussion but otherwise can move his extremities, according to the AP.

That’s fantastic news after what was a terrifying scene at Memorial Stadium tonight.

Hopefully a concussion is all it is. However, given that Best apparently suffered a “mild” (and I use the term loosely) concussion against Arizona State, let me say this as a Cal fan.

After two concussions, Best should sit it out. And I’m talking the month of November, and possibly December.

Brain injuries are serious business. Read Malcolm Gladwell’s piece in the New Yorker if you want to question yourself about being a football fan, given the damage it does to the brains of many players.

I’m sure the doctors and coaches at Cal take this seriously. So should the fans. Jahvid Best is a wonderful athlete to behold. But I’m not interested in watching him risk serious brain injury by returning too soon. If Jahvid needs to hang ‘em up for the rest of the season, I’m going to take a breath and say it’s absolutely the right thing to do. Even if we want to see him play, and Cal win, his health comes first.

All our best to Jahvid and his family.

Well, it’s not often I get surprised by something, but this one caught me completely off-guard. Perhaps it is because I haven’t been able to go to practice and watch (and so haven’t seen D’Amato come on)…

In any case, D’Amato has been named the starting place kicker for the Maryland game. Tavecchio will do kickoffs.

Which is about the exact opposite of what I expected at the beginning of fall camp. I thought that Tavecchio would be the place kicker and that if D’Amato was going to play, he’d be doing kickoffs. But when I saw D’Amato practice during the fall and his kickoffs were not that long, I assumed Tavecchio was going to have all the kicking duties and perhaps Seawright would overtake Tavecchio for place kicker.

Let’s hope Tavecchio’s form is at its best, because when it is he can get the ball well into the endzone on kickoffs (and when he isn’t it can be pretty short), which to me is what we’re most missing on special teams.

Well surprising no one who’s name isn’t Brock Mansion’s little brother (because even Brock himself saw the writing on the wall), Tedford announced that Riley will be the starter in the Maryland game.

I figured this is as good a time as ever to speak to my expectations for Riley this season.

I try really hard to be an honest assessor of the Bears, but I find myself having a hard time not being a homer for Riley this fall. Remember, I’m the same guy who, while not reaching Hydrolic Technician levels, was defensive of Longshore’s performance in 2007 and not sold on Riley after the Armed Forces bowl. I was also unsure of who I thought should start in just about every 2008 game (although the Emerald Bowl answer a lot of my unanswered questions in Riley’s favor).

Point being, I’m not naturally a Riley Homer.

But I just can’t get the feeling out of my head that this is going to be a break-through year for him. I get the feeling his mechanics are very good and what defects develop over the course of a season (it happens to every QB) will be easily corrected during practice. I get the feeling that the game slowed down A LOT for him in the off-season and he’ll make a lot of good reads. I get the feeling that he gets the progressions and when and how to know when to use his outlet options while not ignoring the big play opportunities. I get the feeling that he’s learned how to deal with defensive pressure both how to read their formations and after the snap.

But most importantly, I get the feeling that this is Riley’s team. Nobody was fooled by the off-season indecision of Tedford and every player instinctively knew who was going to be under center when the season kicked off. And this team needed that. They needed to know who their leader in the huddle was going to be.

So I’m left being a Riley Homer, or better stated, a Riley believer. If he delivers, it’s going to open up the run game for Best and this may be a very special season in Berkeley.

OUCH!

Looks like that knee injury that Tad Smith got early in the scrimmage on Tuesday was as bad as it could be: Torn ACL. He’s out for the season.

There’s a lot of depth at tight end so while Tad will be missed, I don’t think it’ll change things much. Anthony Miller becomes the new #1 with Curran and Sparks being his biggest challengers for now and Ladner having the skills to press for time too once he recovers from his injuries.

Well, three Bears were drafted: Mack, Follet and Morrah.

UPDATE on free-agents as of 1:00 PM PDT Monday:

• Rulon Davis signed with Denver.
• Will To’ufo’ou signed with Chicago.
• Anthony Felder signed with San Diego.
• Nick Sundberg signed with Carolina.
• Longshore has been invited to tryout at Miami

Some quick thoughts:

• Mack at #21 overall… that says something about his play and potential at center. He’s getting the reward for all his years of hard preparation and hard play. From what I understand it’s been a full decade since a center went as high as Mack.
• Morrah as one of the last players drafted… what was he thinking by going pro? I think he would have done a lot better in the draft with another year under his belt. He would never have been a 1st rounder, but he could have been a 3rd rounder and there’s an amazingly big difference in your long term prospects (team made bigger investment in you, thereby ensuring they’re not going to dump you for no reason) when you’re a middle rounder than one of the last picks. Morrah was just a 5 minute conversation from going undrafted. I wish the best for him and hope that he recovers from what appears to have been a bad decision. He always struck me as a very nice guy when interviewing him.
• Follett in the 7th round… personally I think the Lions got a good deal on Follett. He’s got both the determination and the raw athletic skill to be a servicable NFL linebacker.
• Personally I think Rulon Davis is the player who most deserved to get drafted but didn’t. I know it’s all about his injury prone history, but it’s also good to hear he was picked up by the Denver Broncos as a free-agent today.
• One of my personal favorite players on the Cal team the last few years was Will To’ufo’ou so I hate to say this, but I think yesterday was proof that college was the end of the road for both him and Worrell Williams. They’re players who played with a lot of heart and were very good college players but just don’t have the tools (Williams lacks speed, To’ufo’ou lacks size) to play at the pro level. I suspect both will get a shot with a free agent contract, but I fear particularly for To’ufo’ou that it won’t last long.
• Finally, Longshore. People keep telling me that he’s going to get picked up as a free-agent but I just don’t see it, and I’m saying this as a guy who was supportive of him when the walls came crumbling down in 2007. He’s just got too many question marks in my mind. But I of course could be wrong.

So, there you have it. There’s also Felder and Sundberg out there who could get picked up by someone.

Overall, what this says to me is that last years team was a lot less “talent rich” than it appeared. Anyone know when the last time Cal had only three drafted guys? (I don’t feel like spending the time to figure out how to figure it out.) Last year clearly was not the most talented Cal team out there. With that in mind, it seems to me that expectations last year were a bit high and since the team met those expectations I’ve got to feel like the team over-achieved a bit. I still would have liked to walk away from both Maryland and Arizona without that bad taste in my mouth to really feel like they fully achieved everything the team was capable of, but at the same time, I don’t feel so bad about walking away from Corvalis knowing we lost to a team with 4 defensive draft picks and 6 overall.

UPDATE on how weak draft effects recruiting:

Some have mentioned that they see the biggest impact of the weak draft being on recruiting. The thought is that the potential recruits are looking at how much respect the program gets with NFL teams. They’re looking to get drafted themselves someday and they would hope that they’d get the benefit of the doubt. Some teams get it (USC) some teams don’t (Washington State). Where does Cal fit in?

Well, I think it is a reasonable perspective, but I think it’s not a very big deal to have one weak year. Cal has had a lot of strong years of late, and this is just one setback. When one couples all the other positives with the Bears including the press that guys like Jahvid Best is getting now and DeSean, Marshawn and Rodgers have gotten in the past. Everyone besides USC on the west coast has had a bad year in the last few years, Cal would not be alone here. Add in that Cal has a lot going for it with the SAHPC, a team with a 4 season bowl winning streak and a number of other upsides and I think recruits will be plenty satisfied that one weak draft year is not indicative of the program.

Most of you who read the spring practice reports from all the other forums already know this, but Tad Smith’s injury looks to be on the short side of the initial estimates. They expect him to be back before fall practice.

That’s very good news. While Anthony Miller looks to have what it takes to make the jump to starter, I don’t get the feeling Curran or Ladner (yet) would be a very satisfying replacement for Morrah. Particularly since I get the feeling we’ll be seeing more two tight-end sets in 2009 (with less strength at fullback, it’s a different way to get an extra blocker in there), it’s important we have two guys (Tad and Anthony) who can fill that role.

Yes, it’s official. Longshore is going to start the Emerald Bowl.

Most people thought when Tedford openned back up the QB position for the Emerald bowl it was just a ploy to either keep Miami on their toes or to keep Riley motivated to push hard. Well Tedford outdid himself in the surprise category yesterday by announcing that Longshore would start.

Make sure to vote in the poll. Is this the right choice?

I’m not one who cares much about this sort of thing, but just for the record:

1. DeSean Jackson: 2nd round, #18 (49th overall) to Philadelphia Eagles
2. Craig Stevens: 3rd round, #12 (85th) to Tennessee Titans
3. Thomas DeCoud: 3rd round, #35 (98th) to Atlanta Falcons
4. Lavelle Hawkins: 4th round, #27 (126th) to Tennessee Titans
5. Mike Gibson: 6th round, #18 (184th) to Philadelphia Eagles
6. Justin Forsett: 7th round, #24 (233rd) to Seattle Seahawks

DeSean slipping to mid-second round and Mike Gibson getting drafted were only two surprises in the Cal list.

Back to Cal football…

DeSean Jackson announced at the 1 PM press phone conference that he is going to go pro. No surprise there.

I wish him the best at the next level.

I had not been one who thought it likely that Alex Mack, the Bears awesome center, would head to the NFL early. Nevertheless there were those that thought he may leave. The good news is that he has announced his intention to stay.

Still no work on DeSean, who everyone is assuming will leave, but it seems suspiciously slow for him to make his announcement. I still think he’s going to go pro… and this from the guy who held out hope Marshawn would stay.

So I was talking to my pal Phil the other day about all things Cal, and I made this observation: I don’t think Cal has a single player in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. (Which I went to in 2002, by the way. Yes, it’s in Canton, Ohio. But make the trip — it’s pretty cool. Not Cooperstown cool, but cool.)

Anyway, the answer is no, Cal doesn’t have a pro football hall of famer. But we will, oh yes we will. I’ve seen a lot of great football players come through Berkeley, and Tony Gonzalez was one of them. He’s in the top tier of Cal players I’ve seen, sure, but not a standout among those guys. Other than that he played basketball, too. That was cool — and at a time when I actually cared about basketball, no less!

And yet, you know what? He’s the guy. He’s the guy who will break the drought. It’s gonna happen.

Just a warm, rosy thought to get you through what omnipresent Cal fan Adam Duritz might call “a long December.”

In a first for my lifetime, Cal is ranked #3 in the AP and USA Today polls.

In other news, is it just me or is it weird to watch the Buffalo Bills offense, with Trent Edwards at QB and Marshawn Lynch in the backfield? That’s just wrong, people.

Everyone’s favorite Cal running back, Marshawn Lynch, took to an NFL field for the first time this weekend against the New Orleans Saints.

The guy who sits behind me at Memorial Stadium always used to shout, “Attababy, Marshawn!” after every long carry made by Lynch during his years at Cal. I’m gonna miss that. But I’ve got the NFL Sunday Ticket package, so I plan on shouting it myself every so often during Bills games this year. After the Chargers and… 49ers (he said tentatively, afraid of being betrayed once again by the foolish York family), the Bills will be one of the NFL teams I’ll be watching closely this year. Unfortunately, I’m in a fantasy football league dominated by Cal fans, so there’s no way that Lynch won’t be anything except hideously overpriced.

Anyway. I digress.

In a weak outing by the Bills offense, Lynch had two carries for three yards.

I’m still pretty positive about Lynch’s future in the NFL, but it would be nice to see him break a few during the pre-season. I’m sure Bills fans are looking forward to it too. I mean, Anthony Thomas? Come on, Buffalo. You can do better than that.