(We FINALLY finish up our hugely unpopular, mostly intolerable look at The Half Season Of Which We Shall Not Speak (THSOFWWSNS) with the Armed Forces Bowl. Go here for past posts.)

The pre-game Storyline:
Would the Bears get back on track for their final game, an undeserved bowl game? Or would this be the first losing season of the Tedford era? Would Kevin Riley get a chance to play with Longshore under-delivering even as his injury subsided? Does anyone care about this game besides Air Force? Bear fans across the nation had more questions than answers. That was enough to get them tuning in, kinda like watching a train wreck, to the bowl game. There were reasons for optimism, including the promise that Riley would get playing time and heavy disciplinary actions by Tedford against Jackson, Jordan and DeCoud, signs that Tedford was getting his team back under control.

The pre-game Reality:
The reality was that this team was still a talented team, one that was fully capable of winning the game. However, the Air Force’s tricky triple-option attack was nothing to scoff at. The Bears had won the last meeting in 2004, but it was after losing in 2002, which gave them the necessary experience to beat it. The 2007 team did not have the benefit of having been on the field for either of those games and was as unprepared as the 2002 team was for the attack which requires disciplined assignment defense.

The key plays:

• Jackson, Jordan and DeCoud were being held out of the 1st quarter for disciplinary reasons.
• Moye and VanHosen were in for Williams and Felder for disciplinary reasons as well (both had not performed well of late), a repeat of the Big Game.
• After Forsett ran for 12 yards to get the Bear’s first 1st down, he was unable to convert on 3rd and inches, losing 2, and forcing the Bears to punt from midfield.
• Air Force quarterback Shaun Carney rushes for 17 yards on an option keeper on their 1st drive.
• RB/WR Chad Hall and his backup Jim Ollis run for 20 and 34 yards respectively, both off of option plays, to get the ball down to the Cal 1 yard-line.
• Carney is able to punch it in on an option keeper. Bears continue their trend of giving up points early: 0-7
• Longshore passes to Forsett who had split out wide for 18 yards to get the Bears across midfield.
• Montgomery runs for 16 yards down to the Air Force 29.
• Consecutive negative runs by Forsett put the Bears out of field goal range. DeSa drops the good pass from Longshore on 4th down.
• Air Force goes for it on 4th and 1 on their next possession and converts the option play to Ollis.
• Carney runs for 40 yards on three option keepers to get the ball down into the redzone.
• Cal bites hard on the play action and Carney completes the easy TD pass. Bears down big early: 0-14
• Cal can’t handle the pooch kick from Air Force on the kickoff and Air Force recovers at the Cal 40.
• Without a chance to re-group and made adjustments on the sideline the Cal defense is burned again on a number of option plays, including the TD run by Ollis. Bears down HUGE early: 0-21
• Riley comes in for Longshore in a planned change at the beginning of the 2nd quarter. Jackson and Jordan are also back in. (DeCoud came back in the middle of the previous drive when the 2nd quarter started.
• Riley avoids a quick pass-rush by Air Force and bombs it deep to Jackson in the endzone. Bears show their first sign of life: 7-21
• The Cal defense comes out in the 3-4 to counteract the option plays. The adjustment works and Air Force punts after a 3 and out.
• Riley shows his mobility running for a 1st down on a busted play.
• Riley finds Jordan wide open down the field. The throw was late and under thrown, giving away the TD, but the completion gets the ball down to the Air Force 12.
• 2 plays later Riley throws a nice fade to Hawkins for a touchdown. Bears back in it: 14-21
• Air Force gets one 1st down but otherwise the Cal adjustments continue to work and Air Force is forced to punt with 27 seconds left in the half.
• Hail Mary nearly is completed to Hawkins, but he was distracted by an earlier blatant pass interference by Air Force and the ball bounces off his chest.
• On Air Forces first drive of the 2nd half, Ollis runs for another 20 on an option play on 3rd and 2 where the Bears were trying to force the punt and over-pursued.
• Some halftime Air Force adjustments clearly are helping as Hall is able to rush for 23 yards down to the Cal 5. The Cal defense holds from there and Air Force kicks the field goal. Cal back in a two score hole: 14-24.
• Justin Forsett loosens up the Air Force pass defense where Riley completes another touchdown pass to Jordan from 18 yards out. Bears closest yet: 21-24
• Air Force converts another 4th down, this time from 2 yards out, extending yet another drive.
• Carney completes a rare pass to Hall for 17 yards down to the Cal 27 yard-line.
• Carney goes to the air again, completing the pass to Dekker who gets it down to the Cal 5 yard-line
• Carney has a massive knee injury on 3rd and goal, putting him out of the game. Air Force kicks the field goal. Bears still within one score: 21-27
• Riley and Jordan continue their breakout game together with another 50 yard pass. But yet again Jordan is dragged down just before reaching the endzone where Forsett punches it in. Bears have their first lead of the game: 28-27
• Air Force 3 and out again.
• Riley to Jordan is again the connection of note on their next drive, getting two passes for a combined 45 yards.
• Forsett breaks free for a 21 yard touchdown run. Bears extend their lead, but it’s still one score: 35-27
• Air Force goes for it again on 4th down, again converting with a 7 yard rush. Ball is all the way down at the Cal 30 after a Mike Mohammad personal foul.
• Air Force kicks a long field goal. Bears lead down to 5: 35-30
• Forsett runs for 25 yards across midfield.
• Montgomery continues another solid day with a 20 yard run to just outside the redzone.
• After Forsett takes it down to the 1, Riley runs the option himself for a TD. Bears 2 scores up: 42-30
• Air Force goes for it on 4th down again, this time from 9 yards out with 4 minutes remaining and can’t convert.
• Forsett fumbles on the first play of the ensuing drive, putting Air Force back in business.
• Another passing play by Air Force catches Cal off guard and gets the ball into the redzone. Hall rushes it in from there. After failed 2-point conversion, Cal still up by 6: 42-36
• Cal recovers the onside kick.
• Forsett runs for 14 on 3rd down to seal the win and allow Cal to run out the clock.

The forgotten

• Longshore did not have that bad of a day. His two possessions were not spectacular, but he was also missing Jordan and Jackson. It doesn’t help when his receivers dropped a couple passes either.
• Carney’s knee injury was before Cal took the lead. While I still think it is safe to say that Cal would have won the game in either case, after all Cal had scored 21 to Air Force’s 6 in the last half of play with Carney in, there’s no doubt it would have more difficult and not as assured as most Cal fans remembered.
• Forsett and Mongomery really gave the Bears their consistency over the final games of the season. While Riley and the WRs played outstanding, whenever Air Force would over focus on the passing game, the two RBs would make Air Force pay.
• Many have forgotten that the 21 points Air Force hung on Cal early were the direct result of the defense not having time to make adjustments between the 2nd and 3rd touchdown because of the turnover on the kickoff.

The post-game storyline:
A new savior of the team was born! Riley, our new knight in shining armor would for sure lead us to greatness in future seasons! How horrible was it of Tedford to keep him on the bench and let Longshore stay in when he clearly stunk. He’s probably good enough to keep DeSean Jackson from declaring for the draft early!

The post-game reality:
There’s no doubt that Longshore had his problems and that his injury heavily contributed to those problems. However, the amount of blame heaped on him was unjust. It was almost as if he was responsible for those 21 points being scored on the Bears early in the game (when in fact it was obviously an overwhelmed defense) or that he was responsible for the lack of effort in previous games. Obviously Riley played a great game and deserved a lot of credit. But giving him ALL the credit is to over look the rest of the team’s improvement during the game and to drastically over-simplify things. Also, to assume that his performance against a non-BCS team was indicative of how he’d perform the following year in the Pac-10 was also a mistake.

The 2007 learnings:

• Riley was most definitely ready to challenge for the starting job.
• The disciplinary actions before this game were insights in to how many chemistry problems there were on the team.
• The 3-4 defensive switch had gone surprisingly well for a mid-game adjustment. It put a lot of questions in the coaches mind that perhaps it was the defense of the future.

The conclusion
Let there be no doubt about my determination. It took just about all of my will-power to re-watch these games. As St. Paul said, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.” (2 Tim 4:7) And what did I gain for my determination? Unlike my semi-futile pursuit of Holiness, not much…

This is still a chapter of Cal football that is better left forgotten. (To which you all say, “yeah, that’s why we kept complaining that you were doing it!?!”) While I believe I have a better grasp on what happened that season having spent the time to re-watch it, I still feel like there’s too much emotion wrapped up in it to view objectively. Normally when I watch the games for my looking back series I’m able to do it objectively and without emotion. Not the 2nd half of 2007. I felt myself getting emotionally wrapped back up in it.

It’s like whenever the Nazis come up in a conversation. Whether or not it’s a reasonable analogy or comparison, the Nazis are just to emotionally charged period of history for there to be of value in making a comparison. So too the 2007 season (see, I’ll now get in trouble for comparing the 2007 season to the Nazi regime).

So, by way of closing this lookback, I now introduce Crawin’s law, corollary to Godwin’s law that states:

As a Cal Bears football discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Longshore or the 2007 season approaches 1. Once such a comparison is made, the discussion is finished and whoever mentioned 2007 has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress.

Do I hear any objections?

My first Press Conference podcast of the season is up over at BearTerritory.net:

http://cal.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=983529

As always, it is free for all to listen to.

This season I won’t be able to do the mid-week Press Conference podcast every week but I do hope to do it as many weeks as possible. There will be the On The Road Home podcast every week, but it will only include player and coach interviews for road games.

(We continue our hugely unpopular look at The Half Season Of Which We Shall Not Speak (THSOFWWSNS) with the Washington game. Go here for past posts.)

The pre-game Storyline:
The Bears had to come out of their hibernation eventually, right? Every Bear fan had to find some reason for optimism for the Big Game because, well, they just had to. The thought that a team that started the season 5-0 could end up 6-6 and potentially without a bowl bid was beyond comprehension. Luckily, Cal had Stanford’s number for the last 5 years. Washington had taken Cal to overtime in 2006 in Berkeley, so in retrospect, they were better than everyone remembered. But Stanford, Cal had laid the wood to them year after year. The Bears had to win this one, right?

The pre-game Reality:
There were two reasons the Big Game was not the same as the previous 5 years. The first was that Stanford was under a new head coach, Jim Harbaugh, who had significantly ratcheted things up in Palo Alto. The second was their new Stadium. The Bears had gotten used to a home field advantage even when the game was in Palo Alto in recent years, with 60%-70% of the fans in Palo Alto in 2005 being Bear fans. With the new Tin Bowl in Palo Alto, Cal would be facing their first hostile Big Game crowd in a long time.

The key plays:

• DeSean Jackson is unavailable for the game, still recovering from the leg injury he sustained in the Washington game.
• Moye and VanHoosen were in for Williams and Felder for disciplinary reasons (both had not performed well of late).
• Stanford has to punt after one 1st down, using Ostrander as QB.
• Hampton returning punts despite flub in Washington game.
• Longshore is sacked and fumbles on Cal’s first possession giving Stanford the ball on the Cal 35.
• Stanford WR Bradford is wide open on a crossing route and is able to turn up-field for an early TD. Bears continue the trend of going in a deficit early: 0-7
• Cal only returns kickoff out to 8 yard line. Hawkins is trying to do too much.
• Forsett and Montgomery go on a string of running plays to mid-field, loosening up Stanford pass defense.
• Longshore finds Jordan in the slot for an easy 50 yard touchdown. Bears tie things back up: 7-7
• Cody Jones gets a roughing the passer penalty, the first of many personal fouls against the Bears.
• Stanford attempts a pass out of a double reverse but the WR to WR pass comes up way short and is intercepted by Hicks.
• Forsett is dropped for a 2 yard loss on 3rd and 1 forcing the Bears to punt.
• Prichard comes in for Ostrander and runs the ball on a naked bootleg.
• Prichard continues to mix runs with underneath passes to get into the redzone.
• The Cal defense stiffens but the damage is done and the Stanford kicker who had missed his last 8 makes the short field goal. Bears back in a small hole: 7-10
• A personal foul on the kickoff puts the Bears inside their own 10 again after the kickoff.
• Forsett has a monster run breaking multiple tackles along the way for a 20 yard gain.
• After a couple pass completions gets Cal into the redzone, Forsett loses 8 on 1st down when he tries to extend to the outside instead of taking a 1-2 yard gain inside.
• A personal foul sets up 3rd and 33 from the 40 yard line, but a well designed screen play to Montgomery gets ball down to the Stanford 10 yard line.
• Unfortunately, that’s 3 yards short of the 1st down and Cal kicks the Field Goal. Score tied again: 10-10
• Stanford switches back to Ostrander. The switching seems to confuse the Bears a bit.
• Stanford goes for it on 4th and 4 at Cal 30 and makes it on pass interference on Syd’Quan Thompson.
• The Cal defense stiffens again and Stanford kicks their second Field Goal. Bears back down by 3: 10-13
• After Hawkins takes two consecutive passes down to Stanford 30, his drops a diving catch (a difficult one) on the goal line that would have given Cal their first lead just before halftime.
• Kay misses the 48 yard Field Goal attempt as time expires in the 1st half.
• Stanford brings lots of heat on Cal’s first possession of the 2nd half, forcing a 3 and out.
• A number of drives later (including two 3 and outs for the Bears) Stanford RB McGraw busts a big run outside down to Cal 1 yard line.
• Cal is fooled by play-action on goal line and Prichard completes the easy TD pass. Bears down by two scores: 10-20
• Cal goes 3 and out again.
• Stanford marches down the field again but this time the Field Goal attempt is wide left, saving the Bears from a near disaster. However the damage of the time taken off the clock is trouble enough as the 3rd quarter is over and the Bears have not completed a 1st down in the 2nd half yet.
• Bears 3 and out again.
• After a couple of Stanford stops (with another Cal 3 and out in the middle) Longshore attempts to complete a long pass to Jordan down the sideline but is grabbed as he threw and the now-short pass is intercepted.
• Cal gets the ball back after another Stanford punt and Cal finally capitalizes on a possession when a double reverse to Hawkins gets the ball down to the Stanford 35.
• A few plays later the drive stalls but Kay makes the 42 yard Field Goal. Cal back within a TD: 13-20
• Follett forces a fumble with a huge hit and Bears recover. It’s a good thing too because the Stanford running game was taking over to run out the clock. Nevertheless, the Bears have life yet.
• Cal is given a gift on 4th down when Stanford is offside, giving the Bears a second shot at the 4th down attempt, which Longshore completes to Jordan who manages to get a toe down.
• Hawkins drops a perfectly thrown ball from Longshore in the endzone.
• Hawkins can’t pull in a 2nd TD pass, this one a tougher one that went through his extended hands.
• Longshore makes a horrible read on 3rd down and the ball is intercepted just off the turf.
• Stanford goes play-action on 3rd down to get the one 1st down they need to effectively run out the clock.
• Cal forces a punt with 12 seconds left but it’s not enough to give a shot at a tying TD.

The forgotten

• Stanford switched between Prichard and Ostrander on every possession and it seemed to be confusing the Bears. Prichard was much more likely to run but Ostrander was a better pocket passer and Cal had a tough time adjusting.
• Stanford significantly switched their defensive philosophy at halftime and it completely stilted the Cal offense for most of the 2nd half. Cal didn’t get a 1st down until midway through the 4th quarter.
• Forsett again had a monster game AGAIN and it was yet AGAIN wasted. He was doing this despite the fact that the opponents were loading up on the run more and more.
• Penalties killed the Bears, particularly in the 1st half. Between stalling drives unnecessarily and giving Stanford lots of yards they didn’t deserve.
• The field was very slippery and also seemed to be cut long, taking away much of Cal’s speed advantage.

The post-game storyline:
The unthinkable had happened twice in one season. Sure, the Bears were going to play in the Armed Forces bowl thanks to Arizona being unable to beat ASU in their final game and so no longer bowl eligible, but many fans felt it wasn’t even worth going to that game, particularly because it was so far away.

The post-game reality:
In the end, it was the offenses inability to deal with the high pressure Stanford defense that killed the Bears. The defense, particularly as the game progressed, held up their end of the bargain. Anytime they hold a team at 20, the offense should be able to get the job done. But between the penalties in the 1st half and the inability to adjust to the blitz heavy defense in the 2nd half did in the offense.

The 2007 learnings:

• Mistakes were the Bears death. Penalties and turnovers in particular.

The conclusion
When I left Stanford stadium at the end of this game I was just if not more disgusted than after the Washington game. Watching it again, I was far more impressed with Stanford’s play than with UW’s. Yes, the Bears should have won this game, but I didn’t feel like the team had phoned it in, in advance. If anything, I felt like the coaching staff was not doing a good job of making mid-game adjustments while Stanford did an excellent job with that. I think this is an very visible example of why having Tedford call plays makes it more difficult for him to be a head coach and make adjustments. But the penalties were still infuriating as was Hawkins game tying drop and Longshore’s baffling effectively game-ending interception.

The regular season was over and nobody, myself included, really cared to see it extended by going to a bowl game.

We’re back with the first installment of this year’s Excuse Me For My Voice podcast, featuring Ken Crawford and Jason Snell.

This time we have a lot to talk about: The Maryland game, handicapping the entire upcoming season, talking about the Pac-10’s new bowl ties, and even offering some mildly informed opinions about the new gigantic hole to the west of Memorial Stadium.

2009 #1 - Maryland, Season preview [ 46:31 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

You can also subscribe to this podcast on iTunes.