(Written by kencraw)

Whenever I put my thoughts together on a Cal opponent, two questions first come to mind:

1. What worries me about the team?
2. What weaknesses will the Bears be able to expose?

In this case, there are only two things that scare me about Maryland. First, I’m a little bit scared of their running game. Maryland was really able to control the 2008 match up through the running game. With Scott back as their lead tailback, I’m a bit concerned he’ll be able to have that balance of power and speed that can give any team trouble. Overall, this concern seems a bit overly worrisome to me because in 2008 although the run game hurt the Bears, it wasn’t the leading reason that Cal lost.

The second scary things is this new Maryland defensive scheme. Now, it may be that their new scheme will result in lots of easy and long scores for the Bears, but their high pressure highly variable blitzing defense could also be very confusing to a team that doesn’t know what to expect from the Maryland defense. I would not be surprised at all to see the Cal offense take 3 or 4 drives to figure out how to defense the Maryland defense.

Which leads in perfectly to the weaknesses of Maryland. What Cal will hopefully be able to expose is the youth and inexperience of this Maryland team. This could be true on both sides of the ball with the Maryland offense sputtering behind their inexperience offensive line that can’t open up holes for Scott or protect Turner and the young receiver core that may not be on the same page with Turner (who will need that when he’s under lots of pressure). On the defensive side, it could burn Maryland in two ways. For one, even if they kept to the old defensive strategy, there would be coverage holes and mistakes of youth that the Bears could expose. However, when one adds on the new defensive scheme, something that will occasionally confuse even experience defensive players, Maryland could be ripe for getting burned a lot.

So overall, I think that Cal should win this one in a lower scoring affair than the betting line suggests. If I was a betting man, I wouldn’t give the points. 3 touchdowns is a LOT, particularly if the game ends up being a lower scoring affair.

I’m going with 31-17 Bears for the final score.

Finally, don’t forget to read my Statistical Preview article (subscription required) over at BearTerritory.net.
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