(Written by kencraw)

The unedited, unbalanced thoughts that rattle in my skull and make me want to travel to every game while buying tickets for the Rose Bowl right now:

• Never underestimate the senior QB: There’s a long lineage of Pac-10 QB’s who were question marks after multiple years as a starter who make a HUGE leap their senior year. Dixon at Oregon. Canfield at OSU. Boller at Cal. It’s not like Riley’s been horrible and there’s every reason to expect him to make the senior-leap. Just look at what Tedford’s been saying about him!
• Keenan Allen: The last time we signed a 5-star wide receiver his name was DeSean Jackson. He started his freshman year, even with Hawkins and Jordan around him. Allen broke into the starting lineup too. Why shouldn’t we expect great things? Add in Marvin Jones on the other side, who’s been getting better with every game plus Jeremy Ross backing them up and we could have a pretty good WR core.
• Shane Vereen is much better suited to Tedford’s offense: Best was awesome, but he wasn’t the grind it out RB that Cal’s offense depends on. When a defense was committed to stopping Best, they could. Sure Best might still break out a 95 yard run for a TD, but otherwise he’d be pretty bottled up. Vereen gets the hard yards. Everyone who saw him at the Big Game knows what he’s capable of and it’s going to open up a lot of possibilities in the passing game as Vereen continues to get 6 yards a carry even with a loaded box.
• Anthony Miller is healthy: Anthony Miller was pretty good before he got injured and never really got back to 100% in the last few games after coming back. Now he’s 100% and there’s every reason to believe he’ll be a key component in the 2010 offense.
• Defensive line ready for a breakout year: Cameron Jordan was awesome at times, inconsistent at others. Owuso and Payne have shown great potential. Those 3 are ready to come of age and be a dominating force on the defensive line.
• No substitute for experience on the O-line: Sure they’ve had some struggles and losing MSG for a while hurts, but there’s no substitute for experience and years of working together and this unit has that. All these guys have seen a lot of playing time, even Galas as a sophomore. They’re ready to take it to that next level, particularly now that it’s their 2nd year with their coach, Steve Marshall.
• Pendergast will give us the same edge the 3-4 did: Remember how that 3-4 had all the offenses in the Pac-10 off balance in 2008? Well, get ready for version 2 of that as Pendergast is going to unleash a new defense, an NFL grade defense, on an unsuspecting Pac-10 this year. That alone will make up for any deficiencies in personnel.
• Better recruits are going to make an impact: Sure we lost a guy or two, but we also kept the vast majority of the recruits of the last two years. People forget how thin our recruits were a few years back: 2007 and 2008 had only 5 4-stars. 2009 got the number to 6, but more importantly 2010 took the number to 8, and one of those is a 5-star. These players are going to make a difference, even this year. But just as importantly, it’ll make a bigger difference in years to come. Cal already has 4, 4-stars lined up for 2011.

See, things aren’t so bad in Berkeley. Why is it we’re ranked so low? Oh yeah, the final reason for hope: no high expectations to mess with the team’s psyche.

Next up: review of the depth chart