(Written by kencraw)

(We continue the looking back series for the 2009 season. We’re going to continue the trend of doing these in “matching order” instead of chronological order. Today we match last year’s “A” non-conference team, Minnesota with this year’s “A” non-conference team, Colorado. Go here for past looking back posts.)

Pre-Game notes and thoughts:
The Minnesota game had been circled on a lot of people’s calendars long before the season started. It was either this game or the Maryland game that would be the toughest game of the season, but this game had the edge because it was on the road. To make the road situation worse, Minnesota was opening a brand new stadium on campus that many expected to give the Gophers a much better home field advantage than in the past. With the Bears going 1-4 on the road in 2008, only beating lowly WSU, there was a question whether the Bears had what it took to win on the road. Minnesota was a routine bowl team out of the Big-10 that the Bears had beat in 2006 at home, but the Gophers looked better in 2009 than 2006, plus the road game factor made this a “show me” game for the Bears.

Scoring and momentum changing plays:

• Cal started the game with the halfback pass from Vereen. Isn’t that “trick play” so cliche for the Bears at this point as to be overly obvious?
• Jahvid Best got through a big hole as the fly-sweep fake freezes the linebackers and then breaks it to the outside before leaping into the endzone, in what was probably his signature TD of 2009, putting the Bears up front: 7-0.
• Minnesota ran a reverse off the kick-off return taking the ball just past midfield, setting them up with great field position.
• Minnesota runs a hook and lateral to try to make a 3rd and 15, but Cal is not fooled and the Gophers don’t convert.
• Riley threw a beautiful rainbow to Verran Tucker for 58 yards, only just being tripped up at the 2-yard line.
• Jahvid Best runs for a surprisingly easy 2-yard TD run between the tackles and the Bears are up by two TD’s, mid 1st quarter: 14-0
• Riley got sacked and fumbled the ball on their 3rd possession. Luckily for the Bears, it was recovered, not giving Minnesota a free trip to the redzone. It does however result in a 2nd and long that the Bears can’t recover from and they have to punt for the first time.
• Anger has a surprisingly short punt giving the Gophers the ball around midfield.
• Alualu beats two defenders en route to the QB for a sack at the Cal 32.
• Minnesota’s Decker catches the ball for a Minnesota TD. Cattouse hit him hard and from my view, Decker didn’t hold onto the ball as he went out of bounds, but nevertheless it was a great effort to even keep the ball on his chest and it was scored as a TD. The lead is cut to a TD: 14-7.
• Boateng makes a nice catch and run on a crossing route on a key 3rd and 7 when Minnesota had momentum, keeping the drive alive.
• D’Amato shanks a 47 yard-field goal attempt after a determined drive with a number of key 3rd down conversions.
• Best explodes through the sizable hole through the line and then quickly past the secondary for another Cal touchdown. Back to a 2 TD lead: 21-7
• Sofele gets a bogus interference to catch the ball, offsetting the fumble recovery by the Bears and giving Minnesota the ball at the Cal 30 with less than two minutes left in the half.
• Hagan completely whiffs on the coverage on Decker giving Minnesota an easy fade for a touchdown. Score down to one TD going into the locker room: 21-14
• After forcing a 3-and-out on Minnesota’s possession to start the 2nd half, the shanked punt hits a Cal defender and Minnesota recovers the fumble around midfield. Yet another special teams issue (I’ll refrain from the word “blunder” as it was a touch bounce) gives Minnesota more chances and better field position than they otherwise deserve.
• A fumble by Minnesota at the Cal 20 saves Cal from letting the special teams turnover result in points.
• Anger has a monster punt from the Cal 25, that is fair caught at the Minnesota 18.
• After a drive where Decker was at the receiving end of almost all the passes, they pull a trick-play out of their hat and Decker throws the ball to a wide open receiver for a 7-yard touchdown. The game is tied: 21-21
• Riley escapes throwing an interception when his overthrown ball over the middle is dropped by the Minnesota safety with it in his bread-basket.
• Cal gets another rough penalty call, a pass interference call on Cattouse when he made a brilliant defensive move on 3rd down, extending the Minnesota drive.
• Preventing Cal’s 4th consecutive 3-and-out, Riley squeezes it into Ross who sidesteps a tackler to get their first 1st down of the half with less than 9 minutes left in the game.
• Riley throws a nice fade to Ross who gets the ball down to the 1 yard line.
• After getting stuffed on 1st down between the tackles, Best goes to the outside and scores his 4th touchdown of the game. Bears back in front: 28-21
• When Cal brings a blitz, the throw is offline giving Mohamed an easy interception on the Gopher side of the field just after the Cal touchdown.
• Cal runs the QB sneak on 4th and 1 from the Minnesota 33 yard-line and converts.
• Anthony Miller makes a great stretching one-handed catch, bailing out Riley’s over-throw, getting the ball down to the 8 yard-line.
• Best gets his 5th touchdown, again going to the corner. Bears back in front by 2 TD’s, now with less than 3 minutes left in the game: 35-21
• Josh Hill gets an interception on 4th and 10 on a desperation throw for the Gophers with the clock running down.
• Minnesota forces the 3-and-out, using all of their timeouts, to give them one last desperation shot, needing a touchdown, an onside kick recovery and a second TD, all in 45 seconds.
• Mohamed gets his second interception of the game to put an end to the comeback attempt.

Observations:

• The Bears came out fast and hard in this very important road game, to prove that they could win on the road. What was noticeable is that the offense pulled out all the stops early, giving Minnesota a lot of different looks, a high diversity of plays and punishing Minnesota for cheating to what had been successful on previous plays, i.e. the long Tucker pass after the strong running game, the running up the middle after the fly-sweep, etc..
• Both teams had very good intensity in the 1st quarter. Cal came out of the tunnel and scored 2 quick TD’s but Minnesota didn’t give in and fought hard both to close the gap on the scoreboard and get momentum back.
• Two plays back-to-back showed the problems that the Cal receivers had in 2009. On the first play, Riley threw a ball out in front of Best who corralled the ball and got a first down. On the very next play the WR had a similarly out in front ball, but he didn’t even catch it, bobbling it before it went to the ground.
• Vereen powered through a gang-tackle on 3rd and 3 to get a 1st down when it looked like Minnesota had him stopped. This is the sort of advantage having Vereen as the every down back in 2010. He’s much more likely to get the tough yards and less likely to lose a few when the play breaks down.
• The touchdown at the end of the 1st half was a huge momentum killer for the Bears. After they had held off the strong push by Minnesota in the early 2nd quarter, extending back to a 2-TD lead, they gave Minnesota both momentum and hope in the locker room. The Bears statistically dominated the 1st half, but the poor results by the special teams and efficient play by the Minnesota offense when they had a short field, had the game much closer on the scoreboard than on the stat sheet.
• Cal had some definite tackling problems in the 3rd quarter. Just before the Minnesota fumble there were two missed tackles for loss. After Anger’s monster punt, Cal had 3 shots at a sack inside the 2 yard-line (perhaps even a marginal safety) before sacking him around the 8 yard-line. Lot’s of diving at players and not wrapping them up.
• There’s no doubt that the Gophers’ new stadium was helping their home field advantage. The crowd was in the game even when Minnesota was down and the players were feeding off of it.
• The Cal defense continued to look out of sync for the rest of the 3rd quarter, particularly on the Minnesota touchdown drive. They looked desperate and out of position as Minnesota went to Decker over and over.
• Great quote from the commentator: “Cal is rushing 3 and dropping 8, so get out your GPS and find #7 (Decker). You’re covering dirt and you should be covering him.” Decker was all Minnesota had in the 3rd quarter yet he was still open play after play. For whatever reason Hagan was on Decker far more than Syd, which just baffles me (and just about everyone else).
• Cal had 3 consecutive 3-and-outs to start the 2nd half (extending into the 4th quarter). Unlike the 1st half where the Bears came out sharp, both sides of the ball came out week in the 2nd half. It was nearly a miracle that Minnesota only scored one TD in the 3rd quarter.
• Cal’s last TD drive was key not just because it made it a two score game, but also because Cal kept the game clock running, taking over 6 minutes off the clock on a 9 play, 42 yard drive. That put Minnesota in desperation mode and made life much easier for the Bear defense. For all we criticize Tedford for sometimes going too quickly to trying to shorten the game, it was drives like this where it bears a lot of fruit.

Implications for 2010:
It’s hard to draw direct comparisons between last year’s Minnesota game and this year’s Colorado game. They’re very different teams. If there’s a similarity, it’s that, at least on the non-conference slate, they’re the most power-oriented teams Cal will face. Cal seems to match up well against those teams these days, as the Big Game game showed. But Colorado isn’t exactly a HUGE power team, they’re just closer to that end of the spectrum than, say, Nevada. Speaking of Nevada, what this game does show is that the Bears seem to be over, or at least minimized, their road game struggles as both the Minnesota game and both the ASU and Big Game showed. If there are games that bring it into question it was the Washington game and to a lesser extent Oregon (which the Bears probably lose either way).

Conclusion:
Far more important than the implications for 2010, what this game showed was a preview of the secondary problems that Cal was going to have. Minnesota only had one good WR and he burned Cal over and over and over. It’s one thing when a multi-weapon passing game is too much for a team, it’s entirely something else when you know who they’re going to go to and you still let him burn you again and again. This game would have been a HUGE blowout if it weren’t for Decker. Luckily for the Bears, minus the 3rd quarter struggles, the offensive was firing on all cylinders and the run defense was pretty stout.