What a trojan horse disaster
(Written by kencraw)
(I caught most of the game from a Chili’s (in the bar area) in between a wedding rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner, so that’s why I wasn’t online but have thoughts now…)
The Bears played their worst half of football all season at the most critical moment yesterday. Receivers couldn’t catch, blockers couldn’t block, Vereen didn’t stand a chance, and Riley threw interceptions whenever the rest of the offense finally did something right. The defense also didn’t stand a chance the way the offense kept giving the ball back but also turned in a weak performance with lots of over-committing and generally desperate looking play.
And that’s what I noticed about the team as a whole, they looked desperate. They looked like the 2005 Bears with Ayoob under center playing the best team in the country, like they knew the only way they’d win was by getting lucky for 90% of the plays for all 60 minutes. They lacked the confidence that they were a real contender and USC was nothing to be scared of.
And I’m not sure why other than some generic claim to “leadership problems”.
Leadership problems show up at two times:
- In tight games
- On the road
The good news is that Cal has a softer back-end schedule, particularly when considering the home games. They only play two teams on the road: WSU and Oregon State. Unless something significant changes, I’m writing off the OSU game as a loss at this point. However, I think the Bears can go to the frozen potato patch and beat WSU. So it all comes down to how they can do at home. ASU is very beatable, as is Washington. We beat those three, ASU, UW and WSU, and we’re bowl eligible. A Big Game win, something I still think the Bears have a better than 50% shot at with the game at home, and the Bears are 7-5. Pull off the miracle at home, where the Bears CLEARLY are a different team than the one that went to the LA Coliseum, and beat Oregon, and we’re 8-4.
Personally, I’m thinking 7-5.
October 17th, 2010 at 8:31 am
Ken, I wish I shared your optimism. My life as a sports fan would be so much better.
October 18th, 2010 at 9:33 am
Just to keep it short, although I always remain a Cal optimist and am generally understanding/defending the team, this is the first game this year where I have serious gripes with player performance and coaching.
October 18th, 2010 at 11:05 am
I’m a Tedford loyalist and will always praise what he did to turn this program around. But it’s getting very hard to ignore these blowout losses against top-flight competition over the past 2 years. And Washington isn’t even top-flight competition. Is our talent level really that different to merit all these lopsided losses? Are we witnessing the manifestation of the hit our recruiting took during the whole tree sitter fiasco? What’s going on? I wish there were easy answers.
I look at the immediate future and it seems even more bleak than this year. If Riley represents the best we have at QB then next year could be troubling. I’d say we have some decent QB recruits waiting in the wings but I’ve lost faith in this program’s ability to develop quarterback talent. Vereen will probably leave and for the first time in as long as I can remember we don’t have a solid #2 waiting in the wings.
We are light years away from being anywhere close to a Rose bowl. Or maybe we’re just a really good quarterback and few good O lineman away. I don’t know. I do know that I don’t enjoy fall saturdays anymore, and I’ve totally gone back to a pre-Tedford mentality about this program–enjoying the wins when they happen but not expecting it.
October 19th, 2010 at 11:52 am
Shocking. Embarrassing. What is up with these unbelievably lopsided losses? How could this team not be up or prepared for this game—of all the games on the schedule? I know SC has fallen back to the pack some, but really, how does this team not get prepared for a vulnerable SC team that has owned us so royally over the past several years? I’ve been attending Cal games since 1979 and have endured my share of talent-deprived teams (and no doubt have certainly repressed a lot), but I barely remember those squads being so thoroughly throttled like these recent Cal teams have been when they do lose. I never thought I’d see something like last year’s Oregon game on Tedford’s watch, and yet here we see it again. Recent Bears teams have demonstrated that they simply don’t know how to respond to adversity. These bad performances and disappointments seem to snowball in a way that is entirely uncharacteristic of other programs on a similar level. I too have been a Tedford apologist, but it’s hard not to escape the fact that this program has tipped in the wrong direction. Given SC’s short fall from dominance and a soon-expanding conference, it comes at precisely the worst time. I’m willing to give Tedford one more chance beyond this year, but unless there is some dramatic shift in philosophy or approach (whatever that may be) it is time to move in a new direction. On the positive side, our return to irrelevance means more 12:30 games, which I’m enjoying.