(Written by kencraw)

Now that all the Pac-12 teams Cal has played (Washington and Colorado) have completed their matchup against our future opponents, we’ve got some sense of what to expect from them.

Washington State truly looks to have turned the corner and although it was a last second comeback, they look like they’re in the middle of the pack. Thankfully we play them at AT8T, so I think the home field advantage will be enough for the Bears to be favored and win with a good effort, but that game does not look like the cakewalk it has been in past years.

Utah on the other hand, was no match for Washington. This both furthers my belief that Washington is one of the better teams in the conference with Price at QB and that Utah is going to have a tough time of it this year. While their 5 turnovers didn’t help, they were also one dimensional, only rushing for 17 yards against a run defense that frankly didn’t impress me all that much. With Utah coming to AT&T, this sure feels like a win with a reasonable effort by the Bears.

Although we’re now looking at 2nd order effects, USC continues to under impress me, particularly defensively. If the Bears can keep USC’s potentially potent but VERY inconsistent offense in check, I’m fairly confident we’ll have success on offense and could steal a game most people have assumed was a loss.

Update after late games:

Oregon State was much improved in their loss to ASU. They were even up 13-0 early before ASU woke up and laid the hammer down. Really, I’d like to play OSU next week before they have a chance to get better. We’ll see how good their team has gotten by November 12th. Somebody needs to tell coach Riley that he’s allowed to practice 20 times in the 4 weeks before games start. It’s the only explanation I have for why OSU always starts so slow, making us look bad in the non-conference and then getting better as the season wears on. Nevertheless, there’s nothing in OSU’s performance to date that suggests their trip to AT&T will result in a loss for the Bears, unless the Bears forget to play the game.

ASU is still the south front-runner and they might just win the south outright, instead of “virtual first” with USC not counting. However, that’s mostly because the south stinks, with the possible exception of USC. The fact that they miss both Stanford and Washington from the north means they could they could end up being 10-2 overall and 8-1 in conference. But considering their toughest games left outside of Oregon are either their trip to Utah or hosting Cal to end the season, that doesn’t speak all that highly of them. As for what I think, they’re definitely better than in past years and Erickson has them believing the hype, which is a much needed emotional boost for them. At the same time, I consider them to be vulnerable and still don’t consider the trip to Tempe to be a sure loss at this point.

UCLA was able to show a bit of fight in their game against Stanford last night, but they remind me of Cal at the end of last season, without the dominant defense. They’ve got enough talent to be much better than they are, but they lack a QB. Without a dominant run game, they’re pretty easy to slow down. To make matters worse, their defense is similar in that they’ve got enough pieces to have some fight, but not enough to keep them in games against good teams. The only challenge here is that we’ve got to play them in the Rose Bowl.

Stanford continues to look really good. They didn’t throw the ball much against UCLA. They just lined up in their 11 man running formations (two tight ends, two full backs and a tailback) and rammed in down the throat of UCLA. What is most impressive is now they can play such tight formations and the defense still can’t bottle them up. They get such a good push from their linemen and tight ends. To make matters worse, they’ve got the conference’s best QB for when they decide they’ve made the opponent look ridiculous in the running game. If there’s a weak spot, if you could call it that, at Stanford it’s the defense. They’re still on the better side of the Pac-12, but I didn’t see anything overly impressive against UCLA. If UCLA could throw the ball, they could have put up a lot more points.