(Written by kencraw)

What a bi-polar game. Were the Bears vastly superior as the stat line suggested, outgained them 517-367 and held them to 72 yards rushing, or is the slim 20-17 lead in the 3rd quarter more indicative of the performance?

Personally, I think it was a little of both.

The Bears hurt themselves early with penalties and turnovers. Cal committed 50 of the 95 penalty yards in the 1st quarter and 8 of their 9 penalties in the 1st half. Those 50 yards of penalties killed Cal’s 2nd drive and contributed to the demise of the 3rd drive.

Which brings us to turnovers. The Bears 3rd drive ended on a long 2nd and 18 with an interception (more on this later) giving Southern Utah the ball at the Cal 28. Somehow the Bears managed to sack S. Utah out of field goal range, saving at a minimum 3 points. Yet 2 plays later Keenan Allen fumbles the ball bringing a swift end to the 4th drive of the game and giving S. Utah the ball yet again on the fringe of field goal range (this time they convert it).

Point being, S. Utah’s points and Cal’s lack of offensive progress, all fall on stupid mistakes. While frustrating, stupid mistakes have the upside of being correctable fairly quickly.

Let’s look at the next few drives:
#5: 8 plays for 78 yards and field goal
#6: 7 plays for 95 yards and a touchdown
#7: 4 plays for 60 yards and a touchdown
#8: 9 plays for 44 yards and a field goal

That looks a lot to me like what the team we hope Cal can be should do against a team like S.U.. Cal had 3 drives in the 2nd half (a pick-6 and a punt return for a touchdown reduced the normal number) and the results were one punt, one field goal and one touchdown. Not horrible stuff at all.

I was pretty hard on the defense in the OTRH podcast which I’ll be posting shortly, but looking at the stat sheet, minus one drive to start the 3rd quarter and the fluke Hail Mary to end the 1st half (more on this later), both of which were pretty disappointing, the 1st string defense did pretty darned well. Minus those, they gave up 84 total yards.

Once the backups started getting on the field, the S. Utah offense got rolling, adding 150 yards to their otherwise mediocre numbers (217 before then) and 14 points.

This doesn’t diminish much of my criticism. I’m still seeing poor tackling, failing to wrap them up. That’s going to burn us against better teams. I’m still very disappointed in our secondary coverage. How Marc Anthony and Steve Williams (and to a lesser degree Josh Hill) lost the ability to make a move on the ball before it gets to the receiver, or failing that, to rip the ball out, is a complete mystery. To add injury to insult, their coverage has been sub-par and way too many open receivers have been the result of the corners getting beat.

We should be very thankful that the S. Utah receivers have hands of stone and the QB isn’t more accurate than he was. They could have really torched us at a number of points with better execution.

But somehow, I have this lingering feeling it wasn’t as weak a performance as it seemed, that the stupid penalty and turnover mistakes masked an otherwise acceptable offensive performance and the defense was not as bad as 31 points would suggest.