(Written by kencraw)

In my previous post I indicated that for the most part I felt like, relative to our post-Nevada/S. Utah expectations, the Bears have improved.

I still mostly stand behind that, but there’s one very notable player who didn’t: Maynard.

Maynard was 18 for 33 (54.5%) for 173 yards, or 5.2 yards per attempt. Not horrific numbers, but also not good. He was also sacked 7 times, which while plenty of blame for that goes to the offensive line, there were 2 or 3 of those that a better QB would have avoided.

The statistic that was most notable was that only one player had more than two receptions: Keenan Allen. Maynard was locked on him like teenage boy seeing his first stripper.

Treggs: 1 reception. Harper: 1 reception. You can’t tell me those guys were never open. Heck, we don’t have to look at the statistics, watch the TV coverage… they pointed out multiple plays were Maynard didn’t see WIDE open receivers, Treggs at least three times for what were sure touchdowns (twice he was wide open in the endzone and the 3rd was a longer play were he was 15 yards behind the defense).

Then there were the misthrows. He missed a number of guys with bad throws yesterday, more than the last couple games combined. Generally his problem is the ball sailing and lacking good touch.

Not to overstate, this was not his worst performance, nor was it the reason the Bears lost. But it was still a definite step back from the tOSU game.

So where does that leave us? Well, it’s really hard to tell. USC has a way of making Cal, and particularly our quarterbacks, look bad. The Bears have rebounded from bad USC games with much better performances afterward. We sure as heck saw it last year from Maynard. After USC he had a 65% completion percentage or better in every game except UCLA and WSU (where the percentage was a bit deceiving in an otherwise good performance).

My bet is it’ll be a lot like last year. Maynard will rebound, but we’re likely to see a regression game or two. When it hits him and whether it affects the outcome of the game is anyone’s guess.