(Written by kencraw)

As I’ve said before, under Tedford’s regime WSU was the one game a year (outside of any FCS match-up) I always had 100% confidence the Bears would win. Tedford’s philosophical approach to offense was to find ways to create mismatches on the field. He used a number of techniques to do this, but in the end he succeeded and failed based on whether he accomplished his match-up goals. With WSU, the talent differentials, particularly in the trenches, made it EXTREMELY easy for him to get favorable match-ups.

But Dykes does not look at football in the same way.

Don’t get me wrong, every football coach likes having a talent advantage on the field. It’s just that certain schemes are better suited for it than others. And Dykes scheme comes from a school of philosophy where it is assumed you don’t have a talent advantage. Said another way, there’s a reason the USC’s of the world don’t use this sort of offense.

The other big thing we have going today is that we have mentor vs. mentee. Dykes’ father, Spike was Leach’s predecessor at Texas Tech and Dyke’s was Leach’s assistant coach both at Kentucky and at Texas Tech. To say they’ve crossed paths before is a massive understatement.

But who has the advantage? It’s not always the mentor. In fact, often the mentee has the advantage of knowing how the mentor thinks inside and out and then bringing their own thoughts to the table of which the mentor can sometimes be clueless, particularly when they’re very strong-headed (Leach, strong-headed? Now THERE’S an understatement!).

And frankly, I think in the end, this is the thing that has pushed me over the edge as to which way the game will go.

Dykes will be able to well communicate to Buh what the keys to stopping Leach’s system will be and Buh will have the talent to do it, particularly in the trenches. Today the defensive line will be FAR more disruptive than in any game yet this season. The pass coverage won’t be brilliant, but it will contain things overall, and might just get a couple of extra interceptions from being inside the head of Leach. Combined with the Cal win in the trenches, I don’t see WSU putting up a ton of points.

As for the offense, I think Cal looks good today. The Bear Raid includes a lot of ideas that aren’t in the Air Raid. Cal’s offensive line problems won’t look so bad today against WSU’s defensive line. The speed of Bigelow will have an impact. The tempo and pace will wear WSU down more than the previous opponents. As long as Goff doesn’t throw a bunch of interceptions, and I do think that’s more of a risk today with the similar minds on the other sideline, we should see a pretty balanced Cal attack.

I think we see a relatively close one early, but Cal opens it up a bit in the 2nd half and never looks back.

Final score: Cal 41 – WSU 27