(Written by kencraw)

(Today we start the looking back series for the 2009 season. We’re going to continue the trend of doing these in “matching order” instead of chronological order. Today we match last year’s “C” non-conference team, Eastern Washington with this year’s “C” non-conference team, UC Davis. Go here for past looking back posts.)

Pre-Game notes and thoughts:
What a difference a year makes. It’s nearly impossible to get one’s mind around the thought that the Bears started the season last year ranked 12th and were ranked 10th at the start of this game. Of course there was no reason to fear Eastern Washington despite what Tedford rightly does to pump up his team. Cal had shown no problem with similar teams like Portland State in previous years. The Bears had been firing on all cylinders the previous week against a Maryland team that at the time, people thought were pretty good (it turned out they stunk). Everyone saw this game as a tune-up for the Minnesota game the following week.

Scoring and momentum changing plays:

• The EWU returner slipped while coming out of his shoe and went down to 1 knee at the 6 yard line, putting EWU in a hole off the opening kickoff.
• Alualu got a quick sack at the goal-line on 1st down and EWU barely avoided a safety.
• On 2nd down the Bears were robbed of a safety on a run play. There’s NO WAY the RB got out.
• EWU only managed a 32 yard punt, setting up the Bears at the EWU 36 for their first drive of the game.
• Brian Holley broke a tackle and kept his knees off the ground and extending for a 21 yard kickoff down to the 3 yard-line.
• A QB sneak gets the TD. Bears up early: 7-0
• In a rare mistake by Syd’Quan, EWU’s Bryce get’s quite a bit of separation on the outside for a 30 yard gain down to the Cal 25.
• EWU executes a perfect play-action TE rollout in the redzone for a touchdown. Game is tied 10 minutes into the game: 7-7
• Best busts a 30-yard run through a sizable hole to start Cal’s 2nd drive.
• The Bears have to punt and Anger’s very high punt lands at the 3 but the Bears can’t keep it in.
• The Bears run a creative counter-toss play to Best, who just barely goes out of bounds 30 yards up-field, preventing the 70+ yard TD run.
• Vereen runs two nice between the tackles plays in the redzone and scores the touchdown. Bears back in front: 14-7
• Mohamed gets a sack off the outside, forcing a fumble, and Kendricks scoops and runs, only getting stopped inside the EWU 5 yard line.
• Option pitch to Best on 3rd down and goal is fumbled, but Cal recovers and kicks the short field goal. Bears up by 10: 17-7.
• EWU went for it on 4th and short and the Bears break up the pass, giving Cal good field position.
• Bears run the “Best as WR matched up against a LB” play that worked so well last season for another TD. Bears extend their lead: 24-7
• EWU gets their first sack of the game late in the 2nd quarter.
• Vereen returned a 50 yard kickoff return to start the 2nd half.
• Sofele ran a fly sweep for 15 yards, completely juking a defender out of his shoes.
• Best runs an easy 1-yard touchdown to extend the Cal lead: 31-7
• The Cal defense stuffed runs on 2nd, 3rd and 4th and short to get a turnover on downs on the first EWU drive of the 2nd half.
• D’Amato misses a medium distance field-goal after the Cal drive sputters.
• Vereen gets his 2nd touchdown at the goal-line. Bears up big: 38-7
• Anthony Miller runs a great seam route that Riley hit him with great timing getting the Bears down into the redzone.
• Vereen runs another redzone run between the tackles for his 3rd touchdown, putting the seal on an already out of touch game: 45-7
• Sofele runs a surprisingly easy TD as the backup tailback and the Bears pile on: 52-7
• Chris Little gets a sack (Bear’s 4th of the game) on 3rd down forcing a longer field-goal attempt for EWU, which falls short when the EWU kicker duffs it.
• DeBoskie-Johnson busts a 35 yard run as EWU’s D-line looks exhausted.
• DeBoskie-Johnson finishes off the drive that was mostly his with a 2 yard TD run. Closing in on 60: 59-7

Observations:

• The Bear defense seems to have the EWU offense pretty bottled up early in the game, but only on 2 out of every 3 plays. EWU has no consistency, but got just enough plays strung together on their 2nd drive to get that TD. All the big gains were through the air as the focus was stopping the run.
• On the other side of the ball, the Bears offense early was all about the run game. They were just over-powering the EWU line and so the Bears weren’t trying much through the air. However, when they did, there wasn’t much success.
• In the first half it was quite apparent the the Cal secondary and the zones they were running were not all that effective. The fact that they were so suspect against an FCS team bodes poorly. Of course we learned the rest of that as the season wore on, but this should have been a big warning sign.
• The Bears started substituting in 2nd and 3rd string guys late in the 3rd quarter and the value of the game slowed significantly at that point.
• The wide receivers for Cal were pretty inconsistent. Occasional drops, occasional half efforts assuming they won’t get the ball, etc.. Considering that the Bears stuck to the run game for the most part, the WR’s needed to make the most of their opportunities and they didn’t.
• Despite Tedford doing all the right things to pull off the accelerator in the 4th quarter, the backups and the generic, run out the clock play calling was working surprisingly effectively against a tired EWU. That says a lot about the future of the Bears when the backups are not enough of a step down to not have effect of taking the foot off the accelerator.

Implications for 2010:
This was a bit of a lazy game for the 1st string. The 2nd and 3rd string is who really ran up the score. Part of that is an opponent like EWU (or UC Davis) is going to tend to over-exert themselves early in a vain attempt to pull the upset. Fans shouldn’t be too worried if the Bears are only leading by a little when the 2nd quarter starts. It could still easily be a blowout by the time the final gun goes off. What also should give some optimism is how well the 2nd and 3rd string did. Since the best of these guys are taking over for the graduating seniors, it gives reason for hope that the Bears have a bright future.

Conclusion:
It’s always hard to take too much away from a game against an FCS team, so I won’t belabor the point too much. Overall, the Bears have shown the determination and talent to put the FCS teams away without breaking too much of a sweat.