(Written by kencraw)

Here are my thoughts as re-watching the game:

• There sure hasn’t been a lot of info on Mohammad’s injury (at least not that I’ve seen).  I sure hope we get him back soon.
• Although Tre Watson was looking sharp on that first possesssion
• Chad Hansen really does have great body control and also has a very good sense of body placement.  On that first TD, he purposely played it inside and kept the DB inside so he had a lot of room between him and the sideline.  Then, he waits until the last second to step to the outside to give him some space to catch the ball and run into the endzone.  Great stuff.
• Interesting that the 1st play Utah ran was a pass play.  And it was complete…
• I think something that is hard for most defenses to get their mind around is a team that always goes for it on 4th and short.  Defenses have had it beat into them from pee-wee onward that on 3rd down you don’t have to stop them for no gain, just short of the 1st down line.  It makes it a bit too easy to give up the yards get to 4th and 1.
• At first I couldn’t believe they didn’t give an intentional grounding penalty at the end of Utah’s 1st drive, but upon closer inspection, there was a receiver “in the area” of where the QB threw to.
• Cal did indeed get a “very generous spot” on that 3rd and 9 completion in the 2nd drive.
• Webb was a bit inconsistent on that 2nd drive, throwing a number balls to either the wrong guy or just a poorly thrown ball.  Not his best drive.
• It sure would have been nice if that 2nd drive punt would have been downed.  Sometimes the guys try too hard to keep it too close.  The 1st guy should have batted it HARD back towards the middle of the field.  Instead he tried to just keep it on the 1 and the result was a touchback.
• Something Cal did well early in this game was to mix up the inside and outside runs.  Lot’s of misdirection on the outside runs too.
• That 2nd touchdown to Robertson was GENIUS!  Just genius.  Cal had ran the fly sweep a couple times.  They run Robertson across the middle before the snap like it’s another fly sweep, but they don’t give it to him.  That has the effect of getting the defense to forget about him “Oh, it’s not the sweep, let’s figure out what it is.”  Then, since they had Robertson singled on his side, when he came across, unless Utah did a shift, they were short a DB on that side.  By having the receivers cut inside, it left a WAAAAY over matched linebacker trying to keep up with Robertson… when he was already really late to pick up that it was his assignment.  Great, great, GREAT, playcall.
• An under appreciated aspect of this game is the affect of an inexperienced QB.  His passing was pretty inconsistent.  Why were the Utes thought to be any good with both a new QB and having lost Booker at RB?
• One of the things that shows that Cal isn’t good at run defense is the delayed draw play.  Utah got a 1st down on 3rd and long with that.  A good rush defense wouldn’t have let that happen, even if they were fooled by the delay.
• OK, we’re on the “why once Cal was up 14-3 did they have such trouble scoring?” watch… holding penalty and then a delay of game did them in.  But overall the playcalling was OK on this one until they were dug in a 2nd and 25 hole.
• I’m sorry, the refs made the wrong call on the overturned fumble.  The ball was in the process of coming out as his knee hit.  That should have been a “play stands” either way (if it had been ruled down or a fumble) as it was pretty dang close and the best view was obscured by other players.
•  OK, that 1st killer personal foul penalty was a stupid one by the Bears.  The throat slash Saffle?  Seriously!?!  I sure hope he got a very public discipline that the whole team recognizes should never be done again.  That cost the Bears 4 points at a very critical time in the game.
• 2nd drive in the stalled period from the 2nd and 3rd quarter: Delay of game and broken up WR screen results in long 3rd down and then Webb does the “virtual punt/prayer” throw down the sideline.  The coaches should have already known the WR screens weren’t working, but the delay of game, that’s on Webb.  Give that 50% credit to over-conservative play-calling.
• 3rd drive of “the stall”: Went for it all (only 39 seconds, so not a bad idea), then a near sack, did them in.  Considering the time, let’s just forget this one.
• 4th drive of “the stall”: Boring out followed by boring run up the middle followed by Webb locking in on boring underneath route (when Hansen was WIDE OPEN down the field) results in a 3 and out.  This is exactly the sort of lacking any dynamic qualities playcalling I don’t like.  No misdirection.  No pre-snap motion.  Nothing interesting.
• Utah scores a TD on another long, time-sucking driving.  Probably the most interesting thing here is this drive is the first sign of the Cal defense stiffening in the redzone.  They had 3 goal-line plays and while Utah got in on the 3rd, he was only barely in.  Cal was starting to figure it out at this point.
• Cal will score an easy TD on this next drive, so we can now summarize “the stall”… I must admit, there’s really only 1 drive of the 4 that really meets my criteria for dinking around and trying to eat clock.  Although I might still quibble that too much in those 4 drives had plays around the line of scrimmage and not enough downfield, the real story was that it was only 4 drives in nearly a half of football.  Utah really did do a good job of keep away.
• Watson really came alive on that drive.  He was doing a great job of fighting through tackles and getting a lot of yards after contact.
• What’s with the new 3-yard ineligible man down field?  Didn’t it used to be 5-yards?  I’m sorry, in neither of those cases was it logically illegal man down field, it was just a lineman who managed to get to a linebacker on his blocking assignments.  That’s just stupid and if I’m a defensive coordinator, I’m going to be coaching my linebackers to stay 4 to 5 yards off the line when they’re not supposed to be rushing the QB to draw more of these stupid penalties.
• Another great throw from Webb to Hansen for the TD.    If only Webb were as on the same page with his other WRs… not that he’s bad with the others, but his touch isn’t as good for their speed.  I think he’s still figuring out just how fast Stovall and Robertson are.
• Another case where the defense “stops” Utah on 3rd down, but because it is only 2 yards, Utah goes for it on 4th down and picks up the conversion.  I’d be remembering this factor for the next game as the defensive coordinator… to coach the defense to not view 3rd down as “we only have to prevent the 1st down”.
• Utah really did make a mistake not kicking the field goal on that failed 4th down conversion.  Yeah, Utah had been executing that 4th and short play at will, but it hadn’t been in the redzone where the defense can focus more effort on the line of scrimmage not to mention the huge difference of only being down 1 vs. 4 points.
• Love that quote by the sideline reporter.  Cal defense says “we will need to do that again… be ready” after the 4th down stop.  Practically prophetic!
• Speaking of a little room for improvement on touch by Webb.  Robertson had to stall quite a bit on his TD catch to wait for the ball.  But he was SOOO fast, he had more than enough room to do it.
• If Utah had kicked the field goal, they’d only be down by 8 right now, still just one score.
• I had under appreciated how successful the Utah passing game had been.  Yes, it was nothing overwhelming (and sure as heck nothing like Cal’s) but similar to how Cal’s run game can at times be good enough to keep the defense honest, the Utah passing game was doing well enough to keep Cal’s defense more balanced and prevent them from putting all their focus on stopping the run.
• The replay booth fixed it for the refs, but I wouldn’t feel too good about my weekly review if I was the line judge on that one.  He was staring right at the play and should have seen that his knee was CLEARLY down on the green portion and his body was leaned back, so it was clearly not a TD.  But he called it a TD.  (And yet again our TV commentators have granite for brains when it comes to looking at reviews… it was true all day.)
• Stupid, stupid, stupid holding penalty on Hudson.  Completely didn’t need to do it and suggests he didn’t understand what his assignment was (or perhaps misunderstood where his runner was).  Completely killed that drive.
• But the refs wanted in on the stupidity too… I just can’t believe they called off the blocking in the back.  It was obvious to everyone in the stadium and seeing it on video it was just as clear.  The guy clearly pushed him. And as for the personal foul, if you watch the “live” portion of the video, at the end of the play #88 (who was called for it, gently taps #7 with both hands, theoretically an illegal block in the back, and then walks around him and is just about off the field with no Utah players around him when the camera pans away.  I can’t imagine what it could have been, unless the guy made a massive U-Turn and did something after that.  I call BS on the whole thing.
• Cal was definitely playing too soft on the WRs for most of the game.
• Boy, for how awesome Looney was on the goal line, boy did he blow it on the run that got Utah to the 9.  He literally was face-to-face with and bumped into the runner, but in no way tried to tackle him… no arms up, nothing.  Could have been a tackle for a loss, and instead was a 12 yard run to the 9.
• Man do Pac-12 commentators suck.  Let the clock go down to 3 seconds for 4th down?  Boy would that have killed Utah’s chances.  Of course immediately after the PI happens, they realize how stupid that would have been.
• The PI on Cal on 4th down was definitely PI.  Yes, as it played out, the ball was uncatchable, but what we don’t know is how much the receiver could have come back to the ball if #18 hadn’t had him in a near bear-hug.  At the same time, I’m not sure #18 did the wrong thing.  He lost his leverage and was leaning the wrong way when the cutback happens.  He doesn’t know where the ball is or how badly it was thrown.  On the ‘one play for the game scenario’ when you’re beat, you foul.
• Which is also why PI is so common in those scenarios and why it’s not “wizardry” (as someone said on another forum) to predict that possibility and game plan for it (i.e. let the clock run down so there’s not as much time.)
• Those who think the pass on 2nd down would have been a TD had it been caught (or thrown better and caught), perhaps if he throws it PERFECTLY and hits him in stride he gets in, but that’s a really tough angle to drop it over the top like that.  If the throw was anything like it was where he has to turn his hips like he did, even if it is lower, that slows him up a lot and he would get tackled from behind by #11 and the game is over.  It was a good thing for Utah he couldn’t catch it.
• On the last play I agree with the consensus that Utah’s play didn’t go the way it was intended.  But I’m not sure it was wrong the way most people think.  I think Moss decided his pulling guard was going to slow and he’d get tackled from behind.  He was right up on his back and then decided to cut back to the middle.  Also, it’s worth noting that pulling guard fell down.  Moss might have gotten in that way, but he would have had to either hurdle the downed guard or cut back to the line (and there was a bit of a whole there that it is unclear if Cal could have filled).  The short answer was that Cal got a good push and was disruptive.  It wasn’t just a “blown play”.
• Anyone else lose some respect for Whittingham for his post-play actions?  He went up to a bunch of guys and clearly said (reading lips) “That’s on you guys!”  I know I wouldn’t be too happy if Dykes was doing that after a heart-breaking, game-losing play.

OK, that’s 2200+ words on the game.  I think that’s enough. 🙂