Evans Hall, Cal Football Stats & Analysis: Pneumonia, Cal Football, and How it Feels to Just Not Perform

2/10, how I would rate both pneumonia and Cal football's play against Oregon

After effects of pneumonia and Cal football are interesting things, sometimes you feel fine, you’re doing what you’re supposed to do, and in moments one struggles to accomplish the basic motion on breathing or completing a pass in football.

However, unlike pneumonia Cal’s issues cannot be fixed with antibiotics. The infection has spread too deeply. Will good Dr. Mendoza V be the fix?

Thinking back how bad was this game? In the grand scheme of the Wilcox tenure, where does it rank. Not to supplant the Berklelium97 series:

I want to look at two quick charts on the overall feel of how we played in the Wilcox era. In my case I will use a much cruder form of data analytics and just look at average PPA.

As stated in the first chart:

• higher on the y-axis = better offense,

• lower on the x-axis = better defense,

• and the lines depict the overall Wilcox era average.

We can see on both parts of the chart Cal has been moving towards have worse and worse performances on defense and a mixed bag on offense with the nadir of 2018. Oregon remained Cal’s kryptonite on both sides of the ball with one decent performance on defense in 2019. (My theory is that they have their own Stallions situated at Berkeley stealing our signs).

In 2023 Cal has had a putrid season on defense and a 50/50 split on offense being above and below average. On defense the top 2 worst Wilcox era defensive performances have been this year: Oregon State, and UW, in that order with the Oregon game being 5th worst.

Fun fact, Cal’s games against UNT, SC, and OSU rank as 6th, 7th, and 9th best offensive performances of the Wilcox era!

Against Oregon

As depressing as it can be Oregon didn’t anything they haven’t done all year. They dominated through the air on early downs, kept 3rd down manageable and ran the ball efficiently but not explosively. Cal was just another name on their schedule on offense and on defense, more or less the same.

Cal had their moments on first down but Oregon did what we couldn’t against them: make stops on 3rd downs especially when we elected to pass the ball. On the running side of the ball besides 2 runs by Ott we did not have any runs worth talking about. Oregon’s defense just had us as another set of victims for them on their quest to the CFP.

Neither offense and defense performed enough to be notable, just we’re a statistic with a name on it on Oregon’s schedule.

Overall Picture

On a positive note, I think for the first time in the Wilcox era we’re a slightly above average offense on a down conversion and TD basis. For the rest of the season we will finally face teams worse than us on this chart.

Also lol Iowa.

We’re right on the line, this is with the sand-bagging of the early season and the issues with the offense against Oregon.

Defense though… Y I K E S. We’re as painful as a baby’s breath.

2023 Justin Wilcox is just Sonny Dykes with an Oregon accent. At least we’re accompanied in the quadrant of pain by our next two rivals: WSU and Stanford.

We’re also facing a worrying amount of 3rd downs even if they are roughly at the national average with distance to go.