15 Comments

I always enjoy reading your articles even when you are blowing a gasket!!

I feel the OL played a great game and there is a lot to build from there. As you stated, the OL has not been a strength for this team. Hopefully the recent tape of these young OL will inspire the staff to mix things up. To my eye several of these youngins deserve more PT and the "veterans" just haven't gotten the job done, period. Saturday's OL was close to the OL I preferred to start this season, so I'm bullish on the OL. Running the ball is still an issue for the Bears but it would seem that we need to play the quicker backs for the time being.

I concur on the "block in the back". It appeared, on replay, that initially the defender and blocker were face-to-face but then the defender turned his back and the blockers momentum carried him into it. A poor call but I'm a homer.

The blocked punt was just a great play by the defender. He put on a juke and 49 damn near broke his ankles trying to adjust to it. Perhaps the punter was meant to roll with the wall perhaps not. Sometimes the opponent makes a great play and that was one IMO.

There is a lot of good about this season. Young players are getting PT and coaches have tape to evaluate. This is a positive.

A negative, with just weeks until early signing Cal may have some difficulty holding on to commits. Let's hope this does not happen.

Go Bears beat the 'furd!!

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A better punter would solve many of our problems. With Cal backed up deep in their own territory and minimal pressure, Sheahan's punts were 24(!), 40, 37, and 38 yards. That's below-average at the P5 level. No wonder Oregon State had so few yards; they had half the field to travel than we did.

The issue is, in years past, punters (and kickers) were widely ignored in the recruiting process, meaning that your local talented legs would inevitably end up in your program. Now, recruiting budgets have ballooned enough to justify national recruiting of special teams, meaning that the best legs go to the best programs. Ryan Longwell and Bryan Anger would be on Alabama and Clemson, not with us, if they graduated now.

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If conditions remained the same for this game (with the removed players), I'd say Cal wins this game 6 times out of 10. Smith outcoached Wilcox this one, plain and simple. It's just the nature of college football, especially in a shortened season, that the better players don't always win. If we had been able to play our first game (and assuming both of our lines weren't positive that week of practice), I figure we'd have a pretty good shot at 3-0. The Huskies basically got the bounces (aka, the refs) against Oregon State that we didn't.

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About the turtling of the offense. It’s now two different OCs but same turtling issue. Do you think this has more to do with Wilcox than the OCs?

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Amen on the last point. Keep the axe

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Removed (Banned)Nov 23, 2020
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