Cal is left wondering what could've been at Florida State
A chance to write a new chapter in the program's history remains unwritten.
It was there. We were so close.
4-0 was staring right in the face of the California Golden Bears. Drive after drive, Cal seemed to find a way to get down the field in Tallahassee. By early second quarter, it was really only Cal successfully moving the ball downfield. Despite countless mistakes and ugly moments piling up, Cal was still getting plenty of chances to get over the top.
The Cal defense was again masterclassing, holding an opponent to 14 points or less for the fourth game in a row. They terrorized DJ Uagalelei in the backfield, putting up three sacks, seven tackles for loss and four quarterback hurries. Miles Williams was a crucial bulwark on the backend with a big red zone pick, Xavier Carlton was a wrecking force, Aidan Keanaaina finished his run fits with stuffs, and Teddye Buchanan and Cade Uluave were prowling with another combined 20 tackle performance.
On the other side, the Bears crossed midfield seven times. They ended up in the red zone five times. There was a four drive sequence where the Florida State Seminoles managed 41 yards and two first downs. In the second half, FSU went three-and-out on three of its four meaningful drives, with Cal running 70% of the meaningful plays (49 to 21) and outgaining them 222-76.
But the goal in football is to put the ball in the end zone. And just like so many times in the Justin Wilcox era at Cal, the Bears were left wanting, and wondering, “What went wrong?”
Well, it was the things that were already going wrong, and the things that have always gone wrong in this modern age of Cal football.
Four games in, and stop me if this sounds familiar, the Cal offensive line is simply not doing its job.
Until the last drive of the first half, Cal had eight rushing yards, as the line could not generate any push. And yet, they rallied to have somewhat better second half success on the ground thanks to a healthier-looking Jaydn Ott and some impressive runs by Jaivian Thomas.
But it was entirely undone by unravelling pass protection, particularly after the scary injury to Sioape Vatikani (according to Justin Wilcox, he had movement in his extremities at a Tallahassee hospital). Cal allowed seven sacks, over half coming near the end of drives to end scoring chances.
Despite all the mishaps, Cal still had two 4th quarter red zone drives that put the Bears in position to put up points…and then they committed three false starts and let Fernando Mendoza hit the turf three times. Cal’s offensive linemen committed all nine of the meaningful penalties, with nearly all of them coming on snap infractions. And we haven’t even gotten to the blocked field goal in one of the late 4th quarter drives that shifted Cal’s strategy at the end.
Mike Bloesch was given the responsibility to call plays while maintaining his offensive line coaching duties. He made it clear that juggling both of these positions wouldn’t impact his unit’s performance.
So far, that promise is not being kept. While the playcalling often has some unique wrinkles to it, it has yet to shown itself to be floor-raising, and sometimes puzzling. It is entirely useless if his line can’t even execute the basics, and puts our skill players in bad situations.
These problems need to be addressed in the bye week, or more ACC teams will be more than ready to pounce. And if these issues lead to QB1 getting hurt, you can guess who I am going to blame.
If there is any silver lining, the struggles of the offensive line meant Fernando Mendoza would have to elevate his game. And game he was.
Mendoza had a 1st down at his own 1, had his entire offensive line lose focus for three penalties in several plays, and still found Josiah Martin scooting down the sideline. He generated 209 yards worth of explosive plays in eight passes. In the second half he converted a 2nd and 23 to Trond Grizzell, a 2nd and 16 to Nyziah Hunter, a 3rd and 10 to Corey Dyches, and a 4th and 13 to Jack Endries. The longest rush of Cal’s day belonged to Mendoza, with a critical 26 yard scramble on 3rd and 14. And another scramble drew a late Florida State first half penalty, and an eventual Cal field goal.
Mendoza’s evolution into one of the most resilient quarterbacks in college football is the big surprise of 2024. He has evolved well beyond his capable game management in 2023. He’s making plays and minimizing mistakes. He’s spreading the wealth and keeping crucial drives alive. We can really start to believe that he could be our starting quarterback for two and a half more years.
It wasn’t a perfect game obviously, but that performance should have been enough, and we have to be excited for his continued development. This should have been his coming out moment to all of college football.
Alas.
Despite their stumbles to start the season and a complete unraveling of their offensive identity, Florida State is still on aggregate one of the most talented teams in college football. At some point, they were going to gel well enough to grab a victory.
The Noles sacked Mendoza six times in the second half. They made ten 3rd down stops. DJ Uiagalelei, struggling with consistency issues all game long, converted a 3rd and 18, a 3rd and 8, and a 3rd and 7 for a touchdown in the 4th to take the lead for good. They landed the crucial field goal block to force Cal to go for the touchdown on the final drive. And when the field shrunk, the Seminole crowd activated and really impacted the Cal offensive line, leading to crucial penalties that stalled our comeback attempt.
For one game, they put enough of that talent together to piece out a win. They made the crucial plays Cal was unwilling to make. They scored two touchdowns on their three successful drives, while the Bears offense did not even really take any shots to the end zone despite five red zone opportunities.
That is what the Bears have to learn if they want this season to be an overwhelming success, and this is where the institutional success of Florida State seemed to come into play. Learn to finish the job.
After all that, it’s hard to get out of your mind one nagging issue: In the aggregate, Cal outplayed them.
In most universes, given the way both teams were playing, the Bears walk out of Tallahassee victorious. Florida State was thoroughly outplayed on both sides of the football for most of this game. One or two more plays by Cal push us over the edge.
And we are again left wanting in the Justin Wilcox era. When the expectations start reaching a new level, when the buzz around the program is trending positively, when we even have something as bizarre as the Calgorithm providing us with the national buzz, Cal clamps up when they need to do that one thing.
The Bears, yet again, have an outstanding defense. Cal is now ranked 18th in scoring defense (12.8 points per game), 38th in rush defense (3.2 yards per play), 30th in sacks (nine), 11th in pass defense (~90 passer rating) in the nation, thanks to being first in interceptions (10). That type of defense requires very few points to score.
But the offense, oh the offense, it’s just so hard for them.
Cal is 96th in run offense (3.86 yards per carry), 76th in pass efficiency (134.7 passer rating), an alarming bottom five in sacks allowed (four per game), and is averaging a meager 23 points per game, good for 104th in the nation.
Cal has scored in the single digits in four of its last five halves. This lack of finishing ability is going to put any game in play against any opponent again.
This feels like a a better version of those 2018-19 teams due to our injuries on offense and players like Ott returning to form, which portends well down the road. Still, it is frustrating yet again for Cal not to be able to pair a very good defense with a consistent offense.
How many times is this going to happen under Wilcox? Will this team ever punch the ball in the end zone when the lights are brightest?
So now we reset to the original standard. Cal is 3-1, which is ahead of the 2-2 pace most of us wanted to be at. Ultimately, this is a successful start.
But even that sort of result is losing its edge. This Florida State team was very beatable, and Auburn is sadly starting to look the Paper Tigers after turning the ball over five times again at home Saturday.
4-0 was very doable. A complete paradigm shift was in the air for a top 25 matchup with Miami in Berkeley.
Instead of talking about Cal’s incredible 4-0 start, we are now left talking about Cal dropping SEVEN straight games to multi-loss, winless teams, most notably 2018 0-5 UCLA, 2021 0-8 Arizona, 2022 0-2 Notre Dame, and 2022 0-5 Colorado1.
It’s an incredible Cal stat, perhaps the most Cal stat you can imagine, and it’s all under Wilcox’s watch.
But it’s not all dour. Florida State is way better than any of those other winless teams. Cal can recover and probably still win a lot of games if they can even slightly improve their offensive uptick. Cal went into two of the most hostile road environments in college football, and despite the issues across the offensive sphere, were a few yards away from going two for two.
Still, it was right there. It was so close.
And unfortunately, yet again, the result was so Cal.
The other two losses were 2020 Stanford and Oregon State, although it feels like nothing from that wretched season should be actively counted.
On target re: Blosech overwhelmed.
The stat around losing to teams that have 0 wins is pretty meaningless to me, especially if its 3 games or less. It's akin to saying that winning 2 games back to back is a 2 game winning "streak."
Teams typically regress to the mean, good or bad. So if those teams lost 2 or 3 games but eventually did well, then we lost to a decent team. For example, the 2022 Notre Dame team finished the season 9-4. The Colorado and Arizona losses look bad because those teams sucked. The UCLA loss wasn't a great team but it was also Chip Kelly's 1st year where he also pulled off an upset to USC.
What would be more meaningful would be losses to, say, teams that ended the year with a < 0.500 record. How will we look at FSU's loss if they finish the season with 8 wins? You can't deny that their defense alone can win them a bunch of games.
The bigger issue here is that it feels like Cal fans look for a reasons to expect a loss or reasons to say we suck. TypiCal. Dooooom. Here's a random stat to show why we should lose. That's a problem with the fan base even if the black humor does help us cope.
The fact is that anyone who did predictions at the beginning of the season likely chalked FSU up as a loss. That they are 0-3 made us think that it was an easy win. But statistically, again, they were likely to revert to the mean which is better than what their record shows so far. No one should be surprised that their 4 and 5 star D-line gobbled our O-line up all night or that they shut down the run or that Nando's throwing wasn't at his best because of the plethora of sacks.
FSU is a team so stacked in talent that they can play bad and still win. We're not that team. We have to play well to win. If we play bad, we lose.
Why are we acting like this is a 4 game season? We went from bullish on the season to saying Wilcox should be fired. Jesus christ. Have some balls people. We have a ton of more games to play and many more wins on the schedule. Don't take one bad loss and throw in the towel.