Evans Hall: "You and I are not so different"

Taking "keep your friends close, but your enemies closer" was not meant to be about performance profiles

Berkeley and Stanford are very similar universities. The same way a slice of pizza from Cheeseboard has to do with Taco Bell’s bean burrito.

Both technically food, both technically containing calories, and yet it is obvious which one you should choose. Is it the hand crafted meal made by folks who work together in a collective to perfect their craft, or something made to simply make sure the shareholder money goes up? Unchanged in it’s deep mediocrity.

There are other points of comparison there is a handy guide created by the one and only @mpete91

However, this study of contrasts ends when we enter the realm of the football spreadsheet. The profiles of a 6-4 team and a 3-7 team are strikingly similar in some key metrics.

Oski’s Bizzare Adventure: Run Pass Tendency

The run pass tendencies are very similar especially on 1st down where both teams try to run the ball on 1st downs. Likewise on 3rd down the passing game becomes the feature, likely due to the fact that both of the teams average 3rd downs are 6.9 for Cal and 6.55 for Stanford, both very bad.

The only divergence and indicator is that Cal passes on nearly half the plays on 2nd down whereas Stanford still tries to cling to the run game. Alas, we still end up in the same quagmire on 3rd.

Offensive Efficiency and Movement

Cal has been able to do what Stanford has not been able to: in spite of gaining roughly the same amount of yards per drive, Cal is able to nearly double the amount of points! Efficiency when scoring opportunities appear + explosive passing game that makes up for the lackluster rushing success rates.

On defense: Stanford looks to be marginally better team! Not a great thing. Cal on paper has better aggregate stats, however, we have played Oregon State, and Texas Southern which are not included in the sample, while Stanford has their loss to Hawaii and win against SJSU removed from the dataset.

Zooming out on a per game basis. Against only P5 (minus Oregon State) competition Cal allowed 28.571 points per game, Stanford 29.875.

We need to be careful with the Stanford defense and know that this isn’t a game where on paper we have the advantage on Wilcox’s calling card that we’re used to.

Zooming even further

Force Stanford to pass the ball on 2nd down. I beg you. And do not let them run the ball on 3rd down.

On the flip side if you liked the Cal rushing offense this year, (you did not like it), then this is going to be a study of similarities with the only outlier being the 3rd down rushing game.

Defensively this is where the game tightens up. Stanford’s passing defense is slightly more vulnerable on 1st and 3rd downs but otherwise match Cal’s advanced statistics. Likewise on the ground we’re matching, which if you watched the Cal run defense means we might see it happen for us.

Again, I repeat my plea: do not allow Stanford into 3rd and short situations because that is where their run game can really shine vs our lackluster run defense.

For Cal: we need to pass the ball, Stanford is much worse in the passing defense especially on 3rd down and 1st down. We might see a stronger shift towards a passing game, hopefully some more movement on early downs to go against our tendencies and put Stanford out of script.

Conclusion

It is going to be a tight game, regardless of the W-L records, FPI/SP+, there is a lot indicating that the game will comedown to the details, to 1st and 3rd down execution, and ultimately to the mentality of the teams.

This is the beauty of a rivalry game, at the end of the game what I do, what numbers happened, nothing can account for the wildness of the Big Game…

And I would not trade that for anything in the world.

Go Bears!