Evans Hall: Ce n'est pas une équipe de football américain

We're getting surreal here folks

Famous Belgian surreal painter René Magritte was once asked about the Cal football team:

The famous college football team. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you consistently score with my offense? No, it's just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture "This is a football team", I'd have been lying!

The whole idea behind surrealism is to subvert the general conception of human senses and perception. It literally means “super-realism” this movement came to the fold after the devastation of WWI. It served as a rejection of realism and materialism of pre-WWI era Europe and embraced the unconscious and irrational. See Dali’s Persistence of Memory

Where what the average viewer sees as an allegory for time moving languidly along regardless of its physical state, I see an allegory for how poorly the Cal offense managed the clock in the 1st half against Washington causing the defense to melt away late in the game.

The Meaning of Night - R. Magritte

The Meaning of Cal football is mired in the muck of mediocrity. We’re just above average on offense, and comfortable below average on offense. However, the differential between where Cal is and where it needs to be in order to support this offense is the gap between Cal and Illinois which would demand our defense to halve it’s allowed points per play efficiency.

It looks like we’ve solidified as an offense in the area that we’re at. On the WFC Discord, there has been discussion on increasing the tempo of the offense to move up the scale but there is a limiter for such moves within the Wilcox ecosystem. But as the last two post-BYE week games have shown there is no sudden offensive renaissance coming, there aren’t any key pieces scheduled to return.

Last year Cal worked their way out of a moribund start to the season to roar back with a solid performance for the rest of the season. This year feels different with more players being lost on the DL and DB (Lu-Magia Hearns, Kaleb Higgins) and continuous shuffling on the ILB spot next to Jack Sirmon suggests that the defense itself isn’t sure what it is yet.

The Lugubrious Game - S. Dali

]The Dismal Game by Dali is another fitting title to the way Cal football plays. Focusing on the play against the Huskies. The run game became devoid of any sense of forward momentum regardless of down and distance. We didn’t break any records considering the way the UW run defense has performed during the season.

The passing game is also missing something worth writing home about. The play from J.Michael Sturdivant where he shook his man the same way Dali shook himself awake on the precipice of consciousness to paint.

On the flip-side the Cal defense did it’s job. It made UW’s quest for points a painful endeavor with the emphasis on their running game being an accoutrement to the Penix passing game. Despite the explosive nature of the UW passing game Cal defense forced them into much less effective passing on 2nd downs especially compared to their historical performance.

I Saw Three Cities - K. Sage

Kay Sage in her painting depicted both classical and modernist forms in a way to display a tension between those ideas in American, especially on the East Coast where roman/greek inspired architecture blends with modern. In the case of Cal I see three downs on every set of downs we need to convert:

It all begins with a sub-mediocre offense that struggles to breach the pile of mediocrity on the rate of converting 1st downs on any given set of downs. Of course we’re missing an explosive manner of scoring TDs that South Carolina or Liberty have and are able to lift out of the muck we’re in.

This shows in our abysmal ability to make the most of our available yards. With a lot of our drives stalling out early we’re already putting ourselves in a losing position. Note that against UW we began the game with only 10 minutes of possession on 83 yards gained.

Cal has a 0 EPA on 1st downs… And then are below average on 2nd down and then have to go hard for 3rd down. The defense on the other hand is doing yeoman’s work on early downs but 3rd down defense remains a lot to be desired.

We can see here with the distribution of 2nd and 3rd down distances to go we’re still putting the offense in bad situations on 3rd downs with an above-average +5 yards to go in those situations

It shows on the averages as well. It bears repeating that we’re playing in hard mode. Like a junior trying to take Econ c142 (Advanced Econometrics) at Berkeley after pass/no passing Math 53 (multivariate math) and taking Econ 140(econometrics) as a summer school class (it was me, and I got MY ASS BEAT). It is so hard for the team to do well when things aren’t set up for us to succeed.