Initial D is a series about lowest high stakes drifting to the best Eurobeat music of all time. However, when you drift too hard it spins into a donut, a fast moving donut but a spinning of the wheels in one place nonetheless. Cal football’s offense feels like this right now.
Spinning our wheels with Cal Football
You know what it means to look at a run/pass tendency chart and see another year of reliance on early down runs by the Cal offense. This begins to taper off when as the down counter ticks up until JKS is told to salvage a 3rd down with his arm 80% of the time.
This creep up in tendency is associated with the fact that Cal faced 21 3rd downs with the average distance of 7.9. What needs to be emphasized is the fact that the offense will not consistently convert 52.4% of their 3rd downs in the long run. This is an unreasonable ask to give Tom Brady at the peak of his power not to mention a player in his 14th CFB start.
To continue the thread about the offense and defense: Cal and UCLA faced similar yards per drive but that’s quite deceptive since UCLA faced a much shorter starting position on the field with their average drive starting position being the UCLA 41 and Cal starting on our own 22.
We got beat, and got beat bad
There is a certain section of the fandom that think that since Cal and UCLA tied 24-24 in Q4 Cal were matching play by play. However, if we look at the explosive and success rate ratios on down by down basis it was never and even match up especially on 1st and 3rd down rushing.
What this shows that UCLA gained a 1st down on every 3rd down rush, and was keeping UCLA on schedule on 75% of their 1st down rushes. Keeping the offense away from passing downs and keeping Nico away from having to put the team on his arm.
Cal on the other hand struggled to get anything done on 2nd downs after a mediocre 1st down performance. The only reason Cal was effective was the near miraculous performance on 3rd down where Cal converted more than 50% of the 3rd downs.
And if we look deeper into the Cal rushing game UCLA kept Adam Mohammed contained to the national mean with many of the tackles happening near the LOS.
This is the most accurate analysis of the game I’ve seen.
First and second downs were not effective creating many long 3rd downs
Even the “relatively” good 3rd and 3 plays felt like we needed to pass, and those passes did not include screen passes which were shutdown all game
When we did pass it felt like JKS was under pressure
Not a confidence booster for the season and that’s not even talking about defense which felt worse
Oh I definitely saw that we were getting our butts kicked in the first half and that the only reason we were in the game was because of JKS pulling some miracles out of his ass.
But that said, after halftime Cal started having a lot more success on the ground and held UCLA to some three-and-outs and it looked like the tide had turned. At 24-24 the overall yardage stats had been played to roughly even and it looked like Cal was driving for the go-ahead score. Then those drives ended with: botched snap, interception, interception, and that turned it into a laugher. So I also don't think it was wrong to think that Cal had played them even at that point. The game overall was not even, of course, and the turnovers were our own mistakes that need to be cleaned up.