Evans Hall: Romped by Ralphie

Poland plays 3 games at every World Cup: First Match, Match for Everything, and Match for Honor. Cal is Entering the "Match for Honor" Realm

What do you see? You see an offense that despite facing a defense that is axis-altering bad was able to make them look nation-leading.

What does do UC? UC Berkeley gives the worst a chance to be the best. Truly a tradition of untraditional excellence.

What do I see? The fact that Cal football and Polish national men’s soccer have the same proclivity towards staggering levels of mediocrity.

I mean, even after winning against Cal, Colorado’s defense remains y-axis-altering bad. Cal? Remains in the cloud of offensive and defensive mediocrity. This is why we skirt the border between being able to challenge behemoths like ND but also faceplant against Colorado, the lack of exceptionalism even on defense this year is our death knell.

Porażka Berkeley przeciwko Kolordao od kuchni. (Berkeley loss against Colorad from the kitchen).

The loss was so bad I had to reach back to a 2022 retrospective of Poland’s World Cup Failure in 2002 for a headline. The Polish national soccer team is mired in mediocrity since 1982 same as Cal.

Just look at this travesty. Colorado allowed historical amounts of yards on the ground on any given down especially 3rd and yet Cal could not convert more than 2 rush on 2nd and 3rd downs out of 9. The 3 unconverted attempts on 3rd and short downs damn near doubled Colorado’s season count to date.

Colorado knew that on 2nd downs for Cal can lead to long 3rd downs and it showed. They shut down the Cal offense that way. With too many incompletions and sacks on early downs. Only in handful cases did we find ourselves in favorable late down situations due to failures on early downs.

Cal defense did it’s job and kept Colorado within its band of performances. Especially when we look at the Colorado running game where only 4 rushing attempts gained a 1st down or more.

1st down passing defense continues to be a worry for them as a whole but otherwise it was another solid effort in making the offense trudge its way down the field.

Reprezentacja Berkeley była, jest i będzie średniakiem (Berkeley’s football representation was, is, and will be mediocre).

Fun fact, Cal has officially the 2nd longest 3rd to go distance in the country. Damn near 3 yards less than UW has by the by. It again has to do with our failures on early downs, if we’re on pace we are average on 2nd downs, but if we can’t get positive yards on 1st or 2nd we are cooked as an offense.

PAIN. Cal, say hi to your neighbors: Louisville, Rutgers, Boston College, and Michigan State. Just end me now.

Fun fact besides Stanford all remaining offenses we’ll face are as painful to watch as a shot of wodka for a Polish person, which is not at all.

Now for some nice stuff?

We’re average in putting offenses into the blender. Oh hi Colorado at the y-axis breaking level. It bears repeating that the defense is not the problem here. The fact that we have a painful offense doesn’t detract from the fact that we’re still on the regression line for defense.

Only SC has a pain-inflicting defense but as our game against Colorado has shown, we are unable to take advantage of weakness the way we’re set up right now on offense. But do take time to laugh at Stanfurd, god knows I am.

Dziennikarze ocenili szanse Berkeley na szanse pozytywny footbol w Pac-12. "Nie wiadomo jak daleko jest w stanie zajść" (Journalists judged Berkeley’s chances for positive football in Pac-12. “Not sure how far they can go.”)

Cal defense continues to hover right around the same mark while the offense unlike in 2021 now flounders in Q1 situations. What has remained a mystery is the lack of production in Q4. A lot of teams start hot due to the scripted offense but Cal simply lags behind, I am confounded as much as you all are. Are the scripts or lack thereof hampering us?

Here it is, 1st down failures that set up harder 2nd and 3rd downs due to the fact that we can’t get the 4-6 yards needed to make life easier on ourselves. On the flipside the defense is doing their damn best on 2nd and 3rd down to make it hard on the opposing offense to move the ball. It bears repeating that the defense is doing a good job.

We’re sliding further down the line and I don’t know what besides a whole sale change on the OL and OC coaching can fix this. We have left the cluster of mediocrity and into the area of “oh god, oh no” right where Northwestern, Virginia etc. reside in, which would be find from good academic school standpoint but not in football.

Here is our yards gained over available rate compared to the rest of the nation. UCLA, UW, and SC are all in the top 5 on this chart rate. They will test our defense and sadly the offense cannot respond in kind. We’re so screwed.

2nd down distribution falls slightly below the national average’s desired distro but 3rd down continues to be extremely unfavorable for the offense.