The Good, The Bad, and The Rock Fights: Cal at Auburn Football

The Bears break a surprising streak

And then Hugh Freeze said: “Let’s call another pass!”

The Bears’ marquee OOC games have been less than stellar recently due to a variety of factors: missed field goals, poor QB play, referees with clearly damaged optic nerves. And those games’ PFF grades, ranging from mixed to downright bad, have contributed to some uninspired results in our classifications: 2023 Auburn (loss—Rockfight), 2022 Notre Dame (loss—Bad), 2021 TCU (loss—Pillowfight). Even Wilcox’s pre-2020 teams that swept their OOC schedules tended to have some struggles in their marquee OOC games: 2019 Ole Miss (win—Rockfight), 2018 North Carolina (win—Rockfight), 2017 Ole Miss (win—Rockfight), 2017 North Carolina (win—Rockfight). The number of Rockfights in our OOC schedules demonstrates the the defense usually shows up for these games (except 2021 TCU) while the offense does not. For that reason, we have yet to see one of these big OOC games slotted into The Good category. That is, until Fernando Mendoza did his best Aaron Rodgers impression in the first half…