Post-Game Thoughts: Oregon State Football

Cal blows out poor Tiny Tim, but there's still time to save Cal football

Still, the Beaver pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.

"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Cal. "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me."

The Beaver was immovable as ever.

Cal crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the paw, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA FOOTBALL.

"Am I that program who lay upon the bed?", Cal cried, upon his knees.

The paw pointed from the grave to him, and back again.

"No, Benny! Oh no, no!"

The paw still was there.

"Benny!", he cried, tight clutching at its robe, "hear me. I am not the program I was. I will not be the program I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope?"

These posts are supposed to be about Cal football. But throughout Saturday’s game I mostly kept thinking about Oregon State.

The Beavers were living the dream. A former QB turned out to be a great head coach, and he resurrected the Oregon State program. After a long stretch of bad football, Oregon State came up with 10 wins two years ago and contended in a brutally difficult conference last year.

And one year later, that program is gone. The Big 10 stole the heart of the Pac-12, Michigan State bought Jonathan Smith, and the rest of the country picked at the carcass that was Oregon State’s roster.

Oregon State is now a Mountain West team. Technically not in name, but practically speaking. They are 2-2 against peer programs, with wins over SDSU and Colorado St., and losses to Nevada and UNLV. They have been blown out by two of the three power conference teams they have faced.

Why should you care?

Well, setting aside basic human empathy, you should care because this could have been Cal, and it still could be Cal someday. On Saturday, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come visited and gave everybody associated with the program a grim vision of what could happen if we don’t reform our ways.

If Cal doesn’t find a way to win football games, this is the future we can expect. Seeing your best players get plucked by rich teams ever off-season. Hoping that the one truly good year you have every 10 years or so happens to coincide with the perfect circumstances so that you can compete for the one playoff spot reserved for one team out of 66. Hoping for a 6-6 season and a ticket to the dregs of the bowl system at best every other year.

Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog, no mist. Clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold—cold, piping for the blood to dance to—golden sunlight; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells—oh glorious, glorious!

"What conference does Cal play in?" cried Cal, calling downward to Jim Phillips in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.

"EH?" returned Jim, with all his might of wonder.

"What conference does Cal play in, my fine fellow!" said Cal.

"Conference?" replied Jim. "Why, the ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE!"

"The ACC!" said Cal to himself. "I haven't missed it.”

Offense

Efficiency Report

9 drives: 4 touchdowns, 4 field goal attempts (4-4), 1 punt, 0 turnovers, 4.6 points/drive

We have a rare challenge: how many drives should we include in the formula, and which drives should be excluded because they came in garbage time? Listed above are all the drives that featured Fernando Mendoza at quarterback, but as it turns out he only sat out for the final two drives of the game.

Cal, somewhat insanely, ‘only’ averaged 6.6 yards/play. That’s a good number, to be sure, but it’s not necessarily a number that would automatically translate to “blowout performance where you only punt once.” Cal managed 6.6 yards or better against both SDSU and Miami, and didn’t

The difference? Against SDSU and Miami, Cal balanced out big plays with negative plays that caused the offense to stall out. The Beavers only managed 4 tackles for loss (and zero sacks!) in 72 offensive snaps. And Cal’s offense only incurred two accepted penalties for 10 yards before garbage time. After half a season of negative plays balancing out positive plays, the Cal offense spent one game only going one direction.

A new look offensive line and hope for next season

We’re eight games into the season, and Cal is coming off of a 3.3 yards/carry performance against a bad, injured defense. Oregon State’s defensive performance against Cal ranks as their 2nd best rushing defense performance this season, beaten only when they allowed 2.9 yards/carry to San Diego State back in week 2.

This is a long way of saying that Cal’s offensive line woes are very, very unlikely to be fixed in-season. The question the rest of the way is the extent to which Cal can scheme around these limitations.

But! There was absolutely something noteworthy about what Cal did against Oregon State. Cal started two redshirt freshmen tackles who were not primarily tackles in high school.

In modern power conference football, this strikes me as, frankly, bonkers. Frederick Williams was listed as a tight end and defensive tackle as a high schooler and recruiting services (and Cal, as best I can tell!) considered him primarily a defensive recruit. Nick Morrow played the same two positions as a prep, though at least Cal was clear that they thought his future was on the offensive line.

This can easily be spun as a negative - Cal’s offensive line recruitment and development is so broken that they’re playing freshmen who had to switch positions! And it’s absolutely true that Morrow has had a steep learning curve at left tackle, and he had rough games against Auburn and Florida State.

But it’s also true that Morrow has quietly improved as the season has gone along, and Williams put up a surprisingly solid performance in his debut appearance. And it’s fair to say that both players are absolutely essential to Cal’s future success.

If Cal’s coaches can turn two guys with the build (Williams is listed at 6’5’’ 295, Morrow 6’8’’ 305) but maybe not the experience into legitimate power conference level tackles with multiple years of eligibility, they will have the kind of foundation that every offensive coordinator dreams of.

That’s a big leap, and I’d like to see Williams flash his ability against a team that isn’t nearly as depleted as Oregon State, but we’ve seen enough to hope for better times along the offensive line in 2025.

Defense

Efficiency Report

9 drives: 1 touchdown, 1 field goal attempt (0-1), 4 punts, 3 turnovers (1 interception, 2 downs), 0.7 points/drive

If you want to argue that Oregon State’s final, prodding touchdown drive came deep into garbage time and shouldn’t be counted, I wouldn’t argue much. Removing it would obviously take OSU to zero points/drive, but Cal (bizarrely) kept their starters out for that drive so I’m counting it in the ledger.

Even when they scored it took OSU 17 plays and THREE 4th down conversions to go down the field, so I can’t say I’m particularly concerned. And yet that final pointless drive counted for more than a third of OSU’s total offensive production on the day. When a team runs through three different quarterbacks in a desperate attempt to find any kind of an answer you know you have your opponent deeply on tilt.

Some rotation, but less than you’d expect

Thanks to injury (get well soon Cade!), Cal basically gave back-up middle linebackers Hunter Barth and Liam Johnson alternating drives. But other than that and the healthy return of Matthew Littlejohn as a nickelback splitting time with Cam Sidney, there was very little rotation outside of Cal’s defensive front 4. The quartet of Nohl Williams, Marcus Harris, Craig Woodson, and Teddye Buchanan played basically every defensive snap.

In a game that was functionally over at halftime, I found myself scratching my head at that a little bit. Seemed like a great opportunity to limit injury risk (those four players are absolutely essential to win games in the back 3rd of the schedule) AND to get younger guys some useful playing time.

Nit-picking against an overwhelmed opponent

PFF credits Cal with 11 pressures in 28 dropbacks, but only one sack. OSU had given up an average of 2 sacks/game entering, so it’s not like OSU’s pass blocking is abominable or anything, but it’s still an area where you’d like to see more. Cal would really benefit from getting Ryan McCulloch back and healthy after the bye week.

Special Teams

As comprehensively dominating as the rest of the game

• Cal 5/5 on field goals.

• Derek Wilkins blocks OSU’s only field goal attempt with a bull rush and a well placed hand in the air.

• Mikey Matthews with a solid 13 yard punt return when OSU outkicks their coverage

• Ryan Coe skies a perfect arcing kickoff to the goal line, goading OSU’s returner to attempt a return that gets blown up at the 11 yardline, plus OSU commits a hold.

• OSU again tries a return and Hunter Barth annihilates the returner to force a fumble.

At points late in the game the brain geniuses in Section R started joking that Cal should take some intentional penalties so that Derek Morris could get some practice on kicks from 40+ yards, such was the comfort with which we enjoyed the game.

Is it possible for Ryan Coe to always do the long-hangtime kick that falls at the goal line? I realize I’m getting greedy and I will never take for granted that we have a guy who can just kick it out the end zone all the time, but it was a thing of beauty and a big field position win.

Coaching/Game Theory

Still locked in despite heartbreak

In last week’s Bear Market Piotr and I talked about how this game was more of a reflection of Cal’s mental state than Cal’s football ability level. Oregon State’s roster is, as we all observed, just not on equal footing right now, and the only way this was going to be a competitive game is if some percentage of Cal’s roster had checked out on the season mentally.

I’m not surprised that such a nightmare scenario isn’t the case; whatever Justin Wilcox’s flaws, getting his guys up to play regardless of the circumstances hasn’t ever been a problem for him. But it’s still refreshing to see the team play a complete game after four weeks of gut punches, and in an atmosphere that you wouldn’t exactly describe as ‘electric.’

A quick reminder of what could have been

Cal breaking out a fun-but-only-moderately-effective punt return lateral throw back against overmatched Oregon State, and Cal going for it to push a 26-0 lead to 28-0 were fine in isolation, but mainly served as a reminder to me that Cal DIDN’T successfully do things like that in prior games when decided to go for it, or attempting some kind of trickeration at all, might have made the difference in a coin flip game. Sigh.

Big Picture

In the short term: Cal has a bye week to get healthy, then a three game stretch where Cal will be solid favorites, then a tough road game at SMU. Based on the current SP+ rankings, and home field advantage, the predicted betting lines here on out would be:

at Wake Forest: Cal by 9, 72% win probability
vs. Syracuse: Cal by 8.5, 71% win probability
vs. Stanford: Cal by 21, 91% win probability (I suspect the actual line won’t be this big, but Stanford has been turbo bad this year.)
at SMU: SMU by 7.5, 32% win probability

Add it all up and Cal is expected to get 2.66 wins over the last four games. 3-1 is the most likely result, but 2 wins is significantly more likely than 4. A bowl is very likely, but that’s not really the baseline expectation we all set for this season, is it?

Sadly, the baseline expectation is a bit hard to define:

1. Win a bunch of football games this year and also in future years

2. ????????

3. CAL FOOTBALL IS SAVED!

And there’s the challenge. We don’t know what needs to be achieved to save Cal football from Oregon State’s fate. It’s possible that Cal football has already been saved because the Bay Area media market and/or Cal’s large alumni/fan footprint made us attractive enough to get into the ACC. But we have to behave as if the next round of realignment is imminent because we have to be prepared to be as attractive as possible when that time comes.

To those in employ with Cal athletics, I beg you to heed the warning of Oregon State and to be thinking deeply and seriously about what needs to be done to prevent Cal from sharing their fate.