It’s probably not a good sign when your favorite football team is doing things that make you question the reality you experience. But that’s what happens when your team sets a record for what appears to be the worst 2nd half performance in college football history after leading at the half
For 30 minutes, I watched Cal outplay SMU. In five first half drives, Cal created four scoring opportunities and only a penalty and a dropped (difficult) catch stopped another drive. Cal’s defense forced two 3-and-outs, and forced SMU to work hard for their points, as the Mustangs had to convert on 4th down three times on their two touchdown drives. Cal’s 20-17 lead wasn’t a fluke, and the lead could have been bigger.
Cal had more yards, more yards/play, more first downs . . . the Bears were marginally but meaningfully better across the board for 30 minutes.
Here are the 2nd half stats:
SMU: 6 drives, 21 first downs, 35 plays, 314 yards, 9.0 yards/play
Cal: 7 drives, 2 first downs, 26 plays, 50 yards, 1.9 yards/play
Was what we all saw in the first half some kind of mass hallucination? Did SMU spike Cal’s Gatorade in the halftime locker room? The world may never know.
Offense
Efficiency Report
12 drives: 2 touchdowns, 2 field goal attempts (2-2), 6 punts, 2 turnovers (2 downs), 1.7 points/drive.
If Cal had spread their offensive production across the entire game, I probably would have shrugged and given SMU credit for another stifling defensive performance. Only one team has managed more than 5 yards/play or 24 points against SMU’s defense (Louisville) and Cal’s total offensive production more or less matched what every other power team other than Louisville has managed.
Obviously, the bifurcated nature of Cal’s offense is what raises questions. What did Cal do right in the first half and wrong in the second half? What adjustments (if any) did SMU make?
I wondered if SMU played more guys in the box or in press coverage in the 2nd half to try to take away Cal’s short stuff. But no, SMU played mostly single high safety the entire way and they were pretty aggressive getting downhill all game. For whatever reason, 4 yard runs turned into stuffs, and pass attempts turned into pressures. SMU’s front just took over the game.
More kitchen sink offense
If nothing else, credit for pulling out all the stops. Kingston Lopa going both ways, Niles Davis getting reps at running back. Splitting out linemen wide to block on bubble screens. Maybe Cal’s 2nd half fade came because these kinds of desperation moves only had so much juice in them before SMU clamped down.
Hey, at least we saw JKS look like JKS
Layered throws down the field, balls right into the pocket of receivers leading them to YAC, confidence in making reads and decisive throw decisions . . . for basically the first time all year long, JKS looked comfortable and confident for long stretches of the game.
There were some missed opportunities and iffy throws, and Cal relied on more short stuff than I’d prefer. And JKS was eventually overtaken by SMU’s pass rush. But there was just enough to allow you to imagine watching Cal’s prize QB making throws and scoring points in games the rest of the way.
Defense
Efficiency Report
11 drives: 8 touchdowns, 1 field goal attempt (1-1), 2 punts, 5.4 points/drive.
I think this is the least efficient Cal defensive performance since the Sonny Dykes era, but I’m not going to look this up because I’m torturing myself and you the reader enough as it is.
A different kind of defeat
If you were looking for a silver lining to Cal’s defensive performances pre-Wake-Forest, it was that the Bears forced lots of bad plays. Much of that advantage was given away by allowing explosive plays and by committing penalties, but Cal was pretty good at stopping teams from chipping their way down the field.
The Wake Forest game was a total breakdown across the board, but Cal seemed to return to their pre-Wake-Forest ways in the first half against SMU, holding down the Mustangs but giving up too many points in part because Cal’s defense handed SMU 4 free first downs via penalty.
But in the 2nd half? SMU had just one offensive play that went for more than 21 yards, and the Mustangs were able to get small chunks on nearly every play in their six touchdown romp. It was a completely different kind of defensive failure and one that raises alarm bells about Cal’s progress on the side of the ball that has been comparatively healthy.
SMU was going to score SOME points
Look: Kevin Jennings was lights out. I don’t recall a single bad throw, and he was dropping dimes all over the field. The wildly entertaining chaos QB of years past has been replaced by a vet who makes things happen. That doesn’t mean that Cal’s defensive performance was good, but even a good defense was probably going to allow, like, 38 points on Saturday.
Kendrick Raphael gives Cal fans a bitter reminder of what could have been
Imagine if Cal gave Raphael that kind of blocking and space to operate last year.
imagine if Cal had a healthy running back room (and could give Adam Mohammed the kind of blocking and space to operate that SMU gives their backs).
Special Teams
All fakes, all the time
How many times can you run a special teams trick play before opponents get wise to it? Before SMU, Cal had run a successful fake punt and a surprise onside kick, and then ran a fake field goal on 4th and 5 with holder Dominic Ingrassia.
But Cal may have gone to the well one too many times, calling a fake punt that had Angus Davies attempting to throw. SMU had two players who broke off normal punt return duties (rushing the punter and/or blocking) to stay home for a potential fake, and Davies had absolutely nowhere to go.
Cal was down 18 and absolutely had to find a way to convert and score, so I don’t exactly hate the attempt . . . but I might’ve wished that Cal had saved the play for a more competitive game.
On another note, BOY could Justin Wilcox have benefitted from the kinds of guts Tosh and company are showing. How many close games did Wilcox lose when a special teams fake might have swung the game? And yet I can barely recall any attempts. Shame.
Big Picture
There is no way to talk about this game as anything other than another deeply disturbing datapoint under Tosh Lupoi. And what specifically scares me is the variety of bad data points.
Sonny Dykes tended to lose the same kind of games. Often, Cal would lose a shoot-out to a similarly talented team, and when Cal came up against a more talented team his offense couldn’t keep up with what the defense would allow.
Justin Wilcox tended to lose the same kind of games. Often, Cal would lose a low-scoring rock fight to a similarly talented team, and when Cal came up against a more talented team is defense couldn’t do enough to keep it close when the offense couldn’t produce much.
Neither coaching tenure was particularly successful, but you understood the strengths and weaknesses of each coach, how they wanted to try to win football games and when their teams were executing well or executing poorly.
In just eight games, Tosh Lupoi’s losses have been all over the place. He’s lost a game when his team got ran over by UCLA. He’s lost a rock fight to Clemson when the offense couldn’t produce anything. He’s lost a shoot out to UNLV because the defense allowed too many big plays. He’s lost a 100% no-show performance to Wake Forest, and now an even more bizarre 50% no-show against SMU.
There’s no rhyme or reason to how the team performs, or a clear pattern to the losses. It’s (different flavors of bad) chaos from week to week. I’m not clear on what this team is trying to execute, or what is going wrong when games turn in the wrong direction.
All we can cling to is the kernel of hope in Cal’s good moments (Sending Steve Angeli to hell, most of the Virginia Tech game, the first half against SMU), and that Cal’s coaching staff can turn those good moments into more complete performances and wins against a very weak closing slate of games.
It's cathartic to read others opine on the state of our team in the context of college football. I'm with those who believe that the new era is seriously problematic for fandom because it used to be we were just fans who sometimes donated, but now are expected to give deeply and often, and therefore expect professionalism from our teams. It's a quid pro quo. We pay for the team, so the team must produce. It's no surprise that not all teams will be good, and the parity created by NIL means few teams have depth. I think as Cal fans we are simultaneously quite capable of spending what the best teams can spend on a football team, and never going to sacrifice our allegiance to the academic brilliance of our university. Don't make us choose, because we will choose Nobel Prizes and academics. We are not being asked to choose, I know, but the juxtaposition of our greatness in academia always made it absurd when we sucked at football, but somehow understandable. Now that we pay huge money for our team? We expect them to be outstanding. Aye, there's the rub. We suck at football now. Really bad at football. Patience was easier when it was free.
USC outscored Cal 46-0 in the second half of their 1930 game, on the way to handing Cal their worst defeat in program history, 74-0. My point is that it has, and always can be, worse.