Worst case: Cal vs. USC Football: USC Reignites the Streak

Without last minute Heroics of Wharton and Beck Cal Continues to Struggle Against USC

With no Pac-12 Football in 2020, Write for California will instead be covering a mock season. In place of our standard game previews, we will start our pregame “coverage” with fictitious contrasting best- and worst-case scenarios for each game (inspired by Ye Olde ESPN Pac-12 Blog) had COVID-19 never cursed us. The week will culminate in a video game simulation on Saturday (with commentary by Rob Hwang and Trace Travers) and a game recap by Nick Kranz on Monday.

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Cal has gotta Cardiac and win on a 1-yard line completion on WSU in the last 3 seconds to cap a Palouse thriller. Coming back from the win the exhaust Cal team looks to continue a winning streak towards an improbable CFP berth.

However, Slovis’ SC team looks to be the midterm boss of the season. With the bend-oh god please don’t break defense Cal has been running this season it finally folds under the offensive onslaught of a veteran SC offense. Even with BRETT JOHNSON’S now-legendary heroics, the defense wasn’t able to buy enough breathing space for the offense to keep pace.

The pass-heavy offense tested and showed how much the young secondary has to learn with a new coach to boot.

Chase did what Chase does with his offense and throws deep giving his wide-outs a chance to make plays on the ball. This play-style has its strengths and weaknesses: lots of touchdowns and huge plays as well as interceptions and 3 and outs. The offense had all the hallmarks of the Dykes era the highs and lows.

The youth on defense and Rex Grossman like offense culminated in a 3 score difference in the final score and a rough start to the hellish SC-Oregon-Oregon State-UW-ASU streak of games where a 5-1 team could become a 6-4 team in a hurry going into the Big Game.

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UNLV: W 24–17
TCU: L 10-14
Cal Poly: W 35-28
Utah: W 20-14 (OT)
Washington State: W 34-33
USC: L 21-38
Oregon:
Oregon State:
Washington:
Arizona State:
Stanfurd:
UC L.A.:

Win-loss: 3–1