Wow!  What a game!  Biggest victory since USC 03 easy.  Might even be bigger.  USC 03 put us on the map.  This might ensure we stay there.  Since USC 03, we had had a lot of opportunities to reinforce the perception that Cal was a national power.  H Bowl 04.  USC 04.  USC 05.  Tennessee 06.  H Bowl 06.  I guess our best victory in that time span was our close loss to USC in 04.  You can see the dilemma.  The utility from a game 4 years ago can start to wear off.  Cal needed this not only to erase the demons from yesteryear, but also to try to shed the moniker of “Most Overrated Team.” 

Some overarching thoughts first before I bust out the fotografias for a photo narrative.  However, it is my 1 year anniversary.  I am frantically writing this all as fast as possible before my wife wakes up and I have to atone for the fact I spent the first chunk of our anniversary at the game.  So, that photo narrative might not come until tomorrow.  Thankfully, she’s a late sleeper!

But first, initial thoughts, just from my viewing of the game yesterday without really looking at the stats or reading a recap. 

What to say about DeSean?  He is certainly making his way to Marshawn levels of unreasonable man-love.  I am sure people are going crazy about his punt return and I can’t blame them.  From where I was standing yesterday, that mostly all took place right in front of me and it was sick.  Especially the part where he kinda falls backwards to avoid a tackle, regains his balance and then keeps going.  He’ll be like Barry Bonds when it comes to punts.  We should bring rubber chickens!  After everytime Tenn wouldn’t punt to him, many people in the student section would put up what I will delicately describe as the Dealtha O’Neal sign.  But it means something else.  Cough cough.

But I didn’t even think that was the most impressive thing DeSean did yesterday, although the punt runback (or the DeSean as it should be renamed) was unimaginably impressive.  The coolest thing he did was on that end around.  I can’t seem to find a video of it, but if I do, I’ll post it.  Anyway, when he like just stopped and let those two Tenn players run by him.  From my memory, it wasn’t like a crazy Marshawn juke or anything.  He just was able to run, stop, and then move on a dime all in the span of 1 second, allowing for the Tenn player’s momentum to carry them past him.  I mean he was just like standing there looking at his watch being all “Dudes, great talking with you, I got a play to complete, though.  Have to talk with you later.  Hugs all around, well, ok, on second thought, nix the hugs.” 

He also saved Longshore on a key pass that was thrown over his head.  DeSean has HOOKS!  DeSean keeps this up, he might (and that’s a very iffy might) enter the Marshawn Pantheon of Guys Almost As Awesome As Marshawn.  He’s close.  He really is.

Speaking of Longshore, was something wrong with him?  I haven’t seen the stats, but I bet they don’t look bad.  He threw for a few TDs.  Snucked in for another.  It wasn’t as much that.  It was more that Tedford was asking him to do NOTHING.  All before the game, I heard how Cal had the 3 amazing WRs and Tenn’s DB corps was new this year.  I thought we might go for a vertical passing game, which would open up holes for Forsett. 

I could not have been MORE wrong.  We just ran ran ran ran ran ran ran.  And it worked.  More on that later.  But I was shocked by the ultra-conservative game plan.  There were even a few rabble rousers around me yelling for Tedford to start passing.  I wasn’t quite as vocal, but I was a bit confused.  At the half, I was speaking with a few friends and we thought he’d really open up in the 2^nd.  There was some more passing, but not as much as I thought.  No bombs to DeSean at all, too. 

I mean that’s the craziest thing of it all.  The offense scored 31 points off of a supposedly SEC defense.  And we barely opened it up at all.  Think of how amazing it could have been.  So, my fear is that there was something wrong with Longshore.  A minor injury or something.  Some of his passes seemed off at times.  And he did fumble that snap that one time (right after the center muffed the snap).  Hopefully, whatever the problem was, Longshore can move past it.  If we can combine the SICK running game from yesterday with the passing attack we all expected, this is one SCARY offense.  No joke!

Speaking of the running game, Forsett really showed me something yesterday.  Perhaps it is due to my manlove for Marshawn, but, as I mentioned last week, I was concerned about Forsett.  He had some very ineffective stretches last year, spelling Marshawn.  But being the big dog CLEARLY works for him.  Moreover, it wasn’t just the run straight forward, let’s hope there’s a hole there stuff I saw a lot of last year.  He was making moves.  Juking people.  Spin moves.  He didn’t have any of the power of Marshawn to make stiff arms and shed a lot of tackles.  But he was shedding some tackles.  Especially that tackle on his screen where the guy just kinda pushed him forward.

It was like the Tenn player was all “Ok, c’mon, keep going forward.  You can do this!  Believe!”

And our other new RB, Jahvid Best, looked great right out of the box.  A new christmas present in September!  There was his 34 yard scamper, which I was barely able to see since it happened on the other side of the field.  He also ran for a key first down, which basically sealed the game.  Took a vicious hit, but fell forward to get just enough inches to get the first!  I get the feeling that someday I’ll be telling my friends I saw Best’s first run.  

I don’t know if we were playing a very conservative defense, too, but we were getting very minimal pressure on the QB.  I heard Ainge penned the great American novel with his time in the pocket.  It’s coming out this winter.  It’s about a quarterback who has endless time to throw passes, but gives it all up for the woman he loves.  Sounds derivative to me, but whatever.

It seemed that whenever we blitzed, great success was had (similar to whenever we threw a forward pass down the field, generally great success was had).  But blitzing seemed as rare as a forward pass down the field.  One of the most exciting moments of a Cal game came early on when we blitzed with Follett and he forced that fumble.  Bee Tee Dub, how totally awesome was Williams just scooping it up with 1 hand.  That probably broke the heart of every fundamentals teacher he ever had, but they were too busy going crazy. 

As for their run offense, I felt we did a good job of stopping the run.  Foster is a beast, but we were able to keep him in control.  But man Ainge, pinky or not, is G-O-O-D.  How many passes were incomplete?  He was automatic.  Especially to Aaron Rodgers, who apparently gave up a lucrative professional contract and had radical facial reconstructive surgery so he could illegally play wide receiver for the Tennessee Volunteer.  Or there’s some other dude named Rodgers.  Who knows?  So, while we did do a great job stopping the run, which might have been helped by the fact we got up by 17 at a point, they were able to pass all over us, easy.

Those are just some thoughts that arise out of the game.  Hopefully, I will get a chance to put up the photo narratives similar to the FanFest.  I am also sure that Ragnarok and HydroTech, who were also at the game will have more thoughts for posts.  Plus, I took some videos and am working on getting them up on YouTube.  I always hate how the video kwality decreases so significantly on YouTube, but don’t really know another place to put them.  So far, there is only this one video of a run late in the game.

Others to follow.   GO BEARS!  WHAT A DAY!  WHAT A GAME!