"I heard he might totally break the plane if you know what I mean and I think you do *nudge nudge* *wink wink*" 

We always knew that one guy back in college.  Could get the girl to his room.  Could get her to his bed.  He could even get her to watch non-threatening porn together.  But he couldn’t figure out a smooth way to get his arm around her.  Couldn’t make that final move. And he’d be stuck with the worse case of blue balls ever. 

Well, that was like watching the Cal offense last night.  Like Michael Cena in SuperBad.  All of our offense’s friends are telling it how it can score at will.  Even the Endzone is saying it wants to give our offense a blowj.  With its mouth.  Its begging Cal to score.  But Cal just couldn’t close the deal.  At least until Forsett "exploded" all over the place with that big run (if only he’d run around in circles for 3 minutes before scoring!). 

Really, this Bend But Don’t Break Offense isn’t all that new.  Last year it seemed that 2nd and 1 was a major disadvantage for the Bears.  Even with Marshawn (stunning, I know).  People blamed the too creative by half play calling of Dunbar.  Now, the reason seems to be execution.  You don’t really need creative play calling to get 1 yard.  At least Cal went for the points this time and it was the difference in the game.  

And because of the final score, I’ve already seen a lot of  "The Cal team that barely beat the 10th place Pac10 team will not be able to defeat USC" thoughts out there.  Perhaps it’s just my natural efervescence, but I’m not leaning that way.  The team that I saw out there completely outplayed Wazzu.  The D pretty much shut them down except for some desperation stuff at the end.  The Offense moved pretty well (and wasn’t helped by some odd drops).  The problems stemmed with when we got within the 1.  The problem was the same in ASU.  In that 1st quarter, we got within the 20 like 3 times and got 2 FGs out of it (and 1 more blocked FG). 

The key will clearly be to "explode" all over USC.  And I, of course, mean that in the most disturbing way possible.  I, personally, believe Cal can do this! 

See, I feel like we’ve worked hard here at the California Golden Blogs to create a reasonable and analytical blog.  Tried to minimize the knee-jerk hate.  Tried to have calm and open discussion of the true positives and negatives of the games as we saw them.  And, normally, for the reasons both social and karmic, we would try to minimize saying negative things about a team.   

Well, that ends now.  This is USC week.  I am officially naming the week of November 4-November 10, the California Golden Blogs Week Of Hate.  We plan to hate.  A lot.  On all things USC. 

But don’t think we are alone in our in-every-way-justified hatred of USC.  I’m sure you, the reader, hate them a lot, too.  Feel free to write us why you hate USC.  We might post up some of the better ones.  And by better, I, of course, mean the ones with the most swear words.  And the best swear words.  Come up with new and inventive ways to insult both the fertility and ancestry of USC fans and you know it’ll show up here.   

GO BEARS!  BEAT THE TROJANS!

P.S. 

Alright, let’s start with the negatives. 

*Longshore getting booed.  I heard a few scattered boos when he was announced on the jumbotron as the starter.  

*Longshore’s interception.  I know I’ve been sticking my neck out for him throughout the past few weeks but I’m not going to for this INT.  He had great pass protection and Hawk was w i d e open.  I suppose the only minor argument in Longshore’s defense was that it was a long 55 yard pass or so.  But other than that, there isn’t much to excuse him for a poorly underthrown ball.  

*Longshore’s should-have-been-intercepted pass.  Again, great pass protection, and the throw was a head-scratcher.  The CB bit on the play action, and it looks as if Longshore wanted to put the ball over the top to Hawk.  But the head-scratcher part was that the safety was still over the top and in prime position to cover Hawk and intercept the ball.  All I can say is, thank god Tedford that Hawk broke up the pass. 

*Hawk.  Lots of drops.  Hawk likes to body-catch.  A little too much in my opinion.  There’s always more potential for a bobble or drop than when using your hands.  I think tonight was just a big random occurance of a lot of drops. 

*Turnovers.  We had 3.  Coulda had more. 

*Goalline offense.  TwistNHook brought it to my attention that we had two goalline situations where we got only 3 points (Twist wasn’t counting our first scoring drive).  One possession we fumbled, and the other we just got stuffed.  It does appear that Tedford is VERY apprehensive about throwing out of our goalline offense (3 TE offense).  This might have to do with the fact that if the LBs don’t bite on the playaction fake, and the TEs aren’t open, then Longshore’s gonna have to run if he can’t/doesn’t throw the ball away.  And as we all know, Longshore doesn’t really run.  Although, he did have that one option run out of shotgun - if you can call that a run.  Maybe a better description would be: take two steps forward then dive to the ground.   

*Those stupid rally towels in the student section.  The students don’t want them.  I saw most of them just lying on the ground after the game.  Plus, the students just tie them into balls and chuck them - which can make for an entertaining 2 seconds to watch it fly through the air and see if it hits anyone, but sucks when you get hit by one.  I got hit by one.  I curse the bastard who threw it.  Oh, plus when you wave those things, all it does is spray towel dust everywhere and block the view of the person behind you.  I guess they might look cool when the entire student section waives them or whatever, but eh.  I’m not big on those things. 

Alright, the non-negative things: 

*Running game.  Definitely had its ups and downs.  On the official stat sheet, it shows Forsett ran for a 4.1 yard average.  But if you take out that 44 yard scamper then he had a 2.8 yard average.  Obviously, the OL was having a bit of trouble opening up huge holes.  BUT, Forsett did have that scamper, thanks to a beautiful block by Alex Mack.  And that touchdown run pretty much put the game in the bag.  So I’ll say that the OL came through when we needed them to do so.

*Hicks.  This guy sort of disappeared for the past few weeks with Ezeff out, but he made his presence felt today in both good and bad ways.  As for the bad, there was that play where he went for the INT, collided with the WR in the air, and didn’t break up the pass thus allowing the WR to catch the ball and get a huge gain.  There was also the play where Brink almost sacked near the goalline and scrambled right, then chucked a deep bomb down over Hicks’ head who I think had deep coverage.  Two bad plays.  But Hicks had a lot of good hits and breakups too.   Overall I’d say he had a decent performance.   Oh, and wasn’t it Hicks who broke up that pass that Syd intercepted?

And for the positives: 

*Every kick begins with Kay.  He was 2/2 today and was a crucial part of the win.  

*Hawk.  Yeah, I put him down in the negatives but he also had a lot of positives.  He had 9 catches, with a few clutch first down catches.  He also recovered the onside kick to win the game.

*Zach Follett.  This guy was beastly today.  He made some clutch tackles and got good pressure on Brink when he blitzed.  

*Penalties.  Or, the lack thereof.  We only had 3 for 35 yards!  Sweetness.  It’s about time we stopped shooting ourselves in the foot.   

*Syd’Quan Thompson.  Great INT return, some great tackles, and a clutch deep-pass breakup in the north endzone.  Plus, he almost intercepted Brink in the 4th quarter but dropped the ball (when Brink was near his own goalline and driving south).  I know he didn’t intercept it but it showed great reaction skills and reading-the-QB’s-eyes skills.  Syd appeared to be in a short zone and was side-pedaling upfield to take away the underneath throw to the WR, saw the Coug TE coming on the out, and broke on the ball.  Nice play. 

*Defense.  I think I might have a few who disagree but I think the defense played pretty well and played a crucial role in securing the W.  They held the Cougs to a 2.4 yard rush average, and allowed 358 yards overall - with 85 of those yards coming off of their final drive.  So prior to that final desperation throw-the-ball-every-down drive, the defense held the Cougs to 273 yards on 59 plays.  Not bad.  Not too bad at all.  All this happened with the BBDB.  Did you notice that we hardly blitzed at all?  Although when we did, Follett was usually involved.  I will admit though that Brink threw some bad passes that could have been completed and the Coug WRs dropped some very catchable balls but still.  Not too bad of a performance by our D.