With the loss to USC behind us, reasons to keep paying attention to Cal Football this season are dwindling.  Honestly, there’s not much of any significance left to play for — except the Axe.  There’s ALWAYS the Axe.  Oh, if you’ve only been a Cal fan for the last few years, you may not know why the Axe is special, but trust me, it is.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Cal will finish the 2007 season in no better than 3rd place.  The Bears will not go to a prestigious bowl game (though they almost certainly will got to *a* bowl game).  They will not win 10 games this year (although they’ll have 3 tries left to secure their 6th consecutive winning season).  Though they may yet retain the Axe, there’s very little to recommend paying attention to this weekend’s matchup against Washington in Seattle — except your die-hard enthusiasm for our beloved Golden Bears.

Saturday’s loss to USC was cold, dreary, damp and depressing, and I’m damn proud of how many Cal fans stayed until the bitter, disappointing end.  If you were looking for the proper time to jump off the Cal bandwagon, that time was a few weeks ago.  Bandwagon fans should have been scurrying away like rats from a sinking ship, and by now, they should’ve all gone and bought themselves a nice green Oregon hat.  There’s no bandwagon anymore, folks.  If you’re still with us now, chances are, you’re a true blue Bear for life.

Anyway, here’s how the Pac-10 currently stands:

Pac-10 Standings

Team	Wins	Losses
Arizona State	6	1
Oregon	5	1
USC	5	2
Oregon State	4	3
UCLA	4	3
Arizona	3	4
California	3	4
Washington State	2	5
Stanford	2	6
Washington	1	6

Yup, Cal sits firmly in the ’sucky’ half of the standings.  Perhaps games against Washington and Stanford (the 9th and 10th place teams) will buoy us towards respectability.

And our bowl destination?  Glad you asked.  Increasingly, it’s looking like the Emerald Bowl is where Cal is headed, but don’t discount the Sun Bowl just yet.  I updated the odds from last week, and added a new assumption, which I’ll discuss below.

Emerald - 58.71% - Now that I’m resigned to a lower-tier bowl game this year, I’m pretty much rooting for this one to happen.  Get your Emerald Nuts signs ready.

Sun - 19.71% - Not terribly likely, but it gets a boost from a new assumption of mine.  Now, I haven’t heard anything regarding such a situation, but I tend to think the Sun Bowl would be reluctant to host the same team two years in a row, and Oregon State was the Pac-10 representative last year.  How many Pac-10 teams have played in the Sun Bowl back-to-back years?  Try none.  In fact, only two teams (Purdue and Texas) have appeared in consecutive Sun Bowls since 1960.

So, my guess is that if Cal and Oregon State tied for 4th place (w/ two Pac-10 teams in the BCS), Cal would be the pick.  How likely is such a scenario?  Actually, that’s exactly what would happen in the ever-popular ‘favorites win out’ scenario.  Oregon would end up in the National Championship Bowl, the winner of USC @ ASU goes to the Rose, the loser to the Holiday, and Cal and Oregon State would be tied for 4th at 5-4.  However, any number of upsets could ensure that Cal falls to the Emerald Bowl, and if you were hoping to stay in the Bay Area for your Bowl experience, you’d better hope one of them happens.

No Bowl - 10.98% - Don’t lose out, Bears!  This isn’t terribly likely to happen.  In fact, there’s only a 31.87% chance that the Pac-10 even fills all its bowl slots.

Armed Forces - 10.60% - Also not terribly likely.  In fact, I doubt the Pac-10 fills this slot, thus ending the conference’s brief and inauspicious association with this bowl.

Las Vegas - 0.0% - I’m still assuming that the Emerald Bowl will snag Cal away from Vegas, so unless I hear otherwise, I’m not considering this bowl a possibility.

Holiday - 0.0% - Technically, Cal isn’t mathematically eliminated from San Diego yet, but the best the Bears could do would be a tie for 3rd with two teams in the BCS, and I’d have to think that if the Holiday Bowl had the choice between ‘Cal’ and ’some other team’, ’some other team’ would be visiting Sea World over Christmas break.

A few other interesting percentages:
UCLA gets bowl eligible - 51.37%
Washington State gets bowl eligible - 17.67%
Arizona gets bowl eligible - 3.30%
The Pac-10 gets two teams in BCS games - 66.27%

 

We are all disappointed about the USC loss.  But as they would be saying in show business if it wasn’t currently on hiatus, the show must go on.  So far none of our writers are on strike, thankfully.  But Hydro is thinking about holding out for more money as he clearly is the engine to our Thomas The Train.  But, I digress.  The DB Report Card (Note:  This was written before USC).  All that remains after this is Special Teams.

TwistNHook:  I am really impressed by SydQuan’s open field tackling.  Cal has definitely had some problems with open field tackling (see 4th and 1 against ASU), but SydQuan is a beast out there.  Quite the hitter.

Plus, I love it when he goes dumb and gets hyphy in the pre-game video.

Yellow Fever:  I think it’s a bad thing when the most impressive thing about our secondary is their open field tackling.  After all, they shouldn’t be letting receivers catch the ball in the open field.   Which is why it was never a problem that Deion Sanders never tackled anyone - they never caught the ball.  But hey, at least when our DBs get burnt, they can bring the ballcarrier down.

TwistNHook:  Not sure I really meant it quite like that.   

HydroTech:  IMO, Ezeff is an extremely reliable tackler too.  As is Decoud.  While I feel like most Cal fans won’t object to our praise of the DB’s tackling ability, they would raise concerns over their ability to defend the pass. 

A few things to note: (1) If I’m correct in interpreting the coaches’ defensive signals, I believe the coaches tell the DBs how far to play off the WRs.  I’ve heard a lot of people complaining that so-and-so plays too far off the WRs.  Presuming that my assumption is correct, all I can say is we Cal fans are going to have to just live with it and stop blaming the players.  Blame the coaches if anyone.  (2) I’ve also heard a lot of complaining that so-and-so can’t cover worth an $C diploma.  Realize this: we play a lot of zone.  Why is this relevant?  The DBs have to maintain their space and zones meaning they can’t blanket WRs such as when they’re playing man coverage.  This is because there are often multiple WRs in their zones and blanketing one means leaving one or two others open.  So Cal fans need to realize, before you slam so-and-so for being a worthless crappy $C talent DB for not being within 5 yards of the receiver, you have to take into account whether the coverage was man or zone.  (3) Zone coverage breaks down as the play progresses.  A lot of times our defense has looked plain silly this year because the QB has had tons of time to throw.  The more time he has, the more time the WRs have to stretch the zones and find the seams (holes) in the zones.  Furthermore, when the QB can scramble, it forces zone defenders down (sucks them in towards the LOS) to defend against the run.  This creates a void where the zone defender just vacated allowing for a receiver to get open.  When a QB scrambles the zone defenders are forced into a bind.  They either can (a) keep their zone and allow the QB to run for a moderate gain or first down or huge gain, or (b) vacate their zone and attack the QB allowing a pass over their head into the vacated zone for a moderate to huge gain.  The choice is the QB’s and he’ll usually do the one which will result in more yardage gained, thus making our pass defense look bad.  But whose fault is this really?  The defensive line’s for not getting a coverage sack, or keeping containment.

TwistNHook:  Wait, you sure Ezeff should be discussed in this one.  Do we have confirmation he is a DB?

HydroTech: Yes, Ezeff is a safety.

Yellow Fever:  I certainly do feel as though Syd’Quan is playing much better this year, though.  This year’s Syd’Quan + last years Daymeion would be a nice set of corners.  Of course, that will never happen, which is why the secondary is currently playing the way they are.

TwistNHook:  We would be remiss if we failed to mention DeCoud.  I was fortunate to meet him and his father at the FanFest and they were extraordinarily nice people.  On the field, however, DeCoud is a beast.  He is ALL over the field, plus great on special teams (when he is not wearing the same jersey number as Best).  Too bad he is a senior.  He is 3rd on the team in tackles (Felder, who we failed to mention in the LB Roundtable, is having a great year and leads the team in tackles).  I don’t view the DBs as too negative.  I think that they have been playing very well, but just put into a bad position due to the DLine.

Plus, his hit last year in the UCLA game.  That’s all-time!

Ragnarok:  I’d say that while the DBs have been solid (for the most part), they’ve definitely missed the big-play ability of Daymeion Hughes.

- Last year, Cal had 21 interceptions in 13 games — almost 2 per game.  Hughes had 8 of those all by himself, while the rest of the team had 13 in those 13 games.

- This year?  Only 9 interceptions in 9 games, and Brandon Hampton leads the team in INTs with 2.  No one else has more than 1.

Without Hughes, we’re missing a big weapon against the passing game, and it shows.  Anyone who’s been reading this website knows that I’ve been harping on the importance of turnovers, and if you’re wondering what our defense has been missing this year, part of the answer is Hughes’ uncanny ability to intercept errant passes.  When Bend But Don’t Break works, part of the reason is that the ability to create turnovers will stop an opponents’ drive cold.

What do you guys think? B?   I don’t think I could give them a much higher grade than that.