San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Respite for QBs: Both play well after absences
Cal quarterback Chase Garbers and his Stanford counterpart, Tanner McKee, shared an unwelcome bond entering Saturday’s Big Game: lingering, frustrating restlessness.
Garbers spent much of the past three weeks feuding with the City of Berkeley Public Health division, novel territory for a college athlete. Garbers, among the 40-plus people in Cal’s program to test positive for the coronavirus, lashed out on social media, criticizing what he considered overly restrictive testing rules.
His team lost to previously winless Arizona without him, then had its game against USC postponed.
McKee, like Garbers, had not played in a game since Oct. 30. McKee spent those three weeks nursing an unspecified injury — he was spotted on crutches at one point, while missing resound
ing losses to Utah and Oregon State. Combined score: Opponents 87, Stanford 21.
So the Big Game could not arrive quickly enough for the quarterbacks.
Garbers took full advantage, guiding the Bears to a 41-11 victory Saturday and cementing his spot in the lore of this rivalry. He passed for 246 yards, ran for 59 more and directed Cal’s offense with clinical efficiency.
Two years ago, after his late touchdown run gave Cal its first Big Game win in a decade, Garbers marveled at how many alums thanked him for ending the drought. CalStanford obviously lacks impact on the national scene, or even on the Pac-12 landscape this year, but the history still matters.
And aside from one fivelateral, band-scattering kickoff return, the history is strongest at football’s most glamorous position.
Consider the quarterbacks on Cal’s side, from Craig Morton and Steve Bartkowski to Aaron Rodgers and Jared Goff. Or the Stanford lineage, from John Brodie and Jim Plunkett to John Elway and Andrew Luck. That’s an impressive parade.
Those players polished their names, and their legacies, in the NFL. Garbers might not make it in the pros, but he will always savor leading his team to two Big Game victories — Cal’s only wins in a 12-year stretch of the series.
It’s only fitting, perhaps, that this latest triumph came in the wake of his retreat into isolation after the positive virus test. Last year’s pandemic-shortened season was over-the-top bizarre, and this year he and the Bears confronted more obstacles — of their own doing if, as Berkeley officials alleged, they ignored public health guidelines.
“I had no symptoms,” Garbers said during the week. “Honestly, it was pretty boring, not being able to do anything. It was stressful, not being with the team and having to watch them on TV.” McKee, in a more profound way, showed resilience on the way to his first Big Game start. He weathered a skincancer scare in high school, delayed his Stanford career by nearly two years to embark on a Mormon mission in Brazil and then endured his recent injury.
He, like Garbers, faces an intriguing decision after the season. McKee has three years of college eligibility remaining, but he also could enter the NFL draft (because he was in the high school class of 2018). Garbers has the option of returning for a sixth season at Cal, thanks to the NCAA’s latest COVID rules.
Saturday’s event at least felt like the Big Game again, rejuvenated by the presence of actual spectators. Last year, in Berkeley, the Bears and Cardinal played before cardboard cutouts in the thick of the pandemic.
This time, on a spectacularly sunny fall afternoon, tailgate parties covered Stanford’s sprawling campus. Alums of both schools mingled, socialized, imbibed. Kids tossed footballs and scampered among the eucalyptus trees.
They provided energy and a familiar Big Game buzz, even if they didn’t fill the stadium. Then, when the game began, Garbers and McKee showed their rust. McKee underthrew his second pass, a deep throw for Bryce Farrell, and it was intercepted. Later in the first quarter, Garbers also threw an interception, an ill-conceived lob into the end zone.
Before long, though, Garbers showed how much he has improved in his four years as Cal’s starter. He’s poised and decisive in the pocket, knows when to run and knows when to veer out of bounds in the interest of self-preservation.
Garbers connected with Trevon Clark on an 84-yard touchdown pass, the longest in Big Game history — Clark covered roughly the last 72 after making the catch — and then found running back Christopher Brooks on a 1yard TD pass.
Ultimately, Garbers finished with these eye-catching numbers over his past four starts (spread over seven weeks): 980 yards passing, 244 yards rushing, nine touchdown passes, one interception. And an emphatic end to three weeks of restlessness.