An opportunity, but Bears in deep against Huskies
In the week leading up to Saturday night’s game at Washington, the Cal football team parroted one of its head coach’s words time and time again: Opportunity. “You get very few opportunities to play a top-10 team, so when you do, you’ve got to take advantage,” Cal defensive coordinator Tim DeRuyter said. “… Our guys are going up there expecting to win. We also know we’re going to get a great challenge.”
The Bears, who have been underdogs in four of their first five games, are facing their longest odds of the season — heading to No. 6 Washington as
28½-point underdogs.
That might not be as big a slight to Cal (3-2, 0-2 Pac-12) as it is praise of the Huskies (5-0, 2-0), who are the Pac-12’s topranked team and are outscoring opponents by an average of 33.2 points per game.
Washington has won seven of its past eight games against Cal and is 18-2 as a ranked team against the Bears. Cal’s two wins in that scenario were in 1950 and 2002.
Led by 2016 Pac-12 Offensive Player of the Year Jake Browning, Washington is scoring 44 points per game. Five games into his junior season, the quarterback is fourth on the school’s all-time list for passing yards (7,636) and second in touchdown passes (71).
Browning has completed 71.4 percent of his passes this season for 1,251 yards and 12 touchdowns to post the conference’s top efficiency rating (175.7).
On top of being one of the nation’s most accurate passers, Browning sets himself apart from a string of talented quarterbacks on Cal’s schedule with his comprehensive control of a voluminous offense.
The 6-foot-2, 209-pounder from Folsom (Sacramento County) is a maestro of an offense that uses multiple personnel groupings, formations, motions and shifts to confuse defenses. The bells and whistles often lead to nothing more than power, zone and counter runs that set up play-action and gadget plays.
“Some of that has to really be in your blood, so you’re not just bogged down by all these mental processes,” Washington head coach Chris Petersen said of Browning, who checks out of about 30 to 40 percent of the Huskies’ play calls. “We’ve continually just kind of grown and grown the package. “He doesn’t flinch on it, at all.” After a 3-0 start, including upsets at North Carolina and against Ole Miss, Cal has flinched a little bit in its past two games. The Bears had a fourthquarter meltdown against USC in Week 4 and got outrushed 308-8 at Oregon last week.
Cal has continued to take on new head coach Justin Wilcox’s personality — playing hard and playing for each other during the stretch — but the Bears have also lacked consistent attention to detail.
There have been problems with receivers’ route depth, the offensive line’s communication and protection, the quarterback’s eye progression, the defensive line’s gap integrity, the linebackers’ tackling and the defensive backs’ leverage.
“Unfortunately, effort alone does not win,” Wilcox said. “You have to execute, and you have to do it over and over and over again — no matter the environment. That’s what it takes to be successful.”
Cal’s offense has a long way to go to restore its early success. After averaging 34 points on 450 yards from scrimmage in the first two games, the Bears have averaged 23.7 points on 394.7 yards while playing without game-breaking running back Tre Watson and field-stretching receiver Demetris Robertson the past three games.
Washington won’t make a rebound easy. The Huskies lead the Pac-12, allowing only 10.8 points per game on 256 yards of total offense.
“It’s fun to watch them, because you respect how they play the game and what they’re doing on defense,” Cal offensive coordinator Beau Baldwin said. “You also get excited about that, because to me, that becomes a challenge.”