The process was unexpected, but the result was inevitable.
On a Saturday night at Memorial Stadium, the No. 2 Ducks cruised to an easy 59-17 victory over the Bears.
But a surprisingly slow start kept Cal close through the first two and a half quarters.
“That’s a great team,” coach Jeff Tedford said. “They can really get away from you in a hurry if you’re not careful.”
Freshman quarterback Marcus Mariota burned the Cal secondary repeatedly with accurate throws to his bevy of speedy receivers. The redshirt freshman finished 27-for-34 and 377 yards and 6 touchdowns.
The vaunted Oregon rushing attack was surprisingly outplayed by the Bears’ three-pronged running back attack; Isi Sofele outgained Heisman candidate Kenjon Barner 134 yards to 65.
Cal’s start didn’t inspire much hope in the hearts of the Bears’ faithful. The Bears’ first offensive drive culminated with a sack on third and long, and the Ducks drove 57 yards for a score in less than three minutes.
With the Ducks out to an early lead and the Cal defense looking fallible as ever, the game appeared to be on the verge of entering blowout territory.
But, uncharacteristically, the Bears weren’t about to give up without a fight.
Behind strong runs by Isi Sofele and two pass interference calls, Cal drove the length of the field on the ensuing drive. Backup quarterback Allan Bridgford found freshman wide receiver Darius Powe in the middle of the end zone for a 10-yard touchdown to tie it up at 7-7.
After trading off three-and-outs, the Ducks drove 86 yards to gain a 14-7 advantage just before the end of the first quarter. Mariota led the charge, completing passes to three different receivers, including a 24-yard strike to Will Murphy.
“Oregon is tough,” Bridgford said. “If you don’t score every time, they’re going to get ahead, and it’s tough to stick with the run.”
A field goal by Vicenzo D’Amato early in the second quarter brought the Bears within four, and the defense held the potent Ducks offense to another three and out.
The momentum seemed to shift toward Cal, but the Oregon offense was simply too fast to contain.
Bears kicker Vincenzo D’Amato missed a 48-yard field goal with two minutes remaining in the first half.
Immediately, Mariota went back to work shredding the helpless Bears’ defensive backs. Completing passes to four different receivers, Mariota and his offense drove 69 yards in 78 seconds to give the Ducks a 24-10 advantage heading into halftime.
“He’s a really good player,” Tedford said. “You have to pick your poison with him. If you try to stop him from running, he’ll burn you on the play-action.”
A deference at the coin toss gave Oregon the ball to begin the second half and a chance to put Cal away for good. But the stout Cal run defense stopped Barner for a loss on first down, and the Ducks were unable to pick up enough yardage to continue the drive.
And then it was Isi Sofele time.
The senior running back, playing in the last home game of his career, carried the Bears literally and figuratively on the ensuing drive. Sofele had runs of 31 and 10 yards, respectively, to singlehandedly drive Cal into the redzone. Sofele finished the drive with a four-yard touchdown run off left tackle to bring the Bears within a score midway through the third quarter.
But the impressive running by Sofele was the closest Cal would get to besting the Ducks.
Two drives later, Bridgford tossed a hurried screen pass right to Oregon linebacker Boseko Lokombo. On the next play, Mariota found Josh Huff in the back of the end zone for a 35-yard TD pass to make it 31-17.
With any hope of a Cal upset on the line, Bridgford threw an incomplete pass on fourth and 12 on the next drive.
And five plays later, Mariota found Huff again on a 39-yard touchdown toss to put the game out of reach for the hapless Bears.
“It’s very disappointing,” Tedford said. “We were playing well and it was a very tight game. Then all of the sudden, in the second half, they made a lot of big plays.”
Michael Rosen covers football. Contact him at [email protected].
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For all you Cal fans out there that are hoping Tedford steps down, don’t hold your breath. And don’t think Cal will fire him, that would cost $6.9 million dollars. Tedford has now stated that he will have a talk with Sandy Barbour about his future and that of Cals.
Tedford has said he will start by looking in the mirror. Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, who is the greatest Cal coach of all? MIRROR: Well technically you have the most wins of any Cal coach, but? At this point Tedford could not stand to look in the mirror any longer. So he is now pointing fingers again, just like he did a few years ago when he was on the hot seat. He has said that he will ask the players and coaches where they think the problem lies, I wonder why Tedford is not going to include the fans or sports writers in this intervention, well for one thing like I said Tedford will not leave on his own, that means there are a bunch of players and coaches that could face repercussions if they honestly said ” Well coach you are the problem”, Tedford at one time was considered a QB Guru and Offensive mastermind, well his last 3 QB’s (Longshore, Riley, Maynard ) have been progressively worse and none of them were ever even considered by a NFL team to be drafted. I can’t remember but I think the Longshore came the closest when he was asked to throw balls to WR’s during the CBA, and I think he also played Arena Football.
Tedford you have led Call on a progressively downward spiral- probably you should have known you hit rock bottom when at the beginning of the year Cal was poised to have one of the great recruiting classes ever after the Armed Services Bowl when Shaq Thompson and many other players all put on Cal Caps and the national spotlight was on Cal, but then within weeks all those recruits went in different directions when Tosh Lupoi jumped ships and went to Washington. So far the recruiting class for 2013 does not look all that promising.
Tedford will be with us for the next 3 years unless Sandy Barbour is out there aggressively trying to find a new Head Coach, which we all know she isn’t doing. So in the next 3 years we might see Zack Kline lift Cal out of basement, but even if he does get Cal to a Bowl game should it really matter unless that Bowl game is the “Rose Bowl “?
Ah yes, just another great defenseless game plan by coach Pretendergra$$. It’s not a coincidence that Cal has pretty much gone down hill since Tedfraud hired him. Pathetic.
Actually the defense has done better under Pendergast than it did before under Gregory. But I agree it has gone down hill.
If the reference point is Gregory, then it’s abysmal.
A rather shocking statistic reported here:
http://www.ibabuzz.com/beartalk/2012/11/11/football-a-tough-day-at-the-office/comment-page-1/#comment-137155
In the not quite 11 years of the Tedford era, Cal has lost 17 games by 17 points or more. Only 2 of those games came in the first 7 years while 15 have come in the last 4 years.
Stated in other terms, for the first 7 years (mostly) BEFORE Tedford’s contract extension and huge raise with a guaranteed contract, Cal lost only 1 in every 45 games by a blowout margin. AFTER Tedford’s contract extension and huge raise with a guaranteed contract, Tedford has lost about 1 out of EVERY 3 by a blowout margin.
Gee, I wonder what changed from before to after? This ALONE is reason enough to fire the man and sue him for non-performance of his contract.
I don’t believe it was the contract extension that caused Tedford to put it in neutral. I believe Tedford could not tolerate DeSean Jackson up-staging him. Notice the correlation between the team’s record and the loss of speed. Tedford’s favorite line was, you can’t coach speed. Since Tedford can’t coach, he needed speed. To get speed, you need to get 5-star recruits. Tedford’s ego can’t tolerate speedy and flashy 5-star recruits. He has a ton of talent in Keenan Allen but Keenan was not a 5-star receiver. His fame was playing safety. Keenan did not have the speed to be receiver and that’s going to be his knock in the NFL draft.
At this time, it’s not certain we would know what to do with speed. It was really funny to watch Bigelow run sideways (east-west) if you’re Oregon. I’m sure Oregon noticed (a) we only threw once into the end zone when we were in the red zone, (b) we only threw to the left side of the field, (c) we threw to our tight end only once, (d) we abandoned the running game when that was the only thing working for us, and (e) we only ran on first down (at least I noticed these five tendencies).
Gee, I wonder what the other teams did during the week nights when it took them only 15 minutes of film to have us scouted. They must have been studying. Now I understand the reason we are second to last in graduation rate. The other teams have plenty of time to study since it doesn’t take much time to scout a simplistic, dull, and unimaginative offense. Our guys are busy playing basketball and breaking ankles.
The loss of speed and the vacuum in the brain trust are the reasons the Bears have been intolerable to watch (for fans) and humorous to watch (for opponents) since 2008.
It was like watching a cat play with a mouse, and the cat figured that it would go ahead and kill the mouse after D’Amato missed a field goal with 2 minutes left in the first half, and Oregon marched 69 yards in 70 seconds for a TD, that was the beginning of the snowball effect.
Anti-tedford clowns need to stfu.
The man is a good coach who has accomplished 10 times as much as holmoe and gilbertson ever did. Cal is lucky to have such a great coach and leader
There are only 2 standards of excellence, Winning the Rose Bowl or winning a national championship. I would like to see Cal win a Rose Bowl in my lifetime a national championship is just to unfathomable, my father a Cal alumni wait his whole life hoping Cal would someday win a Rose Bowl.
Since 2007 Oregon St. game, Cal’s record has been under .500. The man was a good coach. However, in the last five years, he hasn’t been a good coach. There is nothing about the last half decade that should have you calling him a great coach and leader. There aren’t many Cal students around who actually saw Tedford perform at a high level, and I am surprised that a current student thinks so highly of Tedford considering what you have seen.
The man WAS a good coach, BEFORE he received his guaranteed contract. Since then, he has lost more games than he has won and 1 out of every 3 games has been a blowout loss.
That’s not a good coach, Pal. That’s a coach who has stopped trying because he no longer *needs* to try. He is set for life. It is despicable.
Please see my reply to R UKidding Me below.
How much did Tedford pay you to write this? If you’re a CURRENT student, you probably weren’t here at the times of Holmoe and Gilbertson. In case you claim to be a student of Cal football program history, why aren’t you comparing Tedford’s performance to coaches like Andy Smith in the 20s and Lynn “Pappy” Waldorf” in the 50s, where Cal routinely went to Rose ball and won National championships. All of this tells me that either you’re a very ignorant student or Tedford paid you a couple of dollars to write in his support or you’re related to him. No person with a few coordinated brain cells would write what you wrote.
Looking at the past to evaluate the present confirms the theory of relativity – it’s all relative – but it provides no guidance for the future. We did the right thing with Holmoe and Gilbertson – we dismissed them for poor team performance. The right thing to do now is to dismiss Tedford for poor team performance.
As to Tedford’s coaching ability, please see R UKidding Me and my reply below.
Good teams and good programs overcome poor performances and finish strong in games. Like Oregon. Weak programs fall apart at the end. Like Tedford’s.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we DIDN’T have to make excuses and look for fleeting, temporary times when we didn’t suck? Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t lose by 6 touchdowns to anyone? Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a head coach worth his salary? Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a winning conference record over the last 6 years? Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have a half empty stadium for the last home game of the season?
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a head coach NOT named Tedford?
Such an impressive group of “student-athletes”. Please end this farce soon, and stop the subsidies to the athletics department.
“Ducks cruised to an easy 59-17 victory over the Bears.”
Bears are pathetic losers, GOLD PLATED pathetic losers, coached by a Goldbrick! But Heck UCBerkeley is managed and policed by the same overpaid, over-hyped, incompetent scum who rip off the Taxpaying public for the big bucks!
Jeff Tedford: a $2+ million per year waste of space.
where exactly does Div I hand-egg fit into the institutional mission (namely the discovery and dissemination of knowledge primarily for the benefit of Californians)?
oh wait, it doesn’t.
Tedford: go jump in a lake, Tedford: go jump in a lake, Tedford: go jump in a lake,
Tedford: go jump in a lake, Tedford: go jump in a lake, Tedford: go jump in a lake,
Tedford: go jump in a lake, Tedford: go jump in a lake, Tedford: go jump in a lake,
Tedford: go jump in a lake, Tedford: go jump in a lake, Tedford: go jump in a lake,