Best of Social Media: Cal vs. Oregon

Oregon came into the match up with Cal fresh off a much needed bye week, which brought some good news and simultaneous bad effects. The good news was the return of much of the injured wide receiver core. The bad was a mix of rusty play by the skill players on offense, including uncharacteristic mistakes in execution leading to multiple turnovers. You certainly have to give credit to Cal, an excellent defensive football team, but a lot of the blame falls on the Ducks execution.

With a combination of self-inflicted wounds (e.g., Dye’s first fumble, Herbert missing open receivers or throwing behind) and a good defensive opponent, you end up with a large amount of hand-wringing by Oregon fans over offensive production in a 17-7 win. Without looking closer, you end up with a misattributed issue of offensive creativity, not execution.

Talking with people from the Cal fan base, they actually recognize the quality of the offensive play calling against their respectable defense. Even looking just at the first drive, if you take away the personal foul, and bad read (see first Herbert interception, which was still a good defensive play), Oregon was easily marching down the field. Go to the second drive, and Travis Dye self-fumbles what should have been a red zone first down.

You might fault the coaches for not having the players fully mentally ready to play, but you can’t fault the coaches for the overall mental toughness and tenacity of the Ducks. Even with Oregon trailing 7-0 at halftime, I never had a feeling that Oregon would lose this game. That is a testament to the excellent defense and a different culture permeating through the 2019 squad.

The picture above is most notable because of the guy in the middle of the first picture. Mycah Pittman wowed fans pre-season with his acrobatic catching ability, but then got injured during practice. Today would be his first official game action as a Duck. Some might say it is a bit early to anoint someone who hasn’t played a college down, but I’ll go ahead and say, Pittman has the ability to not only be WR1, but the best WR Oregon has had in a while. Pittman in his first college action did not disappoint. While his stat line ended up being 4 catches for 43 yards, his biggest play came off the board on a highly questionable call against Dallas Warmack.

Oregon’s defense showed up the first drive and shut down the Bear offense. The following drive, they had their only hiccup of the game, giving up the first touchdown since game one. That second drive took a few major plays by Cal, but would be the last points surrendered by the defense. It should be noted that Oregon’s offense held the ball for 10:27 of the first quarter, but turned it over after entering the red zone both times.

Despite not putting up points, Oregon did have a couple offensive highlights in the second quarter, including the season’s first catches for Mycah Pittman and Brenden Schooler. On the other side of the ball, the defense gave up some big passing plays, but also managed to not surrender any points. Cal continued to move the ball, holding on to possession for 10:02 of the second quarter. Oregon’s offense ended up with a fumble, punt, and missed FG in the 2nd.

Following Kayvon Thibodeaux’s first career solo sack (he'd have a second at the end of the game), which included a strip of the QB (recovered by Cal), Modster threw a ball that led to near disaster for Cal. If Holland cut back inside on this play, he could have taken this back for a morale destroying TD, tying the game up before half. Fortunately for Cal, Holland got pushed out near midfield.

While the fans probably weren’t too thrilled with 3 points, this one was big to at least get the monkey off Camden Lewis’ back. Lewis hit his first FG in four attempts, including now being only one of three from within 29 yards. Oregon has mindbogglingly been unable to have solid placekicking for nearly 20 years now, so hopefully this will signal a move forward for the young kicker.

If the Duck offense needed a jump start, this might have been the moment. This poor misguided soul thought he could have free run of the field, but Cyrus Habibi-Likio had other ideas. With the police and security seemingly taking their sweet time, Cyrus decided to take things into his own hands, taking out the non-streaking streaker. As you can see from the clip, he even fired up the security guard pretty well, with a big fist pump in the air. After the game, Habibi-Likio apologized to the fan, offering to buy him some ice cream after he gets out of lockup.

Feeding off that energy, Cyrus took the ball in for the Oregon offense (the eventual game winner), giving Oregon the 10-7 lead. The combination of the fan tackle and this touchdown woke up an Autzen crowd that was starting to get a bit antsy.

No game is complete without the Duck doing something crazy. Tonight he went crowd surfing in a raft, cause, sure why not. This wouldn’t be too noteworthy, but it is worth noticing the lack of concern displayed by the crowd in a 4th quarter 3 point game. Although they struggled, Oregon didn’t give the feel they were going to drop this one.

That feeling of lack of concern was amplified once Jevon Holland tipped a Cal throw to teammate Troy Dye. The defensive play eventually led to a huge (although potentially scary) QB run by Herbert that saw Herbert slam into a camera tower, thanks to a late hit by a Cal defender. Fortunately, Herbert popped up from the hit and came right back out to finish this one off.

Cyrus Habibi-Likio nearly took the couple of plays prior to this into the end zone, and would have had a story for the ages to tell his grand kids (he’ll still have a great story to tell). Lucky for Herbert, Cyrus got stopped a bit short, which allowed Herbert to continue his TD passing streak to 33 games. This was an absolute beauty of a play call, which caught Cal completely off guard. Jaylon Redd waltzed into the end zone for his 10th career TD and put the nail in the coffin for Cal.

No question about it now, this defense is special. Oregon is putting up historical efforts, and is now allowing less than 10 points a game (9.8 PPG), including 6.5 PPG in conference. Yes, the offense isn’t a juggernaut, but it doesn’t have to be. To put things into perspective, it is helpful to look at points for and against during conference play. Here is a table of the north division:

Amazingly, at week 7, Oregon has a two-game lead against the majority of the north (save for Oregon State, which is above Washington in the standings). Oregon needs to take care of business this week, on short rest, playing Colorado on Friday. The Ducks can’t look ahead to Washington the following week, where the Ducks will have a chance to put a stranglehold on the north.

Wishing a speedy recovery for Gus Cumberlander (and CJ Verdell too, although not nearly as serious). Cumberlander looked to go down with a non-contact injury (could be ACL), and I’d be surprised to see him play again this season. This is a major bummer for a guy that has put years into the Oregon program to finally shine in his senior season. Oregon will bring the next man up, but will also feel the loss of a major contributor.