Idiots Write About Sports

Ugh.

Not to reinforce the angry anti-Ayoob opinions of loyal reader (and unfrequent punctuator) Seth, but I’ve come to a final conclusion about Joseph Ayoob. Much as it pains me to do it to a local Marin County guy, I’ve gotta say: he’s not very good.

In this game Ayoob was about as accurate as he has been in all of the previous games, which is to say, not very. Yes, occasionally he hits with a deep pass — usually still underthrown, but sometimes the receivers can navigate to the location of the ball. Yes, sometimes he’s let down by receivers who fail to run the correct routes. But the fact is, he repeatedly overthrows wide-open receivers on deep balls, he consistently throws out-of-bounds or high on mid-range routes, and when he’s on the run he has a remarkable tendency to toss the ball into the turf three feet in front of open men.

This week we saw an added dimension to Ayoob, which was that in addition to being inaccurate, he got rattled (similar to what happened in the Sac State game). This led to the fascinating mixture of inaccurate passes, terrible reads, and forced throws, which led to interceptions aplenty.

So until further notice, I’m going to write him off. Tedford’s not a miracle worker; he may be able to take this guy and, Baltimore Ravens-like, make him useful by drastically reducing the chances he’s got to make mistakes. You know, high-percentage passes and handoffs. But I think he’ll be lucky to be a third-stringer next year, to be honest. He came in to camp as a highly-touted recruit, but so failed at getting it together that Nate Longshore beat him out as the starter. Next year Longshore will be back, as well as a certain highly-touted QB who is redshirting this year. I’d lay odds that one or both of them will prove to have a bigger upside than Ayoob.

There’s more than enough blame to go around for this stinkbomb, however. Cal’s special teams proved to be less than special again. The running game was singularly unimpressive, although some of that may be because there are some serious injury problems in the offensive line. And Marshawn Lynch — who does have a cast on his hand — fumbled twice, which pretty much eliminated any momentum Cal had at that point in the game.

The offense in general was pretty sad. Cal’s best drive of the day was powered by 45 yards on three 15-yard penalties, plus two instant-replay reversals. Roll on you Bears!

But let’s praise Cal’s defense, which forced three turnovers and a fumble-touchback, which counts as a fourth turnover in my book. They also forced Oregon State to kick three field goals in situations that probably should’ve netted at least two TDs. The defense did its job here, more or less. Yes, Cal would’ve won the game had there not been an odd second-half lapse when Oregon State’s aimless running game suddenly became unstoppable. I don’t know what that was about, but given the great play the rest of the game I don’t think I can fault it.

So, ugly perspective time: First home loss by Cal in two years (and again to Oregon State!), and this season’s starting to look like a fight to get to the Emerald Bowl. So let’s go back to the summer, and look at the schedule: this is a team picked to finish in the middle of the Pac-10. Five of their six easiest games are their first five. The team could easily go 5-0 and still not be very good.

Over the course of those five weeks we started to convince ourselves that they actually were that good. But this is not the 2004 Cal team. This team’s a whole lot more like the flawed 2003 team that beat USC but then lost to UCLA and Oregon State on consecutive weeks before eking out a last-second win in the Insight Bowl. Except that the 2003 team had an accurate passer who was coming into its own, and this team… doesn’t.

So. 5-2. Night game against Wazzou on Saturday — I’m gonna go out on a limb and predict that we hardy souls who venture to section FF next week will have some room to spread out on the golden benches. And as for the season, a lot will depend on the WSU game. A loss, and Cal’s looking at being 5-5 going into the Big Game. What a terrible thought — Stanford standing between Cal and bowl eligibility.

Like I said. Ugh.

Remember that we were without DL Membane and LB Ma'afala in the 3rd quarter when all the rushing was done. I think too much of our defense was sitting on the sideline. I think that explains the run defense breakdowns.

We'll beat WaZoo, they're looking worse every week. But nevertheless, the way I see it, Cal is 6-4, 4-4 going into the Big Game and Stanford is 3-6, 3-5 or 4-5, 4-4 if they can pick off OSU or ASU. That means the winner of the Big Game should get #6 in the Pac-10.

Otherwise, you're right: Next year Ayoob is toast and Longshore is in.

ah jason! man this is great, i really liked this article allot man, i will post these two similar sentiments that i shared with a bunch of cal people later that i think you may kinda agree with, k-gotta run but i am so pleased by your awakening jason, i knew you had that special talent in you to overcome the hype and see the truth, thanks man!

GUYS, HERE ARE A COUPLE OF EMAILS I AM CIRCULATING IN A VAIN ATTEMPT TO SALVAGE THIS GOD FORSAKEN SEASON...READ ON...

Well, gentleman, i hate to say that i am the man... but it really looks like i had this one pegged all along. i have consistently said since the sac state game that ayoob was terrible and would drag this team into the gutter. finally, some people, but still far too few are starting to take note. we need to put pressure on the sports editors of every major bay area newspaper and sac bee to put the heat on t and ayoob. you can also personally email coach tedford at football@berkeley.edu if we do this maybe we can at least get tedford to put kyle reed on the sideline to watch games instead of wasting away redshirting. reed could play after ayoob has blown it completely, usually sometime in the third or fourth q. this would be a good learning experience for him. i mean where is the harm in it? look this top recruit riley is coming in next year anyway and not to mention longshore will be healthy. honestly, ayoob outta be moved to the flanker spot or maybe play like cordell stewart used to in the nfl. starting qb however, he is not! i have much more to say on the issue but i must watch my pro teams today and see how they perform. something tells me that they will fare far better than my poor baby bears have been. that is exactly how they have been playing, like babies, they need to grow up~! i know this is a young team and all but if the bears hope to have any success this year at this level they are really going to have to step it up a notch or two or three, sadly!
much love to all my fellow bear backers. if you are a member of the small but growing radical element advocating the currently “peaceful” overthrow movement of the ayoob regime please email me personally at steinsac@yahoo.com and maybe we can figure something out to get him the f**k out~! to any of you so-called sports writers, start acting like it and tell the truth about ayoob. i am not asking you to blemish the truth, to tell something that is a falsehood. yet i doubt anyone could seriously say that ayoob is anything but terrible. this team just can't be the babysitter for him. this is the university of california at berkeley, an institution known for having smart, mature earth shakers. whether in physics, politics, rugby and yes, even FOOTBALL, we got it all, until ayoob came to town… he rocked our special happy family in a bad way! i have chosen to just sit back and watch this insanity for too long, at least put levy in or let reed get a shot. i saw this kid in high school, he is freaking awesome. look at it this way guys, he couldn't do any worse than astupid, sorry ayoob played.
seth
p.s. sorry to be so harsh on ayoob but he brought it on himself with that cocky attitude, the idea that he was owed something by this team and his general smugness. the team doesn't owe him jack, he owes the team. after all, he has already cost them the season.

Well the email that probably only i looked forward to writing is finally here, the break down of the bear breakdown, in black and white. the bear’s most recent test of the season, the once seemingly easy opp of o. st. became a game of life and death for the bear’s once promising season. the game was painful to watch, many a bear fan no doubt began to question their very existence on this day. personally i haven't felt this bad since the summer of 2000 when i foresaw then too just how bad things would get in berkeley. oddly enough i found myself warning then coach tom holmoe what was about to unfold. he didn't listen to me either. he probably thought, "this idiots a punk kid, reject fan, some loser with nothing better to do than harass everyone surrounding anything about the program. but for me it goes so much deeper than that. for the better part of my life i grew up loving one professional sports franchise after another. i saw then just how terrible ignorance, stupidity and cockiness could make a man. from then on i went back to the simpler way of life, college football. the truly greatest thing america has to offer. when i watched the game against o. st. i wasn't having fun, it truly was painful to watch. this team however is still a threat, they are still contenders and despite all i have said to the contrary i still very much believe in them. the question that should have many of you up at night but doesn't is this, "can cal beat usc on 11/12 @ home?" YES, cal can and will beat usc! you mark my words, just as i foresaw the doom of the bears overall season, i think cal can and again will, beat usc, resoundingly on 11/12. however, in order for cal to be able to do that one very prickly issue must be dealt with. what can be done with or for ayoob to make him better suited to win games for this apparently inept cal offense? the answer to that is more complex than entire bilateral national treaty negotiations or full fledged armistices'. i can however answer it for you and having said that i will. being as cal is chary to remove ayoob they really only have one option (no pun intended). they must become a fully functional option team, similar to past navy and many current hs teams. ayoob had great success @ ccsf w/option. cal's run game will easily be bogged down for the rest of the season now that o. st. has laid out the magna carta of how to stop cal's entire offensive unit. o. st. db's are certainly not the most competitive bunch in the country so cal had no excuse for not advancing by way of aerial assault. the only assault was the one ayoob took, (kind of like a man i guess.) anyway, look, i am slowly loosing my focus so i must finish up here. being as ayoob cannot pass we must at least begin to explore our options of moving to the low intelligence style of stone age football. we MUST make ourselves a pre-callahan Nebraska if we are to WIN in 05! the last time i think i saw neb was when they beat cal 21 to 3 in berkeley. that game rocked in that i thought we held tough! god, is this a wordy email, i gotta go. here's the inside scoop, and you heard it from the man who predicted the big one back in 01 and this years demise. this team has gotta turn into an option team or dump ayoob off on the bench, or put him at flanker or hb as 3rd string. i don't know, i guess after writing this email i realized a very important thing, even i don't know what to do to fix this team, there-are-just-too- many-problems-this-year. i am already looking forward to the opener next yr. v. ten. i think that will be our year; this year guys, i think i was just a little tooooooo optimistic. i just hope coach tedford can make it through without going crazy or really losing confidence in his abilities, permanently, in such a way that he will no longer be able to function effectively as Mon’ Capitan in berkeley. i truly believe he is telling the players what they need to hear. they just aren't executing it the way they should be, due to, hmm, haven’t figured that one out yet, nor do i feel i ever will.

let me think some more and i will email you all again later tonight, all is not lost guys, remember this team can still be competitive!

seth

p.s. how sad, poor aaron was back and had to see the thrashing in person. it must have been just awful when he slowly came to the realization that he too played a large part in this by deciding stupidly to leave us early for gb, serves him right. i am almost as upset with him as i am with ayoob. i give up already!!!

p.s.s. sports editors, please keep heat on for now, it still is not time to turn it off, just yet anyway... prolonged heat of course could kill us!

jason, great article. that point about stanfurd possibly keeping cal out of a lowly bowl game is horrifying to say the VERY, very least! what the F man!

well to everyone out there who still bothers to read my insane emails i think this may be one of the final ones i write, at least for this season. the last few days i did some real soul searching and thought of what i had become, an intolerant mad man. anybody who would so viciously single out a poor college kid like ayoob has got to be mad. i don't know what so drove me to do it, but i did, and every time i unleashed one of my nasty letters, i felt even worse!

see when the season started and things were still golden (this is not to say that they still aren't) and there was much hope in the air that anything was possible, that, this could be the year that the bears really did some special things, (not that they haven't this season and in the past) and they didn't, i felt sick. i don't know why i felt sick exactly. i mean it's not like the bears haven't had many rough years in the past.

anyway, i decided to spew my venomous poisonous hate and intolerance of ayoob to anyone and everyone i could get my hands on that would even FREAKIN listen. then the oddest thing of all happened. one of my Jewish buddies, (i am partially Jew myself) told me how ayoob was supposedly half lebanese. he went on to ask me what kind of example i was setting for all our ancestors and relatives in Israel. at that point it hit me, let's give this kid a chance. we are either going to sink or float based largely on this guy, and really when you think about it, this guy alone! hey, i am all for fostering in better arab-Israeli relations and if i can do so by showing solidarity with ayoob i can also show solidarity with the larger cal football program itself all at the same time, what a deal huh!

good luck guys! i will try my hardest not to write again this season!

p.s. good job sports writers with your harrowing accounts of the physical anti-ayoob intolerance that was going on in berkeley. i think that more than anything (despite my largely anonymous emails) this showed that berkeley is perhaps not as tolerant as it once was, if only in football. though still i was alarmed at some of the later accounts of what happened to poor ayoob. i insanely even felt partially responsible, though i know i wasn't. anyway i have tickets to all of the remaining home games (including usc because the ticket prices have taken a dive, ha, i kick ass for waiting, i am sooo the man!) and the inevitable stanfurd game. my, i like to think of good buddy, jason from idiots write about sports dot com really called out a scary scenario! one very realistic one in which stanfurd stood between our baby bears and a bowl game! oh my god, that's freakin really nutz MAN. should it appear this is the path we are headed down, mark my freakin words! i'lllll, be-baaaack!

seth

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