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.

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