Preview your team's upcoming season

[bill curley II]

Thought it'd be good for people to give the general audience insight into their teams for the upcoming season.

For the 7-6 California Bears:

Key Losses: Desean Jackson, Lavelle Hawkins, Robert Jordan, Justin Forsett, James Montgomery (transfer), Craig Stevens, Rulon Davis, pretty much everyone worth a damn on the OL

Key positions:
QB. We have two good QB's in Nate Longshore and Kevin Riley. Riley's the fan favorite with how well he played in the bowl game, and against Oregon St despite that mental fart at the end. He's a lot more mobile than Longshore, makes plays down the field, and does a better job of going through his progressions. Longshore obviously has more experience, and was playing pretty well last year before the injury, so it's hard to say how hurt he really was. I think Tedford goes with Longshore to start the year, but Riley will see the field in the first couple games as well. In terms of future though, we're set with Riley (soph).

WR and TE. We lose our top 3 receivers and our starting TE. TE should actually be ok though. Cameron Morrah is more than ready to emerge as a top catching TE in the pac10, and we've also recruited a couple of nice guys at that position. WR's? Who knows. The only guys outside of our top 3 (Jordan, Jackson, the Hawk) that even saw the field were Sam DeSa and LayRelle Cunningham, who are both gone too. From our recruitment list, we did get two 4 star WR's (Marvin Jones and Jarrett Sparks), so maybe they can help.

DL and LB. Our front 7 was a joke last year, so maybe it's good we lost a bunch of guys like Davis and Felder. Our best LB Zack Follett is back, but he's more of a pass rusher and he gets hurt every year. Pretty much, our front 7 will probably suck this year again, and teams will be able to run all over us. As bad as Longshore was, we lost to USC, Washington, Oregon St, and Stanford mainly due to our run defense.

Strength: As always, we'll have a good running game. We always seem to have a solid OL despite losses to the NFL, and we have 2 excellent backs in Shane Vereen and Jahvid Best, along with Tracy Slocum and Covaughn DeBoskie coming in.

Weakness: Being soft on run defense. No mental toughness. Horrible in close games.

Outlook: We had our chance last year and just imploded in spectacular fashion. This is probably going to be a reloading year for Cal, probably back to another Sun Bowl or Las Vegas bowl. Looking at our schedule:

8/30 Michigan State TBA
9/06 @ Washington State TBA
9/13 @ Maryland TBA
9/27 Colorado State TBA
10/04 Arizona State TBA
10/18 @ Arizona TBA
10/25 UCLA TBA
11/01 Oregon TBA
11/08 @ USC TBA
11/15 @ Oregon State TBA
11/22 Stanford TBA
12/06 Washington TBA

We should be able to run the table on our OOC schedule, although I think either against MSU or at Maryland, we'll trip up to go 2-1 there. I see losses at home to ASU and UCLA, loss at USC, and as always, we'll lose one or two extra games just for fun, to have another craptacular 7-6, 8-5 year with a win over a 2nd or 3rd place team from the MWC in a bowl game.

[GSWbandwagon]

umm, wow, i don't mean to be harsh, but that's a pretty inaccurate writeup.

the best offensive lineman and arguably the best center in the country is back along with (i think) 2 other starters on the line. tepper is back and i think one other starter. in any case, far and away the best lineman is back.

rulon davis isn't a key loss because he hasn't done much yet due to injury and he's not gone. he'll be a senior this season. allegedly he's a leader of the defense (along with follet).

felder will also be a senior and is back.

cunningham is back as well. he's unlikely to start though. michael calvin, a redshirt freshman, is almost cemented into the top 2. boateng, an army all america game alum, is likely also in the top 3. ross might be the other top 3 receiver. not much in the way of game experience, but this year's receivers will be a LOT bigger than last year's. if nothing else, run blocking should be much better and we'll actually be able to throw slants and other passes over the middle.

morrah has the edge at the starting tight end spot but tad smith, who just moved to te from defensive end, has reportedly had a pretty spectacular spring. there's also a jc transfer in there.

arguably the biggest loss is safety decoud. he led the team in tackles last year and was a beast against the run (he got no help from the dline, but that's another story). he was also incredible at catching people from behind and prevented a number of long tds.

any preview that doesn't mention that cal switched base defenses is incomplete. we're now running a 3-4, which is good considering that we have a lot of linebacker talent and not much in the way of above average linemen.

cal also overhauled the coaching staff, including bringing in a new offensive coordinator who will take over playcalling. new dline coach. new receivers coach.

only two schools have beaten us in memorial over the last 4 seasons. neither are coming this year. i say we keep the perfect at home in even years thing going. i say we're 7-1 or 8-0 heading into the usc game. cal wins at least 10 games again this year.

[PhilipNelsonFan]

Cal won't be as miserable as last year (running game, LBs, CBs), but I can't see a world-beating season out of Berkeley. Every other team in California improved pretty drastically, and it could be argued that Cal is one of two or three schools that does not bring in as much talent as it sent out. Also, color me unimpressed on a move to the 3-4...fits the talent, sure, but could take some time to iron out the kinks, and it might not work as well against a good offensive line. I figure, in the Pac-10, you run a 4-3 until it kills you because the offensive talent is just too good.