The Washington Huskies started the season ranked in the Top 25, and won their first four games — but didn’t look good in the process. They only beat Hawai’i by 1, narrowly avoided embarrassment against Eastern Washington, 59-52, and had a miserable first half against the Georgia State Panthers of the Sun Belt Conference, going back to the locker room trailing 14-0. They finally woke up and won, 45-14, but the game helped to illustrate just how poorly these very talented players have managed to play as a team most of the time. OK, new coach, new system, maybe not all the players have bought in; maybe they don’t see Chris Peterson as a big-time coach (after all, Steve Sarkesian, the last coach, went back to be the Head Coach at USC). Whatever it is, these guys haven’t played all that well for a majority of the quarters they’ve played.
Central to this team under-achievement is soph QB Cyler Miles, who still hasn’t cracked the 200+ passing yardage barrier. Honestly, the UW passing game is just what the Cal defense has needed. With starting safeties Avery Sebastian and Stefan McClure [maybe] returning for Cal, the Bears could very well limit UW to under 250 yards passing. Or will Coach Peterson roll the dice and give QB Jeff Lindquist more playing time? With 2 weeks to prepare, they might be able to pull it off…
The Huskies’ ground attack is led by their massive OL, and they might be able to run the ball on the Bears if they had Bishop Sankey back for a day, but none of the Huskies’ RBs has stepped up to fill his shoes. Bottom line: the Bears were able to stop Arizona’s vaunted ground game, and deal with their OL, so look for the Bears to stop UW on the ground, and get enough stops to keep the Cal defense off the field for a while.
Cal’s offense will put up points, but receivers will be wary of SS Shaq Thompson, who will be on duty to put big hits on Cal’s prolific WRs, and blow up the bubble screens.
Here’s a good synopsis by ducky23 on BearInsider:
The clear facts are these (and they cannot be disputed);
Cal is elite in passing
Uw is awful at pass defense
Cal is awful at pass defense
Uw is awful at passing
Uw relies on running
Cal decent in rush defense
This isn’t difficult.
Jeez, it’s late! Time to land this plane.
Prediction: Cal beats UW, 48-38