Cal's Latest Loss Enough To Give a Coach a Headache

The problems on defense were enough on their own to sink Cal in a 42-34 double-overtime loss at Virginia Tech on Friday night.

Give up 357 rushing yards and you’re gonna lose. That simple.

But the Bears’ shortcomings were far from one-dimensional. The offense experienced nightmares of its own, as coach Justin Wilcox detailed.

“We have to run the ball better,” he said. “We’ve got to limit the pre-snap penalties. We had some bad snaps. We had a few pass pro issues. We had a few drops."

The Bears struggled with center snaps, which should be the least of their worries. As a result, Cal swapped out starter Tyson Ruffins for Lamar Robinson late in the game.

“Before we do anything else, we’ve got to get the ball to the quarterback,” Wilcox said with evident frustration.

The Bears will continue to work on it, he said. “Hopefully, get better at that and eliminate the snap issues so we can worry about the next part of the play, which is blocking, running, throwing, catching.”

Trouble in that last category continued a season-long trend. By our count, Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele threw five passes that, if not perfectly targeted, were catchable.

Another chronic problem has been penalties, especially pre-snap infractions. Three different offensive linemen were flagged for false starts in the first half.

One early possession had to be particularly galling.

Trailing 10-0 midway through the first quarter, the Cal offense finally began to move the ball.

Then, in a span of five snaps, the Bears were penalized for holding, ineligible receiver downfield and a false start. They wound up with a 38-yard field goal from Chase Meyer, but it takes little imagination to suggest the Bears could have/should have gotten into the end zone.

“We just keep shooting ourselves in the foot, honestly,” said Cal receiver Jacob De Jesus. “As an offense when we get a good drive going, then the very next play it’s a penalty or a sack or a dropped ball.

"We’ve got to be more mature as an offense and be able to finish games.”

The Bears (5-3, 2-2 ACC) have all of this to correct just as they enter the toughest four-game stretch of the schedule.

With bowl eligibility still not secure, here’s how the Bears will close the regular season:

— Saturday at home vs. No. 16 Virginia

— Nov. 8 at No. 19 Louisville

— Nov. 22 at Stanford

— Nov. 29 at home vs. SMU

“There’s still a lot of season left,” De Jesus said. “We’re going to work on our discipline this week and being tougher as a team. We’re not losing the team or anything like that.”

The margin for assembling the season the Bears want — at least seven or eight victories — has grown smaller.

“We have to expect more from ourselves than what we put out on the field tonight,” Wilcox said.

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