Our OL dominated Cal. Yes, our backs are good. Particularly, the read the hole really well, made some very early cuts to find daylight. But, there was a LOT of daylight.
Our receivers are very effective blockers.
Mikey Matthews flashes.
Not so fun fact. Cal had three scoring drives of 75+ yards. Something they haven't done in over 20 years. They were converting a lot of 3rd downs. As I think someone noted, they were throwing a lot on 3rd and manageable.
On both of the the 4th quarter picks, Omosigho was chasing their QB. QB was running to his left (is he a lefty?) and Omosigho was chasing from the offensive right side. The two plays came within a couple of minutes of each other and almost looked like the same play. Probably the same defensive play call. Gotta give the DC some credit on that too.
This is just a weird observation-
It is my impression that we almost never called 3rd down runs for Nico last season. Maybe a couple of RPO's, but not many. And, plays where he was always going to keep it. But, Nico converted a ton of 3rd downs for us on scrambles.
Saturday, we called designed Nico runs maybe 3-4 times. But, I don't think Nico scrambled once. He got blasted a couple of times, but he didn't scramble. Don't know if that means anything, but it was interesting to me.