A case can be made that we may have the worst defense in the conference after early returns from week 5.

Apparently you didn't see USC vs. Arizona - two of the worst defenses you will see all year.

Did you happen to see the UA-USC game today?

From what I've seen so far there aren't any good defenses in this conference.

I understand the SC-Arizona game had no D but those are two NFL QBs flinging the rock around. Tyler Hansen is, at best, a mediocre D1 QB. More realistically, he's a below avg QB who managed to pass for 800 yards against us. The mighty WSU defense did a pretty good job on Hansen today.

That used to be fun to watch.

The D usually plays very well at home, which we haven't really been able to see yet. I agree it's crap on the road.

hanky1;583357 said:

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A case can be made that we may have the worst defense in the conference after early returns from week 5.

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What returns?

Let me get this straight. When the D is good, it's Pendergast's doing. But when it sucks it's Tedford's fault.

hanky1;583357 said:

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A case can be made that we may have the worst defense in the conference after early returns from week 5.

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Then perhaps you should make that "case."

Yes, a case can absolutely be made that the defense which held Fresno State to ~200 yds for the whole game and @Wash to 136 in the entire second half is the worst in the league. Not even close, if you ask me.

CMHBear;583382 said:

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Yes, a case can absolutely be made that the defense which held Fresno State to ~200 yds for the whole game and @Wash to 136 in the entire second half is the worst in the league. Not even close, if you ask me.

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Be careful when you start referring to Cal's performance based on how they did for a half - this could now be a 10 page thread.

WhipItOutJoe;583384 said:

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Be careful when you start referring to Cal's performance based on how they did for a half - this could now be a 10 page thread.

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Sorry Joe, I just had to whip it out.

CMHBear;583389 said:

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Sorry Joe, I just had to whip it out.

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Yeah, that can cause cause problems too.

hanky1;583357 said:

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A case can be made that we may have the worst defense in the conference after early returns from week 5.

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Dude, Arizona....

GB54;583361 said:

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From what I've seen so far there aren't any good defenses in this conference.

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Bingo. We can move the ball on anyone in the P12. But the issue as to what kind of season we have is whether we can learn how to stop someone.

GB54;583361 said:

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From what I've seen so far there aren't any good defenses in this conference.

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Stanford has had some defensive success so far, but with Shayne Skov out with an injury we'll have to see how they do when they run into an offense with a pulse.

Oregon also has shown some defense. Most of their struggles agaisnt LSU were due to turnovers. Giving LSU a short field hurt them.

But you're right about the rest of the Pac-12, we haven't seen many impressive defensive performances. This season offenses reign in the conference.

I thought our run D was super good

cyrusthebear;583458 said:

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I thought our run D was super good

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It was, but the case can obviously be made that it's the worst in the league. After watching Washington dismantle Utah, however, I now think that the case can be made that Cal has the second worst D in the league.

eom

SiniCal;583464 said:

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eom

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The troll is the guy who started this ridiculous thread. I'm just going along with the ridiculousness of it. Have a little fun.

CMHBear;583462 said:

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It was, but the case can obviously be made that it's the worst in the league. After watching Washington dismantle Utah, however, I now think that the case can be made that Cal has the second worst D in the league.

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I don't think many (any?) other defenses in the conferences could hold Polk to 60 yards in 20 carries. He has 156yds in 26 carries so far against Utah.

CMHBear;583466 said:

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The troll is the guy who started this ridiculous thread. I'm just going along with the ridiculousness of it.

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Um, except you seem to be confused about who started this thread?

Fwiw, here's the OP's namesake:

Cal88;583470 said:

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I don't think many (any?) other defenses in the conferences could hold Polk to 60 yards in 20 carries. He has 156yds in 26 carries so far against Utah.

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Guys, if a statement sounds super ridiculous, there may be two plausible explanations: 1) I am an idiot or 2) I am trying to use sarcasm to highlight the ridiculousness of a thread. My wife would definitely side with the former, but I can assure you that even I'm not stupid enough to really think Cal's D is the worst in the league.

hanky1;583357 said:

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A case can be made that we may have the worst defense in the conference after early returns from week 5.

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AZ, CO, UT, SC,WA are worse in my opinion.

GoBears58;583477 said:

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AZ, CO, UT, SC,WA are worse in my opinion.

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You can honestly make a case for OrSt, WashSt, UCLA also being worse. I'm also not sold on Oregon. WA's defense looked awfully impressive tonight and they did beat us last week.

KoreAmBear;583422 said:

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Bingo. We can move the ball on anyone in the P12. But the issue as to what kind of season we have is whether we can learn how to stop someone.

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This is not true. Our defense played quite well in the second half vs UW and had 2 busted plays vs Colorado that made the numbers look much worse than they were (in addition to the big busted play vs UW). In fact, our defense gave us a chance vs UW, but the offense got bogged down in the 2nd half.

We do need to stop the busted plays, but generally these things are rather flukey, and I believe things will even out.

Stats from the Pac-12 website:

Scoring Defense: 10th in the league
Total Defense: #8
Rushing Defense: #7
Passing Defense: #10
Passing Defense Efficiency: #12 (dead last)

Don't think the stats include today's games though.

Pac-12 Stats

#uSC tszuchs!

grandmastapoop;583503 said:

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This is not true. Our defense played quite well in the second half vs UW and had 2 busted plays vs Colorado that made the numbers look much worse than they were (in addition to the big busted play vs UW). In fact, our defense gave us a chance vs UW, but the offense got bogged down in the 2nd half.

We do need to stop the busted plays, but generally these things are rather flukey, and I believe things will even out.

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I mean generally. There's no way you can say our D generally played well against CU and UW overall. And busted plays, third downs, first half, etc. -- are part of the game too. I believe we have the athletes and the talent to be a good D. If we can just continue to get better, I believe we have decent balance on O and D -- more than a lot of P12 teams.

burritos;583376 said:

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Let me get this straight. When the D is good, it's Pendergast's doing. But when it sucks it's Tedford's fault.

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Well, if anything is bad, it is Tedford. Tedford is why Firefly got canceled.

hanky1;583357 said:

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A case can be made that we may have the worst defense in the conference after early returns from week 5.

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Not even close. I definitely am a Tedford skeptic at this point, but let's not get crazy.

- Exhibit A: Arizona. 'Nuff said.
- We're 0-2 against Pac-12 teams having played at extremely difficult road venues, one of which was against an excellent offensive team (UW). Let's see how things shake out in the latter part of the season when we get some of our home games. Also, our D looked pretty good against Fresno State.
- That being said, we haven't played great. It's clear we have tons of room for improvement in our pass defense.
- The question should really be, why aren't we one of the top defenses in the conference (wouldn't take much)? Two senior middle linebackers, two senior safeties, two senior defensive ends etc., two experienced corners, all fairly highly-recruited, tons of young talent to complement.

Stop playing favoritism. Next year this team will be mediocre also because the young talents need pt. Whiteside and McCain should start (and there are others)!

What a waste of talent!

GranadaHillsBear;583527 said:

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Stats from the Pac-12 website:

Scoring Defense: 10th in the league
Total Defense: #8
Rushing Defense: #7
Passing Defense: #10
Passing Defense Efficiency: #12 (dead last)

Don't think the stats include today's games though.

Pac-12 Stats

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Before posting. It does NOT include the games and is thus almost entirely meaningless.

For instance, the #8 total defense ranking included two teams tied for first because this week was their first game, namely, CU and WSU. These two put up 336 and 455 against each other, respectively.

Our passing defense definitely needs to improve...and that definitely comes down to more pressure on the passer. UW and CU (even if it wasn't a Pac-12 game, it was a P12 opponent) had plenty of time to pass the ball.

That cannot happen if we want to win another game...

Signed, Mike Stoops:rollinglaugh: