One of the biggest questionS to arise out of last Saturday's morphing of CMS into a house of horrors, was/is...could it be that Nevada is actually really good? Certainly we know that Cal played poorly and probably the most disturbing thing was how much Cal got dominated at the LOS, especially on D. But was Nevada really good as well? Here is some interesting information out of Athlon, Lindey's and Phil Steele's preseason annual college football publications. These preseason rankings also include information about San Diego St. and San Jose St., two teams that were competitive against Pac-12 north rivals UW and furd respectively. I was trying to get a sense of which Pac-12 teams have already been tested and which are yet to be tested.

Lindey's, which I find to be the least credible has the following:

50 Cal
81 San Diego St.
83 Nevada
92 San Jose St.

With Athlon, who I find more credible, the rankings get more interesting:

38 Cal
54 Nevada
95 San Diego St.
98 San Jose St.

But here is where it gets reeeeallly interesting. From Phil Steele who researches teams far more than others and is widely known as the most accurate we get this.

44 Nevada!!
48 Cal !!

San Jose St. unranked but picked as one of Phil Steele's most improved teams.
San Diego St. unranked and picked to finish behind Nevada (which is 2nd in the MWC) at 5th in the MWC.

The point of all this is to try to get a very early read on how we sit compared to our top two competitors for runner up in the north. And also to show that Nevada is clearly the best of the 3 teams and, according to Phil, a legitimate quality team and better than Cal.

In comparing Cal to UW after week 1 both Cal and UW were playing a MWC team with a significant home field advantage. Cal had the sell-out and the grand opening. UW was playing in Seattle, one of the hardest venues for visiting teams plus SDS had to travel all the way from the south border to the north border of the USA. But accoring to the above, UW was facing a much easier team. Yes UW won, but not by much 21-12. Wash. has been hit hard on the O-line and RB with injuries, so I don't think they are going to be the high scoring affair they were last year with Polk and Co.

What about SJS and the furd? Again there are some similarities. SJS has played Nevada really tight recently and should have won last year in San Jose. SJS lost that game by 3 points as they did against Stanford. But they had to go on the road against the furd making Nevada the slightly more impressive team between them and the furd.

So, I realise this is a stretch because I'm mixing and matching data from this year and last year, and I'm using preseason rankings and it is only 1 game, but hey folks, there is not much good stuff to work with here.

Those that want to find some hope can look to this and see that we could still very well beat furd and UW, which, even if we only win 4 or 5 games this year, would make the season somewhat salvages from what we all feared could be the case after Saturday.

Furthermore, WSU was tested and failed and ASU, UCLA, Oregon St. and Utah have yet to be tested. We should find out quite a bit about these teams this week, but I suspect that at least OSU and ASU are very beatable. So we could still stumble to 6-6 and a bowl...if we beat Southern Utah on Sat..

I hope this helped!

heartofthebear;841941342 said:

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One of the biggest question to arise out of last Saturday's morphing of CMS into a house of horrors, was/is...could it be that Nevada is actually really good? Certainly we know that Cal played poorly and probably the most disturbing thing was how much Cal got dominated at the LOS, especially on D. But was Nevada really good as well. Here is some interesting information out of Athlon, Lindey's and Phil Steele's preseason annual college football publications. These preseason rankings also include information about San Diego St. and San Jose St., two teams that were competitive against Pac-12 north rivals UW and furd respectively. I was trying to get a sense of which Pac-12 teams have already been tested and which are yet to be tested.

Lindey's, which I find to be the least credible has the following:

50 Cal
81 San Diego St.
83 Nevada
92 San Jose St.

With Athlon, who I find more credible, the rankings get more interesting:

38 Cal
54 Nevada
95 San Diego St.
98 San Jose St.

But here is where it gets reeeeallly interesting. From Phil Steele who researches teams far more than others and is widely known as the most accurate we get this.

44 Nevada!!
48 Cal !!

San Jose St. unranked but picked as one of Phil Steele's most improved teams.
San Diego St. unranked and picked to finish behind Nevada (which is 2nd in the MWC) at 5th in the MWC.

The point of all this is to try to get a very early read on how we sit compared to our top two competitors for runner up in the north. And also to show that Nevada is clearly the best of the 3 teams and, accoring to Phil, a legitimate quality team and better than Cal.

In comparing Cal to UW after week 1 both Cal and UW were playing a MWC team with a significant home field advantage. Cal had the sell-out and the grand opening. UW was playing in Seattle, one of the hardest venues for visiting teams plus SDS had to travel all the way from the south border to the north border of the USA. But accoring to the above, UW was facing a much easier team. Yes UW won, but not by much 21-12. Wash. has been hit hard on the O-line and RB with injuries, so I don't think they are going to be the high scoring affair they were last year with Polk and Co.

What about SJS and the furd? Again there are some similarities. SJS has played Nevada really tight recently and should have won last year in San Jose. SJS lost that game by 3 points as they did against Stanford. But they had to go on the road against the furd making Nevada the slightly more impressive team between them and the furd.

So, I realise this is a stretch because I'm mixing and matching data from this year and last year, and I'm using preseason rankings and it is only 1 game, but hey folks, there is not much good stuff to work with here.

Those that want to find some hope can look to this and see that we could still very well beat furd and UW, which, even if we only win 4 or 5 games this year, would make the season somewhat salvages from what we all feared could be the case after Saturday.

Furthermore, WSU was tested and failed and ASU, UCLA, Oregon St. and Utah have yet to be tested. We should find out quite a bit about these teams this week, but I suspect that at least OSU and ASU are very beatable. So we could still stumble to 6-6 and a bowl...if we beat Southern Utah on Sat..

I hope this helped!

---

(tl;dr, sorry hotb)

On the 1hr CC replay seen a few minutes ago i watched (hugely edited) two teams very well matched. Dumbing it down, couldn't tell why our defeat was an upset a'tall.

#look out S-Utes1

They are going to have a very good season, but that game was still winnable, we played poorly. In fact, I think they played so as well. We had plenty of opportunities to win it, but we're undisciplined. If they keep playing like that, but clean up their penalties, they are going to roll thru their schedule and finish ranked.

The same Cal team, with more preparation and better play calling wins the game, and at the end of the year we look back on it as a quality win since they're very likely to have no more than 1 or 2 losses.

That was not us. Yet another opportunity to show that we aren't the same ol Bears, wasted.

socaliganbear;841941361 said:

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They are going to have a very good season, but that game was still winnable, we played poorly. Intact, I think they played so as well. We had plenty of opportunities to win it, but we're indisciplined.

The same team, with more preparation and better play calling wins the game, and at the end of the year we look back on it as a quality win since they're very likely to have no more than 1 or 2 losses.

That was not us. Yet another opportunity to show that we aren't the same ol Bears.

---

We are the same ol Bears. That's the problem.

Maybe Cal is just a 6-6 / 5-7 type team yet again this year. Maybe Nevada will put together a 10-2 season, but it doesn't change the fact that Cal looked flat (how is that even possible?), undisciplined, and once again showed no clue how to handle a triple option offense.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
According to a blog item from Chris Murray of the Reno Gazette-Journal, the Wolfpack is 0-10 in season openers against teams from BCS conferences (plus Notre Dame), dating back to 1992, when it became an Football Bowl Subdivision team.

Nevada has lost those games by an average margin of 30.2 points, and its offense has produced a paltry 13.1 points per game in those outings. None of the 10 games was closer than 14 points.

Here are scores from those 10 openers:

2011: Oregon, 69, Nevada 20
2009: Notre Dame 35, Nevada 0
2007: Nebraska 52, Nevada 10
2005: Washington 55, Nevada 21*
2002: Washington State 31, Nevada 7
2000: Oregon 36, Nevada 7
1999: Oregon State 28, Nevada 13*
1998: Oregon State 48, Nevada 6
1996: Oregon 44, Nevada 30
1993: Wisconsin 35, Nevada 17

i've said it in other threads... Nevada looked sharp. They had an out pass that, from QQ, went almost directly away from us to the NW side of the stadium, and it was flat out beautiful to watch it develop. THeir quick outs and slants killed us all day. And their RB looked huge to me. Seemed a good team... though we should have beaten them..

It looked bad but not UCLA 2011 bad where we had 4 turnovers and Prince ran all over us .. and he's SLOW!

Reading between the lines, JT seemed to indicate that there were a couple plays where freshman didn't know what they were doing. One of them was a very badly missed block by Treggs which resulted in tackle. I think he also seemed to indicate that there were some missed sideline reads which resulted in too many players on the field.

Not to make excuses for JT, but I wouldn't be surprised if this were true. Also, I would consider a true freshman's mistakes like this to be somewhat acceptable in their first game. I wouldn't call it a lack of discipline but just being green and needing to be able to keep their mind straight in a huge game where 60k people are watching.

Those mistakes will get cleaned up. At least we didn't see any DERP moments where a ball was hiked so low it went past the QB. Also didn't see any really bad interceptions by ZM. I think there was one botched handoff with CJ (I think that was ZM's fault for bad placement). There were a number of low snaps but ZM was able to grab it and didn't seem to happen too many times like it did with Galas. I don't remember any false starts.

When I think about it, it does seem like they played more disciplined than they did last year.

I think they need to work out kinks with the no-huddle. They need to get plays in faster and don't need to enigma-encode the plays. I used to laugh at Oregon's play cards but now I see the brilliance (simplicity) of it.

I really wonder if the Check With Me's are worth it. I feel like there would be a better rhythm if the QB could just call the plays at the line. It's not that I have super confidence in ZM but the tradeoff of getting into a rhythm and throwing against a defense that is getting tired and has to hustle may be worth the trade off of not calling the most optimal play.

Doesn't explain:

- ZM short-hopping a 5-yd hitch route
- DL not ready for a no-huddle offense
- ZM running the ball and fumbling on his own
- KA false-starting
- Switching starting QB's the day before the game
- ...

Bottom line is, regardless if Nevada was higher or lower ranked than us, or if the other FCS teams challenged the other Pac-12 teams, the fact is that Cal played sloppy, undisciplined, and with no energy. Coaching decisions and preparation were suspect. This is not a one-game isolated incident, but a recurring trend that started back in 09 vs Oregon when we got blasted 42-3. Slow starts, penalties, multiple 3-and-outs, tired defense, and so on.

This has nothing to do with our opponent but ourselves, so even if we play a So Utah this weekend, if we come out like this again, it'll be ugly.

Nevada is better than we thought, though we should have won. They probably only have between 0-2 losses on their schedule. I could see them going undefeated if they win this week.

That being said, the Bears should have beaten them, and would have if we started Maynard. Simple as that. But we were exposed on defense with offense, and we will have to do something different for UCLA. We can not continue to give the game away. Assignment defense, if it does not work in three straight games against the same offense, needs to change.

Penalties, bad snaps, fumbles, miscommunication, etc all are fixable. We can have good days and bad days. Having a bad day when you bench your QB (maybe that is why we had a bad day) is not a good thing. But having a defense which can not make plays against a particular offensive scheme is a killer.

I still think we have the capability of beating almost anyone else on our schedule - except maybe SC at the Coliseum.

heartofthebear;841941342 said:

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One of the biggest questionS to arise out of last Saturday's morphing of CMS into a house of horrors, was/is...could it be that Nevada is actually really good? Certainly we know that Cal played poorly and probably the most disturbing thing was how much Cal got dominated at the LOS, especially on D. But was Nevada really good as well? Here is some interesting information out of Athlon, Lindey's and Phil Steele's preseason annual college football publications. These preseason rankings also include information about San Diego St. and San Jose St., two teams that were competitive against Pac-12 north rivals UW and furd respectively. I was trying to get a sense of which Pac-12 teams have already been tested and which are yet to be tested.

Lindey's, which I find to be the least credible has the following:

50 Cal
81 San Diego St.
83 Nevada
92 San Jose St.

With Athlon, who I find more credible, the rankings get more interesting:

38 Cal
54 Nevada
95 San Diego St.
98 San Jose St.

But here is where it gets reeeeallly interesting. From Phil Steele who researches teams far more than others and is widely known as the most accurate we get this.

44 Nevada!!
48 Cal !!

San Jose St. unranked but picked as one of Phil Steele's most improved teams.
San Diego St. unranked and picked to finish behind Nevada (which is 2nd in the MWC) at 5th in the MWC.

The point of all this is to try to get a very early read on how we sit compared to our top two competitors for runner up in the north. And also to show that Nevada is clearly the best of the 3 teams and, according to Phil, a legitimate quality team and better than Cal.

In comparing Cal to UW after week 1 both Cal and UW were playing a MWC team with a significant home field advantage. Cal had the sell-out and the grand opening. UW was playing in Seattle, one of the hardest venues for visiting teams plus SDS had to travel all the way from the south border to the north border of the USA. But accoring to the above, UW was facing a much easier team. Yes UW won, but not by much 21-12. Wash. has been hit hard on the O-line and RB with injuries, so I don't think they are going to be the high scoring affair they were last year with Polk and Co.

What about SJS and the furd? Again there are some similarities. SJS has played Nevada really tight recently and should have won last year in San Jose. SJS lost that game by 3 points as they did against Stanford. But they had to go on the road against the furd making Nevada the slightly more impressive team between them and the furd.

So, I realise this is a stretch because I'm mixing and matching data from this year and last year, and I'm using preseason rankings and it is only 1 game, but hey folks, there is not much good stuff to work with here.

Those that want to find some hope can look to this and see that we could still very well beat furd and UW, which, even if we only win 4 or 5 games this year, would make the season somewhat salvages from what we all feared could be the case after Saturday.

Furthermore, WSU was tested and failed and ASU, UCLA, Oregon St. and Utah have yet to be tested. We should find out quite a bit about these teams this week, but I suspect that at least OSU and ASU are very beatable. So we could still stumble to 6-6 and a bowl...if we beat Southern Utah on Sat..

I hope this helped!

---

Just want to point out that the Phil Steele 44 Nevada and 48 Cal is what he believed the final poll would show based on schedules. On page 331 he ranks the teams by talent and has Cal 35 and Nevada 63.

NYCGOBEARS;841941363 said:

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We are the same ol Bears. That's the problem.

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is Nevada that good? Time will tell.
Were we that Bad? Results speak for themselves.

Are you OK with losing to any midmajor team? Because that's what happened.

We have a $300M+ stadium renovation. JT makes more than the entire Nevada staff. We have much more talent according to high school recruit rankings.

There's no excuse in my book, but to each his/her own.

We should be playing San Jose St. this weekend. After the way they played Stanford, I'm not sure we could beat them. Oh, the more things change the more they stay the same What are they paying their coach? 20K?

Doesn't matter how good Nevada is to me. For a long time Home games at Memorial were a virtual lock. For like a 6 year span we only lost home games to two different teams (USC and Oregon State). We defended the turf against good AND bad teams.

We also kicked butt in revenge games. We beat Maryland, Tennessee, etc at home in large fashion to revenge our big road losses.

It was the loss of the homefield advantage that ticked me off so much...not so much the loss. We know we have issues on the road, but if we have issues at home against decent competition as well now we are screwed.

~MrGPAC

bear945;841941543 said:

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Just want to point out that the Phil Steele 44 Nevada and 48 Cal is what he believed the final poll would show based on schedules. On page 331 he ranks the teams by talent and has Cal 35 and Nevada 63.

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NV may be a good team but this is what people are pissed about: less talented teams coached up to outplay us.