wallyball2003;841947608 said:
I respect your enthusiasm -- with no intended sarcasm. Butsos it possible that some fans' problem with Zach THIS year might be more related to perceived attitude than actual performance. Sure, he is inconsistent at times on the field. But the laughing and chatting on the sidelines, to say nothing of the arm pointing, might be pretty irritating to many. It's tough to get the benefit of the doubt.
Forgive me for saying this, but its attitudes like the one you display here that is a huge part of why Cal is perceived to have an extremely stupid fanbase.
Football is a game where emotion and intimidation matter. How often in the past few seasons have we heard of a team that folded almost before they stepped on the field because they were convinced they could not win?
And watch the Pac-12 play a bit more closely. You'll see players in every game acting up with the same types of antics you condemn Maynard for.
The pointing at his arm is a great exanple. Even fans on this board keep saying that Maynard is a weak QB who can't throw the long ball accurately. Yet, on that pay he threw a 35+ yard bomb to Treggs and dropped the ball between 2 defenders. His pointing at his arm was a way of saying "I can beat you with my arm." to the Nevada defenders. It's a subtle but often effective form of intimidation.
You see more of this on defense. I hate to trot out U$c as an example, but during the years Desean was at Cal, you might remember how the USC fans would always point out that one of the goals of the defense was to hit Desean very hard early in the game. They even bragged that the hits would take Desean out of the game and make him ineffective. And it worked. Desean never had a great game against USC.
But too many Cal fans actually whine when players for Cal show emotion on or off the field. It's like they want the team to be robots who somehow perform perfectly while not allowing any emotoin to intrude on their play.
The game doesn't work that way.
Maynard is definitely a different personality type than Tedford, Longshore or Riley. It's obvious that he plays a bit more relaxed and open than the others. It's equally obvious that his emotions are far more visible. But condemning him for that is wrong. How he psychs himself up for a game or to recover from a bad play is something he had to deal with. As fans we need to recognize that emotions matter in football, and that we want our players to be jazzed after making good play. It might be the first good one of the game and occur in the thrid quarter, but if the emotion is there, better play often follows.
That's why momentum is often considered a huge part of games. The team that can build up the emotional edge tends to win. Cal has done this terribly in the last 6 years. Maybe we need players like Maynard who don't go into a funk when things get tough to help the rest of the team keep their emotoinal edge. We sure know that Riley never managed to bring the team back from down 14-0 to tie the game up at 24-24 (as happened at Nevada. The loss was not on Maynard, but on the defense failing to stop Nevada.)