“If you’ve got one game to win, I’d probably pick between these two”. As a fifth-year senior, the Cal safety is well-versed in the football rivalry with Stanford that will see its 118th installment played Saturday.
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It’s actually not all that tough to say: Without Brennan Scarlett on this team, Stanford would not be 8-2 with a clean shot at the Pac-12 North title.
“What he’s brought is really energy and passion in practices”, Shaw said. Stanford’s David Shaw called Goff “the kind of guy you root for”, while Cal’s Sonny Dykes suggested Hogan, not Oregon’s former Heisman Trophy victor Marcus Mariota, has been the best player in the conference over the past three years. Her goal is to help the professors understand what it means to be a student-athlete at Cal, while encouraging the student-athletes to be comfortable enough to approach the professors and develop their relationships directly. Check out the Stanford vs. California prediction and game preview.
Stanford has won five straight in the series, outscoring Cal 201-75….
With the Cardinal offense needing to make a big play to hold off Cal, McCaffrey made it, in perhaps his most spectacular touchdown this season. But Cal got blown out again, 38-17, behind lackluster play from the Goff-led Bear Raid.
One of those, a writing course that focused on Hurricane Katrina hit home for the Houston-area native because he had a lot of friends who moved to Houston from New Orleans after the storm. “That’s in our rearview mirror”. Oh, how we laughed when they could only muster six points against the Wildcats! Cal turned it over on downs as Jared Goff’s fourth-down pass was too high and fell incomplete.
Good things happen when Christian McCaffrey has the ball. San Jose State RB Tyler Ervin is a distant second at 209.8. He is seventh in the nation with 1,354 rushing yards and ninth with an average of 135.4 rushing yards per game.
It seemed like that: 182 yards and three touchdowns, to be exact.
Scarlett already knows who he’s going to be lining up against for most of the game – guard Chris Borrayo and tackle Steven Moore. It might be just two more games. In the three previous games, he had two catches for 14 yards. After tearing his ACL last season, Scarlett said he began to think more about his post-football future and decided that transferring for a graduate program was in his best interest. “We knew going in that we’d punch each other in the mouth and see who was left standing”.
Halftime arrived with Stanford leading by 15 and McCaffrey headed to a record performance.
The Bears could also slide to an at-large berth with a bowl that does not have a contract with the Pac-12… He has thrown 238 passes this season with just seven interceptions. With Daniel Lasco slowed by injuries this season, Watson had a breakout game last week when he rushed for 110 yards and added 54 yards receiving and a touchdown.
“Everyone has to be assignment-sound”, McClure said of Cal’s defense.
McCaffrey wasn’t done. In the second half, he gashed the Bears for 107 yards on the ground, finishing with 192 yards. Stanford leads the conference in pass defense, holding opponents to 214.1 yards per game. Cal QB Jared Goff has put up a few prolific numbers over the course of his career.
Moving the ball down the field wasn’t a problem for California.
Matt Anderson kicked a 20-yard field goal late in the first quarter to reduce the Bears’ deficit to 7-3. With only a second remaining on the clock, Alabama lined up to try a 57-yard game-winning field goal. McCaffrey provided two impressive kickoff returns against OR, gaining 27 yards on one return and 33 on the other. He now leads the Pac-12 at 28.9 yards per kickoff return. In the previous four games, he has just three catches for 26 yards. The Cardinal have bested the Bears the last five meetings by a combined score of 201-72.
When Stanford lost head coach Jim Harbaugh to the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League, they made the decision to stay in house to hire their next head coach.
The 5-10 190lb speedster is a weapon in space or will make his own, torching corners for 564 yards and six touchdowns this year.
The Cardinal didn’t get much from quarterback Kevin Hogan, who threw for 96 yards and a touchdown in the win. He is now 32-10 as a starter and 13-6 against Top-25 teams. He is ninth in the Pac-12 in passing but ranks second in pass efficiency rating. Still, the 6-foot-5, 325-pound offensive lineman has generated quite a buzz in the wake of a viral video showing him making two blocks on one play against Washington. The second flattened a cornerback. Goff can’t stop running back Christian McCaffrey, and he certainly can’t pick off Kevin Hogan.
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McCaffrey broke Glyn Milburn’s single-game all-purpose record of 379 set in the 1990 Big Game. Although he was new to the team and wasn’t able to be as vocal in practices, he led by example with his tireless work, and it didn’t take long for his teammates to notice and for his impact on the field to be known. He also had one sack. He had two touchdown receptions in 2014. The curtain was pulled back on the Stanford D last week, a situation exacerbated by Harris’ bum ankle.
