Tennessee at Cal

this game has me perplexed. i'm interested to see some of you guys' takes on this game. while catching 5.5 with an upper echelon SEC team seems enticing, i could see Cal running away with this one. While the Vol front seven should be very good, I don't know if Tenn. has an answer for Desean Jackson in the secondary. Longshore returns as well, and although they lost Lynch to the NFL, Cal returns a lot of experience on offense. Cal has revenge, home field, Tenn. has to travel cross-country first game of season, etc, etc. starting to think all signs point to Berkeley. What do you guys think?

good stuff, fellas. and razz i have been to knoxville for two games, and i agree--cal had never seen anything like that before. glad to see you like cal as well lindetrain. 

I figure I know more about Cal than anyone on this board... I go to a lot of practices and a couple of my best friends are on the team.

I refuse to bet on Cal out of principle, as I want to avoid being biased, but I really think that this could be a good bet.  I flew to Knoxville for the game last year, and the game was not as close as 35-18 (people forget we only lost by 17) but it was also not as bad as people described.

It was sort of a 'perfect storm'... the stadium was NUTS (way louder than Autzen or the Colosseum) and I don't think that the players were prepared.  The brand new offense just didn't work with Nate at QB, and it was also literally Nate's first real college game. (playing 3 quarters against sac state doesn't count)  Plus, neither team really did anything except Meachem caught a couple of hitches and Syd (freshman with a broken hand and a cast) couldn't grab on and tackle him and he ran 70 yards for a touchdown twice.

After that, Cal was playing catch up and nothing seemed to go right... crowd went nuts, Cal got intimidated, and then all of a sudden it was 35-0.



This year, Nate is going to be great (but maybe not quite as good as people think), our special teams are without any question whatsoever the best in the country, our line is solid, our runningbacks are very good and we have 4 WR's that will play in the NFL.

Linebackers are great, but secondary is merely above average and the D-line sucks, and therein is Cal's problem.

I know our defense is designed for the line to eat up blockers and let our backers make all the plays, but even so I really don't think that they are very good this year.  We'll probably struggle to get pressure on Ainge, and when you give that guy time in the pocket he's real good. (You should've seen his jersey after the game last year - spotless.  and that was with Mebane)

If Tennessee's receivers are even decent (which they might not be) this will be tough.


I think Cal's a better team, I like the fact that we are at home, and I think we should win the game the majority of the time... that said I don't think that there is HUGE value at -5.5.  I think that a fair line is -6 or even -6.5, 7 at most.  Those lucky enough to get on this when it was around 4 should be thankful.  Go Bears.

Oh yeah, and be on the lookout for Tom DeCoud at free safety.  Our best defensive player that nobody seems to know about, and definitely playing in the NFL one day.


Also, I was talking to my buddy on the team and apparently the 2004 team with A-rod and JJ which was the best team we've had in recent history had like 6 guys running in the low 4.4's or better and this team has 12.  Also, we have twice as many people power cleaning however many pounds it's impressive to power clean.  Take that for what you will.

Last year's game was a "perfect storm" type scenario against the Bears.  This year won't be.  

Really?  Break it down piece by piece:

PR - DeSean Jackson is the best punt returner in the country, no questions asked, this isn't even up for debate.

Kicker - Tom Schneider is the best kicker in the country, (or maybe Sam Swank at WF) but nobody realizes it becuase he hasn't hit a game winner.  Ito as an All American is a joke, he's only famous because he pointed at the sky cam - nobody remembers that he MISSED the game winner before that, but got an offsides penalty to re-kick it.  Schneids was PERFECT from inside 40 last year (8/8) 5-7 from 40-49 and 2-5 from 50+ but made a 55 yarder... he hit 75% overall and has been perfect on XP's two years in a row. (102/102)

Punt team: Larson has NFL potential, his hangtime is ridiculous.  Plus, correct me if I'm wrong but we have the best net punting in the Pac-10.  We almost never give up returns of 10+.

KR - Probably put Jahveed Best, who ran a 10.36 100 last year in high school to win California State's and James Montgomery back there, very good but not insane.

Kickoff team - in the past has been average or above average, but the team is way deeper this year so we will have a lot of starter quality athletes on the team.

Plus, Justin Moye = the most gangster special teams player I've ever seen.  He'll probably be in the linebacker rotation this year, but the dude makes like 2 humongous hits a game on special teams.




So add it up, you have the best punt return game, the best kicking game, top 5 punting, and very good kickoff/kick return game - whose special teams as a whole are better than Cal's?

Oh yeah, I forgot - Nick Sundberg is already an NFL long snapper, the guy is retardedly good.  He will play in the league without question.  We do need to find a replacement holder for Ayoob though (who actually was a really, really freaking good holder).  Either Kevin Riley will do it or BVM.  I think BVM is a little better but then that would mean we need to travel an extra QB.

Also, I should point out that secretly I've felt that Cal has been pretty overrated the last two years (especially when Ayoob was playing, or late last season when we couldn't score a TD to save our lives), but that we are slightly underrated this year.



Hope I'm right.

Great thread...leaning to Cal at this point.