By Morris Phillips

Talk about making your opponent pay.  On Saturday at Autzen Stadium, the Cal Bears found themselves reaching for scampering Ducks—and their symbolic wallets–repeatedly.

The Bears came in licking their chops, hungry for the opportunity to face the Pac-12’s worst defense and hopefully end their three-game losing streak.  Instead, Oregon feasted on Cal’s leaky defense for 777 yards total offense in a 44-28 win.

Oregon amassed 441 yards in offense in the first half alone when they buried the Bears with four touchdowns in the second quarter.  As a result, Cal’s early 10-0 lead evaporated into a 31-10 Oregon lead at the half.

The Bears seemed capable of engaging the Ducks in a high-scoring shootout, but that didn’t materialize either.  Jared Goff’s uneven performance in which he misfired on 23 of his 41 pass attempts had a lot to do with Oregon’s 31 unanswered points in the first half.  Goff finished with 329 yards passing with one pass intercepted, but his overall performance littered with errant throws and drop passes paled in comparison to what the junior signal caller accomplished in the season’s first five games.

Given all the misfortune, Cal started fast and had the Ducks on their heels in the first quarter. The Bears scored on their first two possessions to lead 10-0.  In between the two drives, Griffin Piatt picked off Vernon Adams Jr. in the end zone to keep Oregon from tying the score at 7.  Piatt’s pick short circuited Oregon’s 10-play, 79-yard drive and seemed to signal Cal’s fortunes were looking up.

But that was hardly the case.  The Ducks and Adams rebounded with an 11-play drive that stalled when Hardy Nickerson Jr. sacked the Oregon quarterback on 3^rd-and-3 at Cal’s 22-yard line.  Aidan Schneider’s 41-yard field goal brought Oregon within 10-3 with 1:49 remaining in the first quarter.

And then the roof fell in on Cal in the second quarter as Oregon scored touchdowns on four consecutive possessions.  Three of the four Oregon drives were preceded by three-and-outs by Cal, and none of the Oregon’s drives took more than 3 ½ minutes on the game clock.

Cal’s defense contributed to Oregon’s surge with its own poor play, which Coach Sonny Dykes referenced in his post-game remarks.

“I think we missed 50 tackles tonight,” Dykes said.   “We couldn’t generate any pass rush at all.”

“Obviously it starts up front,” Oregon coach Mark Helfrich said of his team’s offensive explosion.  “Those guy did a really good job of neutralizing their front and getting to the second level.”

Royce Freeman, Oregon’s powerful tailback, rushed for 180 yards on 29 carries.  But Freeman was just part of a committee that totaled 477 rushing.  Tony Brooks-James topped 100 yards rushing, and Kani Benoit had 94 yards on just eight carries.

The Bears rallied when they opened the second half with 11 consecutive points to cut Oregon’s lead to 31-21.  Matt Anderson’s 48-yard field goal, Vic Enwere’s 9-yard touchdown run and Goff’s two-point conversion on a designed run brought Cal with 10 points, but the Ducks rebounded with a second field goal from Aidan Schneider and Charles Nelson’s 20-yard touchdown catch to open the fourth quarter.

Bryce Treggs’ 80-yard touchdown on a deep ball that was tipped by the defender and then grabbed by the Cal receiver brought the Bears within 44-28 with 7:27 remaining.

Cal has dropped four straight following a 5-0 start to the season and a brief landing spot in the national Top 25.  Now the Bears must defeat downtrodden Oregon State on Saturday to secure a sixth win and bowl eligibility.  If not, the Bears face a daunting task trying to defeat either Stanford or Arizona State in their regular-season finale.