By Morris Phillips

In their recent, turbulent history with the Oregon Ducks, Cal has been embarrassed, nipped, popped, blown out, blasted, outlasted and outclassed a second time in losing annually to the Pac-12’s most accomplished program over that period.

Jared Goff let it slip away in the rain, Cal’s been cooked, roasted and boiled as well.  Had any of the seven consecutive losses gone the Bears’ way it would have been the signature win of Jeff Tedford’s final four seasons, or the biggest win in Sonny Dykes’ first three.

But none did, and Cal was only competitive once, November 2010, losing 15-13 to the top-ranked Ducks who went on to the BCS National Championship Game that season.

Flash forward to Friday night, and the Bears experienced something far different with the Ducks.

Cal jumped to a 21-0 lead, only to see the Ducks rally behind true freshman quarterback Justin Herbert to lead 35-34 early in the fourth quarter.  After Matt Anderson’s last minute field goal attempt to win for Cal sailed wide, the Bears pulled it out in overtime, 52-49 when sophomore linebacker Jordan Kunaszyk intercepted Herbert as Oregon was driving for a potential game-winning touchdown.

Enough explained in a small space?  Probably not, but this one lasted four hours, twenty minutes, with a tidy ending just before midnight on ESPN’s national broadcast.

“Just another boring Cal football game,” Coach Sonny Dykes said in jest as the opening of his postgame statements.

And a huge win for Dykes and his crew that’s bounced around through the first seven games of this season, beating ranked Texas and Utah, while getting beat up by San Diego State and Oregon State.  On Friday, the suddenly downtrodden Ducks lost their fifth straight, and the Bears nearly let them off the hook.

“You have to credit the defense,” Dykes said.  “In the second overtime, we had three offensive penalties in a row that killed us.  Matt (Anderson) came in, nailed the field goal.  Our defense’s back was against the wall, just like it was against Utah.  Jordan (Kunaszyk) made a big time play on the ball—you could kind of see it developing.”

In fact, Herbert had made the fatal mistake negating what had been an eye-opening second start for the freshman quarterback.  While no threat to burn the Bears with deep stuff, Herbert threw short crosses, scrambled impressively, and kept his team in it until his final throw, which was late and right to Kunaszyk, who wasn’t too startled to juggle it and drop it.  Instead the linebacker grabbed it, and heeded the instructions of his teammates to take a knee so that the celebration could begin.

“Coach was raving the whole time about getting to the boundary hash,” Kunaszyk said.  “That’s where they’d been throwing a lot.  So I opened up the field, and in the back of my head I remembered coach saying ‘boundary hash, boundary hash.’  Low and behold, I went to the boundary hash, found myself the ball, and made the play.”

Boundary hash, the buzz phrase for ending a painful losing streak to a key conference opponent.  On the other sideline, boundary hash wasn’t anything good, as Herbert was inconsolable coming off the field, needing coach Mark Helfrich to apply an emergency hug.

“(Herbert) has a ton of support in the locker room,” Helfrich said.  “Already you can see guys rally around him.  He’s obviously very hard on himself, how the end occurred.  We really shouldn’t have been in that position but I’d do the exact same thing at the end and trust him to make the play.”

“It was comforting but it still doesn’t ease the pain,” Herbert said of the encouragement he received from Helfrich and his teammates.  “They said to keep my head up and start working hard for next week.”

In losing four straight coming in, the Ducks allowed 41.3 points a game, and 522.3 yards per game, both numbers right at the bottom of FBS rankings.  The Bears continued the trend, living off the Ducks’ shortcomings along the defensive line where Cal made constant withdrawals.  Against Cal, Oregon surrendered 636 yards in offense, including a combined 304 yards rushing for Cal’s Khalfani Muhammad and Tre Watson alone.

But the star for Cal wasn’t Muhammad or Watson, Kunaszyk or Anderson.  And it wasn’t Dykes who admitted his fourth down decisions in the third quarter in which Cal decided to punt with a short field and shanked it, then opted to go on fourth and were stuffed, allowed the Ducks to rally.

Davis Webb stood alone for Cal in that regard, throwing 61 times, completing 42, and doing so without starting tailback Vic Enwere, who was declared out for the season with injury on Thursday, or Chad Hansen, the nation’s top receiver, who was nicked up and a late scratch.  In the absence of his biggest weapons, Webb threw five touchdowns with no picks and was sacked just twice by an ineffective Oregon pass rush.  Throughout, Webb showed great arm strength, throwing out patterns that took advantage of the Ducks’ passive corners and compensated for Cal’s inability to throw deep.

Just two weeks after Webb threw four touchdown passes against Utah, none shorter than 24 yards, he completed 42 passes, none of which went longer than 17 yards.  When things got tight in the fourth quarter, Webb calmly led Cal on an 11-play drive culminating with his touch pass to Watson that covered just 14 yards but was thrown beautifully beyond a trailing Oregon linebacker.

Is Webb having a more impressive season than Goff did last season, one which led Goff to be the NFL’s top overall pick?  Yes.

“It was a great team win,” Webb said.  “When a guy goes down of (Hansen’s) caliber, someone’s got to step up, and our whole team did.”

The Bears travel to Los Angeles for a Thursday meeting with USC at the Coliseum.  Dykes expressed his displeasure with the scheduling that not only had the Bears playing in front of a less-than-full crowd on a rare Friday at home, then needing to transition to the Trojans almost immediately.

“We have a game in six days, which is crazy,” Dykes said.