By: Eric He
PASADENA, Calif. — The danger of relying on a high-octane offense to win games is that sometimes, that offense inexplicably fails to produce enough points.
Such was the case for the No. 20 Cal Bears on Thursday night as they were routed 40-24 by the unranked UCLA Bruins in front of 57,026 at the Rose Bowl.
Jared Goff, who has put himself in the Heisman Trophy conversation with an excellent season thus far, was thoroughly outplayed by UCLA’s freshman quarterback Josh Rosen despite the Bruins missing three all-conference candidates on defense and giving up 124 points in their past three games.
Rosen threw for nearly 400 yards, completing 34 of 47 passes for three touchdowns. Goff, meanwhile, had 295 yards and also threw for three touchdowns, but completed just 32 of 53 passes.
“You’ve got to give UCLA a lot of credit,” said head coach Sonny Dykes. “They came out and played a very aggressive, physical brand of football. Obviously, we didn’t perform as well as we needed to. We had 12 days to prepare and we didn’t do a very good job getting our guys ready to play. We never got into a flow.”
No Cal wide receiver or running back had more than 63 yards of offense, while UCLA had two receivers reach the century mark – Thomas Duarte and Kevin Fuller, who combined to catch three Bruins’ touchdowns.
Goff attributed the struggles to not being able to establish the run. Cal finished with just 131 yards on the ground.
“When you can’t run the ball effectively, it doesn’t help,” said Goff. “In order to set up the pass game, you have to run the ball and we weren’t able to do that as well as we would like to.”
With a two-score lead at halftime, the Bruins blew the game wide open in the third quarter. Right out of the half, UCLA took under three minutes to march 80 yards down the field and find the end zone on a 21-yard touchdown pass from Rosen to Fuller to take a 33-10 lead.
After the Bears kept themselves alive with a touchdown drive, the Bruins responded with a heavy dose of Jomabo, whose one-yard touchdown gave UCLA 40 points on the night.
“We just didn’t do a good job of getting off the field,” said Dykes. “Throughout the game, we had opportunities to intercept passes. Against good football teams, we have to make those. We didn’t do a good job of keeping [Rosen] hemmed in. We broke tackles, we lost contain. Things we haven’t done all year, we did tonight.
“We’ve tackled well this year. We did not tackle well early in the ball game. We didn’t play physical on offense or defense. We’ve got to get back to playing physical football.”
The two teams traded field goals on their respective opening drives, with Cal’s first possession stalling inside the Bruins’ 10-yard line.
UCLA jumped ahead with the game’s first touchdown late in the quarter when Rosen and the Bruins advanced rapidly down the field on a 13-play, 70-yard drive. Rosen found a wide-open Duarte in the right corner of the end zone to give UCLA a 10-3 lead after the first quarter.
The Bruins extended the lead on their first drive of the second quarter. Rosen again marched UCLA down the field with a 90-yard, 10-play drive that took just three and a half minutes. A 23-yard catch and run by Soso Jamabo, who had all kinds of room down the left side, set up a 19-yard touchdown pass to Devin Fuller for a 17-3 Bruins advantage.
“We had too many missed tackles, too many lost leverages, too many missed assignments and misalignments,” said linebacker Hardy Nickerson.
He continued: “[Rosen] was doing a lot of play fakes and passes. He read us well. He played very well.”
A failed fake punt attempt on the ensuing by the Bears added insult to injury, with the Bruins taking over at the Cal 29-yard line and adding on another field goal.
Cal finally found its offense late in the half. Golf broke a string of five consecutive incompletions with a 36-yard completion to Darius Powe down to the UCLA four-yard line. On second and goal, Kenny Lawler made a tremendous leaping catch for a one-yard touchdown.
But Bruins’ placekicker Ka’imi Fairbairn, who made four field goals in the first half alone, nailed a 60-yard kick to end the half and give UCLA a 26-10 lead.
After a competitive loss to No. 3 Utah last game, the Bears were playing from behind all night long Thursday. Two straight losses will likely drop their ranking and set them back in the Pac-12 standings, but given the volatile conference, they are far from out of contention for the Pac-12 championship game.
Cal will head back home and prepare for USC next Saturday, and they promise they will put on a better performance.
“Every week’s a different challenge,” said Dykes. “Our guys are hurt and not happy with the way we performed. We’ll come back with better sense of purpose and we’ll play well against USC.”
Added Goff: “We’re going to fix it. I promise you we’re going to fix it. It’s going to be a different team Saturday.”
Cal has dropped 11 straight games to USC and is 30-67-5 all-time against the Trojans.
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