STANFORD — Chase Garbers hadn’t taken a snap in a game since Oct. 30, but the Cal senior quarterback had an idea what was coming Saturday in the 124th Big Game at Stanford.
“We knew on Monday, after that practice, that we were going to do something special today,” Garbers said after the Bears kept their bowl aspirations afloat with a 41-11 rout of their rivals. “The all-out intensity and energy of the whole week, we knew we were just going to pick up where we left off way back when against Oregon State.”
Cal had crushed Oregon State 39-25 on the night before Halloween, but Garbers was among 24 players who missed Cal’s game two weeks ago at Arizona after testing positive for COVID-19. Without their leader, the Bears lost 10-3 to a team on a league-record 20-game losing streak.
The virus continued to spread among Cal’s roster, forcing a postponement of the USC game a week ago.
So while Garbers made references to scraping off the rust, there was little to be seen in one of the most overwhelming offensive showings in Big Game history.
Cal rolled up 636 yards — 352 on the ground and 284 through the air — to set a Big Game record by either school in a series that began in 1892.
The Bears averaged 10.1 yards per snap, boosted significantly by a Big Game-record 84-yard pass play from Garbers to Trevon Clark for the game’s first touchdown, a 75-yard run by Christopher Brooks and a 76-yard TD dash by third-string running back Marcel Dancy.
Cal hadn’t scored this many points against Stanford since 2004 or this many against any Pac-12 opponent since a 49-7 win at Oregon State in 2018.
The Bears (4-6, 3-4) will need to be clicking on all cylinders next Saturday when they visit UCLA (7-4, 5-3) in Pasadena but at least the game has meaning.
Cal needs to beat both the Bruins and USC a week later in Berkeley to reach six wins and become bowl eligible, and UCLA’s 62-33 dismantling of USC on Saturday suggests the Bears will have to put points on the board to get the job done.
Cal has not beaten its three in-state conference rivals in the same season since 1958, the year Joe Kapp directed the team to its most recent Rose Bowl.
Senior safety Elijah Hicks, part of a defense allowing an average of just 12.3 points over the past four games, sees no reason his team can’t shake up that ancient history.
“I feel we can win all these games,” Hicks said. “We’ve got to continue to practice hard and hone in on the details of our craft. That’s when you see big games like this from our team.”
After Cal fans mobbed the field at Stanford Stadium and remained there for perhaps 20 minutes, coach Justin Wilcox finally emerged for his postgame interview, during which he mentioned nearly everyone on the offense, including coordinator Bill Musgrave.
But he saved his highest praise for Garbers, who completed 17 of 26 passes for 246 yards with two touchdowns and one interception — his first after 126 pass attempts. He also ran for 58 yards.
“Chase is playing his best football since he’s been here and it’s not even close,” Wilcox said. “Just his execution, control, making plays with his arm and his feet, it’s just been a lot of fun to watch him.”
A bit less fun for Stanford coach David Shaw, who has nonetheless developed a great respect for the Bears’ senior.
“Typical Chase Garbers game. Made some big-time throws, put the ball in safe places,” Shaw said, noting that Garbers also hurt the Cardinal by getting loose on the outside for scrambles. “He’s the X factor. All the guy does is come out and make plays. But he’s also a senior, older guy. Knows how big this game is. And he came out and played a great game.”
Garbers has now played in four Big Games, completing 63 percent of his passes for 852 yards with six touchdowns and three interceptions, just one of those the past three years. He has rushed for 226 yards against Stanford and in 2019 scrambled 16 yards for a touchdown with 1:19 left that sealed the Bears’ 24-20 victory, snapping a nine-year drought in the series.
Wilcox, in his fifth season as the Bears’ head coach, wasn’t sure he is qualified to rank Garbers in the long history of the program’s best Big Game quarterbacks.
“He’s had two big wins in the Big Game and I’m sure people at Cal will remember that a long time,” Wilcox said. “If he happens to come back when he’s older and is sitting around campus for lunch, I’ll bet he doesn’t have to pay.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment