A little comparison point for you:
Cal led the Buffs 31 - 0 at halftime Saturday on 151 total yards of offense. The Oklahoma Sooners held on similar lead 34 - 7 over the Florida St. Seminoles. Guess how many yards they had to move to get 34 points?
412!
That's 261 more yards than Cal had to work for to get to a similar point total. It is easy to say the Buffs served this game up on silver platter for the home team Bears. Throw in five turnovers that resulted in two scores, six sacks and nine Buff penalties and you start to wonder if the score should (could) have been 75 - 7.
Eight of CU's nine penalties came in the first half and cost the Buffs 68 yards. Colorado now has being penalized 19 times in the early season. The 19 penalties (an average of 9.5 per game) rank 111th in the NCAA out of 120, a similar ranking to a year ago.
The Colorado offense did it's teammates no favors yesterday especially in the first half where Cal scored 31 points where they only had to drive an average of 25 yards. Yes, you read that right. Four touchdowns, one field goal which Cal had to move an average of 25 yards on each of them. Cal scored 24 points off of four CU turnovers.
In the first quarter, California's average starting position was the Colorado 44 and their own 44 in the second quarter, which was good for an average starting field position of the Colorado 49 yard line the entire first half. It's hard for any defense to defend such a short field, especially for a full half. On the flip side, Colorado started on it's own 23 in the first half.
| Time of possession | |||||||
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 1st | 2nd | ||
| Colorado | Qtr | Qtr | Qtr | Qtr | Half | Half | Total |
| Time of possession | 04:56 | 10:47 | 10:53 | 05:39 | 15:43 | 16:32 | 32:15 |
| 3rd Down Conversions | 0/3 | 4/7 | 3/5 | 1/3 | 4/10 | 4/8 | 8/18 |
| Average field position | Col 20 | Col 26 | Col 36 | Col 27 | Col 23 | Col 29 | Col 26 |
| 4th Down Conversions | 0/0 | 0/0 | 1/1 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 1/1 | 1/1 |
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 1st | 2nd | ||
| California | Qtr | Qtr | Qtr | Qtr | Half | Half | Total |
| Time of possession | 10:04 | 04:13 | 04:07 | 09:21 | 14:17 | 13:28 | 27:45 |
| 3rd Down Conversions | 1/3 | 1/3 | 0/2 | 2/3 | 2/6 | 2/5 | 4/11 |
| Average field position | Col 44 | Cal 44 | Cal 21 | Cal 25 | Col 49 | Cal 23 | Cal 39 |
| 4th Down Conversions | 0/1 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 0/1 | 0/1 | 0/1 | 0/2 |
Further, the Bears held a time of possession advantage in the first quarter of 10 minutes to 5 minutes because of Colorado's inability to move the ball, highlighted by going 0-3 on third down.
Colorado's all-time leading receiver in Scotty McKnight had one pass attempted to him in the first half and didn't get his first catch until the third quarter when the game was all but decided.
For lack of better words, the offensive performance yesterday was pathetic from the offensive line play to the lack of a offensive game plan.