Continuing up the coast, we now visit the land of Berkenstocks and Tye-dye shirts. Berkley, California is still an interesting place for me that has no business being a competitor in the land of college football. Of course, that was largely true before Jeff Tedford arrived. Tedford will be fielding another very talented team and is likely to compete for major bowl bids. This team, however, has a couple question marks on offense, unlike many of his teams of recent years. First we will explore the strengths of their offense.

First, like many of the teams in the Pac 10, their level of their success, offensively, lies squarely on the back of their extremely talented Quarterback, Nate Longshore. Longshore will be entering his Junior season as one of the favorites for Pac 10 Player of the Year. In 2006, as a Sophomore, Longshore had a phenomenal season with a 141Quarterback rating, throwing for over 3000 yards and threw 24 touchdowns against just 13 interceptions. This, after sitting out the previous season with a knee injury. I see All-America written all over this guy for 2007.

The Running back position looks to rebound well with Justin Forsett taking over the primary rock carrying responsibilities with Marshawn Lynch going to the next level. Last year, we got a glimpse of Forsett when Lynch was injured and Cal actually average MORE YARDS rushing with him in the back field. This kid is tough, strong, and even faster than Lynch. Last year, in limited time, Forsett rushed for over 600 yards averaging 5.3 yards per carry. With the experience of the offensive line, I look for Forsett to approach the 1500 yard rushing mark in 2007.

The Receivers are the strength of the Cal offense. Their Top FOUR receivers all return, and this should make their passing game that much more devestating to opponents. DeSean Jackson is their staple, last year with 59 receptions for over 1000 yards and 9 touchdowns. It doesn't stop with Jackson, however. Cal also boasts two of the best deep threats in the country in LaVelle Hawkins and Robert Jordan, who are both lighning fast with great break-away speed. Between the two of them, they added nearly 1300 yards and 9 more touchdowns in 2006. Finally, they have an experienced Tight End in Craig Stevens, who is not only a load to get down, he can catch and block. In 2006 Stevens added 17 receptions for over 200 yards, but is sparingly used inside the opponents 20 yard line because of his excellent blocking ability and the great running game that Cal boasts every year.

The Offensive line is going to be solid as always. They will be experienced and large, although they will be a bit lighter than in recent years, averaging a mere 305 pounds per lineman. The starters to watch will be Mike Gibson and Brian De La Puente. The Left Tackle and Guard are both seniors and will anchor the line in such a way to protect Longshore's blind side and provide lots of running lanes on the left side. Clearly, the challenge for defenses is to run a lot of stunts on the left side to try and neutralize them because it will be no secret that the majority of Cal's offense will run behind these two linemen.

Finally, the kicking game.Tom Schneider is likely to be an All-America this year. Simply put, he is an exceptional kicker. In 2006, Schneider hit on all 46 PAT's, never missed a field goal attempt inside 40 yards and missed only one kick inside 50 yards.

So what question marks do we have for Cal? Not many, but one question I have is their depth. In the past, this hasn't been a challenge but it seems to be this season.

If Longshore goes down with an injury, their second quarterback is either going to be Kyle Reed or Kevin Riley. Neither player has had any realistic playing time. With the graduation of Joseph Ayoob, it will be that much more important for Longshore to stay healthy.

At running back, behind Forsett, you'll find a host of players with little or no experience, so it is hard to know what you will get. The likiest person to be successful, should Forsett go down, is James Montgomery. This redshirt freshman was a juggernaut in highschool and Tedford and company is likely to find ways to get him the ball whenever they can.

The biggest depth challenge that Cal might have is on the offensive line. These backups are relatively light and very green. Theoretically, if all of the back up linemen were forced to play, their average size would drop to about 285 pounds (relatively small for an offensive line).

Still, these challenges are unlikely to occur, at least to any major degree, so I look for Cal to have another great year under one of the best coaches in the country.

Labels: CollegeFix, Dawgman14