Cal Keeps Singing the Fourth-Quarter Blues

Cal led entering the fourth quarter in three of its four ACC games, but lost all four

Cal quarterback Fernando Mendoza was not sacked in the first three quarters against North Carolina State but was sacked three times in the fourth quarter. / Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images

If college football games lasted only three quarters, Cal would be 6-1 overall and 3-1 in the ACC right now. The Bears would already be bowl-eligible and would be thinking about a conference championship in its first season in the ACC.

Alas, teams are required to play a fourth quarter, and that has been the Bears’ Achilles heel. Instead Cal is 3-4 overall and 0-4 in the ACC.

Players typically hold up an arm and flash four fingers between the third and fourth quarters, indicating they will own the final 15 minutes.  Cal has relinquished ownership of those final 15 minutes to its opponents.

“Yeah, it’s definitely been an issue for our football team, having leads in the fourth quarter,” Cal offensive coordinator Mike Bloesch.

You can look at the numbers in a variety of ways, but they all lead to the obvious conclusion: Cal is letting games get away in the fourth quarter.

---Cal has outscored its seven opponents by 80 points over the first three quarters, but the Bears have been outscored by 23 points in the fourth quarter.

---Cal had outscored its four ACC opponents by 24 points over the first three quarters, but Cal has been outscored by 33 points in the fourth quarter.

---Cal held the lead entering the fourth quarter in three of its four ACC games, and lost all four.

---Cal has scored 76 points over the first three quarters in its four ACC games, but the Bears have scored a mere nine points in the fourth quarter of those four games and has been shut out in the fourth quarter in two of them.

---Cal has outscored its four ACC opponents 76-52 over the first three quarters, but has been outscored 42-9 in the fourth quarter.

Those nine fourth-quarter points in ACC games stick out like a sore thumb. Averaging 2.3 points in the fourth quarter of the four ACC games indicates the shortcomings on the offensive side, but the defense has been the culprit in two of those ACC losses.

Against Miami, the Bears held a 35-10 lead in the third quarter and were ahead 35-18 entering the fourth quarter.  But while the Cal offense managed just three points in the fourth quarter, the Bears’ defense gave up touchdown drives of 75, 70 and 92 yards in that quarter, when Miami amassed 291 yards in that quarter alone.

Against North Carolina State, the Bears held a 23-10 lead entering the final quarter, but the Bears’ offense was shut out after that while the defense yielded scoring drives of 75 and 80 yards in the fourth quarter.

The most obvious possible explanation is that Cal players are not in good enough condition, but that’s too simple.

“We’ve looked at that very hard,” Cal head coach Justin Wilcox said of the fourth-quarter woes.  “The look in their eyes on the sidelines is good. We feel like our conditioning is strong. It’s the execution in critical moments.”

He is trying to address the issue in practice.

“We’re adjusting some things in practice to make it very competitive late [in practice], because we have to be a fourth-quarter team. You gotta win late in the game, and we have not obviously done that,” Wilcox said.

Quarterback Fernando Mendoza confirmed that the practice schedule has been modified to focus on the fourth-quarter issues.

“Coach Wilcox has shifted up the practice schedule a little bit, so that we finish strong and end strong in practice,” Mendoza said.

Cal defensive coordinator Peter Sirmon noted that when teams are behind and forced to throw on nearly every down, it can wear down a defense as linemen must chase the quarterback and defensive backs have to chase receivers on nearly every play. 

“I don’t know if there’s an easy explanation,” said Sirmon. “We have to find a way to have more juice at the end of the game.”

Maybe that means better conditioning or rotating in more players even if they aren’t as talented as the starters. Maybe it’s just attention to detail on one or two late-game plays that could have changed the outcome.

“It comes down to mental focus,” Mendoza said. “There’s a couple plays, or a play in each game I vividly remember going back and ‘Ooh, if we hit that play . . .’”

Mendoza is not necessarily talking about a long, game-changing play, but perhaps a slightly different read in a given play that would have resulted in a short game instead of a sack or a first down instead of an incompletion.

Maybe it means different play-calling on offense.

Cal called just four running plays in the fourth quarter against North Carolina State, but those four runs amounted to just 13 yards. All three of the Wolfpack’s sacks in the game came in the final quarter.

The Bears called seven fourth-quarter running plays in the loss to Miami, but only one of those runs was for more than three yards, and three were for zero or minus yards.

The lack of a reliable run game has prevented Cal from eating up time at the end of games and maintaining possession. It allows opponents more late-game possessions and has not given Cal’s defense time to rest.

There is no single reason for Cal’s fourth-quarter problems, but the most obvious late-game problem is an inability to run the ball when the opponent knows Cal wants to run the ball.

Cal is averaging just 3.41 yards per rushing attempt, and only two of the other 16 ACC team are averaging worse than that on the ground. And the average is even worse in ACC games, as the Bears are averaging just 2.7 yards per carry in those four games. Injuries in the offensive line and to running back Jaydn Ott probably contribute to that, but somehow Cal has been able to achieve significant leads after three quarters, only to let it slip away at the end with one or two plays making the difference.

Sometimes it's the offense that is to blame in the fourth quarter, sometimes it's the defense and sometimes it's special teams as a missed 40-yard field goal against Pitt and a missed 28-yard field goal against North Carolina State, both in the final two minutes, doomed the Bears.

To wit:

Cal has lost its four ACC games by a total margin of just nine points, and that includes a losing margin of just four points in its last three losses combined.

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