Cal's Second-Half Task Gets Tougher When Oregon's Kayvon Thibodeaux Plays

Controversial targeting rule will keep Ducks' star defensive end sidelined in first half Friday
Cal's Second-Half Task Gets Tougher When Oregon's Kayvon Thibodeaux Plays
Cal's Second-Half Task Gets Tougher When Oregon's Kayvon Thibodeaux Plays /

Teams who claim to get stronger as the game goes on often say, "We're a different team in the second half." Well, No. 9 Oregon can use that slogan literally as it prepares to face Cal in Eugene, Oregon, on Friday night.

Ducks defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux must sit the first half of Friday's game as a result of being ejected for targeting in the second half of Oregon's overtime loss to Stanford in its most recent game Oct. 2. Targeting as a rule has become a point of discussion that the Cal and Oregon head coaches addressed later in this story. But the impact is that Thibodeaux will enter Friday's game against Cal in the second half, changing the Ducks' defense considerably.

Can the presence of a defensive end change a game that dramatically? After all, Oregon beat Ohio State on the road without Thibodeaux, who was out with an ankle injury.

True, but consider the games against Fresno State and Stanford. 

The Ducks were dominating the contest against Fresno State, with Thibodeaux's pass rush rendering Bulldogs quarterback Jake Haener ineffective. But when Thibodeux left the game with his ankle injury, everything changed, and Oregon was lucky to get away with a win.

Stanford trailed 24-17 and had the ball at its own 27-yard line with 1:33 left when a Thibodeaux pass rush forced Cardinal quarterback Tanner McKee into an incompletion. But Thibodeaux was called for targeting on the play, a controversial call that resulted in Thibodeaux being ejected. With Thibodeaux gone, the Cardinal drove for the game-tying touchdown and won in overtime. 

Prior to Thibodeaux's ejection, Stanford had scored no second-half points and had managed just 62 yards of offense after halftime. After Thibodeaux's ejection, Stanford scored 14 points and had 71 yards of offense in the final 1:33 of regulation and one overtime possession.

---Click here for the opinion of an Oregon beat writer on the impact of Thibodeaux's absence in the first half---

---Click here for an ESPN.com story about Thibodeaux's many interests---

Despite missing two games completely and parts of the other three games, Thibodeaux is still considered the best pro prospect in the nation.

CBS Sports, Pro Football Network, NBC Sports, Sports Illustrated are just some of the respected sites that project Thibodeaux to be the No. 1 overall pick in the 2022 NFL draft. Check the NFL Mock Draft Database and note that nearly every mock draft has Thibodeaux going first.

So does Cal need to change its offensive game plan in the second half when Thibodeaux becomes available?

 "No, not at all," Cal quarterback Chase Garbers said this week. "We're game-planning for the whole Oregon team, not just one player. He won't be there in the first half, but he will be in the second, so we're going to game plan for who's in the game at the time. But the game plan won't change at all just because he enters the game."

OK, so the game plan won't change, but it sounds like there will be some tweaking to the play-calling and the blocking schemes in the second half.

"We understand the circumstances of when he'll be in and when he won't," Cal head coach Justin Wilcox said in the video atop this story. "He's a guy that you got to account for. There are certain things that can be done to help that."

Thibodeaux lines up on either the left or right side of the defensive line, and you would assume Cal offensive tackles Will Craig and Valentino Daltoso will need some help keeping him out of the Bears' backfield.

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Oregon had two players ejected for targeting in the Stanford game -- Thibodeaux and cornerback Trikweze Bridges -- but Bridges was ejected on the opening kickoff so he will be available at the start of the Cal game.

The issue of targeting has become a point of contention.

Oregon coach Mario Cristobal addressed the way targeting is called in his press conference early in the week.

"No. 1 should be player safety," Cristobal said. "No. 2, consistency. And there has to be a form of discretion because you're impacting games, and you're really interjecting someone's discretion into the outcomes of a lot of games, and affecting the next game in certain cases, without the opportunity to appeal. I think it's really easy for someone to make judgments when they're able to super-slo-mo things on a monitor as opposed to bodies changing positions and guys not being able to avoid certain contact in fractions, fractions of seconds at full speed.

"So I think there has to be a re-evaluation of the system, always keeping the players' safety first."

Wilcox also had an opinion.

"They're trying to make the game safer, which we're all for," he said. "The intent of the player being called for targeting probably should be taken into account. You hate to see guys tossed out because it may be a timing issue of the ball-carrier moving."

But, as Wilcox notes, the rule will not be changed in the middle of a season.

So Thibodeaux will sit the first half of Friday's game, and Oregon will be a different defensive team in the second half when he is available.

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Cover photo of Kayvon Thibodeaux sacking Fresno State's Jake Haener and forcing a fumble is by Chris Pietsch, The Register-Guard via Imagn Content Services, LLC 2

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Follow Jake Curtis of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jakecurtis53

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.