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Husky Drive Efficiency vs Cal

Good offense and defense matched with below average special teams. This is not a new thing.

Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

Yet again, the Huskies dealt themselves unfavorable field position on every drive, and on a couple drives it was downright awful -- 91 and 97 yards -- but ironically these two drives resulted in touchdowns. Had they gotten a couple of short fields, a couple of those punts would have likely turned into points, or those field goals into touchdowns.

More so than (I believe) any other game this season, the Huskies were the beneficiaries of big offensive plays which is encouraging. The numbers around college football bear out that it's pretty hard to score touchdowns without at least one big play in that drive, and I think the Huskies have been pretty unique (lucky?) in how many drives they've put together and gotten into the endzone by chunking their way down the field.

As our eyes told us, the defense played pretty well. To a certain extent, it looks like Sonny Dykes and his staff figured a couple of things out as they were able to move the ball better as the game wore on. Ultimately, it seemed the talent gap was the reason Cal was unable to turn some of those punts into scores.

The total yards per play of non-garbage time allowed by UW's defense (4.61) would rank in the top-12 of the nation if sustained over the course of the season, and is better than teams like Alabama, Oklahoma and UCLA.

The garbage time that was omitted largely favored Cal (both offensively and defensively) due to the fact that Cal's #1's were going against the Husky 2's and 3's.