I think you’ve done a great job this year covering Cal Football. I’ve loved reading your blog, articles, and updates on the on-goings with the Cal program. I also think you’ve shown some great insight on the program, especially since (if I remember correctly?) this is your first year covering Cal Football in such detail and depth. However, I think that in the vast majority of the comments that I’ve read from you, it seems that you have gone out of your way to defend Nate Longshore, and at times it has appeared to be from the perspective of more than a mere neutral reporter.

Now, I don’t think that it’s been necessarily wrong of you to do. Nate has suffered a lot of criticism, some of it deserved, and some of it unfair (similar to Joe Ayoob when he struggled). However, in fairness to Cal fans who have voiced their opinions to see Riley much sooner than yesterday morning, one of Tedford’s ONLY faults is that he has appeared almost two loyal to his players in the past. I think the same can be said of his loyalty to Longshore.

Obviously hindsight is 20/20, and we can all play Monday morning (or Tuesday morning) quarterback, but I think Cal fans who were so frustrated with Cal’s performances the last seven weeks that people merely wanted to see Riley “get a shot.” Yesterday he got that, and as much as people knocked his “lack of experience”, he performed incredibly well. Let’s face it, injury or not, if you KNOW football, you can watch Longshore’s games and see his INCREDIBLY POOR mechanics. Tedford prides himself on developing quarterbacks, and there’s no way he doesn’t see Nate’s failures to step into his throws. It’s almost sad how bad his mechanics have deteriorated, and that was happening even in games he was healthy (how many open guys did he miss in the Colorado St. and Arizona games)?

I guess Riley’s performance was more disturbing than exciting for me as a Cal fan. I wanted to believe, as you told us, that Longshore was still the guy, because Riley was still raw, inexperienced, etc. I, like other Cal fans, have not been at practices, etc. to see Riley perform. I was impressed with him against Oregon St., even with the fatal mistake at the end. My feeling is that the team, much like the fans, lost faith in Longshore, and started to lose confidence in Nate’s ability to bring them back when faced with deficits.

J