Cal Football: Bears drop third straight in devastating loss to Oregon State

The Cal football program lost its third straight game on Saturday as they fell to the lowly Oregon State Beavers by a final score of 21-17.

The Cal football program reached a new season-low this past Saturday when they lost their third consecutive game — this time to the conference bottom-feeder Oregon State Beavers.

Cal entered the game fresh off a bye week and even though the Bears had lost their last two games, they both came at the hands of currently-ranked opponents in Oregon and Arizona State.

This week was supposed to be their opportunity to get back into the win column with a victory over lowly Oregon State.

Except that’s not exactly what happened. Not at all.

The Bears came out flat surrendering a 14-point deficit and went into the half trailing by 11 points. A thrilling third quarter saw Cal rattle off two touchdowns to take a 17-14 lead but everything fell apart again in the final 15 minutes.

After a few three-and-outs to start the fourth quarter, quarterback Devon Modster came up slow following a third-down attempt and he was immediately sent to the tent to be evaluated for a possible head injury.

That forced true freshman — and third-string — quarterback Spencer Brasch into the game to make his collegiate debut. And after a 12-play, 80-yard drive from Oregon State in which they regained the lead, it was up to Brasch to lead the Bears to victory.

Yeah, that didn’t happen.

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Brasch was intercepted on his second career pass ending any reasonable hopes the Bears had of staging a comeback. Cal would get the ball one last time with under a minute to play, no timeouts, and backed-up inside their own 10-yard line, but the attempt proved futile.

Cal has now lost their last three games after beginning the season 4-0, much to the surprise of the college football world. Part of their struggles obviously has to fall on injuries at the quarterback position.

Modster was only starting on Saturday because starting quarterback Chase Garbers injured his shoulder towards the end of last month. Garbers had led the Bears to their 4-0 start but was injured in the team’s loss to Arizona State.

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And now with Modtser out, Cal might be forced to start their third quarterback of the season in the form of the true freshman Brasch.

It makes you wonder where this team would be if Garbers had never gotten hurt. 5-2? 6-1? 7-0?

But alas, Garbers may very well miss the remainder of the season and if Modster is forced to miss any time, the Bears are in some big trouble. Next week Cal will travel to Salt Lake City to take on the No. 13 ranked Utah Utes before returning home to take on Washington State and USC.

Their final two games against Stanford and UCLA appear easier on paper but for a Bears team once talking about a possible Pac-12 title game berth, the discussion has now shifted to first qualifying for a bowl game.