AUSTIN, Texas - Given everything it could handle in hostile territory by a Texas team hungry for a key early season win of its own, the Cal football team ran off 31 unanswered points between the second and third quarters and weathered a furious late charge by the Longhorns to score a 45-44 win at Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.
Quarterback Jared Goff showed the traits that have served him so well through three weeks of his junior season, completing 27 of 37 passes for 268 yards and three touchdowns while in the process becoming Cal's all-time leading passer. He had plenty of help from an offense that racked up 548 total yards of offense as Khalfani Muhammad rushed for a career-high 164 yards on 10 carries and Kenny Lawler hauled in six passes for 79 yards and two touchdowns.
Cal (3-0) led 45-24 entering the fourth quarter but Texas (1-2) got a little closer with 13:24 left to play when quarterback Jerrod Heard rushed for a 13-yard touchdown to make it 45-31 Bears. The Longhorns got a little closer still when D'Onta Foreman busted loose for a 27-yard touchdown to cut the margin to just a touchdown with 3 minutes to play. Stephen Anderson grabbed the onside kick for Cal but Texas got the ball back with one more chance to even the score.
Heard did just that with 1:11 left, bolting for a 45-yard touchdown run that brought the Longhorns within a point. Needing that extra point to likely force overtime, Texas kicker Nick Rose pushed the attempt right as Cal's Darius White flew by from his rush end position, keeping the Bears in front. The onside kick went out of bounds and the Bears kneeled out the clock to emerge with the win.
"I was proud of our guys," Cal head coach Sonny Dykes said. "We hung in there and made some plays down the stretch. Darius White blocked the extra point. I think he got his hand on the extra point and that was the game winner for us. We told our game that every play in this game was going to matter. It's a pretty insignificant play, an extra-point is, until somebody makes a play like that."
A wild first half that took nearly two hours to play ended all square on the scoreboard as the Bears and Longhorns battled their way to a 24-all tie by intermission. Cal struck first, with Goff finding Maurice Harris for a 6-yard touchdown pass on the Bears' second offensive drive of the game. Just a few moments before the touchdown pass, Goff completed his ascent to the top of the Cal passing chart when his 22-yard pass to Anderson moved the signal-caller past Troy Taylor's record of 8,126 career passing yards.
That was only the start of an eventful half. Texas answered on a 2-yard touchdown run by Heard, then forged ahead just over 2 minutes into the second quarter on a 27-yard field goal by Rose that came after a Cal fumble on the Longhorns' 2-yard line. Cal had its own response ready, and Lawler went high over Texas defender John Bonney to snag a laser of a back shoulder throw from Goff on 4th and 3 for a 17-yard touchdown to put Cal up 14-10.
Texas countered with a 95-yard scoring drive that culminated with a 4-yard touchdown run by Johnathan Gray, then brought its home crowd to a full boil when Shiro Davis blindsided Goff, forced a fumble and Desmond Jackson recovered on the Cal 6. Gray needed just one attempt to punch it in and the Longhorns led 24-14 with 1:32 left.
Cal wasn't content to go into the locker room facing a deficit. A 49-yard run by Muhammad got the Bears going and Vic Enwere eventually rumbled in from a yard out to make it 24-21. The Cal defense made the next big play when Jalen Jefferson stepped in front of a Heard pass, picked it off and returned it to the Texass 30 with 24 seconds left. Matt Anderson converted a 34-yard field goal with four seconds left and brought the game back to even as the teams headed to the locker rooms with over 650 yards of combined offense between them.
Armed with the momentum it grabbed before the break, Cal didn't wait long to silence a partisan crowd. Texas got the ball first but a fumble by Heard, who finished with 364 yards passing and 163 yards rushing, landed in Jonathan Johnson's hands and gave the Bears the ball in Texas territory. A few plays later, Enwere turned 4th and goal from the 1 into a lead Cal wouldn't give back, putting the Bears up 31-24 with 11:08 in the third quarter.
"We play better from behind," Goff said. "I don't know why that is. It probably shouldn't be that way, but sometimes that’s the way it goes, so when we saw we were behind, it didn’t really phase us, not with this group. The defense made big plays, and we got some momentum, and we were able to capitalize on it."
After the Cal defense got a stop on the next drive, Goff found Lawler for a 3-yard touchdown pass to cap an eight-play, 71-yard drive and push the lead to 14. By the end of the quarter, that lead ballooned to 21 thanks to a breakaway 74-yard touchdown run by Muhammad and the Bears had all the momentum in their first road game of the season.
"Anytime you go on the road and play in front of 100,000 people, you hang in there and figure out a way to win when your back's up against the wall a little bit like it was for us tonight, that shows you've got a lot of character," Dykes said. "I'm proud of the way our guys kept battling."
Cal remains on the road next week as the Bears head to the Pacific Northwest for their Pac-12 opener at Washington. Kickoff is set for 2 p.m. on Saturday and the game will be broadcast by the Pac-12 Networks. Action returns to Kabam Field at Memorial Stadium on Oct. 3 when Cal hosts Washington State. Kickoff for that game is TBA and will be announced once the television network is known.
