Offensive Film Study and Other Thoughts

When you lose, there are three kinds of film study sessions that follow. First, there's the one where you see that the other team just had you beat at all the critical junctures, both schematically and in how they played. For example, most of Wazzu's film sessions last year went like that. As a coach, you feel a bit small watching those sessions, but you've got so much work to do that you don't have time to dwell on it. And you know your talent level has pretty much set a ceiling.

Second, there's the one where everything pretty much went right except a couple key plays, say in a close loss. That's the film session Belotti's staff had after the loss to Cal in '07. While the loss hurts, as a coach you look at those and feel pretty good that you're on the right track.

Then there's the third one, the one that makes you want to slide all the papers and gatorade bottles off the table, throw some furniture, and then slump down into a chair and start rubbing your eyes and your temples in frustration and exhaustion. This is the one where time and again, all game long, you've got the right scheme, your guys have won their share of individual matchups, just like in practice, but unforced mistakes and sloppiness by one player (same one or different one each time) keep killing the plays.

Watching film of the SC game is going to sting. It's going to gnaw at a details guy like Tedford in a way that very few things in football can. It makes me green with nausea to think of all the points and chunks of yardage that Cal left on the field Saturday through unforced errors. And I'm just a fan. My investment in the program pales in comparison to the coaches' and players' investments. I wouldn't trade places with those guys right now. I guarantee you Tedford would forfeit his salary to have some of those plays back right now, because he knows he had the SC defense beat.

With that, let's look at some of questions people have raised this week concerning the game plan, the play calling, and the in-game adjustments.

1. The game plan was pretty good, just like last year, but variety of play calls was better than last year. Last year I thought Cignetti had a sound game plan and I thought he dialed up the right plays. Same goes for Ludwig this year. The difference is Ludwig showed an even better diversity of looks. Bottom line, I really liked the game Ludwig called.

There were just so many plays where Cal had the matchup they wanted, and the receiver was open. Against a defense that good, I was impressed. The problem of course was poor execution at critical times, which is beyond frustrating, but the fact that the plays were there is a good sign.

The offense showed a nice mix of looks: fakes out of the screen packages, moving the pocket around and rolling Riley out, nice use of the reverse, the wildcat, and the quick passes to the TE, tailback and slot receiver. Lots of attack points all over the field.

If this team can limit the mistakes, it can get back to scoring 30 a game easily.

2. Riley wasn't as bad as often as I initially thought, but his mistakes were just killers. On rewatch, he made plenty of decent throws, more than I thought. And some of his misses weren't all that bad -- good coverage, under pressure, good throw aways. But rewatch also confirmed that his bad plays were the kind that makes you pull your hair out as a coach.

Last year I wrote that Riley's biggest nemesis was the "freethrow" passes, the ones that were easy, wide open passes. And on rewatch, it was definitely the gimmes that he struggled with. This is 100% mental. Like I said earlier in the week, it remains to be seen if he can shake this.

3. Riley has not "regressed" under Tedford. I keep reading and hearing about how Tedford turns his QBs into head cases until they regress into mediocre QBs. Not to be a downer, but I have news for you: I have seen nothing to suggest Riley is an elite talent. He is a decent QB with the potential to play some great games, but that's all.

And before you cite the Armed Forces Bowl, the second half of Ore St. 07, Mich St., MD 09, as evidence of his upside, those games all have one of two things in common: (1) they were coming off several weeks to prepare, and/or (2) the game plans were simplistic. Tedford said at the coaches' tour before the 08 season that the AFA and OSU game plans were considerably simplified for Riley (ditto for Levy vs. Stanford and BYU), and though he gave Riley credit, he also noted that having Jackson, Hawkins and Jordan really helped.

Why do I make this point? Because there is a big difference between game planning and mentally preparing for the opening game or a bowl game, and the grind of putting in and executing full blown game plans week in and week out during the course of a college football season. The latter is 10 games a year, the former is 2. This a huge component of the mental aspect of playing QB.

And Riley's performance in those week-to-week games, especially against good defenses, has frankly been average from the very beginning. So I am not sure how much regression there has really been.

For what it's worth, coming off a bye, this pattern suggests he'll have a nice game vs. UCLA.

4. The offensive line played pretty well. On run plays, often they got a good surge and got angles and leverage on the defensive linemen. The exception was Jurrell Casey blowing Cheadle and Boskovich up a couple times. Casey is a load, probably a first day draft pick, and the latest in a tradition of ridiculous talent at DT at SC, so no shame in that.

The breakdowns in blocking were on the edges, by TEs, WRs, FB, or just SC's ridiculous speed. Holley in particular struggled with SC's quickness. Also, I said in my preview that for the past couple years SC has killed Cal with guys coming around the edge unblocked and grabbing runningbacks from behind or making shoestring tackles. This happened again this year. Often Cal's plays don't call for those guys to be blocked because most defenders aren't fast enough to make those plays going away from them. But Carroll sent Mays, a safety, and LBs a few times on run blitzes, and they worked. Cal has got to get this fixed.

On pass plays, the OL protection wasn't bad either, save for a few breakdowns. I actually thought Riley got spooked and started scrambling prematurely a couple times, when the line actually had things under control. Given how many times SC was sending blitzers, I thought the protection was decent. Each guy had a lapse here and there, but for the most part, they protected well, much better than versus Oregon. Jahvid Best on the other hand has pass blocked poorly most of the season, and there is really no way to sugarcoat that.

5. SC's defense was as fast as any I've seen under Carroll. They made up for inexperience with ridiculous speed, particularly on the edges. Cal won't see another defense like that all year.

6. The FG was the right call, and it's not debatable. I keep hearing about how the FG call was gutless. People, listen to me. When you're on the 20 yard line, with 12 seconds and no timeouts, and your offense has been struggling all game against maybe the best defense in the country, you don't get delusional. The way Cal had been playing, the chance they score a TD from 20 yards out against that defense was maybe 5% or 10% tops. Heck, they were having trouble getting 4 yards per play against SC, let alone 20. And in the red zone, their average was even worse.

In contrast, the chances D'Amato hits a FG from there is probably at worst 50%. Coming off your best drive of the game, you want to come away with points. You play the odds there, and the odds say kick it. From 10 yards out, or with 17 seconds on the clock, you try a play. But 20 yards with 12 seconds - no way.

And consider one other point. If you try to run a play, the chances of something ugly or untoward happening go up exponentially. Riley takes a sack and clock runs out. They try to rush the kicker onto the field and can't get the kick off. They complete a pass but the guy gets tackled and clock runs out. Now you get zero points and you look awful doing it. Talk about deflating. Not a great way to head into the locker room.

7. People have overestimated the raw talent on this offense, period. Outside of Best, Schwartz and Tepper, the rest of the offense will not get a sniff at all conference or even a practice squad on an NFL roster (Boateng too could be an undrafted FA on measurables, but that's about it). If Cal gets back to scoring 30 points a game, it'll be a good coaching job.

8. Let's wait until a few other coaches besides Pete Carroll win the conference before we start talking about Tedford not being the guy to get Cal over the hump. Last I checked, no one else has won outright since Carroll's run started, including Belotti, the dean of Pac 10 coaches. Is Cal undisputedly the most talented team in the conference, or even second most talented? Does it have the best or even second best facilities? Does it have the biggest donors or even second biggest? Does it have the most football-conducive administration or even the second most?

The answer is no to every one of those questions. And yet for some irrational reason, everyone thinks Tedford should be fired if he can't get Cal to finish first or second (and 04 and 06 don't count apparently). I am not saying Tedford is god, or he's the best coach in the conference, or even that his teams occasionally disappoint when they lose.

But he's been doing what he's done, which is win at a .663 pace over 7 years, with more hurdles than most other coaches in the conference. He's got a considerably better winning percentage than UCLA or Stanford since he's been at Cal, the only two schools with comparable academic and institutional impediments to football success. If it is so easy to find someone to get a team over the hump, how come Washington, Arizona, UCLA, and ASU haven't been able to find that magic guy? All four are on their second coach during Tedford's tenure.

Wait until the facilities get built, the talent improves, and a few other coaches still beat Tedford to the Rose Bowl after all that, before we say the Tedford experiment is a failure.

[Comments glitch fixed by the way, so you can again leave comments.]