freshfunk;841957148 said:

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It's not so much defending Teddy as thinking that most of the opinions here are not great (that's me holding my tongue).
After all how many people here had Cal winning or even coming close today. Look how BAD the opinions are here?
And these are the same opinions making judgments on the game and JT.
I'd like to see what a new HC could do but a new HC doesn't mean we automatically win against $C. Sometimes you just dont' have the talent to win.
We couldn't really get much of anything going today.

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Huh? You're comparing fans hopeful/sarcastic score predictions to the outcome and concluding those people don't know football?

freshfunk;841957148 said:

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After all how many people here had Cal winning or even coming close today.

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Stanfurd has beaten them four times in a row. Fricking Stanfurd! Six years ago, I almost felt sorry for the few Furd fans who came to the Big Game.

But sure, let's keep apologizing and lowering the bar. That'll continue to work wonders.

RaphaelAglietti;841957140 said:

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Freshfunk,


seriously give it up ...

You've never coached a sport in your life - and the difference is I have. You clearly do not understand what is required of a coach head or otherwise.

A head coach is ultimately responsible for putting his players in the best possible position to succeed.

A head coach is also responsible for the product on the field.

You know how I know Tedford completely botched that game ... I don't have enough hands or feet to count the number of glaring coaching mistakes that Tedford made against USC

1. One of your best/most dynamic players was barely on the field despite the fact when he did carry the ball he was unstoppable and USC had no answer for him.

2. You remember when SC got that penalty when the USC player ran to the wrong sideline Cal followed up that with a delay of game penalty. How is that even possible?

3. How about the two time outs blown in the span of a minute in the second half ...

Those are just for starters. I could re-watch the game and write down at least 20 more...

Was USC more talented? Yes, but they were playing like horseshit and literally tried about everything to hand the game over to Cal.

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Tell me how many Div 1 HC positions you've held. Hurry up, I'm waiting.

Agree on what HC is responsible for. Still wondering what decisions he made today that YOU would've made differently that would've WON us the game. Hurry up, I'm waiting.

Biggie played today. If putting him in guarantees us a win, how come he didn't score a TD? It just took him a couple plays against tOSU. If Biggie is superman, why is his average kick return something like 10-20 yards? WHy doesn't he score?

Go watch the game and come back with how JT lost the game, not our players or their players.

Hmmm..I would have told my corner not to play 5 yards off their receiver at the five yard line.. That TD was so easy it was embarrassing.

freshfunk;841957007 said:

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What would you have done differently?

And make your case for how that would've won us the game.

Catch: You can't switch out our players for players NOT on our current team.

I'm not apologizing for him but I don't think coaching lost us the game. And, frankly, I want to see the obvious things that JT missed that you guys think wouldve won us the game.

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Funk- we're not paid $2.5 million a year, Tedford is. He must produce results, and all else is fluff. The program has been on the slide since 2007, with no real sense Tedford will ever right the ship. The man has lost his mojo and he can't get it back.

concernedparent;841957164 said:

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Like anybody really ****ing knows the answer who's the best.

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It's certainly not a deer-in-the-headlights senior who's taking us nowhere.

I ask this question because if he is the CEO of the football program, then he bears responsibility for its lack of performance. He makes all the personnel decisions, is responsible for the development of the strategy whose intent is to win games and gets paid to win games. When the program that he is in charge of fails to perform in the expected manner, he then bears the the weight of that failure. Whether or not things could have been done differently matters little. What does matter is that the program that he is in charge of achieves success in the expected manner. The only question that needs to be asked at this time is did Tedford achieve success pursuant to expectations?

82gradDLSdad;841957145 said:

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Most of the stuff a headcoach does to win a game happens in the days, weeks, months and years before the game is even played.

1. How does he recruit and hire and deal with assistant coaches.
2. Same question for players
3. How does he instill his vision and strategies in the team and coaches.

and on and on. I suggest reading Bill Walsh's book Finding the Winning Edge for a complete description of all the things a head coach has to deal with. Yah, there is game day stuff but 99% of the book talks about all the other stuff a head coach has to do and do well to be successful. It is a daunting list and it makes you appreciate why head coaches get the money they do. Obviously Tedford isn't doing this stuff as well as he used to. I think we can all see that by the results on the field, and not just the final score but also by the quality of our play.

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Well, of course.

Every loss (and win) is on the HC in some way.

The tone, though, of some people here is that this game (as it was today) was TOTALLY winnable and our HC lost it for us. I think THOSE are the people you need to speak to.

So the fact that our QB is vastly inferior in talent compared to USC's qb is not on Tedford? I'm not even talking about slightly worse. Sure, nobody here could coach Cal to a win against USC. So that's some justification for keeping JT?

Haha I'd love to see Tedford do my job. Would be comical.

freshfunk;841957188 said:

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The tone, though, of some people here is that this game (as it was today) was TOTALLY winnable and our HC lost it for us. I think THOSE are the people you need to speak to.

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Of course, how do we ever expect to come close to the accomplishments of Stanfurd, with all of their athletic advantages?

Fresh, your heart is in the right place and I understand your point, but your whole argument falls apart when you keep downplaying the impact biggie could have made if given the ball more.

I'm not sure how you can say with such certainty that biggie wouldnt have made a difference. He singlehandidly almos won the Osu game. The offense was humming with him in. If given even one more carry, maybe he scores a td and it's a completely different game. You know as well as anyone that one play can change a game. And biggie has the most potential to make that play. That's why they are called game changers. No one truly knows what would have happened. But playing bigelow could have changed the game. Easily. To deny that makes you look silly. And I know you aren't dumb.

freshfunk;841957177 said:

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Tell me how many Div 1 HC positions you've held. Hurry up, I'm waiting.

Agree on what HC is responsible for. Still wondering what decisions he made today that YOU would've made differently that would've WON us the game. Hurry up, I'm waiting.

Biggie played today. If putting him in guarantees us a win, how come he didn't score a TD? It just took him a couple plays against tOSU. If Biggie is superman, why is his average kick return something like 10-20 yards? WHy doesn't he score?

Go watch the game and come back with how JT lost the game, not our players or their players.

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And tell me how many Div 1 HC positions you've held. Hurry up, I'm waiting too.

Why do you get to ask other people that and then make your own points asserting just as unqualified opinions?

freshfunk;841957177 said:

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Tell me how many Div 1 HC positions you've held. Hurry up, I'm waiting.

Agree on what HC is responsible for. Still wondering what decisions he made today that YOU would've made differently that would've WON us the game. Hurry up, I'm waiting.

Biggie played today. If putting him in guarantees us a win, how come he didn't score a TD? It just took him a couple plays against tOSU. If Biggie is superman, why is his average kick return something like 10-20 yards? WHy doesn't he score?

Go watch the game and come back with how JT lost the game, not our players or their players.

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If you're going to continue to argue that not playing Bigelow for more than 5 plays wasn't a problem, at least start arguing based on his plays as a RB.

Kick-off returns are a non-issue for that argument. Our kick-return blocking schemes totally suck, no matter who is the returner. We have Keenan-fu**ing Allen returning punts, and he has to fair-catch most of the time. Genyk clearly has no f'ing clue how to set up a return.

Bigelow rushed for 31 yards on 4 carries, 7.9 ypc - tops on the team. Isi was 8 carries for 16. 2.0 ypc.

I think 82DLSDad has a valid point that not playing Bigelow more was a decision that directly contributed to losing the game.

freshfunk;841957188 said:

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Well, of course.

Every loss (and win) is on the HC in some way.

The tone, though, of some people here is that this game (as it was today) was TOTALLY winnable and our HC lost it for us. I think THOSE are the people you need to speak to.

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if you think talent disparity was the biggest reason--you're flat wrong. if talent disparity almost always trumps everything else, you wouldn't be seeing so many upsets in CFB.

if talent disparity from $C is why we get crushed every time, then why didn't tOSU dominate us? their unit-by-unit comparison should give them the advantage. surely, you're not going to say that Urban Meyer is a terrible coach?

if talent disparity is the issue, then why did Stanfurd not get rocked? they no longer have Luck, they lost a good amount of OL to the NFL, and their DBs are average.

after 3 seasons of mediocrity and years of lopsided losses, are you REALLY going to try and say COACHING is NOT the biggest problem?

freshfunk;841957177 said:

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Tell me how many Div 1 HC positions you've held. Hurry up, I'm waiting.

Agree on what HC is responsible for. Still wondering what decisions he made today that YOU would've made differently that would've WON us the game. Hurry up, I'm waiting.

Biggie played today. If putting him in guarantees us a win, how come he didn't score a TD? It just took him a couple plays against tOSU. If Biggie is superman, why is his average kick return something like 10-20 yards? WHy doesn't he score?

Go watch the game and come back with how JT lost the game, not our players or their players.

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You win ....

Tedford was brilliant today ....
he could not have done anything better ...
all of his decisions were flawless ...

He clearly prepared his team so well that they were executing like they were cyborgs.

All the best players played and there were no flaws in play calling and the schemes were of championship caliber.

USC just played at a magical level and with all that talent they can never be beaten ...

P.s. I've held zero Div coaching positions but I did coach with Cal Poly's first ever Div 1 All-American wrestler (also Div II champion) and wrestling hall of fame member for 5 years oh I also had two of my wrestlers beat national champions but hey it means nothing right ...

freshfunk;841957177 said:

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If Biggie is superman, why is his average kick return something like 10-20 yards? WHy doesn't he score?

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I'm sorry, but you're an idiot.

GoldenYears;841957182 said:

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Yeah I get it. You're a CGB person first, so you spend your time here mocking the posters here and criticizing the program over there with your little clique.

The thing is, the micro analysis of what JT did wrong in this game is a waste of time. The team consistently can't get plays called fast enough, burns timeouts early in halves, and the players make mental gaffes. All examples of bad coaching before you try to assess the talent level.

Your "analysis" is just the typical CGB crap that is done to make the game seem far more complex than it is. Both teams made a ton of mistakes that show they are poorly coached teams. Tedford took it a step further by not playing Bigelow and playing scared in the redzone to take whatever small chance his team had of pulling out the victory and ensured that no matter what SC did, we would never threaten them in the game. And we didn't.

Take your CGB "holier than thou" attitude back to that board where it belongs and tell a few jokes with your pals that make you feel inaccurately cleverer than other folks.

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That's pretty funny because I've openly criticized CGB here and, for a time, wasn't very welcome there.

Getting the plays in fast enough and weird used of TOs... yeah I'm not too happy with that. Still don't think that's why we lost the game today.

I don't think we had so much mental gaffes today as we didn't talent differential. Mental is something you can fix. You can't magically make our guys 25% faster/stronger/bigger with the stroke of a wand. There are limits.

Could we have played better? Sure. Do I think it would've won us the game? No.

$C didn't play perfect but most of the time they look like they're practically NFL level. There's a reason why they are/were ranked so high.

If talent is a problem then the CEO of the Football program needs to fix it or find somebody who can fix the talent issue. If memory serves me correctly one of the biggest complaints over the years has been the QB position and Cal's inability to see success at that position except for Rodgers. Is it talent or something else with our QBs? Is it the evaluation of QB talent coming in or the development of the QB talent once it gets to Cal? IMO if it were just talent then we should be doing better with all the guys we put into the NFL.

Question: Did Stanford have more or less talent than USC in each of the last 4 years?

freshfunk;841957188 said:

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Well, of course.

Every loss (and win) is on the HC in some way.

The tone, though, of some people here is that this game (as it was today) was TOTALLY winnable and our HC lost it for us. I think THOSE are the people you need to speak to.

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"In some way"?

[U]He[/U] and [U]his[/U] chosen assistants recruit, develop, coach [U]his[/U] players. [U]He[/U] calls the game. [U]He[/U] motivates [U]his[/U] team, or is supposed to. You really think this game against a downgraded SC team was not winnable? I count 4, maybe 5, Pac-12 teams who would have bested SC's crappy effort today, and a few more who would have produced better results than [U]his[/U] team. [U]His[/U] offense failed to score a single measly TD against a defense that is galaxies apart from PC's days, even in that 3rd quarter when Kiffen was begging for Tedford to have [U]his[/U] offense score multiple TDs.

the coaches didn't lose this game. they lost the program about 5 years ago

Who knows what Biggie could do with 4 more carries. Maybe 2 touchdowns and 160 yards? Not to mention just his presence on the field opens things up for everyone else. You could see it on those option plays where Zach got good yardarge.

ducky23;841957206 said:

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Fresh, your heart is in the right place and I understand your point, but your whole argument falls apart when you keep downplaying the impact biggie could have made if given the ball more.

I'm not sure how you can say with such certainty that biggie wouldnt have made a difference. He singlehandidly almos won the Osu game. The offense was humming with him in. If given even one more carry, maybe he scores a td and it's a completely different game. You know as well as anyone that one play can change a game. And biggie has the most potential to make that play. That's why they are called game changers. No one truly knows what would have happened. But playing bigelow could have changed the game. Easily. To deny that makes you look silly. And I know you aren't dumb.

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That wasn't against OSU.

Does anyone here think OSU's defense is even close to $C's?

Against OSU, our other backs were productive as well. Against $C, none of our backs were productive (consistently).

beeasyed;841957215 said:

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And tell me how many Div 1 HC positions you've held. Hurry up, I'm waiting too.

Why do you get to ask other people that and then make your own points asserting just as unqualified opinions?

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Beassy, you need to read the thread. The question of HC position was posed by Raphael first. I was simply returning the question.

GoOoOoOoOoBears!;841957224 said:

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You're completely blinded by your adoration of Tedford. Let me guess - you never wanted Holmoe to leave either, right?

You didn't see much from Biggie today except for a 2 plays of 7-8 yards? Well, genius, that's because he only had four rushes the entire freaking game! And he averaged 7.75 yards per carry. What exactly did you expect to see from a player sitting on the bench 90% of the game?

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GooooooBears, return to ESPN.

For the record, I'd like to see a new HC. I just think we got outplayed today not outcoached.

beeasyed;841957231 said:

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if you think talent disparity was the biggest reason--you're flat wrong. if talent disparity almost always trumps everything else, you wouldn't be seeing so many upsets in CFB.

if talent disparity from $C is why we get crushed every time, then why didn't tOSU dominate us? their unit-by-unit comparison should give them the advantage. surely, you're not going to say that Urban Meyer is a terrible coach?

if talent disparity is the issue, then why did Stanfurd not get rocked? they no longer have Luck, they lost a good amount of OL to the NFL, and their DBs are average.

after 3 seasons of mediocrity and years of lopsided losses, are you REALLY going to try and say COACHING is NOT the biggest problem?

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General thoughts on talent disparity are true. However, I never said it "trumps everything else." I'm saying it made the difference today.

The way I see it there are two factors to winning a game:
1. How much you play to your potential.
2. How much your opponent plays to their potential.

You can play up to yours but not beyond. Same for your opponent. But given that both play to their potential, talent wins. Straight up. From the coaching to the players.

Against 'furd, $C did not play up to their potential. Part of the obvious reason that people making this argument seem to forget is that they had several starters out, some of whom returned to the game.

Other factors affecting you playing to your potential? Playing at home.

COULD we have won this game from a talent perspective? Theoretically, yes. Of course we could. But that involves $C playing below their potential and us playing to ours. But if $C plays anywhere near their potential, then their talent wins.

RaphaelAglietti;841957251 said:

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You win ....

Tedford was brilliant today ....
he could not have done anything better ...
all of his decisions were flawless ...

He clearly prepared his team so well that they were executing like they were cyborgs.

All the best players played and there were no flaws in play calling and the schemes were of championship caliber.

USC just played at a magical level and with all that talent they can never be beaten ...

P.s. I've held zero Div coaching positions but I did coach with Cal Poly's first ever Div 1 All-American wrestler (also Div II champion) and wrestling hall of fame member for 5 years oh I also had two of my wrestlers beat national champions but hey it means nothing right ...

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You brought up coaching first. Not me.

I guess since you've done it the rest of us who've played sports should just shut up. In fact, we should rename this the RaphaelAglietti board. You could give us lectures and we can all sit on our hands and nod our heads.

freshfunk;841957332 said:

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GooooooBears, return to ESPN.

For the record, I'd like to see a new HC. I just think we got outplayed today not outcoached.

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What games have we been outcoached this year? Nevada and tOSU? I think we also got outcoached by SUU except we had far superior talent? Fair enough? 3 out of 4 outcoached and 1 out played? Ok so now can Tedford be fired?

CalBearz02;841957321 said:

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Then his main fault is not recruiting/developing a decent QB. But the main thrust of the negabears here today are on all the coaching mistakes he made, which is fair, but it's not the reason we had no shot of winning today.

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If we had no shot of winning today, then it's all Tedford's doing. Cal admin, fans, and donors have given the support he asked for and he hasn't delivered since 2007. When does the rubber meets the road on accountablilty? How many mediocre and poor seasons does he get before he's retired to the pasture?

freshfunk;841957327 said:

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Against $C, none of our backs were productive (consistently).

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Bigs had like 8 ypc. What's your definition of productive?

freshfunk;841957337 said:

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General thoughts on talent disparity are true. However, I never said it "trumps everything else." I'm saying it made the difference today.

The way I see it there are two factors to winning a game:
1. How much you play to your potential.
2. How much your opponent plays to their potential.

You can play up to yours but not beyond. Same for your opponent. But given that both play to their potential, talent wins. Straight up. From the coaching to the players.

Against 'furd, $C did not play up to their potential. Part of the obvious reason that people making this argument seem to forget is that they had several starters out, some of whom returned to the game.

Other factors affecting you playing to your potential? Playing at home.

COULD we have won this game from a talent perspective? Theoretically, yes. Of course we could. But that involves $C playing below their potential and us playing to ours. But if $C plays anywhere near their potential, then their talent wins.

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why the f*ck would it matter if $c didn't play up to potential?? you said talent disparity is a big reason why we lost today, the only thing we had to do is play up to our own potential, or close to it.

instead, you saw what happened today, and numerous other games in the past few years. so why don't we play at the level we are capable of playing? COACHING.

Freshfunk, I think the subject of this thread is asking for trouble. This is evident in some of the posts we are reading. But just as a basic truth, you simply cannot say that the offense is better with Bigelow on the bench than on the field. I don't see how anyone could possibly think that.

We can argue about Maynard, Tedford and the gameplan, but not having him on the field for fakes, screens, decoys and so forth is indefensible. I cannot see how or why you would argue otherwise.

pappysghost;841957313 said:

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Who knows what Biggie could do with 4 more carries. Maybe 2 touchdowns and 160 yards? Not to mention just his presence on the field opens things up for everyone else. You could see it on those option plays where Zach got good yardarge.

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Exactly, after what Bigelow did to Ohio State last week, you know the USC coaches and players were looking for him, not playing him at all in the first half to put us in a big hole was the game. When was the last time a Tedford team came back from a 3 score deficit? Rodgers never did it, Longshore never did it. Expecting Maynard to do it on the road at USC? In past years this would have been a blowout loss, so I guess we have that to be thankful for.

CalBearz02;841957417 said:

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Our QB play was so bad, it required a miserable game by USC just to stay in it for 3 quarters. We protected Maynard the entire first half. If we stuck with the run we simply make it down to the RZ and kick another field goal or two.

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1a. QB play is terrible, ON THE WHOLE, b/c our OL is bad. first, tell me HOW MANY TIMES we f*ck up the snap? too low is the case this season.

1b. but looking just at our "bad" QB--who recruited Maynard and who started him? JT swears by Maynard, and that's a mistake, in retrospect. i don't care why you think he chose Maynard, whether b/c everyone else sucks, or b/c he's trying to keep KA happy--i don't care about that. but seeing Maynard play...i kept thinking he had turned a corner, but he's just a Jekyll&Hyde type of QB. playing him continuously is on JT.

2. so tell me, who was the coach making the calls and making the decision on who played? you think this was an isolated event? contrary to last game against tOSU, playcalling, scheming, and personnel usage is once again questionable, as has been the argument many times.