Post game Shaw said "Cal controlled the game," "but we were fortunate enough to play good red zone defense." In response to qa questions he also said "We had to allow passes in front of us, because they had receivers open for touchdowns in the first quarter, and we were lucky the threw in completes."

Sounds to me Shaw is saying Cal simply could not execute in the clutch. And watching the game he may be right. Cal was in a position to win, and didn't take advantage. Is this on Goff, the coaching staff, or ???? I might add that Mike P touched on this issue diplomatically post game when he asked Sonny about being able to finish. Thoughts?

Only thing I see is as soon as they play a good team they end up on the losing end of things.

Go Bears!

wifeisafurd;842598361 said:

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Post game Shaw said "Cal controlled the game," "but we were fortunate enough to play good red zone defense." In response to qa questions he also said "We had to allow passes in front of us, because they had receivers open for touchdowns in the first quarter, and we were lucky the threw in completes."

Sounds to me Shaw is saying Cal simply could not execute in the clutch. And watching the game he may be right. Cal was in a position to win, and didn't take advantage. Is this on Goff, the coaching staff, or ???? I might add that Mike P touched on this issue diplomatically post game when he asked Sonny about being able to finish. Thoughts?

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schematic weakness. becomes tougher when the field is more constrained

This is the same defense we played in our wins, meaning our opponents had trouble scoring. Unfortunately, our drives stalled on field goals and penalties.

moonpod;842598369 said:

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schematic weakness. becomes tougher when the field is more constrained

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expressed this elsewhere, but Sonny needs to have his QB come over center and his line to lose the vertical set when the get into the red zone. Other teams do it (e.g. Furd), why not Cal?

Not executing in the rz is exactly how mediocre air raid teams lose. Tons of pointless yardage, literally and figuratively.

wifeisafurd;842598361 said:

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Post game Shaw said "Cal controlled the game," "but we were fortunate enough to play good red zone defense." In response to qa questions he also said "We had to allow passes in front of us, because they had receivers open for touchdowns in the first quarter, and we were lucky the threw in completes."

Sounds to me Shaw is saying Cal simply could not execute in the clutch. And watching the game he may be right. Cal was in a position to win, and didn't take advantage. Is this on Goff, the coaching staff, or ???? I might add that Mike P touched on this issue diplomatically post game when he asked Sonny about being able to finish. Thoughts?

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For the life of me I could not understand why Furd was playing off and letting us go down the field when most successful defenses jammed our receivers. (Still don't frankly). At the end, though, I have to concede they played rope-a-dope and let us punch ourselves out.

I don't think it is that simple. Cal lost due to poor execution but also by poor preparation and play calling. How many balls were dropped or poor passes(Goff is so much better than Hogan). Then, The game plan was good till the redzone on offense, AND the defense front seven loozed way oUT of their league.. Finally, the Bears had momentum or got over the fg hump with the first TD, depending how you look at it. Then the coaches call for a line drive kick that gives fuRd the ball at the 40. You only can use that so many times before others teams know it's coming. These coaches aren't putting these players in a position for victory.

moonpod;842598369 said:

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schematic weakness. becomes tougher when the field is more constrained

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Scheme looked ok to me. The wrs were open in the end zone, just poor execution. A couple of bad throws and a few drops.

OaktownBear;842598419 said:

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For the life of me I could not understand why Furd was playing off and letting us go down the field when most successful defenses jammed our receivers. (Still don't frankly). At the end, though, I have to concede they played rope-a-dope and let us punch ourselves out.

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I completely agree. Once again Shaw is more lucky than good.

Other teams have shown the blueprint to stop the cal offense. It was incredible the cushion their dbs were giving.

Sure I guess it worked. But if not for some super ill timed penalties, dropped passes and poor throws, we probably should have converted at least a couple more of those red zone trips. Again shaw being just lucky.

I thought shaw's deciosons were at least as bad as dykes (for instance 3rd and 3 qb sneak when you have a heisman candidate rb?) Except his mistakes are covered up because of superior talent.

ducky23;842598451 said:

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I completely agree. Once again Shaw is more lucky than good.

Other teams have shown the blueprint to stop the cal offense. It was incredible the cushion their dbs were giving.

Sure I guess it worked. But if not for some super ill timed penalties, dropped passes and poor throws, we probably should have converted at least a couple more of those red zone trips. Again shaw being just lucky.

I thought shaw's deciosons were at least as bad as dykes (for instance 3rd and 3 qb sneak when you have a heisman candidate rb?) Except his mistakes are covered up because of superior talent.

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So, if furd wins because Shaw is lucky or good, then our losses are because Dykes is "unlucky" or not good????
Bad logic.
furd DC came up with a different scheme, and it worked, maybe figuring the odds were that Cal would screw up in one form or another (dropped passes, bad throws, penalties, settle for FGs instead of fighting for TDs).
Whatever, furd rolls on and we roll over.

OaktownBear;842598419 said:

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For the life of me I could not understand why Furd was playing off and letting us go down the field when most successful defenses jammed our receivers. (Still don't frankly). At the end, though, I have to concede they played rope-a-dope and let us punch ourselves out.

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Their secondary has been a problem this year, probably they don't trust those guys to jam the receivers well.

OaktownBear;842598419 said:

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For the life of me I could not understand why Furd was playing off and letting us go down the field when most successful defenses jammed our receivers.

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That was our gameplan. We played with more empty backfield sets than I can remember seeing from any team, including plays where we didn't even have a RB on the field. At that point, it's simple math. If you split out all five of your eligible receivers, then the defense has to take 5 players out of the box to cover them (assuming man coverage). If you want to play with a safety, then that's 6 dedicated pass defenders, and so you can only have a 5-man box, which limits your blitz options almost completely. That means that Goff will have time (which he did), which means that you can't play as aggressively with the press (which Stanford didn't). As a defense in that case, your best adjustment is to play Cover-0 and blitz from the secondary to get some unpredictability about where the rush is coming from, but then you don't have a safety. Stanford's DB's couldn't make a living pressing Davis and Harris on the outside, and if they did they'd be at risk for the jailbreak screen with zero safety help over the top and poor pursuit angles with everyone pressing.

LACalFan;842598447 said:

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Scheme looked ok to me. The wrs were open in the end zone, just poor execution. A couple of bad throws and a few drops.

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Agreed. We had a guy with the ball in his hands and two feet in the endzone, but it got punched out. On another drive, Goff missed an open Hansen. The scheme was good enough for those additional 8-points at least. You can (and should) blame the coaches for poor execution, and for the kick return at the end of the half, and for poor tackling/recruiting, and for penalties, but offensive scheme had us in position to win. It's not the scheme, it's the coaches implementing it.

berk18;842598502 said:

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That was our gameplan. We played with more empty backfield sets than I can remember seeing from any team, including plays where we didn't even have a RB on the field. At that point, it's simple math. If you split out all five of your eligible receivers, then the defense has to take 5 players out of the box to cover them (assuming man coverage). If you want to play with a safety, then that's 6 dedicated pass defenders, and so you can only have a 5-man box, which limits your blitz options almost completely. That means that Goff will have time (which he did), which means that you can't play as aggressively with the press (which Stanford didn't). As a defense in that case, your best adjustment is to play Cover-0 and blitz from the secondary to get some unpredictability about where the rush is coming from, but then you don't have a safety. Stanford's DB's couldn't make a living pressing Davis and Harris on the outside, and if they did they'd be at risk for the jailbreak screen with zero safety help over the top and poor pursuit angles with everyone pressing.

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So here's my question.

If all we had to do was go to 5 wr sets, why didn't we do this earlier in the season?

We should have known by the ucla game that there was a problem with our receivers getting separation.

If we had this many passing yards against sc we win.

And it's not like the furd secondary is any worse than oregon's. Why couldn't we pass like this against Oregon?

If it's really true that all we had to do was go to a five wide set, then dykes really should be fired.

OaktownBear;842598419 said:

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For the life of me I could not understand why Furd was playing off and letting us go down the field when most successful defenses jammed our receivers. (Still don't frankly). At the end, though, I have to concede they played rope-a-dope and let us punch ourselves out.

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Two related reasons:
1) Stanford's D has been relatively weak this year with few healthy D linemen and inexperienced corners and safeties. (As much as it pains Cal fans, Brennan Scarlett shoring up the D line was a key factor in Stanford's success this season.)
2) Teams that run a spread offense play to score quickly and exhaust the opponent's defense.

With most of the Pac-12 running a spread offense now, Stanford's defensive gameplan has been to allow short-yardage plays in order to not give up the big plays, let the other team march down the field, then stiffen up in the red zone. This forces spread teams to play slower than they want to, burning clock and limiting the number of possessions.

ducky23;842598511 said:

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So here's my question.

If all we had to do was go to 5 wr sets, why didn't we do this earlier in the season?

We should have known by the ucla game that there was a problem with our receivers getting separation.

If we had this many passing yards against sc we win.

And it's not like the furd secondary is any worse than oregon's. Why couldn't we pass like this against Oregon?

If it's really true that all we had to do was go to a five wide set, then dykes really should be fired.

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One reason is because we want run/pass balance. You can do this kind of thing every game, it just makes you WSU (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). Leach basically does this by using his RB's as WR's even when they line up in the backfield (99 receptions, 683 yards, and 6 passing TD's to RB's).

I might be able to get back to more of this later, but it's an interesting question.

The NFL statisticians have concluded that most wins and losses can be attributed to three things: turnover differential, penalty differential and red zone efficiency. All but turnovers worked against us last night and no team can beat a talented, well-coached Furd team with that especially with Furd not committing turnovers. We can pick off 8 yard gains all day, like Furd was allowing and pile up the yards, but it means nothing if you can't get the tough yards in the red zone which are often short, tough runs against a D that knows you're gonna run.

And don't even get me started on yet another miserable special teams performance.

wifeisafurd;842598361 said:

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Post game Shaw said "Cal controlled the game," "but we were fortunate enough to play good red zone defense." In response to qa questions he also said "We had to allow passes in front of us, because they had receivers open for touchdowns in the first quarter, and we were lucky the threw in completes."

Sounds to me Shaw is saying Cal simply could not execute in the clutch. And watching the game he may be right. Cal was in a position to win, and didn't take advantage. Is this on Goff, the coaching staff, or ???? I might add that Mike P touched on this issue diplomatically post game when he asked Sonny about being able to finish. Thoughts?

---

Paws and Starky like to portray Cal a certain way. If you listen to the broadcast it is maddening because it doesn't match with what you can see on the screen.

It is also a tease. Often times it seems that Cal is doing better than they are until you see it on the screen.
Whether it is a first down that turns out to be just short and then turns out to be 3 yards short or catch that wasn't a catch or woops the flag will nullify that, Cal is portrayed as "in the game" and just needed to finish.

Cal lost this game a few years ago when they failed to recruit linemen to win the LOS.
The rest is just public relations to cover that fact.
The Cal media does a great job of selling that Cal is close.
That allows them to continue to generate the modest interest they get.
But Cal is not close.
Cal is a bottom dweller and that is exactly where the administration wants Cal because apparently everything else is an embarrasment to them.
You see, a successful football program might negatively affect the image that certain folks at Cal want to protect because those guys believe that football players, by nature, are not smart.

If Cal wanted to improve the success of the team, there are very simple things they could have done years ago to change things. They know it and yet they refuse to do it.

On the issue of Cal "executing in the clutch". If Cal hadn't executed in the clutch a number of times, the score would have been much worse.

berk18;842598519 said:

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One reason is because we want run/pass balance. You can do this kind of thing every game, it just makes you WSU (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). Leach basically does this by using his RB's as WR's even when they line up in the backfield (99 receptions, 683 yards, and 6 passing TD's to RB's).

I might be able to get back to more of this later, but it's an interesting question.

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I get what you're saying about a pass/run balance. In a perfect world, that would be lovely.

But when the offense ain't working, screw that balance. If you're getting 7-8 yards on every first down play, who cares about running the ball

To mE, either dykes or shaw is incompetent.

If it's true that this whole time all we had to do was go to a five wide set to move the ball, then dykes should have made that adjustment earlier in the season.

If it wasn't dykes and it was due to the super soft furd coverage then shaw is incompetent. I don't care what anyone says, it's just stupid to willingly give the other team 7-8 yards on first down every time.

Lawler was a huge red zone threat earlier in the year. Missing him once, and not having him on the field after,
limited the red zone calls. You could see how different the timing was with other receivers on the same pattern:
even when it was split second. Kenny was a huge loss in this game.

ducky: I'm not defending Dykes but it seems that Cal had a better match-up against the furd D that allowed them to go 5 wide than they would have had against most of the other teams. And I think they could have succeeded against Oregon had the defense not failed in the 2nd quarter. At that point, with a large deficit, Cal could not run the same type of offense. IOWs, Oregon could drop 8 or 9 back because they knew Cal was not going to run much losing by a large margin.

The better criticism of Dykes is why he didn't continue to run more when it was being given to Cal, even if Cal was massively behind. After all it was still the first half. Of course we can point to our weak OL is part of the answer to that. And I fully blame Dykes for the state of our OL, regardless of whether it is an issue of talent/recruiting, an issue of scheme (Franklin) or an issue of coaching (Jones).

heartofthebear;842598543 said:

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Cal lost this game a few years ago when they failed to recruit linemen to win the LOS.

Cal is a bottom dweller and that is exactly where the administration wants Cal because apparently everything else is an embarrasment to them.
You see, a successful football program might negatively affect the image that certain folks at Cal want to protect because those guys believe that football players, by nature, are not smart.

If Cal wanted to improve the success of the team, there are very simple things they could have done years ago to change things. They know it and yet they refuse to do it.

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I fear that you are exactly right.

ducky23;842598593 said:

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I get what you're saying about a pass/run balance. In a perfect world, that would be lovely.

But when the offense ain't working, screw that balance. If you're getting 7-8 yards on every first down play, who cares about running the ball

To mE, either dykes or shaw is incompetent.

If it's true that this whole time all we had to do was go to a five wide set to move the ball, then dykes should have made that adjustment earlier in the season.

If it wasn't dykes and it was due to the super soft furd coverage then shaw is incompetent. I don't care what anyone says, it's just stupid to willingly give the other team 7-8 yards on first down every time.

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Just got back from the Bay, so I can go into this a bit more. Another factor is that things that make a good gameplan don't necessarily make a good base offense. Empty is one of those sets that you don't see a lot in a game usually, so you'll often have an empty check that you go to as a default, and that's distinct from your base defensive game plan that you're using against everything else. Here's a possible scenario: Stanford was counting on seeing our base 2x2 and 3x1 sets, and had a lot of blitzes planned from a 6-man box. Against empty sets, they just gameplanned to check out of those blitzes and play coverage. So, we come out in the first half and run empty sets way more than usual, so they're auto-checking out of their blitz calls because that's what their gameplan says to do. As a result, we get to play against a radically simplified defense. Who knows, maybe we knew that this would be their empty check based on past film, so we just ratched up the number of empty sets and exploited the sh*t out of it. Now that ASU has seen us do this on tape, though, they could just plan more blitzes specifically for empty formations, or adjust their check system so that blitzes can stay on vs. empty sets. Something that's a great call by gameplan can't necessarily sustain you for 6 games.

Another factor might be Stanford's depleted DL. A 5-man pressure vs. 5 blockers means that you just have a bunch of 1-on-1's. Stanford's DL has taken some hits, so maybe we thought that we could get them blocked, while against UCLA or some other team we might've gotten smoked on those 1-on-1 blocks.

At the end of the day, playing empty as much as we did would never have been a good offense game after game, but it was a good way to catch Stanford off guard for this one game when we needed a spark to move the ball. The coaches didn't have something like this for every game, which is why they aren't great gameplanners, but they had a few things (including runs away from trips, accounting for a bunch of Watson's yards) for this game.

OaktownBear;842598419 said:

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For the life of me I could not understand why Furd was playing off and letting us go down the field when most successful defenses jammed our receivers. (Still don't frankly). At the end, though, I have to concede they played rope-a-dope and let us punch ourselves out.

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I can recall three passes where the Cal receiver was ahead of everyone in the first half and Goff missed the pass. For example, where Enwere was ahead of everyone and Goff overthrew him. Shaw told them to go into cover 2 after the third pass.

Somebody smarter than me can tell if this is just a match-up issue that Furd had or if Shaw just overreacted. But this is what Shaw said post-game on the radio, and his team did hold Cal to just 23 points.

The empty set time after time in the red zone was a mistake. Using Enwere there a bit more may have loosened up coverage.
Have to acknowledge that Mccaffrey is quite a player. He is a difference maker.
Anyone notice how thick the grass field was? There was a lot of slipping, but Mccaffrey had little trouble cutting. The guy gets tackled, but shows very little effect. He is made of rubber.
As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, we miss Chris Harper a lot. He made a lot of tough catches.
I don't place blame on Goff for missing Enwere since he isn't exactly Shane Vereen with speed and soft hands.
Goff missed a TD in the end zone and threw it high, because he had to throw it over a safety close to Hansen(?). Overall, I thought Goff played very well. Too bad he didn't have that much time to throw in previous games.
I disagree with the call denying us a TD where the ball was wrenched from the receiver after he had touched down in the end zone.
You can't blame Dykes for the absolutely stupid foul by number 55 which hurt us badly during a drive. Players have to use their heads and maintain their composure once the play is over.
We need to take down ASU.

berk18;842598962 said:

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Just got back from the Bay, so I can go into this a bit more. Another factor is that things that make a good gameplan don't necessarily make a good base offense. Empty is one of those sets that you don't see a lot in a game usually, so you'll often have an empty check that you go to as a default, and that's distinct from your base defensive game plan that you're using against everything else. Here's a possible scenario: Stanford was counting on seeing our base 2x2 and 3x1 sets, and had a lot of blitzes planned from a 6-man box. Against empty sets, they just gameplanned to check out of those blitzes and play coverage. So, we come out in the first half and run empty sets way more than usual, so they're auto-checking out of their blitz calls because that's what their gameplan says to do. As a result, we get to play against a radically simplified defense. Who knows, maybe we knew that this would be their empty check based on past film, so we just ratched up the number of empty sets and exploited the sh*t out of it. Now that ASU has seen us do this on tape, though, they could just plan more blitzes specifically for empty formations, or adjust their check system so that blitzes can stay on vs. empty sets. Something that's a great call by gameplan can't necessarily sustain you for 6 games.

Another factor might be Stanford's depleted DL. A 5-man pressure vs. 5 blockers means that you just have a bunch of 1-on-1's. Stanford's DL has taken some hits, so maybe we thought that we could get them blocked, while against UCLA or some other team we might've gotten smoked on those 1-on-1 blocks.

At the end of the day, playing empty as much as we did would never have been a good offense game after game, but it was a good way to catch Stanford off guard for this one game when we needed a spark to move the ball. The coaches didn't have something like this for every game, which is why they aren't great gameplanners, but they had a few things (including runs away from trips, accounting for a bunch of Watson's yards) for this game.

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thank you, that actually makes a lot of sense.

it seems one way to look at this is that you could actually give Dykes a lot of credit for saving this for the Big Game (assuming you can only use this trick once).

berk18;842598962 said:

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Just got back from the Bay, so I can go into this a bit more. Another factor is that things that make a good gameplan don't necessarily make a good base offense. Empty is one of those sets that you don't see a lot in a game usually, so you'll often have an empty check that you go to as a default, and that's distinct from your base defensive game plan that you're using against everything else. Here's a possible scenario: Stanford was counting on seeing our base 2x2 and 3x1 sets, and had a lot of blitzes planned from a 6-man box. Against empty sets, they just gameplanned to check out of those blitzes and play coverage. So, we come out in the first half and run empty sets way more than usual, so they're auto-checking out of their blitz calls because that's what their gameplan says to do. As a result, we get to play against a radically simplified defense. Who knows, maybe we knew that this would be their empty check based on past film, so we just ratched up the number of empty sets and exploited the sh*t out of it. Now that ASU has seen us do this on tape, though, they could just plan more blitzes specifically for empty formations, or adjust their check system so that blitzes can stay on vs. empty sets. Something that's a great call by gameplan can't necessarily sustain you for 6 games.

Another factor might be Stanford's depleted DL. A 5-man pressure vs. 5 blockers means that you just have a bunch of 1-on-1's. Stanford's DL has taken some hits, so maybe we thought that we could get them blocked, while against UCLA or some other team we might've gotten smoked on those 1-on-1 blocks.

At the end of the day, playing empty as much as we did would never have been a good offense game after game, but it was a good way to catch Stanford off guard for this one game when we needed a spark to move the ball. The coaches didn't have something like this for every game, which is why they aren't great gameplanners, but they had a few things (including runs away from trips, accounting for a bunch of Watson's yards) for this game.

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Thanks for the instruction, berk. Love reading about strategy from a knowledgable source.

ducky23;842599060 said:

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thank you, that actually makes a lot of sense.

it seems one way to look at this is that you could actually give Dykes a lot of credit for saving this for the Big Game (assuming you can only use this trick once).

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Definitely, there are a lot of ways to think about it. It was a good gameplan for this particular game, in this particular season's context. You can only use it as a surprise once, but then if you can figure out how subsequent teams are likely to attack it then you can build a sequence off of that, so you can keep it as a strategy (or you could've started using it earlier in the year and kept it for the Stanford game) so long as it's balanced by the rest of your playbook and gameplanning. If it could only have worked as a surprise, then you could also see it as we couldn't implement this earlier because we aren't good enough at running everything else to balance it, so it's kind of a win the battle, lose the war thing. It could never work for more than a game as a one-dimensional strategy, though, and if the rest of our offense were better we probably wouldn't have needed it in the first place, so once again, good gameplan, but ultimately indicative of an underwhelming overall season.