Here's the silver lining. If you're the BYU staff, how on earth do you prepare for this offense?
Yes, the Cal offense looked awful against UNC. And I highly doubt that they looked that miserable on purpose just to throw BYU off.
But with that said, it doesn't mean that Cal's confounding offensive performance won't make it much more difficult to prepare for.
In a very limited amount of practice time, BYU now has to prepare for 3 different QB's who run 3 different types of offenses. And since Cal was fortunate enough to have a significant lead thru most of the game, it allowed Cal to run an extremely conservative, vanilla offense. No matter how bad you think Baldwin may be, I guarantee there are several wrinkles that you will see against BYU. I also think you're going to see a lot more of Dancy, who, for some reason, didn't get a single carry against UNC. So right now, the only film BYU has to look at is of Laird running extremely basic running plays up the middle. Its not a lot to go on.
On the other side of the ball, BYU had to show their hand a bit more since they had a more competitive game on their hands. And on offense, BYU is extremely predictable (and I think their coaches would even admit that). They rely on a strong o-line to open up the inside run game. Once that is established, they will run misdirection plays (jetsweeps, play action roll outs, etc) to keep the opposing defense off balance. Its not a secret what BYU wants to run, so Cal should be very well prepared. So whether we can stop the BYU offense won't have to do with scheme. It all comes down to whether we can be physical enough at the point of attack to stop their inside run game (something that is certainly unclear).
So here is where we have an advantage. Our defensive staff is top notch. We are going to have a good gameplan to stop their offense (whether we have the physical ability to do so is another question). But I think its very possible BYU's defense is going to be caught at least slightly off guard cause no one has any idea of what to expect from Cal's offense.
Yes, its very possible all of this won't matter. Its possible our offense is really so inept that no amount of schematic advantage is going to help. But I have to believe Cal's offensive performance against UNC was a bit of an aberration. It was most likely a combination of 1) cal QB and o-line playing very poorly 2) cal offensive staff being caught off guard by UNC's defense 3) extremely conservative vanilla offense 4) 1st game jitters 5) 1st game experimentation
In the end, this is the exact same offense from last year. No one is expecting them to be a juggernaut. But even an average 2017 offensive performance will give Cal a really good shot against BYU.