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Cal Football
Bloesch Planning to Lean on OL to Lead the Way
After the departure of former OC Jake Spavital, the Bears went in a very different direction in 2024, expanding offensive line coach Mike Bloesch’s role to add offensive coordinator duties to his responsibilities. It’s a role he excelled in at North Texas with a series of strong and fairly balanced offenses.
"I think I manage it just by coaching football, the way I've always coached football," Bloesch said of the transition. "Obviously, off the field, there's a lot more involved in it as far as running staff meetings, running unit meetings, really getting everybody on the same page schematically with how we're going to attack things. But on the field, I think the reason I've always done it, and the reason I did it when I got my first coordinator job was, I knew that no matter what I installed offensively, if the O line wasn't any good, it wouldn't matter. And so that's something that Justin and I talked about, whenever he promoted me to the spot, he felt like I did a really good job with the O line last year. I obviously have a ton of confidence in what I can do coaching those guys, and I want to continue to see that unit develop, because if they develop and we could dominate the line of scrimmage, that it's just gonna make everybody's life easier."
Bloesch was asked about his thoughts from his players about their position coach also being the offensive coordinator.
"Oh, I don't know, you'd have to ask them," Bloesch said. "I think just from from my point of view, I would hope that they would obviously want to try their best to make things right for me and by me. They know that I'm going to always put them kind of at the forefront of thoughts that we have going in. And we're going to build this thing around the o-line, just like we did last year."
Two vets Bloesch will rely on are 2-year Cal starters TJ Session and Siope Vatikani.
“(They're) just savvy vets now, which is nice," Bloesch said. "I got here last year and really had to clean up some things with those guys. So they're a year in the system. Obviously, from a run game and protection standpoint, a lot of the stuff we did last year was my stuff so they're very comfortable now going into spring number two with me and schematically what we're doing. So we're really fine-tuning some minor details with them to clean them up.”
As for what Bloesch is expecting of his veteran linemen?
"I think just their leadership, really the standard that we're trying to uphold in that room and them understanding what that looks like every day,” Bloesch noted. “When I got here, whatever it was, 14 months ago, I talked about that with those guys, I walked in and I said we're going to be the reason why we win games. But saying that and doing that are two completely different things. And we had some games where we did close out games up front, and we just leaned on those big boys. And we got out with some big wins down the stretch following the o-line. But we also had games where we didn't. And so we're still trying to raise the bar and I want them to understand - I told those guys the other day that that (last season) is now the floor of who we're going to be going forward. So last year should be the worst that the o-line is while I'm here."
Session has appreciated having an offensive coordinator who truly understands the Xs and Os of offensive line play.
"It's great, because he has our back, Session said of Bloesch. "Sometimes offensive coordinators, they don't always have our back. But Coach Bloesch, from day one he's always been there for us. So I think that it's cool that he's still here and even being the offensive coordinator, too.
"I think it helps the o-line out a little bit more, because he knows what the o-line scheme is and what exactly we need to do. So instead of rather than it being a quarterback coach doing it, it's the o-line coach who's kind of leaning more towards maybe running the ball more or being more aggressive in what we do.
"The o-line, that's the roots of the team. Instead of being five pennies, we're one nickel. I think that we're all the big root of the whole team. Coach Bloesch has kept telling us and Coach Mike Saffell kept asking us what is our identity? What do we want out of our 0-line? We want to be fast, physical and fearless. Those are the three things that we want to do. So that's exactly what we're gonna do this year. Run the damn ball, get your guy, put him on his butt and play with some grit."
As far as offensive identity, Bloesch made it clear for the Bears to be successful, they’re going to have to establish dominance in the running game to open up the rest of the offense. He noted that they have every intention of taking advantage of all that a strong running game allows them to also excel at.
"We want to obviously start off with running the football,” Bloesch said. “I think every great offense is built around being able to run the ball. We did that well last year with Jadyn (Ott) ending up leading the Pac-12 in rushing. So with four guys coming back, we've got to make people respect the run. And then I think the one thing that's probably a little bit different about me is we're gonna try to push that thing down the field. We're going to create matchups on the outside. We're going to see a lot of single high defense because of the way we can run the football. And we're gonna have guys isolated so our goal is going to be super explosive in the pass game. We're going to run RPOs and things like that that we've done but you're probably going to see a few more shots down the field."
The Bears will be back on the field tomorrow morning at 8:45 for session three of spring ball. All sessions are open to the public.
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