Post-Arizona Game Thoughts: "All the Little Things"

If Brock started, he would have pass blocked for himself and thrown TD passes to himself.

Arizona, like Maryland, is probably going bowling.

It sucks now, but in retrospect it won’t look so bad.

Thanks Seth.

The problem with the receivers is we seem to have 50 of them. We need to get three or four who are solid and stick with them.

Yes, I agree that we need to be realistic about expectations. Living in a conference with USC, I think many of our fans expect us to perform like them. But as you said, Cal isn’t USC. We aspire to be them, and hope to be like them, but we’re not and shouldn’t raise our expectations to an unrealistic USC level.

Many fans often mistake that argument as saying we’re settling for less than perfect, but I don’t think that’s an accurate statement. We definitely hope to be like USC someday, but until we are, we can’t have USC type expectations.

Alex Smith

And no they did not try to tear down the goal posts because this does not make their season. They have bigger fish to fry.

The commentators were saying UA students were on the field prior to the game ending. I guess they were sort of preparing to rush the field?

That’s the entire nation, not just CGB.

i was the only person in the CGB group to pick Arizona. and i’ve got a special reason for that.

My point exactly. We seem incapable of making second half adjustments. Not just against AU, but a slew of other games. Why is this?

nite seth, sweet dreams

I was at dinner for the first half: no TVs, Cal up 24-14. Dinner over, I started to head to the bar to watch the game: 24-21. I arrive at the bar: Bears drive sputters, results in a FG instead of a TD, 27-21. I settle in to watch from a good vantage point: 21 unanswered Wildcat points.

Sorry, everyone.

We know what we’re going to get out of Nate: a solid but not spectacular senior quarterback who almost guarantees us a victory at home, assuming that the Bears don’t implode on defense and special teams. On the road, however, Nate’s almost equally as certain to make enough bad plays to ensure the loss.

I say it’s still too soon to call this a “rebuilding” year and begin playing for 2009. Not only are the Bears in a virtual 5-way tie for first in the Pac-10, but there are too many seniors (Felder, Follett, Mack, Will T, et al.) who deserve to have their Rose Bowl dreams kept on life support for at least another week. And I think that Longshore probably gives the Bears a better chance—by an admittedly small margin—to win the next two weeks. But unless he suddenly plays lights out against the Bruins and Ducks, then I’d roll the dice with Riley on the road at SC. At some point, however, the QB situation will probably resolve itself due to injury. I’m not wishing for that, but it seems to be a reasonable expectation.

My biggest concern is that the Bears faithful actually remain faithful and support whichever guy is under center. Arizona clearly fed off their crowd last night. The quick score to open the second half absolutely killed the Bears, not only because it slashed the lead to 3 but also because it gave momentum back to the home side and 7 points quickly multiplied into 28. When teams are as evenly matched as they are in the Pac-10 this year, home-field advantage makes a HUGE difference. And for the next two weeks, the Bears have it. Let’s use it!!

Fantastic second quarter on both sides of the ball—after Arizona had a huge momentum swing in its favor. What made the second half extra disappointing for me, was that I thought the Bears had successfully weathered the storm, going from 14-7 down to 24-14 up at halftime. But then the defense lays an egg to start the second half, despite the home crowd being totally out of it. I swear I could hear Sonoran Desert crickets during that first series of the third quarter, the stadium was so quiet. To give up a score so quickly, and let the Wildcats back in the game, was just inexcusable.

The silver lining is we play UA at home next year.

Not enough Greek references

But the Maryland non-call on the safety was reviewed. Tedford even called a timeout to make sure there was enough time because everyone in the stadium, the announcers, and everyone watching on TV knew that was a safety. Everyone, that is, except the replay officials and the call was not overturned. Unfortunately, using that timeout there with the reasonable expectation of it paying off in two points meant that we had one less TO later on. This meant we had to settle for a FG from the hash, which we missed, instead of the another shot (or two) at the end zone. But you’re right, not getting the safety was a huge momentum swinging play.

The main running play that killed was the same play used by Maryland: Slot reciever or RB lines up next to the tight end, back or receiver goes in motion towards tight end, hand-off to RB to tight end side where Cals defense is undermanned. Cal needs to either shift the defensive line or move their LBs to handle the overload to the tight end side. This play kills us every time. This looks like a coaching problem.

Yeah, one of their RB’s long TD runs came off this play. The offense would put twin WRs to one side of the offense, then twin TEs to the other side. This forces the defense to choose which pair to cover. But on the TD run, UA motioned a WR over towards the twin TEs to use as blocking. UA then had a WR, 2 TEs, and perhaps even a pulling backside guard (I don’t remember) at the point of attack which is devastating. It takes a lot of defenders to soak up those blockers and make a tackle. We weren’t getting to the point of attack fast enough and were outnumbered at the point of attack.

Why didn’t Tedford (or the officials) call for review of the Boateng drop (catch and fumble) at the goal line? Why didn’t he/they review the safety non-call at Maryland? These were momentum changers that signifcantly affected both games, IMO.

Boateng’s drop at the goalline was a good call. Tedford probably saw that and thus didn’t review. The WR has to maintain possession once he lands, not just obtain possession in the air. Boateng clearly lost possession in the air before he came down.

Morrah is a good receiver but a huge liability for run blocking. Given that none of the other receivers has really stepped up, why not move Morrah to wide receiver or the slot receiver and put in someone who can block? Not just at the goal line, but most of the time. We did this last year when we basically used Stevens as a run blocker. We are never going to establish the run against a decent team when our tight end can’t block.

We do do this, but I didn’t notice us doing it last night. Most of the time we put Morrah in the slot in passing situations and sub in Tau’ufo’ou instead of the RB. I suppose the coaches just didn’t think this was advantageous to the offense.

I agree we should pass more when the other team stacks 8 in the box, but we should also try more screens, dumps to the FB and RB, delay draws, etc. when they start blitzing and Longshore’s sphincter starts constricting. The screen worked pretty well against ASU (except for the bonehead interception). Keep the defense honest and keep the pressure off the QB. It seemed like we ran the delay draw with reasonable success last year with Forsett.

I think what we needed more of us was playaction passing from our base personnel package. When we were in our base personnel packages, UA would get very very aggressive on defensive, drop defenders into the box, and blitz. I would have baited them by putting base personnel on the field, and using playaction (fake the run – since UA was expecting the run), then attack down field or use rollout dumps to the fullback or TE.

Both are very good, but I like Best better. I think his vision, anticipation of blocks, speed and elusiveness are all very good. Vereen is probably better between the tackles and hitting holes because he’s more accepting of the fact that he’s going to get tackled so he’ll just grind out a few yards. Whereas, I feel like with Best, he’s less willing to hit the holes and instead will like to string out a play to see if a cutback lane forms for a big gain. Best is always looking for that big gain and turning 5 yards into 7 yards, and 10 yards into 15 yards. There’s a fine line between knowing when you can sort of string out a play to look for a bigger gain and knowing when you have to just stick it up the hole for whatever yardage you can get. Best is riding that fine line very precariously. Sometimes he makes great plays by stringing out the play, and sometimes he doesn’t because he’s waiting and waiting for something to open up, and it doesn’t (in those cases he should have taken what little the defense gave him).

Best is still a very good back. I believe he has more “home-run” threat (to use a stereotypical analogy) than Vereen. Best did go down without much contact last night but I think that was because (a) he was protecting his elbow by not taking big hits; (b) because he didn’t want to get “stood-up” and possibly get stripped – which would also put strain on his elbow as he would try to prevent the ball from being stripped. I really wouldn’t too much into Best going down without a lot of contact. Sure, he’s not Marshawn. But one benefit of sparing yourself of heavy contact is that you stay healthier and have a longer career.

If we lose at home to a dreadful Husky team sans Jake Locker with a lame duck head coach…let’s just say “firejefftedford.com” finally gets registered for the $150 price being offered.

Bunch of 3 and outs by the offense will do that.

Longshore said he was fine. Tedford said he was fine. Nobody knows but those two and the trainers.