Concerning Cal's Defensive Woes Against UCLA

Josh Hill actually had a fairly good game in open field tackling, even if he isn’t quite ready to cover receivers yet.

There have been WAY too many short fields; the first touchdown of the game resulted in one big play followed by an immediate score. Also that was the case in the Minnesota game, where two Gopher touchdowns were aided by short fields to work with.

Strangely the special teams was a non issue against, of all teams, Oregon.

I get that this is a younger, less experienced defense than last year, but that reason isn’t all that satisfying when I continue to see the other guys gain huge chunks of yardage.

The big problem seems to be our passing defense. Consider, we ended up making Kevin Stinking Prince look like John Elway out there, not to mention how good Masoli looked. Consider that for a moment. Prince and Masoli looked like first rounders against the Cal pass defense.

I’m not sure if it’s personnel or scheme, but something just isn’t working. It seems as if the LBs just are incapable of providing any meaningful pass support at all, but I don’t know enough to say whether that is because they are incapable, or they aren’t being used properly. Fortunately Ucla is completely impotent offensively, so they ended up with mainly FGs for their effort. But Oregon kept getting into the end zone. It makes me worry, however, about what might happen against Zona, Furd, and UW.

3) Cal’s defensive personnel is less experienced (and arguably less talented) than last years’. Especially the LB corps.

I certainly agree this is the case with the linebackers. But our D-line and corners/safeties have MORE experience than last year, not less. With SQT out, though, we’ve got troubles.

I’m OK with the defense’s performance against UCLA, and to a lesser extent against USC. Still, I was anticipating a higher level of performance.

The only explanation that really makes sense is that the new linebackers are such a significant downgrade from last year’s unit. Still, I can’t help but get the feeling that both the secondary and the defensive line are performing at a lower level than last year. I wish I knew why. I suppose you can make the argument that weaker linebackers means that more plays last longer and more completions are allowed over the middle and in the flat. Still, I feel like each unit has taken a small step back.

But #3 just = “the defense isn’t good”, which is the statement you are supposed to be contesting.

1. is somewhat heartening, but, our lack of pass rush was still a serious problem. Pass rush is a key part of defense, especially in the Pac-10. We don’t have a good one, and it’s killing us. We need more risky blitzing, because giving up endless first downs loses the game, even if you have a safety further back to prevent the TD.

That’s the Oregon game in a nutshell – just kept giving up 1st downs. O stays on the field.

Now UCLA didn’t execute nearly as well as Oregon (who was great – let me take a little of our D by saying some of those Oregon plays were perfect). Since perfect Offense beats perfect Defense, a defense needs a combination of great play along with some level of misfire by the Offense. Great defensive numbers come by both getting aggressive and lucky, and getting the O to make so many mistakes they’re off the field before they can burn you (just string 3 D plays together and you’ve got a punt very often). Two 3 yard runs and an incompletion, you’re home.

One of the best things a D can do get the O to make more mistakes is to bother the QB. It might pay great dividends (great QBs can take 20 hits and get fired up – sorry D). Leaving him alone to get into a rhythm certainly hurts the D. I think this pays even greater dividends in college than pro, ergo Gregory should call more blitzes.

If we could get pressure with our vanilla zone package, then fine – don’t change it – but we aren’t. So change it. Bring more pressure, even if you have one less DB back there (or 2!). Because you’re letting them get too many first downs.

My 2nd paragraph is saying if we were held (your point #5), then at least were in a dangerous spot and probably doing the right thing.

I don’t mean to be saying aggressive is always good, period. That’s too simple, so sorry if that’s what my post boiled down to.

But I count results on the field, not in practice – so I don’t care if our D looked more successful in practice with a less aggressive pash rush – it’s not working on the field, so change it. What I’ve seen on the field over 6 games is when we had more QB pressure, we had better D. And our zone D was getting smacked both over the middle and on WR routes so they need help getting QBs out of rhythm.

And it’s my prerogative as a fan to do Monday morning quarterback!

I also haven’t seen that when we blitzed or got aggressive, we got burned for it. If that happened, I’d be happier to go back to safe. But you don’t do much worse than the Oregon loss. And frankly, you can do a hell of a lot better than our D did against UCLA.

Also, here’s one of the college football things to ponder. If your D is going to give up a TD, would you rather have them do it quickly or slowly? I’d argue quickly. That probably goes along with risky/aggressive defenses. Maybe you get the sack – maybe you give up a long TD. But then your D gets off the field, gets rest, and your O is on the field, hopefully controlling the game. There’s a lot of ways this plays out, but a disadvantage of the prevent and also the BBDB is spending a lot of plays out there, the D gets tired, while the enemy O gets into rhythm.

I prefer the D goes all out, and gets the stop or pays the price. Then they go all out next series.

Against a weak team, you can play a more vanilla defense with far more success. The enemy O will make mistakes without much effort on your part. You’ll get a pass rush that hurries or sacks with 3. You’ll keep the run game to 2ypc without aggression.

But against the strong team that doesn’t happen. What went wrong with your great defense? It wasn’t aggressive enough to succeed against a well-oiled O.

This has generally been my criticism of Tedford’s coaching style. He’s coaching towards beating about 7 of the 9 enemy Pac-10 teams every year. A good (but not great) vanilla O and D, well executed, with 4 but not 5-star athletes, has a great shot at beating 7/9 Pac-10 teams.

I’m not satisfied. I want to see the risk-taking necessary to beat a better team, at least some of the time.

When was the last time you think Cal beat a team that was frankly better than us – athletically, skill positions, size of the D and O lines, etc.?

We’re still working on beating teams as good as us consistently. Or beating teams that are perhaps a little weaker than us on the road.

I want the bar set higher. That’s how I think Oregon St. plays – sometimes they blow it against weaker opponents, but they have an aggressive plan, that if it works can knock off anybody. That’s more fun to watch week in and week out.