Oregon State 31 Cal 14: I'm Steve Marshall, And I'm Here To Make Your Offense Terrible

Rec’d. So true. The problem with the line upsets me so much. It really is this bad on every single play.

I think you hit the nail right on the head :(

if it weren’t so true…

The O-line returned enough experienced talent and should be better than they have shown this year. The D-backs and D-line are very experienced and were supposed to be among the best in the conference, but they are not showing it.

Somethings up. Attitude seems good, but execution is terrible. All signs point to coaching, but coaching doesn’t go from good to bad in a year, unless you change coaches (O-line). That doesn’t explain the defense.

I’m not a Riley hater, and I think he’s the best Cal has. He’s just in the bottom third of QB talent in the Pac-10.

How could the team of athletes that some were saying could go to the national championship crumble so entirely? O-line fail.

Last night was a nightmare—I thought Riley was going to be murdereded. The running game was like running into a brick wall. I’m not sure if it’s entirely on the new coach, or the loss of Mack, but something sure slipped in the transition to this year.

I was thinking if only O-line played average, we would not have had such bad games. Riley does not seem to be a QB who can overcome pressure, but can be quite reliable in the absence of it. Best and Vereen are great backs no doubt, who can make plays if holes exist. It’s all on O-line, and they are apparently poorly coached.

I think a case can be made for a LOT of coaches to be released from their duties. The only ones who should be safe are Tedford and Gould. And can we find the secret photos Alamar has on Tedford, so he can finally stop torturing us?

Let’s look across the line at what we have. LT Tepper is a good guy, but he’s not nearly as good as he’s been made out to be. LG was a RS Frosh starting who got injured and his replacements are a former walk-on in Fisher and a current walk-on in Boskovitch, who spends more time whiffing on blocks and losing his feet of any OL I’ve seen in the Tedford era. Our Center is an undersized RS-JR taking his first meaningful snaps at C but who has no business playing that position, especially against top notch DTs. The RG is a RS-So who has the size to play the position but has lapses. The RT is a RS-So who has been pretty reliable. The TEs cannot reliably block and are all young. Just looking at our starters, they are a recipe for inconsistency. As much as size of OL is important, mentally they need to know their assignments and how to adjust on the fly when blocking, which comes from repetition.

In a sense, the line is still young with 3 underclassmen starters. The interior of the OL is the biggest issue right now, and quite frankly, the reason why we absolutely stink running between the tackles.

While this post was funny to read because it pokes fun at a glaring weakness on our O, this post really does not look at the root of the problem: recruiting. There have been too many scholarship busts and/or misses on the OL front in 05-06 and we are really feeling it now. There is exactly ONE starter on the OL from those classes. Guys from those 2 classes are who should be starting right now unless there were some super sensational underclassmen who could beat them out. That is not the case.

Instead of calling out our new OL coach, blaming him for our offense sucking, creating undeserved animosity towards him, and throwing more fuel on the fire when it’s not needed, perhaps you can better use your time and creative juices looking more in depth at the non-surface issues next time. I enjoy reading and posting here because I found CGB to be probably the most intelligent places on the net to discuss any Cal sports and particularly football. I’m not so sure about that after reading this post from a mod :(

Avinash – this might be the funniest post I’ve ever read on CGB. It’s painfully true, but that doesn’t make it any less funny.

I have to say, I set out to refute some of Cali49a’s points by looking at our past recruiting…and was surprised to find, at least based on rivals recruiting rankings, that our oline recruiting has been pretty weak. I had a much more optimistic opinion on it then when I looked back through. We really just might not have the talent….

between Cali49a’s points in Marshall’s favor and Avinash’s points against.

Pro Marshall:

-He has some talented starters, but the line has little interior depth after MSG’s injury, forcing him to play two walk ons at left guard due to poor o-line recruiting in 2005-6
-Among his non-injured starters are included an undersized center, a left tackle who previously lost a season to injury and did not have experience on the blindside (though he acquitted himself well at right tackle previous to injury), the solid Mitchell Schwartz, and the inconsistent Justin Cheadle

Against Marshall:

-There’s a difference between bad and bad: The perennially strong Cal run game has been almost completely shut out of 4 games out of 9, and an offense that features two of the best running backs in the country ranks only 36th in the nation in rushing, 5th in the Pac-10. Meanwhile the offensive line has given up 19 sacks (69th in the nation) and allowed 56 total tackles for loss. Even with Matt Summers-Gavin starting, the line was caught completely flat-footed by an Oregon defensive line replacing 3 starters.
-This, while Oregon jerry-rigs an offensive line out of bubblegum and duct tape after having lost 6 of their top 10 linemen to graduation and still manages to be the top rushing team in the Pac-10.
-The Cal o-line has already given up 6 more sacks than the 2006 offensive line which replaced 3 NFL draft picks (in fairness, Cal’s rushing ypg is higher this year than it was in 2006, but I’m at all not convinced it will stay that way)

Personally? I’m not in favor of riding Marshall out on a rail, just giving him the same handshake and pat on the back he’s received from so many NFL teams already. There’s reason to give him the benefit of the doubt; just not enough.