during that whole two point conversion debacle were very upset. Cal is one of the best academic institutions in all the country, yet our coach couldn’t see that were down 16 but couldn’t do basic math to figure out that Cal would need 8 and 8 to tie the game.

I am starting to wonder and worry about the same thing, perhaps the Pac10 is starting to catch up and pass Tedford by.

Not going for it on 4th down late in the 4th quarter while down by 9 really bothered me.

Another question, when was the last time Tedford attempted a fake FG or punt?

Is Tedford becoming the Ben Braun of Cal football?

You can’t judge coaching success relative to expectations. The more successful your program is, the higher your expectations will rise. Florida fans expected a national championship this year – does that mean Urban Meyer failed because they went 12-1?

Jeff Tedford is the most successful Cal coach in at least 50 years by pretty much any metric. The idea that he is a “bad” coach because he’s only winning 8 games a year and not 10 is…well…just plain silly.

“Same shit, different day.”

Only if by “same shit” you mean “not going to the Rose Bowl.” Which is to say that while Tedford has made a lot of mistakes in his tenure, I don’t really believe he’s repeated many of them.

2002: 7-5
2003: 8-6
2004: 10-2
2005: 8-4
2006: 10-3
2007: 7-6
2008: 9-4
2009: 8-4

Clearly Cal is neither getting better nor getting worse. In that regard, Tedford is only “disappointing” if you assume that Cal should be improving its record every year, which is a highly questionable assumption (for obvious statistical reasons, no program can keep getting more and more wins every year). It’s entirely possible, even, that Cal has hit its ceiling in terms of football success.

such as the ill-advised riley scramble…the infamous decoud coin flip where we kicked off twice…and now, sending your kicking team out onto the field when a 2 pt. conversion makes it a one possession game. You can blame the players in the first two examples, but doesn’t the responsibility ultimately fall on the shoulders of the head coach, especially when these boneheaded things occur repeatedly?

People often complain about Tedford being too conservative, and I’d like to see him be more aggressive too. But at least that’s more of a philosophical disagreement, and there certainly have been successful conservative coaches in both the college and professional game. But the mental lapses that are sometimes just unfathomable make me wonder what’s going on in Tedford’s head. I want him to succeed, I don’t think we should fire him. But he needs to take spend this off-season doing some serious soul searching if he wants to have any shot at a top 3 finish in the Pac-10 next year.

1. Tedford is who Tedford is. The things that excited us years back are bound to appear stale. That said, I think like a lot of long term couches, Tedford needs to wonder if teams have figured his schemes out. Giving credit to Mike Bellotti, but he understood that times were changing from multiple schemes to spread schemes. Speed over power. We can either adapt or get used to mid Pac 10 finishes.

2. Tedford is Kirk Ferantz (sp?): At a university typically out recruited by a couple of big boys in the conference, and usually gets a few 8 win seasons, and the occasional 10 win season. Our perspective would be completely different if we hadn’t been hosed by Texas in ’04.

3. Big receiver experiment has paid off. Hawkins, Jordan and Jackson may not have run blocked, but they were game changers. We now have tall, slow, receivers (or can’t catch…hello Jeremy Ross) who can’t separate or change the game. Even Marvin Jonesis a slot receiver in most schemes. We need speed at the receiver position.

4. The last good QB at Cal was…Steve Levy. He had guts, did no harm, and was who he was…a fullback in QB clothing. The QB position should be opened up because we know what Riley is, 50-50. If he’s your best QB simply because of years, then God help us.

5. Alamar must go. I think Gregory is fine. He’s playing fourth string DBs, and the ones he has in there normally (other than Squid) aren’t worth a damn anyway. But generally, I think Gregory does well with the personnel he has.

Eight years on the job, things are bound to get stale. Everything must be evaluated, from unis to coaches. i figure Tedford will do it.

First and foremost, let me say that I am a supporter of Tedford and would nothing more than to see him live out his days (as the winningest coach in Cal football) and retire of his own accord. I don’t think he should be fired, even if his contract wasn’t extended until 2014.

However, I am also quite critical of Tedford. These two actually go hand-in-hand.

The head coach in NCAA football has a multitude of roles. He’s a recruiter of high school athletes, a manager for coaching staff, a role model for the team, a schemer for game planning, and a figurehead on the field. All of these together create the head coaching role, which more than anything else, should be seen as the equivalent of the CEO of a large corporation.

Tedford, when he began at Cal in 2002, was not this CEO. He tried to do everything, and it worked well because he was putting in 14 hour days and sleeping in the office. However, as his role has developed, he has recognized that this approach has led to problems — see 2007 for a prime example. Thus, his evolution of Tedford into the CEO role. He began to take less of a focus in game planning and more of a focus as an overall team manager. He paid attention to team dynamics and morale, to the defense (previously the sole realm of Bob Gregory), to allocating duties to a full-time offensive coordinator. I’ve seen a lot of evidence that Tedford is doing this superbly.

Unfortunately, the results seem to have stagnated in terms of wins and losses. For this, I will criticize Tedford, because ultimately the buck stops there. But this is not a critique of Tedford’s ability as a coach. It’s a critique of Tedford’s ability as a CEO, which he is still learning. The fact that Tedford has retained Alamar for this long is one of many examples where I cannot simply stand by and keep quiet.

I hope as Tedford continues to develop into the CEO role that his delegation of duties will pay dividends. Some of his prior coaching hires (Dunbar, Cignetti), did not work out too well, and I think he has learned from these experiences. I hope Ludwig, Marshall, and our upcoming special teams coach will take begin to bring an upswing to our W-L record. If not, Tedford needs to continue to search for the best in coaching staff. He needs to continue to identify problems, delegate competent members of our coaching staff to address those problems, and ensure completion of those corrections as a supervisor. Regardless, I trust the Cal program in his hands — he’s shown he is loyal to Cal and has proven himself to identify with values that I find myself proud to associate with as a Cal fan.

Anyway, just my 2 cents. Go Bears!

Tedford’s kids look like their heart is not in it as they do not believe in Riley or Gregory’s BS prevent.

Riley will never ‘get it’ and it is high time to play anyone but Riley. Beau Sweeney seems like the best option at this point and we are past needing a new defensive coordinator!

Gregory sucks and his schemes are a joke. His prevent is preventing Cal from winning like all prevent defenses do. Aaron Rogers bailed Tedford out and Follett and the other graduated LBs bailed Gregory out. It is time to attack on D and O by add elements of the spread on O and dialing up well timed zone blitzes. Good thing Tucker’s football dropping @$$ will be gone next year!

Cal is going to morph into the Raiders if they are not careful…

Here is some regression for ya. Davon Dunn(WR) has de-committed from Cal and is now going to Fresno St. This came after the loss, where the passing offense looked dreadful. I wonder how many recruits are going to flee after watching that pathetic performance.

Stick a fork in Tedford, the dude is pot roast.

I like what he’s done for the program, I like how he’s gotten facilities finally started for our school, and I really like the way he focuses on academics and teaches our players to “win with class” and to, well… be men, rather than simply just football players. Honestly, in some ways, Tedford has been more than “just” a football coach and as a Cal alum, I consider that a pretty big deal. That said, I think it’s perfectly fair to question his coaching ability. Certainly some of our losses this season were head-scratching, particularly the WAY we lost them.

I honestly think Tedford’s most major flaw might be his loyalty. At this point, I think it’s getting pretty clear that Alamar is going to have to go. I can’t think of a single redeeming thing about the way our special teams played this year and it’s getting bad enough that I can usually “predict” what will happen. When we were up 14-0 I turned to my friend and facetiously said “This is the worse part our of program, they’re gonna make a huge gain on us” and sure enough Utah returned the ball to our own 35. I mean, that’s just ridiculous. It’s ridiculous that we can all jokingly predict what will happen on special teams and then watch it actually happen more often than not. I’m not sure why Tedford is so loyal to his coaches but that’s probably just who he inherently is. I hope that he seriously evaluates his assistant coaches during the offseason. Tedford’s shown an ability to make changes before, so I have SOME hope.

Probably the other thing that has hurt our team really bad this year has been execution. False starts. Dropped calls. Missed tackles. I actually feel that our SCHEMES are fine (except for special teams, something is really wrong there) but our players need to practice technique more. Gregory, for all the grief he’s gotten, has actually been able to field decent defenses in the past but I feel that his defensive scheme is heavily dependent on talent and getting good LBs. I was actually fine with Ludwig’s calls for most of this season. Riley’s errant throws and receivers dropping catchable throws might have made the playcalling look worse than it actually is but there were definitely some 3rd down conversions that “should” have been converted if our WRs could actually hold on to some balls or if Riley wasn’t over/underthrowing. I’m not sure who gets the blame for execution/technique problems, but that is something we need to get fixed next year.

So I’m actually not sure where I was going with this post, but I think the main thing is that Tedford probably needs to work more on micromanaging and telling his assistant coaches to emphasize fundamentals over complex schemes first (or start hiring assistant coaches who will). I’m no football expert though.

In 2007 the QB/Coach blame was probably 80/20 in favor of Longshore. He got the majority of the blame. This year the QB/Coach blame was about 20/80 in favor of Tedford.
Why were people quicker to blame Longshore than Riley? In my humble opinion, I think most of the blame for the offense should rest on Riley’s shoulders. Some of the throws (especially the overthrows) make me want to bang my head against a wall. As we saw last night, whenever he does make a good throw, a receiver can’t hang on.
I know fans are disappointed for the consecutive frustrating seasons—but I’m with the school of thought that its the players execution rather than Tedford.

Some answers from my 53 year experience with “The Loveable Losers”;

1) Cal is a difficult school academically. Would you rather be at Alabama, where the degree is unimpressive but the football is a way of life?
NO! I would like to be some of the Mountain West teams that do so much more with so much less talent.

2) We have terrible facilities. Seriously an embarrassment.
BOO HOO!! What position do these faclities play? You think the players we do recruit aren’t better quality talent than Boise State gets? And Boise State has a BLUE FOOTBALL FIELD!! WHOO HOO!

3) Cal football has a history of losing, and now we don’t…so we complain?!
MAYBE because no team in the pack 10 has been SO DOWN for so many years? MAYBE because we actually DO have more raw talent than many teams in the Pac 10?

4) Tedford is a nationally recognized coach, I think above and beyond all the other Pac-10 coaches—besides Petey, and everyone hates him.
THEN why is he rated a low FIFTH in pac 10 coaches? WHY has Cal looked TOTALLY UNPREPARED in every one of their losses this year and even a few of their wins?

Anyway, I just don’t get it.
Maybe you should read, and read again, the post by the UTE fan who showed how similar their problems were to ours. You think the University of Utah get’s better talent than UC Berkely? Maybe they DO MORE WITH THE TALENT THEY DO GET?

Should I post a DBD? Are enough people around today?

He rarely fires any coaches, even ones that probably deserve to be let go.

I believe Tedford, as the HC should call in his entire defense, especially the seniors and ask them about their defensive schemes.

I just can’t get the picture of Cal rushing three out of my head. People complain that the defense is on the field too much, thus getting tired because our offense couldn’t sustain any drives. Well it works both ways, our defense is allowed to stop the other teams offense after three plays and get off the field. The defense could help themselves get off the field.

Why doesn’t Gregory attempt more DB blitzes? Send Cattouse of Thompson off the edge.

We lost last nights game and Washington due to coaching, not talent. We can get the biggest and best facilities in the land but those facilities won’t coach these kids up. Recruiting certainly helps but at the end of the day the HC and his coaching staff has to maximize that talent and improve it. I saw very little improvement from any of our players throughout the year, in fact a case could be made that some even regressed (Tepper, Riley, Jones, the entire secondary, Kendricks) and if they haven’t regressed then they have hit their talent ceiling and this is the best we can expect from these players over the next two years.

just on the basis of comparing him to his predecessor’s.

I don’t think we can accurately judge him until he gets the recruiting boost from the new facilities. We need these facilities to put us on an equal level with U$C, Oregon, and dare I say Stanfurd as they all have recently pumped money into their facilities.

I think he is doing the best with the talent. Rodgers, Jackson and Best were coups for recruiting….but we can’t convince more 5 star talent to come when we have an aging high school locker room.

Maybe these two changes can be made in the meantime-Tedford takes over play calling duties. We get new special teams coach and maybe think about changes on D.

Why would a site, dedicated to all things CAL, decide to propagate a highly derogatory term, so that it sounds like it’s something uniquely CAL when it fact it’s something that happen PLENTY of other teams when they lose their QB – or did you not notice Oregon that year? It’s pernicious, it’s petty and it devalues the weight of your opinion. I stopped reading at that point and just came down here to post.

1) I don’t think any of the MWC are academic juggernauts.
So, you DO believe that the MWC gets better quality athletes?

2) Facilities can make a big impression on recruits, look at what Chris Martin said just last week.
I can see that you DON’T believe that Cal recruits as much talent as the MWC. I get it. I don’t agree with it, I don’t believe anyone else here agrees with it, but you’ve made yourself clear.

3) Makes it sound like we lost the Pac-10. We were in the middle of the pack, and no way are we "So down for so many years." We had ten win seasons in 2004 and 2006—three years ago! It sounds like someone is grumpy they don’t have the Rose Bowl.
The Cal Bear football team is NOT on the bottom of the pile nor has it been since Tedford came.When, though, has it been on the TOP of the pile?

4) I meant national recognition, like people know who he is, and the media talk about him. Also, it seems like he has a lot of respect from other elite coaches.
How many win does that “respect” generate every season? That, “talk” about him? Does it also include his lack of passion? Passion that seems to help OTHER coaches get more performace out of lesser players?

If Cal is so great at getting talent without Tedford, why were we so bad from 1980-2001? I’d rather not go back to those doldrums, thank you very much.
Once again, you’ve made your position clear. Cal does not get as good a talent as the rest of the Pac10 or even the MWC. That is the ONLY WAY you can avoid faulting the coaching that produced FOUR GAMES that Cal should have been able to win but didn’t seem to be motivated enough to give their best effort. You might be satisfied with a “middle of the pack” team that “shows up for most games, just not all”. I am not.