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Aaron Rodgers says he owes his "perfect" throwing motion to Cal coach Jeff Tedford.

Coach [Jeff Tedford] texted me last night. We talk usually weekly or every other week. I like to say he's a big reason I'm here today and deserves a lot of credit for the success that I've had in this league. He prepared me to be in this position, I think, and really taught me a lot about leadership and honed my fundamentals, gave me an opportunity. So I owe him a lot of credit.

Chip Kelly and Jeff Tedford engage in a war of words in the Pac-10 coaches conference call.

"I really don’t know what officials can do … If teams are doing that...they're basically throwing the white flag." ~Kelly
"Anytime anybody goes down against Oregon, they always think that’s the case. But that's not the case." ~Tedford

It was just a high energy moment. I got caught up.

This wasn’t just homesickness. There was a long list of distractions. I’m not going to get into specifics, but you can imagine for us to not put up more resistance to him transferring, how long that list was. It was evident when he got here that he didn’t want to be here. He wanted to do other things. He wanted to run around with his ex-buddies and do all that. There wasn’t a lot of dedication to school, football and everything like all the other players had. I wanted him to go and find a place where he could be happy and the rest of our guys would want to be here and be focused and productive

"I wanted to come back," he says. "But Coach [Jeff] Tedford said, ‘There’s no way I’m playing you again.’ They took my helmet and everything."

I looked at my chart and it said one to win, two to tie. I should have just looked at the scoreboard, but I looked at my chart instead of looking at the scoreboard.

I think we might have been overlooking Washington a little bit. I think a lot of us were more worried about the bowl game than Washington, and it bit us in the butt.
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I was pissed. It was a frustrating game.
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We got beat in all phases of the game. You have to give Washington credit. They were ready to play and we weren't.

He [Kevin Riley] played because he made good decisions and didn’t turn the ball over, and he had an escape mechanism so he could make plays with his feet," coach Jeff Tedford said in a one-on-one interview in his office, "but he had accuracy problems. His mechanics were off, but it’s really hard to work on that during the season because the player is uncomfortable changing anything."

Tedford played Nate Longshore in the Emerald Bowl — "Nate had had a sore shoulder which was healed, and he had a much better practice week" — but he hasn’t given up on Riley. Just as he did with Kyle Boller, Tedford has given tips for Riley to work on.

Now, it will be time for Riley to show what he’s learned, and he will have competition for the starting job from Brock Mansion and Beau Sweeney.