Jon Embree is Colorado's new head coach, and he's assembling an All-Star cast to join him. One of those names is Cal offensive line coach Steve Marshalll ($), who found his greatest success at the collegiate level at Colorado a decade ago, when he helped guide the Buffaloes to a Fiesta Bowl bid back in 2000-01.
Whether his fault or not (the cupboard was left pretty bare for him when Michalczik left for the Raiders), Marshall presided over some of the worst offensive lines of the Tedford era. They never seemed to employ proper technique when they played, looked slow off the snap, and never looked good against the best Pac-10 teams. They improved from 2009 to 2010, but not by much. It was an offensive line error that ended Kevin Riley's career at Cal, and it was offensive line penalties that killed us in at least two of our defeats this season.
After the jump, numbers.
Here's a look back at the regression of Cal's offensive lines, the national rank for each category is in parentheses. The biggest dropoff is in the final category, where Cal's running game has fallen from elite to average; it's one of the big reasons Cal's offense has regressed the past two years.
| Year (O-line coach) | Sacks allowed | Tackles for loss allowed | Rush yds/game | Rush yds/attempt |
| 2006 (Mich) | 12 (T-3rd) | 51 (T-10th) | 162.38 (35th) | 4.94 (13th) |
| 2007 (Mich) | 11 (T-3rd) | 72 (T-53rd) | 166.77 (44th) | 4.92 (T-14th) |
| 2008 (Mich) | 25 (T-68th) | 82 (T-99th) | 186.23 (28th) | 5.57 (T-5th) |
| 2009 (Marsh) | 31 (T-91st) | 86 (T-99th) | 169.31 (42nd) | 4.66 (T-30th) |
| 2010 (Marsh) | 23 (T-60th) | 67 (T-54th) | 158.83 (51st) | 4.44 (T-49th) |
We wish Coach Marshall the best in Colorado...at least until the first time we play them.