The Tennessee Debacle: Out-played or Out-coached? Part I
Ah yes, what horrible memories this picture brings back. The national embarrassment. The chants of "overrated". The never ending taunts of SEC fans saying west coast football is soft.
I know the Tennessee game was a long time ago but I thought it would be good to go over what went wrong that game. Ask any Cal fan and they’ll probably tell you that everything went wrong that game. We all shamefully laugh and agree because… well, what the hell didn’t go wrong when supposedly you’re a top-10 team and a fringe top-25 team dropkicks you with 35 unanswered points?
But seriously now, does anybody know what really went wrong that game?
Some people say it was the fact that Cal started a blue-shirt (the Cal equivalent of a red-shirt) cornerback. Others say it was Cal’s inexperienced quarterback. Some say it was the offensive line’s inability to protect the quarterback. Others say will say the Tennessee defense was just like nothing we’ve ever seen before in terms of athleticism, quickness, and speed. Or some people might suggest it was the fault of Mike Dunbar’s playcalling.
All the aforementioned reasons are all somewhat correct. But I’m still looking for a simpler answer. Something that is just a little more all-encompassing. And the more I think about it, the more I think the the faults of Cal’s demise can be divided up into two categories: Outplayed and Outcoached.
Outplayed are all the instances where any Tennessee player beat a Cal player. Whether it was a CB shutting down our WRs, or a DLineman blowing through our OL, or any instance of a Tennessee player out-hustling and out-performing our players.
Outcoached are all the instances where our offensive or defensive playcalling was bad or predictable.
Now, I’m not going to talk much about defensive coaching because I’m simply not a defensive person - offense is more my specialty. Even if I could speak about Cal’s defense, critiquing the defensive playcalling is inconclusive since Tennessee supposedly decoded or intercepted Cal’s defensive playcalling. But I am going to talk about Cal’s offensive playcalling.
After the Tennessee game, it seemed as if some Cal fans were ready to fire Dunbar after just a single game. Fans were saying that the new hydrid offense sucked. Or whatever elements that Dunbar was trying to incorporate sucked. Or he wasn’t calling the right plays for our inexperienced quarterback. It seems as if most fans were screaming for the return to the pre-Dunbar offense. But was the playcalling really that bad?
Was Cal outcoached or outplayed? That’s the question that I set out to answer and the purpose for this very long analysis (so bear with me).
In my search for answers I rewatched the Cal/Tenn game. Not only did I watch it, I wrote down what I saw. Not just general notes, but notes about the offensive playcalling. I’m talking about personnel packages, shotgun vs. under center, formations, down & distance, run or pass, and what types of runs and passes. All that nitty gritty.
My hypothesis (and the the seemingly popular hypothesis of many other Cal fans after the game) was this: Dunbar’s playcalling was at fault for the Tennessee loss.
Proof of my hypothesis would come from predictable playcalling, any "tells" (signs that Cal might be more inclined to run or pass on a certain play), or simply unvaried playcalling.
For clarity of data I limited my analysis to only the plays where Longshore was the QB. This is because the plays where Longshore is the QB represent Dunbar’s original offensive ideology and because by the time that Ayoob was in Cal had deviated from the norm to a pass heavy offense in order to catch up.
So with all this introduction stuff out of the way tomorrow we’ll dig into the data, starting with the basics.
