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.
I look forward to your analysis, but one of the biggest plays had to have been the opening kickoff, when the Bears lost their starting tight end to a vicious, but entirely clean, hit. That hit was both evidence that UT was far more ready to play than Cal; it gave the home team and their raucous crowd incredible energy and momentum which lasted throughout the entire first half; and it robbed the Bears of one of their most important blockers at the point of attack. That, and the play calling sucked (way too predictable as you suggest.)
Comment by California Pete — May 23, 2007 @ 7:59 am
I too look forward to your analysis. One thing that you should be careful with in regards to the play-calling is the audibles. I re-watched the entire season in February in preparation for a series of articles that never got published. One thing I noted about the Tennessee game was that Longshore called a lot of audibles and the combination of a young QB and the noise made that a horrible decision.
If I were Tedford, after the second series, I would have made the call to either eliminate audibles or come up with a visual system with only one option for change (of course it’s difficult to coordinate something like that mid-game, making me think ‘no audibles’ would be the appropriate decision). I also noted that Ayoob when he came in called fewer and that the crowd noise has substantially abated the few times he did call an audible.
In any case, it may have been that Dunbar was counting on a lot of audible situations in his game-plan and the inability to do that caused lots of predictable play-calling. I’d still fault the coaches for that game-plan considering the environment they were heading into. They should have known that a game-plan with lots of audibling was trouble for a young QB in an insanely loud stadium.
Comment by Ken Crawford — May 23, 2007 @ 9:49 am
You bring up a good point, Ken. Towards the end of the week I will address the “audibles”.
Comment by HydroTech — May 23, 2007 @ 7:45 pm
Cal was not outcoached or outplayed. They were simply outmatched. They came to the south…the SEC where people live football. And the SEC the Meca of NCAA football. It is a different game, my friend. The defense was like nothing you’ve ever seen b/c in the SEC a quarterback literally has (on average) about 1 sec. less to make a decision. That’s a lot when you’re only talking about 3-5 sec. It’s that way in all aspects of the game. The only difference this year will be that you will have to suffer embarassment (and exposed of fraud for impersonating power football team) on your own home field
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