Let’s watch Marshawn partying like a rock star.

"Family First!"

Thanks to industrious reader and all around awesome blogger, Avinash (who may or may not be a girl), here is a YouTube clip that brings Gus Johnson’s head one step closer to exploding.  Forget the College Pick ‘Em, we should do a Gus Johnson Pick ‘Em.  When will his head explode? 

You might be saying to yourself, "but wait the video kwality of YouTube kinda Ayoobs.  I need something better."  Well, firstly, talking to yourself is a sign of insanity, you might want to stop that.  Secondly, reader James left a comment that tells us how to see more awesome Marshawnosity.   

"You can actually see Marshawn’s runs on Nfl.com - if you go under Videos->Teams->Buffalo Bills, you can select Marshawn and see him pound his way through the cornerbacks."

If there’s one thing I want to see, it’s Marshawn pounding.  And I mean that in the least sexual manner possible.  So, here is the video at NFL.com.  It might not go straight to it.  If not, click on the "Broncos 15, Bills 14" video on the far right.   Its the entire game highlights, but they have a better kwality version of some of Marshawn’s run, including that most amazing TD run.

I love the call on the end of that run.  "Marshawn will NOT be denied!"  What could deny him?  Well, I sat down and thought about it.  There’s only 1 thing I think that could deny Marshawn.  If you covered him with giant magnets where the same pole (let’s say "north") was facing out towards the endzone and the endzone is covered with a wall and/or domed structure constructed solely out of giant magnets where the same pole ("north") is facing out towards Marshawn. 

Because science jokes are HI-larious.  (Self-absorbed side note:  This Political Science major had to call up an EECS major to have the underlying science of that joke explained to him, so, even though it never had a chance at being funny, it would at least be accurate.)   

Anyway, that’s the ONLY way that I can think of stopping Marshawn.  That’s right, the only person who can deny Marshawn is this science fair kid.

"Belichick already offered me a contract." 

So, there you go.  2 links hid in an endless avalanche of "It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia" references (so close to tomorrow at 10 PM!) and inane science jokes.  Just the way you want your Marshawn wrapped.  And I mean that in the most sexual manner possible.

HydroTech: So uh, Louisiana Tech took #20 Hawaii to overtime and only lost because they failed to convert a 2-point try for the win.  I originally thought this might be an easy 3-4 touchdown win but now I’m rethinking things.  I think our defense has potential to keep them under 24 points or so but I’m not sure if they will.  "They will" meaning both if the players will perform at their best and if Gregory’s gameplan is conducive of a low score.  Actually, after just writing "if Gregory’s gameplan is conducive of a low score" I thought that: what defensive strategies aren’t trying to keep the score low?  Isn’t every defensive coordinator’s goal to limit scoring?  Does it really matter if the limiting of scoring comes from an aggressive blitz heavy defense or a conservative drop-back-and-defend defense?  I suppose I shouldn’t even ask that question because it seems that most Cal fans seem to be leaning in one direction. 

Well, without arguing for or against the two defensive ideologies I’ll just summarize them really simplistically.  Aggressive blitz heavy defenses try and take away offensive yardage - such as through sacks.  While conservative drop-back-and-defend defenses try to limit the production of offensive yardage by keeping the offense in front of them and only giving up the short plays.  Or even more simplistically: aggressive defenses are proactive and conservative defenses are reactive. 

Which one do you like? 

But the money questions is really, which one will best defend against Louisiana Tech?

Restating a question already brought up by Ragnarok: what the hell is Louisiana Tech doing in the WAC? 

Shall I just keep asking more questions?

YellowFever: I don’t know necessarily that I’m really worried about Louisiana Tech’s offense either way.  Sure they piled on the points against Hawaii at home, but I’ve got to believe that that’s not going to be the case against our Bears.  Why?  Because I’m a Bears fan and an optimist.  Hawaii’s defense is, to say the least, porous.  This doesn’t excuse what happened last week against Colorado State, but what happens if the Rams don’t recover that onside kick?  Then the final score of the game is 34-21 and Bears fans feel a lot better about our team.  It was a remarkable confluence of events that led to last week’s score being as close as it was, and we were (a lack of) substitutions away from the score being, in all likelihood, 34-14.  How much better do our Bears look then?  Chances are, I think our defense shows up to play, and Gregory learns not to substitute that early.  At least, he learns not to substitute our defensive backs that early.

As for why the hell they’re in the WAC, I don’t remember.  I think I looked it up once when I was bored, but I completely forgot again.  Because I was bored.

Ragnarok: I don’t think the late scores last week are bothering anyone; Cal has seen its defensive numbers hurt in the past because teams have put up touchdowns against the backups in what was essentially garbage time.
Last week was just a case of the coaches going to ‘garbage time’ mode a little early — whoops!  Lesson learned.

What bothers me about last week is that it didn’t appear as though the defensive starters came to play.  The D was dominant in the third quarter; why did they wait so long to get after it?  Louisiana Tech may not make us pay for such lax behavior, but you can be damn sure that most Pac-10 teams will.

I don’t know who is responsible for the point spreads that we use in our Yahoo! Pick ‘em league, but they’ve got Cal as early 33 1/2 point favorites.  So someone out there isn’t too worried about our defense, at least for this week.

TwistNHook: Yknow what?  LA Tech are the Bulldogs.  Is there a college football team out there with a less original name?  Maybe Wildcats.  I mean c’mon.  At least add an adjective to it, like, let’s say, Golden Bears.  That’s different.  Bears, see, that’s boring.  Everybody is named the Bears or the Bulldogs.  But Golden Bears or Hungry, Hungry Bulldogs, well that’s exciting and new.

I hope we defeat these Hungry, Hungry Bulldogs this Saturday.  Kinda like the same way USC beat UGA last week and in no way similar to that game against Fresno State back in 2000.

I like how if you go to the LA Tech football webpage right now they are advertising how some channel is gonna replay their loss to Hawaii over the weekend.  Sweet!  Now, fans can re-watch their painful overtime loss.  And relive the agony all over again.  Is Tom Holmoe their media manager?

YellowFever: I fell asleep before the game and didn’t notice that Avinash had provided a web link to watch the game (much props, and how is that even legal?) until the fourth quarter, so I didn’t catch any of the game until the fourth quarter, right before Best’s little touchdown run.  As a result, I can’t really offer an opinion on how I thought the defense looked earlier in the game.  Like I said before, I’m basically writing off the two late scores as an unlucky fluke and don’t think it has any bearing on how the team played as a whole, though I’m also going to say that if the team only surrended 14 points for most of the game without being totally dominant, that isn’t too bad.  I’ll take that.

As for Louisiana Tech itself, I was superficially impressed with the number of points that they put up against Hawaii.  No matter how you slice it, 44 points is a lot, even if took them an overtime to do it.  From reading some previews of the team though, the offense isn’t considered to be terribly strong, so I’m not concerned that they’ll beat our Bears.  But judging from their performance last week and Gregory’s trigger happy backup scheme, I’m going to agree with Ragnarok that 33.5 seems like far too high a spread.

HydroTech: Speaking of defense and Bob Gregory, I must concur with some Cal fans’ perplexity of our D’s up and down performances.  Gregory has shown flashes of brilliance by restraining top opponent offenses and individual players, and then other weeks against inferior opponents they’d crap a brick. 

But you know, in all fairness to Gregory I’ll have to bring up this point.  Cal fans’ criticism of Gregory because of last week seems to be primarily over those final two touchdowns.  A brief surf around the internet does reveal some fans complaining of the defense’s lack of energy and motivation - which I can’t argue with, but most were frustrated because of the final 5 minutes of the game or so.  As YellowFever said, the circumstances surrounding CSU’s comeback were fairly unusual and well, lucky.  If we had recovered the onside kick and won by 13, I’m sure we wouldn’t be hearing half of all this Gregory criticism.  Cal fans would be saying something like "Oh, CSU got lucky on one deep pass and our defense didn’t play with inspiration" instead of "OMG!!! WTF is wrong with our defense/Gregory?!?!"  Am I not too far from the truth? 

I’m not saying criticism of Gregory is unwarranted.  I’m saying it’s probably a little more than he deserves mostly because of the margin of victory.  But keep in mind the margin of victory is affected by our own offense’s production.  If our offense can consistently outscore the opponent by 14-28 points, then are Cal fans really going to complain about our defense as much as if we were only winning by 7 points?  I personally don’t think so. 

And another point, in fairness to Gregory, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have as much influence over the development of defensive players as the positional coaches do.  I assume Gregory doesn’t spend all practice with the defensive guys teaching them technique.  Littlejohn coaches the DBs, Delgado coaches the DL, and Thompson coaches the LBs.  I think that’s where all the positional technique takes place.  If my assumptions are correct, then in my opinion I believe all this blame on Gregory for our defensivebacks’ lack of technique (such as failure to locate for the ball) is a little unwarranted.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not averting Gregory of any blame.  But I think the poor DB technique is on Littlejohn. 

Now, I do believe my assumptions are correct.  I’ve spent some time at a few in-season Cal practices and Gregory is more of the scheme coach rather than the technique coach.  I have seen Gregory give a few technique pointers to certain players - I saw him once teach Daymeion "Dante" Hughes better backpedal technique that eliminated a false step - but most of his time is spent teaching the Xs and Os for the upcoming game. 

As fans, we certainly have the right to criticize coaches.  But if we are going to do so, let’s be accurate with whom we criticize.

With that out of the way, I’d just like to say that it’s not really a big deal that defensive backs don’t "look for" or locate the ball.  It doesn’t mean they suck or are clueless.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but non-contact face guarding is perfectly legal in college football.  Granted, if non-incidental contact occurs between the DB and WR while the ball is in the air, then there is a much greater chance for a pass interference penalty than if the DB were looking for the ball.  In fact, believe it or not, but some cutting edge DB coaches (or unusual, depends on how you look at it) teach their DBs NOT to look at the ball but to just play the ball through the receiver.  Meaning that they teach the DBs to perfectly time a swat at the WR’s hands as the ball is caught, or face guard.  Many DBs will look for the ball through the WR’s eyes, meaning the DB will watch the WR’s eyes.  When the WR looks up, and his eyes get big, the DB knows the ball is near.  At that moment the DB can either just defend without looking for the ball, time a good swat at the WR’s hands, or turn and attempt to locate the ball last-second and defend it.  And in some instances, it’s completely irrelevant or useless for the DB to turn and locate the ball.  If the DB isn’t even in position to swat the ball, why slow yourself down and disorientate your upper body to just see the ball fly over your head?  In some situations, it’s just more efficient to forget the ball, concentrate on the WR, and try to make a swat or at least a tackle.  Also, let’s keep in mind that the defensive play can dictate the circumstances in which a DB locates the ball.  When playing zone, the defensive players are facing forward and towards the QB.  Locating the ball is easy and pretty much mandatory.  But when the defensive player is playing man, he might have his back to the LOS and the QB.  Locating the ball is harder, sometimes not as efficient, and has a lower requirement.

TwistNHook: Now, *that’s* a paragraph at the end there.  That paragraph would crush and eat the bones of most paragraphs.  I think I saw that paragraph stab Elijah Wood in the stomach with its stinger.  I heard that paragraph is the thing destroying NY in the JJ Abram’s upcoming super secret project cloverleaf.  Didn’t that paragraph briefly blot out the sun?  That paragraph is what happened to Iraq.

Ragnarok: Those jokes are as lame as FDR’s legs.  What?  Too soon?

YellowFever: The irony of you, of all people, complaining about editing and formatting, is incredible.  Almost as incredible as the irony of Bob Gaebler complaining about anything.

Ragnarok: You know, I was thinking about our defense’s inconsistancies earlier today, and I basically came to the conclusion that while we don’t always keep the score down, we’ve usually managed to keep the score down enough to win.  What I mean is, how many losses in the past 3 years can you really pin on the defense?  Off the top of my head (no research done whatsoever), I can only think of 3:

2004 Holiday Bowl (Texas Tech lit us up)
2005 @ UCLA (although special teams shares some of the blame)
2006 @ Tennessee (but really, poor tackling hurt us a lot more than
bad defensive schemes)

Every other loss over that span (I think), you can say that our defense gave us a chance to win, and our offense failed to capitalize.  Sure, there were defensive breakdowns (there always are), but the postgame assessment was usually something along the lines of "Gosh, USC’s got a really good team" or "@&*^$% Joe Ayoob!"

What I’m trying to say is that Gregory’s defense, while it hardly compares to that of LSU, is usually good enough to win.  And isn’t that all we’re really looking for?