With a large amount of Tedford bashing this week, I thought I’d play devil’s advocate.  I’m still not quite sure whether I want to join the "Tedford isn’t playing to win/Tedford is scared" camp or the "Tedford botched the playcalling this game but he’s still God" camp.  After I’m finished doing this analysis I think I will have convinced myself on which side I want to take. 

Please keep in mind that the purpose of this post is to bring some arguments to the table to try and justify why Tedford did what he did, why the playcalling maybe wasn’t as bad as it seemed, and to show that maybe some of us are overreacting a little bit.  Remember, I’m trying to play devil’s advocate here.  I am not advocating these arguments (yet, although by the end of this post I might) but I merely want to try and shed some light on the other side of things.  It seems like the Tedford bashers have plenty of ammo on Tedford and being pretty vocal, so I want to balance things out. 

Screen Plays
Alright, first of all, I want to talk about screen plays.  Why?  Because Tedford called a lot of them and they didn’t seem to work very well.  First of all, Tedford called 10 screen plays.  That’s 10 passes out of Longshore’s 34 attempts that were screen passes (29.4%).  Obviously, Tedford wanted screens to be a big part of the game plan.  I suppose his thinking here was that UCLA was probably going to come after Longshore with blitzes to try and make him run on his gimpy ankle.  Evidence of this was the fact that 4 out of the 10 screens occurred on our 2nd possession and first scoring drive (4 screen plays out of 11 plays during that drive).  The other six screen plays were stretched out over the remainder of the game. 

How effective were those screens?  Well, in order they got +7, +2, +5, 0, +2, +3, 0, >10 & FD (first down), >10 & FD, and +1.  So two out of the ten screens got first downs.  Eh, not so great.  The ones that didn’t get first downs averaged 2.5 yards per play which is pretty darn pitiful.  Obviously, either UCLA snuffed them out real good or we executed poorly.  I honestly think it was more of the former.  

So was calling all these screen plays a bad idea?  The devil’s advocate argument here is, NO!  The screen plays are relatively safe plays that get the ball out of Longshore’s hands quickly and take advantage of any UCLA defensive aggressiveness!  But then actually, let me interject the other side of the argument and my opinion.  Yes, I think it wasn’t such a great idea.  I like the fact that Tedford called 4 screen plays in the second touchdown scoring drive.  I think it’s safe to assume, as I already stated, that Tedford wanted to protect Longshore and just get the ball out of his hands fast.  But that stretch of 0, 2, 3, and 0 yard gains made it quite obvious that UCLA was well prepared and aware of our screen plays after the first few.  And despite getting 2 and 3 yard gains I think those were really hard fought yards.  I know we also did get two first downs off of screens towards the end but I think the first one was luck.  The second one was genius.  Without the torrent and pictures to show you, the second screen play that went for a first down was a new play I’ve never seen before in the 6 years I’ve been watching Tedford.  It’s a deception play.  I mean, obviously screens are deception plays but the way that Tedford executed this screen play was innovative and groundbreaking.  I hope to see more of those types of screens. 

But back to screens in general.  We called a lot of ‘em, 10 to be exact.  I think in most games we run about 5-6 screens.  And upon a quick glance at my Oregon notes, I see 4 screens.  We called a lot more than usual.  I think this was just a part of the gameplan to get the ball out of the QB’s hands fast.  They didn’t work that well and I must admit that the downs might have been better spent on a down-field pass. 

Part II and Part III will be posted later today. 

In an episode of ‘King of the Hill’ earlier this season, Hank tries to encourage his son Bobby’s newfound interest in football by taking him to a Texas-Nebraska football game.  Things look good for Texas until they lose in heartbreaking fashion in the closing seconds.

Some quotes after the loss (if my memory serves me correctly):

Bobby:  Is it OK that I feel like I don’t want to live anymore?
Hank:  Yes Bobby, that’s normal.

Bobby:  Can Texas still go to the Rose Bowl this year?
Hank:  No Bobby, I’m afraid not.  However, we can still go to the Gator Bowl, or the Peach Bowl, or, God Forbid, the Pacific Life Holiday Bowl.

—–

Myself, I just went kinda numb after Longshore threw the interception with the Bears within (a long) field goal range.  I sat in disbelief as the rest of the game played out, and then filed dejectedly out of the Rose Bowl.  The rest of the weekend was filed with other events that were distinctly "not football related".  After all, if I didn’t think about it, the crushing collapse of this season over the course of the last two weeks didn’t hurt so much.

Still, we’ve all got to face reality sometime, so here I am, dealing with the wreckage from Pasadena.  My thoughts on the game, the team, and where the Bears go from here (Tempe, Arizona would be a good start).

Let’s start with the positives:

- DeSean Jackson had another great game.  Some big catches, a couple TDs.  I can’t find much fault with him.

- Longshore looked pretty good, except for the interceptions.

- Pass protection was good.  It seemed like there was plenty of time to throw, and Longshore wasn’t sacked once.

Ok, now that that’s out of the way, the negatives:

- God, no running game whatsoever.  Our O-line was getting its butt kicked all day, and linebackers were all over Tedford’s play calling, plugging all of Forsett’s potential running lanes.  Time and time again, linebackers set up closer to the line of scrimmage to defend against the run, and we continued to pound it right at them, with little success.

- With no running game but plenty of success passing the ball, why the heck weren’t we passing more?  Why did we continue to run the ball up the middle for a yard and change on first and second down.  I get the whole "establishing the run" thing, but at some point, you gotta go with what works, and running between the tackles sure as heck wasn’t working.

- Our run defense was, on the other hand, flat and uninspired.  Huge holes all day, with plenty of running room.  6, 7, 8 yards on first down seemed to be standard operating procedure for the Bruins offense.  How bad was it?  With the game essentially over, but Tedford burning timeouts to try and get the ball back for one last, desperate attempt to win the game, the Bruins ran the ball up the middle 3 times to try and run out the clock.  Everyone in the Rose Bowl knew that the Bruins were going to run up the middle.  There was no reason to expect anything else.  And you know what?  UCLA got the first down to ice the game.  No trickery, no fluke plays, just straight up-the-gut running, and our defense couldn’t stop it.

- This was the hottest Cal game I’ve been to all year, and I’ve only missed the Colorado State game.  I got tired and sweaty just standing there.  Could conditioning (or a lack thereof) have been the reason our linemen were getting pushed around all game?

- OK, who’s missing Tom Schneider now?  I don’t necessarily want to pile on Jordan Kay, who’s been perfect on extra points this year and began this season as a nice surprise, but he’s now only 5-10 on field goals on the year.  Yeah, the only miss from inside 38 yards was the disputed over-the-upright attempt at Oregon, but that’s now 3 games in a row where the game has come down to the wire and a missed Kay FG attempt earlier in the game would have changed how the end of the game played out.  Should the last two games have been this close?  No, but they were, and our inability to convert drives into points really came back to haunt us.

- Of course, that’s also two games in a row where Cal had a chance to win or tie the game and we couldn’t get our kicker on the field to even attempt it.  The way we played against UCLA, I think we were very fortunate to even have that opportunity.  Of course, UCLA’s inexplicable decision to not go for it on 4th and 1 on our 34 yard line helped as well.  With the way Kahlil Bell was running all over our defense all day, I can’t imagine that the Bruins wouldn’t have gotten the 1st down.

OK, that’s it.  I don’t want to talk about it anymore, unless perhaps you know what happened regarding Tedford’s brain-cramped play-calling.  That’s not going to happen again, is it?  I mean, he’s got to be learning from his mistakes, coming up with something spectacular for Arizona State, right?  Right?