Of course we were down Garbers last season when we played Arizona but we could run against them last year. SDSU offense is similarly challenged and inept as Cals and Arizona shut them down. I imagine they will load the box up to stop the run and force Cal to prove they can pass protect to sustain drives. It will be ugly.
I agree with you most of the time, but I am taking a different tack on this game. I say it has the potential to be a replay of last year's TCU game that went into the 30's on both sides. I think Cal can and will move the ball on Arizona, but the defense has no chance of containing de Laura. Cal's blitz packages will not slow him down much because he is elusive and then becomes a terror on the run. To me, the transfer portal pickup of the year was de Laura to Arizona. You could argue Penix at Washington or Williams at USC, but no one person has had a bigger impact on a program than this dude.
I'm going to be honest here, I did not have as much time for this article as I did for previous ones (I was in Notre Dame this past weekend, and did not have as much time to watch/rewatch/clip games as I usually do). When I watch games, I will always note players making positive plays and I'll take a clip of it, as it's better to have too many clips than too few, especially because I don't always know who I'll be writing about weeks into the season by the time the Cal game rolls around (surprise players injuries, etc).
Typically what I do in this situation, when I know I have a controversial opinion, is that I'd opt to include some negative clips of the player in question instead of simply writing that such and such player is bad. In fact, that was how I got into showing constant clips in the first place, because opposing fans would always come on here and disagree with my assessment if I said anything other than X player is the best ever, yadda yadda (not saying that's what you're doing, just saying this is how I got started). So I'd throw in some video clips to my article instead, and let that do the talking for me. Complaints about my criticisms shot way down. Unfortunately, I did not have time to do that this past weekend, and to be honest I'm not usually interested in putting a non-Stanford player on blast, and prefer to focus on positives.
With that out of the way, I almost certainly wrote down plays where I thought Jaxen Turner goofed, and could probably go back and clip them if you're really interested.
Second, we do have a PFF subscription at WFC, and I would put no stock in their overall player grades. We have discussed this ad nauseam at WFC, trying to contort ourselves explaining how it could even be possible that X player has a better grade than Y player, maybe it's the nature of the binary per play grade that levels out the overall grade, and so on, but I think the truth is that PFF grades are just not that good. I have spent a ton of time looking into this in the past, say in 2019 when Evan Weaver was one of the best linebackers in the country (literally: runner-up to Isaiah Simmons in the Butkus Award, the Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year, etc).... and not even a member of PFF's Pac-12 first team. Like what? It turns out that Cal's PFF grades were being done by a high school student, and let's just say I'm skeptical that the PFF grader really understood exactly whose responsibility is what, and who should be rewarded/penalized on every given play, etc. Even the NFL PFF graders have this problem with defensive backs, where DBs publicly dispute grades and say that the PFF grader(s) doesn't understand the assignments so how could they possibly be grading them positively or negatively on a given play (e.g. you could be penalized for being the closest DB in the area, even though the receiver wasn't your responsibility, etc). I am also skeptical that someone can consistently and accurately chart plays from watching games on TV. It's night and day the things you can pick up with a good view in the stadium vs. just what you can pick up on the TV cameras.
The idea of overall grades almost makes sense. Even giving them the benefit of the doubt with all their charted plays, it makes sense that e.g. a DB was targeted 8 times, gave up 6 catches for 92 yards, and you give him a grade for that ("COV"). However, my conspiracy theory is that PFF uses overall grades to fudge numbers that make no sense, to result in overall results that more closely match reality. For example, PFF will boost the "overall" grade for "consistent play", so a player who gets a 65% every week gets an overall score like 74%, higher than any grade they got in an individual week. That way you see star players at the top of PFF comparison lists, instead of a random Bowling Green wide receiver being named the country's best receiver. Even if grades in an individual game were perfect, sometimes they're not comparable because the grader of one game could be a whole lot tougher than another (notably, Utah players--although good-- frequently receive inflated scores. Even when Cal's secondary was full of future NFL players like Ashtyn Davis, Jaylinn Hawkins, Cam Bynum, etc, they were all graded lower than ALL of Utah's defensive backs, which is just objectively ridiculous).
Further, I really, really dug into PFF grades this off-season with Notre Dame. I like the objective measures PFF provides, like snap counts, positions/personnel groups, WR vs CB targets, run stops and missed tackles, etc. It helps me notice things I might otherwise overlook, like how ND's RB lined up as a slot receiver on ~10% of snaps (typically, I only notice this on TV if the player is actually being targeted). I figured Cal has a small fanbase but Notre Dame has a big one, so surely their PFF grades are held to higher scrutiny, right? It's possible that I'm missing something here because this was the first time I noticed that even their objective tallies may not be correct. I focused on Notre Dame's offensive line (because I thought it would be a bigger story at the time), as ND was literally bottom 10 in the country in sacks allowed and rush yards in their first 5 games (note the unexpectedly close games with e.g. Toledo). I went through every ND game this off-season, noted every single time an OL got beat or missed an assignment and so on, and my numbers ended up WAY higher than PFF's. You can actually verify this if you have a PFF subscription and compare it to the box scores: ND gave up more sacks in those first 5 games than PFF credits their offensive linemen giving up for the whole season. Does PFF just not count a "sack" if they think the defensive lineman just made an amazing play to beat them? If more than one player is responsible (a DL splits a double team), do they just assign that sack to no one? I feel like I am definitely missing something, because the tallies and grades were so far off reality that I felt I must be missing something. So now I'm even skeptical of PFF's objective measures as well.
This concludes my thesis on why PFF grades are bad.
Lastly, I just want to clarify that I'm not saying that Jaxen Turner is bad or anything. I thought he was fantastic early on in his career, and he did have a couple of fantastic games (if you check my previous Arizona articles, I did speak highly of him). I was just making the point that I don't think he has played all that great so far this year. I wrote "boom or bust" to mean that aggressive play as a safety is great when it works out, but bad when it doesn't. For example, cheating up and trying to jump a route for an interception is great when you get an interception, but if you miss, you're out of position and no longer a safety and have just given up a big play or TD. From memory, I believe he got caught out of position a few times against Mississippi State, for instance. Turner has had some great games, but he's also had some not so great ones, and I'd expect to see more consistency at this point of his career.
Sep 22, 2022Liked by Piotr Le, Christopher Helling
Dang! That is some serious dedication Mr. Helling! Undoubtedly, you have a passion that drives you to dedicate so many hours to acquiring all of this detailed knowledge. Still, WFC and all its followers is lucky to have you producing these articles. My appreciation for your work just grew immensely.
Sep 22, 2022Liked by Rob Hwang, Piotr Le, Christopher Helling
All great points, I appreciate the response. I shared your articles within Arizona forums and the responses were predominantly positive as well, so even if you didn't have as much time as you wanted, the analysis was written as if you had followed the team as close as we do.
Re: Turner, it's funny you thought highly of him, because many of us - myself included - did not. The boom/bust narrative is very accurate but most of his Arizona career has been bust. The physical tools have always been there but you never knew what was going on in his head. When Nansen came in, he sent his defense to "Football School" and it seems Jaxen Turner has been the most prominent benefactor. His progress between early/mid 2021 to now has stunned me as - again - someone who didn't rate him highly. I'm sure, as you point out, there are plenty of goofs in the tape. But the number of obvious mistakes (particularly completely blown coverages and unnecessary Targeting penalties) has dropped to the point where my main concerns are directed elsewhere. His strip, scoop, and almost score vs Miss St. is easily one of the best plays an Arizona defender has made in a decade.
For the sake of honesty, if I'm Cal, I'm singling out Gunner Maldonado and Kolbe Cage and making them stop you. If he's locked in and not facing a pure burner, CRW can play at an All-Pac 12 level (thought your analysis on him is spot-on). Treydan Stukes is a great story (former walk-on, tremendous athlete) who missed 99% of Fall Camp, but we generally feel good about him. Certainly feel better about him than Rutherford who we're all on the same page about.
Maldonado is a giant ? and mostly a negative ? at that. While Cage has only played 3 games of LB in his entire life and was abjectly terrible in at least one of those. That's just where Arizona is at though. Young guys have to play when you're rebuilding from the abyss, and they're going to struggle. Expect to see true Freshman Jacob Manu in the exact same situation. He got thrown to the fire as an undersized LB against a ridiculously physical NDSU team and just did the best he could.
Again, appreciate the analysis and response - especially on the PFF info. I always love seeing how other fanbases view Arizona, and this (and your offensive preview) is one of the most accurate breakdowns I've seen in that regard. Kudos.
I hope we get back to running more frequently, albeit with successful blocking. Come to think of it, we have not been especially dominant in that area even against Davis and UNLV, relying on the elusiveness of Ott to create even when the holes are not there. Plummer (not sure) may have the longest run from scrimmage this season, or maybe DeCarlos Brooks did. Anyway at that position outside of Ott and a couple of Brooks runs against Notre Dame we have not been explosive. Not sure what happened to Damien Moore who may be third string at the moment. But overall I am not that sanguine that the run game will be effective, but hopefully we can get over 200 yards rushing.
On the Arizona defense, like goBears49 I watched the end of the AZ-NDSU game. Zona was getting punished by the NDSU running game but suddenly stiffened in the 4th quarter which was a bit of a surprise.
Of course we were down Garbers last season when we played Arizona but we could run against them last year. SDSU offense is similarly challenged and inept as Cals and Arizona shut them down. I imagine they will load the box up to stop the run and force Cal to prove they can pass protect to sustain drives. It will be ugly.
I agree with you most of the time, but I am taking a different tack on this game. I say it has the potential to be a replay of last year's TCU game that went into the 30's on both sides. I think Cal can and will move the ball on Arizona, but the defense has no chance of containing de Laura. Cal's blitz packages will not slow him down much because he is elusive and then becomes a terror on the run. To me, the transfer portal pickup of the year was de Laura to Arizona. You could argue Penix at Washington or Williams at USC, but no one person has had a bigger impact on a program than this dude.
Really good write from an Arizona fan perspective. Biggest issue is run defense, that other LB position, and depth.
Only critique is that Jaxen Turner has been mostly *really* good this year. Actually leads the Pac-12 safeties in PFF grades: https://twitter.com/WestCoastCFB/status/1572439875856760834?s=20&t=itCZIA5VXBk4USWmHmsYYA
First, thanks for the kind words.
I'm going to be honest here, I did not have as much time for this article as I did for previous ones (I was in Notre Dame this past weekend, and did not have as much time to watch/rewatch/clip games as I usually do). When I watch games, I will always note players making positive plays and I'll take a clip of it, as it's better to have too many clips than too few, especially because I don't always know who I'll be writing about weeks into the season by the time the Cal game rolls around (surprise players injuries, etc).
Typically what I do in this situation, when I know I have a controversial opinion, is that I'd opt to include some negative clips of the player in question instead of simply writing that such and such player is bad. In fact, that was how I got into showing constant clips in the first place, because opposing fans would always come on here and disagree with my assessment if I said anything other than X player is the best ever, yadda yadda (not saying that's what you're doing, just saying this is how I got started). So I'd throw in some video clips to my article instead, and let that do the talking for me. Complaints about my criticisms shot way down. Unfortunately, I did not have time to do that this past weekend, and to be honest I'm not usually interested in putting a non-Stanford player on blast, and prefer to focus on positives.
With that out of the way, I almost certainly wrote down plays where I thought Jaxen Turner goofed, and could probably go back and clip them if you're really interested.
Second, we do have a PFF subscription at WFC, and I would put no stock in their overall player grades. We have discussed this ad nauseam at WFC, trying to contort ourselves explaining how it could even be possible that X player has a better grade than Y player, maybe it's the nature of the binary per play grade that levels out the overall grade, and so on, but I think the truth is that PFF grades are just not that good. I have spent a ton of time looking into this in the past, say in 2019 when Evan Weaver was one of the best linebackers in the country (literally: runner-up to Isaiah Simmons in the Butkus Award, the Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year, etc).... and not even a member of PFF's Pac-12 first team. Like what? It turns out that Cal's PFF grades were being done by a high school student, and let's just say I'm skeptical that the PFF grader really understood exactly whose responsibility is what, and who should be rewarded/penalized on every given play, etc. Even the NFL PFF graders have this problem with defensive backs, where DBs publicly dispute grades and say that the PFF grader(s) doesn't understand the assignments so how could they possibly be grading them positively or negatively on a given play (e.g. you could be penalized for being the closest DB in the area, even though the receiver wasn't your responsibility, etc). I am also skeptical that someone can consistently and accurately chart plays from watching games on TV. It's night and day the things you can pick up with a good view in the stadium vs. just what you can pick up on the TV cameras.
The idea of overall grades almost makes sense. Even giving them the benefit of the doubt with all their charted plays, it makes sense that e.g. a DB was targeted 8 times, gave up 6 catches for 92 yards, and you give him a grade for that ("COV"). However, my conspiracy theory is that PFF uses overall grades to fudge numbers that make no sense, to result in overall results that more closely match reality. For example, PFF will boost the "overall" grade for "consistent play", so a player who gets a 65% every week gets an overall score like 74%, higher than any grade they got in an individual week. That way you see star players at the top of PFF comparison lists, instead of a random Bowling Green wide receiver being named the country's best receiver. Even if grades in an individual game were perfect, sometimes they're not comparable because the grader of one game could be a whole lot tougher than another (notably, Utah players--although good-- frequently receive inflated scores. Even when Cal's secondary was full of future NFL players like Ashtyn Davis, Jaylinn Hawkins, Cam Bynum, etc, they were all graded lower than ALL of Utah's defensive backs, which is just objectively ridiculous).
Further, I really, really dug into PFF grades this off-season with Notre Dame. I like the objective measures PFF provides, like snap counts, positions/personnel groups, WR vs CB targets, run stops and missed tackles, etc. It helps me notice things I might otherwise overlook, like how ND's RB lined up as a slot receiver on ~10% of snaps (typically, I only notice this on TV if the player is actually being targeted). I figured Cal has a small fanbase but Notre Dame has a big one, so surely their PFF grades are held to higher scrutiny, right? It's possible that I'm missing something here because this was the first time I noticed that even their objective tallies may not be correct. I focused on Notre Dame's offensive line (because I thought it would be a bigger story at the time), as ND was literally bottom 10 in the country in sacks allowed and rush yards in their first 5 games (note the unexpectedly close games with e.g. Toledo). I went through every ND game this off-season, noted every single time an OL got beat or missed an assignment and so on, and my numbers ended up WAY higher than PFF's. You can actually verify this if you have a PFF subscription and compare it to the box scores: ND gave up more sacks in those first 5 games than PFF credits their offensive linemen giving up for the whole season. Does PFF just not count a "sack" if they think the defensive lineman just made an amazing play to beat them? If more than one player is responsible (a DL splits a double team), do they just assign that sack to no one? I feel like I am definitely missing something, because the tallies and grades were so far off reality that I felt I must be missing something. So now I'm even skeptical of PFF's objective measures as well.
This concludes my thesis on why PFF grades are bad.
Lastly, I just want to clarify that I'm not saying that Jaxen Turner is bad or anything. I thought he was fantastic early on in his career, and he did have a couple of fantastic games (if you check my previous Arizona articles, I did speak highly of him). I was just making the point that I don't think he has played all that great so far this year. I wrote "boom or bust" to mean that aggressive play as a safety is great when it works out, but bad when it doesn't. For example, cheating up and trying to jump a route for an interception is great when you get an interception, but if you miss, you're out of position and no longer a safety and have just given up a big play or TD. From memory, I believe he got caught out of position a few times against Mississippi State, for instance. Turner has had some great games, but he's also had some not so great ones, and I'd expect to see more consistency at this point of his career.
Dang! That is some serious dedication Mr. Helling! Undoubtedly, you have a passion that drives you to dedicate so many hours to acquiring all of this detailed knowledge. Still, WFC and all its followers is lucky to have you producing these articles. My appreciation for your work just grew immensely.
All great points, I appreciate the response. I shared your articles within Arizona forums and the responses were predominantly positive as well, so even if you didn't have as much time as you wanted, the analysis was written as if you had followed the team as close as we do.
Re: Turner, it's funny you thought highly of him, because many of us - myself included - did not. The boom/bust narrative is very accurate but most of his Arizona career has been bust. The physical tools have always been there but you never knew what was going on in his head. When Nansen came in, he sent his defense to "Football School" and it seems Jaxen Turner has been the most prominent benefactor. His progress between early/mid 2021 to now has stunned me as - again - someone who didn't rate him highly. I'm sure, as you point out, there are plenty of goofs in the tape. But the number of obvious mistakes (particularly completely blown coverages and unnecessary Targeting penalties) has dropped to the point where my main concerns are directed elsewhere. His strip, scoop, and almost score vs Miss St. is easily one of the best plays an Arizona defender has made in a decade.
For the sake of honesty, if I'm Cal, I'm singling out Gunner Maldonado and Kolbe Cage and making them stop you. If he's locked in and not facing a pure burner, CRW can play at an All-Pac 12 level (thought your analysis on him is spot-on). Treydan Stukes is a great story (former walk-on, tremendous athlete) who missed 99% of Fall Camp, but we generally feel good about him. Certainly feel better about him than Rutherford who we're all on the same page about.
Maldonado is a giant ? and mostly a negative ? at that. While Cage has only played 3 games of LB in his entire life and was abjectly terrible in at least one of those. That's just where Arizona is at though. Young guys have to play when you're rebuilding from the abyss, and they're going to struggle. Expect to see true Freshman Jacob Manu in the exact same situation. He got thrown to the fire as an undersized LB against a ridiculously physical NDSU team and just did the best he could.
Again, appreciate the analysis and response - especially on the PFF info. I always love seeing how other fanbases view Arizona, and this (and your offensive preview) is one of the most accurate breakdowns I've seen in that regard. Kudos.
Best of luck beyond Saturday.
SEE. WE CAN GET ALONG
I hope we get back to running more frequently, albeit with successful blocking. Come to think of it, we have not been especially dominant in that area even against Davis and UNLV, relying on the elusiveness of Ott to create even when the holes are not there. Plummer (not sure) may have the longest run from scrimmage this season, or maybe DeCarlos Brooks did. Anyway at that position outside of Ott and a couple of Brooks runs against Notre Dame we have not been explosive. Not sure what happened to Damien Moore who may be third string at the moment. But overall I am not that sanguine that the run game will be effective, but hopefully we can get over 200 yards rushing.
On the Arizona defense, like goBears49 I watched the end of the AZ-NDSU game. Zona was getting punished by the NDSU running game but suddenly stiffened in the 4th quarter which was a bit of a surprise.