“ The defense gave up a bunch of third downs”? Unlv was 1/12 in third down conversions and 1/4 in fourth down conversions. Hand it to the D - they won the game for Cal!
Another chapter in the ‘How to Make a Win Feel Like a Loss’ novel that we get to see this coaching staff write five to seven times a year. Of all the frustrations to come from this game - the lack of asses in seats, the students that can’t be bothered to show up, the fact that we apparently no longer have a cheer or dance team, another season of disastrous offensive line play that will surely cost us wins, the complete lack of a killer instinct to freaking bury teams that have no business hanging with us - what has me most on the verge of going nuclear is how the hell the guy responsible for scoring 60% of the touchdowns so far this season only gets handed the ball 7 times? What more does this coaching staff need to see to realize Ott is our most dynamic playmaker? We have a fanbase long down the road to apathy that hasn’t had a star worth coming to see since maybe Goff. But nooooo, we wouldn’t want to generate any level of excitement in the mundane world of Wilcox-coached football. Good lord it makes my blood boil. Let’s keep scraping for .500 seasons with 20k or less in Memorial. Must be nice to get extensions with a sub .500 overall win-loss record and pocket a shade under $5 mil a year with the only expectation being the continuation of mediocrity. I can’t wait to see where Ott transfers this off-season to become the featured back. In the meantime, I will continue hoping to be proven wrong.
Great read avinash. Really solid analysis and I always love your input. The UNLV game was a mess in the second half. It was a duplicate of the Nevada game last year where CAL jumped on them early and didn’t put them away when they should. I don’t see a lot of “step on the throat” mentality when they have these teams on the ropes. They allow them to get back in the game and it’s becoming a trend in the Wilcox era. Having said that, I still believe in JW. He’s a heck of a coach and he’s the right fit for the program. The fact that he could have gone to Oregon with unlimited support and resources proves he can coach. Players like him and he likes being in Berkeley. BUT, the offensive line continues to be a mess and he hasn’t been able to fix it. If the line simply average with the young explosive offensive weapons CAL has this year, this team I believe could go 8-4. Plummer is clearly an upgrade from garbers when he has time in the pocket. His arm talent and experience shows it. But the o-line is a disaster and CAL will be 6-6 this year if it isn’t cleaned up in a hurry. Way to many missed assignments and defenders just rushing freely. I’m surprised Plummer wasn’t injured by the end of the game with the amount of abuse he took.
WRT playing Ott more, I agree they shouldn't have pulled him until there was a bigger margin. But looking at the box score, it seems like coaches really need a third RB to get reps. Ott had 7 carries for 52 (7.4 YPC) and 1 TD. Moore had 6 carries for 26, a below-average 4.3 YPC (last year was 5.2). Seems like staff settled on Brooks as the #3 back and gave him 10 carries for a bad 22 yards (2.2 YPC). We don't need RB by committee this year -- Ott & Moore should get vast majority of reps -- but a team can't get by with just 2 backs, and young players need reps. Brooks appears to really need reps.
We don't need a 3rd RB when the person who should be our primary back is ONLY GETTING 7 CARRIES. Vereen carried the ball 45 times against Furd because Tedford wanted to win. Wilcox needs to stop being scared of losing and just focus on winning. Give Ott the ball 20-25x a game. Why the hell are Brooks and Moore getting 16 carries vs. his 7?
The problem is the drop off in the RB room is substantial...pound for pound, Ott is probably the most gifted skill position player Wilcox has signed in 6 seasons - you build a frigging Offense around talents like that...you DON’T lift them when you need a 1st down in predictable running situations to ice a game...the Bears were lucky it didn’t cost them a W.
The other backs don’t make anyone miss, and given the early inconsistency of the OL, that’s what this squad really needs right niw.
Hate to tell you, Bob, but chances are better than average that Ott leaves Cal after this season and heads to a better team. That’s life for a middling program in the era of the transfer portal and immediate eligibility. I’ll be shocked if we keep him.
I respect your opinion - I just completely disagree with it. The O looks noticeably different with a back of Ott’s caliber on the field, and both the statistics and eye test tell the story. Those other backs are struggling to make plays behind an O-line that has been completely overmatched by UC Davis and UNLV…the only guy making plays is Ott - feed him.
Turtling? I think they just got outcoached and outplayed. Cal should have lost the game at the end but they got bailed out by their defense. Again. Something is very seriously wrong with the offensive line and the offense in general with this team. For years. Position coaches may be underperforming, but the responsibility ultimately falls on Wilcox. He made the hires. It's incredible how consistently poor Cal's O-Line has been and continues to be year after year.
Getting beat one-on-one on the OL and DL is not going vanilla and turtling up, it is flat out getting your ass beat one-on-one.
Simple, no excuses or reasoning ("don't give up the play book") needed. Our lines are getting beat, 2 weeks in a row now. Angus has to go prior to the end of year.
UNLV is way better this year than they were last year and the year before. I think Wilcox said they had 40 new players through the transfer portal. Their O and D-line's were both solid. They had a legit #1 receiver and the QB was solid. They had a decent running back. Transfer portal guys are an immediate upgrade. Watching the game will leave you with a terrible first impression that is a knee jerk response. Watching the film will give you a much better perspective. I'm not going to say we played well; we have some real issues to work out, but we're not nearly as bad as you may think. If we can solve our scheme issues then, like Marshall, we can beat Notre Dame.
Last year it was Nevada is going undefeated and so much better than a typical MWC school. Now it is UNLV is so much better than they were last year. So many excuses for Wilcox and this staff. Why didn’t Cal as improve proportionally from last season?
Truth is, anything else than 7-5 in year 6 and in a down year for the Pac12 and Wilcox should be fired like Frost.
And the Pac-12 is better this year, and the MWC is back to getting steamrolled. They had the worst start to the year of any of the FBS conferences I think. We lost our window. WSU/OSU are both better, half of Furd's roster isn't injuured anymore, USC is firing on all cylinders, UCLA is improving year over year, ASU/Arizona both have life again. Our saving grace is that Colorado is flat out the worst, meaning our floor is 11th in the Pac-12.
I don't think coaches should react to fans, and should do what they think is best. But if Wilcox and Co. don't start Ott next week against Notre Dame after what we saw against FCS and G5 level talent by everyone else, that's just malpratice and someone needs to be fired by the end of the year. You can blame the offensive line or whatever, but the coaches need to do what it takes to win with what we have. If we have an inconsistent o-line, we need to stop starting RBs who have no idea how to gain yards behind said line.
Ott started this game, coaches just pulled him early to get the other guys playing time and get used to a new line. Brooks clearly needs reps and we can't have the whole running game rely on just two guys. Coach pulled Ott too early but it's not like he didn't give him the start.
Ott will start against ND and he'll get a larger share of the reps than he did vs UNLV
My point is that Ott shouldn't be a victim of RB by committee when he's the only effective option against even inferior talent. I understand spreading the wealth for experience -- but when you can afford to. We obviously cannot. We need to exploit Ott for everything he can give us before he gets targeted for transfer by a more prestigious program.
Coach W is hired to win games. If he doesn't play Ott and we lose, it's not good for him. I he plays Ott and we lose, its not good for him. He's going to do what's best for the team. But IMHO, they should play Ott. Lol.
History repeats itself much too often with this team. I am not sure that the coaches intentionally go vanilla or that is all they can come up with. Not so sure most of the problems are with the play calling. Either way, it will be a nasty, brutish, and long season if things stay as they are. Hopefully the line play gets better, the reads get better, the blocking on the screens improves, they stop running plays to the flats that don't work, and they play Ott as much as possible. Cal is a much better team with him in the game, regardless of the play calls. Looking forward to the Arizona game in a couple weeks.
This was a credible analysis of the UNLV game. We learned that our Offensive Line is not yet capable of giving our quarterback and receivers time to deliver, and our running game is weak. Our defense performed reasonably well, but I was surprised at how easily in the second half the Rebels were able to run against us. Let's hope that Notre Dame's quarterback is out for the Cal game, and we can at least play a close game.
If Ott does not lead the team in carries from here on out (barring injury, of course) something is seriously wrong...which I suspect is the case, TBH. The autonomy JW gives his staff is a ticket to mediocrity.
Regardless, Aristotle & Angus should be on the hot seat.
It's not about saving the playbook for better teams, or we wouldn't have been running the same vanilla bullshit all throughout last season. Part of college football is running up the score on lower quality teams -- if we refuse to do this we will never be considered a good team.
Happens all the time now, particularly with teams in the middle that need to play long. Cal ran a very vanilla offense against Nevada and unleashed a whole bunch of new plays and looks against TCU partly. Wazzu uncorked new blitz looks against Wisconsin after doing base against Idaho. Wouldn't be surprised to see us try some new stuff next week.
Tedford did similar stuff, but had higher-level talent most of his time here because he recruited better, so we dusted most everyone.
Against TCU partly, and then the same boring plays throughout conference play. I have no faith that an open playbook is going to magically appear in year 3.
I think Musgrave is actually a great OC that has improved our offensive potential since he joined, but he needs to realize this isn't the NFL. And Musgrave and Wilcox both need to get their heads out of their asses in regards to seniority and just play our best players within the realms of safety.
And turtling against "lesser" talent is legitimately the worst possible strategy for college football. We won't be respected until we're beating UNLV's by 30. The moment the second half started and I realized what was going on, I wanted to turn the TV off. If Cal wants fans in the stands, it's beyond just poor marketing -- they need to show the students that we're actually competitive at a P5 level instead of showing that we're ready to be left out by the B1G and invite the MWC over to the Pac-12 since that's where we are.
I don’t mind turtling against lesser talented teams and winning knife fights 20-14 against UNLV and other G5 teams IF it meant Wilcox is going 10-2 or 9-3 the rest of the season. That isn’t the case here. In fact, I don’t think we are “turtling” in season 6. Turtling is just an excuse to give Wilcox and his staff a pass for his poor offense. We aren’t playing turtle, we are a turtle. We need to recognize that and stop deflecting for Wilcox. Was Dykes turtling his defense in year 4?
I agree that turtling sounds generous or like an excuse, but it might just be semantics. I think it's true in the sense that most quality P5 teams keep things vanilla for the B and C level OOC opponents. At least, on paper that's the right strategy.
The difference here, which is also an indictment on Wilcox's understanding of reality, is that Cal is not a quality P5 team.
We arent the 2016 Wisconsin Badgers (11-3) which from day 1 seemed to be the basis of Wilcox's not only philosophy but decision making.
It's great to aspire to that, and we would be happy to be there. But you have to build up to that first. And handling your business impressively against the teams you should beat is important to building momentum.
It's like nothing is actually building here. We're stuck in being a program modeled in the image of the 2016 Badgers but not having the coaching or recruiting to actually get there, or show any signs of at least moving in that direction. Just excuses and what-if's and "strategy" year in, year out, game in game out.
But whether Sonny Dykes beats UNLV 55-47 or Wilcox beats UNLV 20-14 is hardly relevant. The issue is that we would rather see something more along the lines of Cal beating UNLV 38-10, while still "turtling" and limiting the number of snaps and getting backups playing time because the game was never in doubt from start to finish, because they are a well coached team with a culture of winning who handles their business against middling Group of 5 teams.
And there will always be exception games here or there, but the problem is the rule not the exception in the last decade.
I disagree. CFB rankings are largely done via statistics, which have their own "eye test." If our margin of victory is 6 points against teams who rank in the bottom 60 of the FBS, we will never be ranked outside of the bottom 60 of the FBS. Because we sure as hell aren't blowing out the USC/Georgia's of the world like that.
The only way to overcome low margins of victory is to have 1-2 losses max on the season, and if you can't blow out the lower level teams you aren't finishing the season with 10+ wins. If you're going to turtle, get up by 30 first. Hell, we lost our one chance at a Rose Bowl because Tedford refused to blow out Southern Mississippi -- we should have learned this lesson the hard way.
Holding back the offense against Nevada while in the lead makes sense. What is the reason for holding the offense back against Nevada once we were losing?
You only can install so many plays during game week. Typically its 20 to 30 plays. The rest come from your list of staples. The plays you install can be run out of multiple sets to disguise them. Scouting and game planning are critical with respect to picking the right schemes for the game. No coach uses their entire play book early in the season, not just because they don't want to show it, but because they haven't practiced many of the plays enough. Over the course of the season the repertoire grows.
Teams usually rely on base on a given week and practice advanced looks specific to game opponent. So if Musgrave doesn't believe UNLV deserved anything more than your base sets the team probably didn't practice enough advanced looks to feel confident to throw them out there compared to your standard two minute offensive drills, which Cal should generally feel confident in executing but failed to do so last year because of numerous offensive limitations.
The thing about CFB vs. the NFL is that you have a revolving door of a roster because college and NFL drafts take away your players. If Wilcox/Musgrave need 3 years to be comfortable letting anyone use the full playbook we haven't seen thus far, we're royally f*cked.
At some point, you need to adapt and draw a line and stand behind. They need to figure out how to either simplify the playbook so that it can be executed at a college level without blue chip recruits, or they need to do a better job coaching up the players so that we're not losing to Nevada and UNLV every year. We may have won the game this weekend, but in my eyes that was a loss. We were f*cking outplayed by a G5 cellar dweller and managed to scrape out a "win" with defensive heroics for the entire second half while the offense took a dump on the field because their coaches asked them to. No wonder all our receivers transfer to different teams after 1-2 years.
And those same offensive limitations are present again in year 6 of Wilcox and year 2 of Musgrave so they seem content on just banging their head against the same wall and not trying to adapt.
“ The defense gave up a bunch of third downs”? Unlv was 1/12 in third down conversions and 1/4 in fourth down conversions. Hand it to the D - they won the game for Cal!
Random thought: Ott and Cal should partner with NBA Youngboy and make shirts with the slogan "I feel like I'm Marshawn Lynch in 2006"
Another chapter in the ‘How to Make a Win Feel Like a Loss’ novel that we get to see this coaching staff write five to seven times a year. Of all the frustrations to come from this game - the lack of asses in seats, the students that can’t be bothered to show up, the fact that we apparently no longer have a cheer or dance team, another season of disastrous offensive line play that will surely cost us wins, the complete lack of a killer instinct to freaking bury teams that have no business hanging with us - what has me most on the verge of going nuclear is how the hell the guy responsible for scoring 60% of the touchdowns so far this season only gets handed the ball 7 times? What more does this coaching staff need to see to realize Ott is our most dynamic playmaker? We have a fanbase long down the road to apathy that hasn’t had a star worth coming to see since maybe Goff. But nooooo, we wouldn’t want to generate any level of excitement in the mundane world of Wilcox-coached football. Good lord it makes my blood boil. Let’s keep scraping for .500 seasons with 20k or less in Memorial. Must be nice to get extensions with a sub .500 overall win-loss record and pocket a shade under $5 mil a year with the only expectation being the continuation of mediocrity. I can’t wait to see where Ott transfers this off-season to become the featured back. In the meantime, I will continue hoping to be proven wrong.
Great read avinash. Really solid analysis and I always love your input. The UNLV game was a mess in the second half. It was a duplicate of the Nevada game last year where CAL jumped on them early and didn’t put them away when they should. I don’t see a lot of “step on the throat” mentality when they have these teams on the ropes. They allow them to get back in the game and it’s becoming a trend in the Wilcox era. Having said that, I still believe in JW. He’s a heck of a coach and he’s the right fit for the program. The fact that he could have gone to Oregon with unlimited support and resources proves he can coach. Players like him and he likes being in Berkeley. BUT, the offensive line continues to be a mess and he hasn’t been able to fix it. If the line simply average with the young explosive offensive weapons CAL has this year, this team I believe could go 8-4. Plummer is clearly an upgrade from garbers when he has time in the pocket. His arm talent and experience shows it. But the o-line is a disaster and CAL will be 6-6 this year if it isn’t cleaned up in a hurry. Way to many missed assignments and defenders just rushing freely. I’m surprised Plummer wasn’t injured by the end of the game with the amount of abuse he took.
Just win baby. No more excuses.
WRT playing Ott more, I agree they shouldn't have pulled him until there was a bigger margin. But looking at the box score, it seems like coaches really need a third RB to get reps. Ott had 7 carries for 52 (7.4 YPC) and 1 TD. Moore had 6 carries for 26, a below-average 4.3 YPC (last year was 5.2). Seems like staff settled on Brooks as the #3 back and gave him 10 carries for a bad 22 yards (2.2 YPC). We don't need RB by committee this year -- Ott & Moore should get vast majority of reps -- but a team can't get by with just 2 backs, and young players need reps. Brooks appears to really need reps.
We don't need a 3rd RB when the person who should be our primary back is ONLY GETTING 7 CARRIES. Vereen carried the ball 45 times against Furd because Tedford wanted to win. Wilcox needs to stop being scared of losing and just focus on winning. Give Ott the ball 20-25x a game. Why the hell are Brooks and Moore getting 16 carries vs. his 7?
Yes, this.
Too…many…fumbles…
The problem is the drop off in the RB room is substantial...pound for pound, Ott is probably the most gifted skill position player Wilcox has signed in 6 seasons - you build a frigging Offense around talents like that...you DON’T lift them when you need a 1st down in predictable running situations to ice a game...the Bears were lucky it didn’t cost them a W.
The other backs don’t make anyone miss, and given the early inconsistency of the OL, that’s what this squad really needs right niw.
Hate to tell you, Bob, but chances are better than average that Ott leaves Cal after this season and heads to a better team. That’s life for a middling program in the era of the transfer portal and immediate eligibility. I’ll be shocked if we keep him.
I respect your opinion - I just completely disagree with it. The O looks noticeably different with a back of Ott’s caliber on the field, and both the statistics and eye test tell the story. Those other backs are struggling to make plays behind an O-line that has been completely overmatched by UC Davis and UNLV…the only guy making plays is Ott - feed him.
6.5 yards per carry is massive, I have no idea what you're talking about. That means a first down every 2 times he touches the ball.
Turtling? I think they just got outcoached and outplayed. Cal should have lost the game at the end but they got bailed out by their defense. Again. Something is very seriously wrong with the offensive line and the offense in general with this team. For years. Position coaches may be underperforming, but the responsibility ultimately falls on Wilcox. He made the hires. It's incredible how consistently poor Cal's O-Line has been and continues to be year after year.
Getting beat one-on-one on the OL and DL is not going vanilla and turtling up, it is flat out getting your ass beat one-on-one.
Simple, no excuses or reasoning ("don't give up the play book") needed. Our lines are getting beat, 2 weeks in a row now. Angus has to go prior to the end of year.
UNLV is way better this year than they were last year and the year before. I think Wilcox said they had 40 new players through the transfer portal. Their O and D-line's were both solid. They had a legit #1 receiver and the QB was solid. They had a decent running back. Transfer portal guys are an immediate upgrade. Watching the game will leave you with a terrible first impression that is a knee jerk response. Watching the film will give you a much better perspective. I'm not going to say we played well; we have some real issues to work out, but we're not nearly as bad as you may think. If we can solve our scheme issues then, like Marshall, we can beat Notre Dame.
I agree with this...that UNLV team sure didn’t look like a 3-10 team in the MWC.
Still, Tedford in year 6 would’ve hammered them.
Last year it was Nevada is going undefeated and so much better than a typical MWC school. Now it is UNLV is so much better than they were last year. So many excuses for Wilcox and this staff. Why didn’t Cal as improve proportionally from last season?
Truth is, anything else than 7-5 in year 6 and in a down year for the Pac12 and Wilcox should be fired like Frost.
And the Pac-12 is better this year, and the MWC is back to getting steamrolled. They had the worst start to the year of any of the FBS conferences I think. We lost our window. WSU/OSU are both better, half of Furd's roster isn't injuured anymore, USC is firing on all cylinders, UCLA is improving year over year, ASU/Arizona both have life again. Our saving grace is that Colorado is flat out the worst, meaning our floor is 11th in the Pac-12.
I don't think coaches should react to fans, and should do what they think is best. But if Wilcox and Co. don't start Ott next week against Notre Dame after what we saw against FCS and G5 level talent by everyone else, that's just malpratice and someone needs to be fired by the end of the year. You can blame the offensive line or whatever, but the coaches need to do what it takes to win with what we have. If we have an inconsistent o-line, we need to stop starting RBs who have no idea how to gain yards behind said line.
Ott started this game, coaches just pulled him early to get the other guys playing time and get used to a new line. Brooks clearly needs reps and we can't have the whole running game rely on just two guys. Coach pulled Ott too early but it's not like he didn't give him the start.
Ott will start against ND and he'll get a larger share of the reps than he did vs UNLV
My point is that Ott shouldn't be a victim of RB by committee when he's the only effective option against even inferior talent. I understand spreading the wealth for experience -- but when you can afford to. We obviously cannot. We need to exploit Ott for everything he can give us before he gets targeted for transfer by a more prestigious program.
Coach W is hired to win games. If he doesn't play Ott and we lose, it's not good for him. I he plays Ott and we lose, its not good for him. He's going to do what's best for the team. But IMHO, they should play Ott. Lol.
Respectfully Rugbear, it sure seems that Coach W is hired to:
1. Run a clean program
2. Graduate student-athletes
3. Win games
;-)
"Coach W is hired to win games"
That is debatable.
Edit: simplified
Ott has the tools to find holes. The OL can manage. The other RB’s cannot.
History repeats itself much too often with this team. I am not sure that the coaches intentionally go vanilla or that is all they can come up with. Not so sure most of the problems are with the play calling. Either way, it will be a nasty, brutish, and long season if things stay as they are. Hopefully the line play gets better, the reads get better, the blocking on the screens improves, they stop running plays to the flats that don't work, and they play Ott as much as possible. Cal is a much better team with him in the game, regardless of the play calls. Looking forward to the Arizona game in a couple weeks.
This was a credible analysis of the UNLV game. We learned that our Offensive Line is not yet capable of giving our quarterback and receivers time to deliver, and our running game is weak. Our defense performed reasonably well, but I was surprised at how easily in the second half the Rebels were able to run against us. Let's hope that Notre Dame's quarterback is out for the Cal game, and we can at least play a close game.
Absolutely embarrassing this continues to happen in YEAR FUCKING 6.
So many excuses in year 6 by Cal fans for Wilcox.
UNLV is so much more improved!! They will be lucky to win 5 games this season.
We are just playing vanilla and going turtle for quarters 2-4!!
Wilcox just needs more time to build up the OL talent.
If Ott does not lead the team in carries from here on out (barring injury, of course) something is seriously wrong...which I suspect is the case, TBH. The autonomy JW gives his staff is a ticket to mediocrity.
Regardless, Aristotle & Angus should be on the hot seat.
That photo defines the Wilcox era: predictable and boring.
All that makes sense in years 1 and 2 but we are in year 6. Wilcox isn’t holding anything other than the program back at this point.
Never seen a coach whose wins sure feel like losses....Wilcox is that guy.
I feel zero elation to be 2-0...more frustration.
It's not about saving the playbook for better teams, or we wouldn't have been running the same vanilla bullshit all throughout last season. Part of college football is running up the score on lower quality teams -- if we refuse to do this we will never be considered a good team.
Happens all the time now, particularly with teams in the middle that need to play long. Cal ran a very vanilla offense against Nevada and unleashed a whole bunch of new plays and looks against TCU partly. Wazzu uncorked new blitz looks against Wisconsin after doing base against Idaho. Wouldn't be surprised to see us try some new stuff next week.
Tedford did similar stuff, but had higher-level talent most of his time here because he recruited better, so we dusted most everyone.
Against TCU partly, and then the same boring plays throughout conference play. I have no faith that an open playbook is going to magically appear in year 3.
I think Musgrave is actually a great OC that has improved our offensive potential since he joined, but he needs to realize this isn't the NFL. And Musgrave and Wilcox both need to get their heads out of their asses in regards to seniority and just play our best players within the realms of safety.
And turtling against "lesser" talent is legitimately the worst possible strategy for college football. We won't be respected until we're beating UNLV's by 30. The moment the second half started and I realized what was going on, I wanted to turn the TV off. If Cal wants fans in the stands, it's beyond just poor marketing -- they need to show the students that we're actually competitive at a P5 level instead of showing that we're ready to be left out by the B1G and invite the MWC over to the Pac-12 since that's where we are.
I don’t mind turtling against lesser talented teams and winning knife fights 20-14 against UNLV and other G5 teams IF it meant Wilcox is going 10-2 or 9-3 the rest of the season. That isn’t the case here. In fact, I don’t think we are “turtling” in season 6. Turtling is just an excuse to give Wilcox and his staff a pass for his poor offense. We aren’t playing turtle, we are a turtle. We need to recognize that and stop deflecting for Wilcox. Was Dykes turtling his defense in year 4?
I agree that turtling sounds generous or like an excuse, but it might just be semantics. I think it's true in the sense that most quality P5 teams keep things vanilla for the B and C level OOC opponents. At least, on paper that's the right strategy.
The difference here, which is also an indictment on Wilcox's understanding of reality, is that Cal is not a quality P5 team.
We arent the 2016 Wisconsin Badgers (11-3) which from day 1 seemed to be the basis of Wilcox's not only philosophy but decision making.
It's great to aspire to that, and we would be happy to be there. But you have to build up to that first. And handling your business impressively against the teams you should beat is important to building momentum.
It's like nothing is actually building here. We're stuck in being a program modeled in the image of the 2016 Badgers but not having the coaching or recruiting to actually get there, or show any signs of at least moving in that direction. Just excuses and what-if's and "strategy" year in, year out, game in game out.
But whether Sonny Dykes beats UNLV 55-47 or Wilcox beats UNLV 20-14 is hardly relevant. The issue is that we would rather see something more along the lines of Cal beating UNLV 38-10, while still "turtling" and limiting the number of snaps and getting backups playing time because the game was never in doubt from start to finish, because they are a well coached team with a culture of winning who handles their business against middling Group of 5 teams.
And there will always be exception games here or there, but the problem is the rule not the exception in the last decade.
I disagree. CFB rankings are largely done via statistics, which have their own "eye test." If our margin of victory is 6 points against teams who rank in the bottom 60 of the FBS, we will never be ranked outside of the bottom 60 of the FBS. Because we sure as hell aren't blowing out the USC/Georgia's of the world like that.
The only way to overcome low margins of victory is to have 1-2 losses max on the season, and if you can't blow out the lower level teams you aren't finishing the season with 10+ wins. If you're going to turtle, get up by 30 first. Hell, we lost our one chance at a Rose Bowl because Tedford refused to blow out Southern Mississippi -- we should have learned this lesson the hard way.
Holding back the offense against Nevada while in the lead makes sense. What is the reason for holding the offense back against Nevada once we were losing?
You only can install so many plays during game week. Typically its 20 to 30 plays. The rest come from your list of staples. The plays you install can be run out of multiple sets to disguise them. Scouting and game planning are critical with respect to picking the right schemes for the game. No coach uses their entire play book early in the season, not just because they don't want to show it, but because they haven't practiced many of the plays enough. Over the course of the season the repertoire grows.
Teams usually rely on base on a given week and practice advanced looks specific to game opponent. So if Musgrave doesn't believe UNLV deserved anything more than your base sets the team probably didn't practice enough advanced looks to feel confident to throw them out there compared to your standard two minute offensive drills, which Cal should generally feel confident in executing but failed to do so last year because of numerous offensive limitations.
The thing about CFB vs. the NFL is that you have a revolving door of a roster because college and NFL drafts take away your players. If Wilcox/Musgrave need 3 years to be comfortable letting anyone use the full playbook we haven't seen thus far, we're royally f*cked.
At some point, you need to adapt and draw a line and stand behind. They need to figure out how to either simplify the playbook so that it can be executed at a college level without blue chip recruits, or they need to do a better job coaching up the players so that we're not losing to Nevada and UNLV every year. We may have won the game this weekend, but in my eyes that was a loss. We were f*cking outplayed by a G5 cellar dweller and managed to scrape out a "win" with defensive heroics for the entire second half while the offense took a dump on the field because their coaches asked them to. No wonder all our receivers transfer to different teams after 1-2 years.
And those same offensive limitations are present again in year 6 of Wilcox and year 2 of Musgrave so they seem content on just banging their head against the same wall and not trying to adapt.
I think they ran a magical forward-lateral once :)