My take is with 7 or 8 stacking the box we should have been making a LOT of short throws, at least until they started being honest. You are right, running into 7 to 8 guys is just stupid. This is where they need to give Mendoza the opportunity to audible into another play. He may be young and inexperienced, but he's smart. He should be able to read a D and change the play if needed.
Davis is a top FCS team. It was a perfect "pre season" tune up for the Bears. Auburn played a miserably weak team which could not show any Auburn weakness. I'm hopefully sure that Cal will show a lot more this week.
I would certainly give Auburn the advantage as of now, but if we can get some of our injured guys back and get in a groove, we can make a good go of it. More later.
1) Nobody is really mentioning the Tim Plough factor. Plough was TE coach at Cal, so that means he knows Bloesch's tendencies well...and likely knows what Sirmon and Wilcox are trying to do on D. Not an excuse for the first half but hard to ignore.
2) Ott is a sticky point but (minor) injuries in the beginning of the season can be a blessing in disguise. Does Cade Ulluave emerge last year if Sirmon did not get hurt? Not saying injuries are good b/c depth is a real factor but figuring out who's on your bench early can be helpful.
Crazy thought: what if the Ott injury was orchestrated to fool Auburn? Probably wishful thinking, but ya never know...
Yeah, offensive line is especially a unit that takes time to jell and Cal was set back by the injuries, without a doubt. However the defense may be able to keep Cal in the game vs. aww-burn. Have to take the sharp out of Thorne once again.
This team looked like the bill musgrave days. They looked like they didn’t have a clue on offense again. The days of putting up 109 yards total offense in a first half are back. The offensive box change again, is a bad sign. They will not win a game if they come out looking like they did against Davis..
I was just listening to one of the Cal podcasts with a writer who was attending multiple practices. He said Cal did not show a single fancy thing that either the offense or defense have been working on in the Davis game. We may or may not win, but you’ll see different dimensions against Auburn.
My take is with 7 or 8 stacking the box we should have been making a LOT of short throws, at least until they started being honest. You are right, running into 7 to 8 guys is just stupid. This is where they need to give Mendoza the opportunity to audible into another play. He may be young and inexperienced, but he's smart. He should be able to read a D and change the play if needed.
Davis is a top FCS team. It was a perfect "pre season" tune up for the Bears. Auburn played a miserably weak team which could not show any Auburn weakness. I'm hopefully sure that Cal will show a lot more this week.
I would certainly give Auburn the advantage as of now, but if we can get some of our injured guys back and get in a groove, we can make a good go of it. More later.
Nice write up.
Couple of things:
1) Nobody is really mentioning the Tim Plough factor. Plough was TE coach at Cal, so that means he knows Bloesch's tendencies well...and likely knows what Sirmon and Wilcox are trying to do on D. Not an excuse for the first half but hard to ignore.
2) Ott is a sticky point but (minor) injuries in the beginning of the season can be a blessing in disguise. Does Cade Ulluave emerge last year if Sirmon did not get hurt? Not saying injuries are good b/c depth is a real factor but figuring out who's on your bench early can be helpful.
Crazy thought: what if the Ott injury was orchestrated to fool Auburn? Probably wishful thinking, but ya never know...
My hope is that they were focused on Auburn and just didn’t want to show much on offense
Yeah, offensive line is especially a unit that takes time to jell and Cal was set back by the injuries, without a doubt. However the defense may be able to keep Cal in the game vs. aww-burn. Have to take the sharp out of Thorne once again.
This team looked like the bill musgrave days. They looked like they didn’t have a clue on offense again. The days of putting up 109 yards total offense in a first half are back. The offensive box change again, is a bad sign. They will not win a game if they come out looking like they did against Davis..
I was just listening to one of the Cal podcasts with a writer who was attending multiple practices. He said Cal did not show a single fancy thing that either the offense or defense have been working on in the Davis game. We may or may not win, but you’ll see different dimensions against Auburn.
It me. I’m the writer.
Yeah it was a tune up game.
Straight up