Cal offensive coordinator Mike Bloesch talks explosive plays, RPOs, GoPros

The new playcaller for the California Golden Bears conducted a lot of offensive tinkering during spring practice.

Credit: Cal Football

Near the end of spring practice, Cal offensive coordinator Mike Bloesch spoke with the media about the state of where his unit is.

What are your thoughts on on how the running game is coming and what the defense is doing right now?

Yeah, I feel great about the running game and they made some good plays on defense today. We're seeing a multitude of fronts and blitzes that we're still adjusting to. But yeah, I don't lose confidence in what we're doing.

We just got to be a little bit more consistent. Like I told those guys, it's really about we know what to do. We're just still cleaning up how we're doing things right now.

On Josiah Martin continuing to step up in practice

He had seven or eight catches today. He had nine catches on ten targets on Saturday. He definitely carried his momentum from Saturday. It's been awesome to see.

He's a great kid. He's super intelligent. He's really learned the offense very quickly and he just gets better every day.

So the consistency that he's showing us and his route running and his explosiveness and his consistency, the quarterbacks are starting to like that, too.

We tell the receivers all the time if you want the rock, you better be consistent because the quarterbacks are going to go where they know the guys are consistent.

How do you evaluate Saturday (4/13) overall for you guys?

I thought it was good. You know, it was long, one of our longer days that we've had this spring. or the most part guys were were competing at a high level. Obviously, we had some situational things that we needed to clean up. I thought we ran the ball well. I thought we were pretty solid on third down.

We had introduced the two minute drill to them on Friday and then did another one on Saturday. I didn't think we were as good in that drill on Saturday as we were on Friday. It's the challenge for those guys and the challenge for us offensively is just the consistency of the day in, day out.

And then, as you're sitting here at the last week of spring ball, not getting tired of working on little things and getting better.

On incorporating more explosive plays

When people think of explosiveness, you're thinking it's going to be a 75 yard shot down the field or whatever. But for us, we can have explosives on screens. We can have explosives in the run game, as well as pushing the ball vertically down the field. So we want to be multiple in the way that we're we're being explosive. But it definitely helps us get going.

I think you see when we get out on the field in these team periods and even in scrimmages, we talk a lot about getting the first first down because then we can dictate the pace of play. So that's a big point of emphasis for us is go out there, let's pick up the first, first down, and then we can start playing with our tempo that we want to play with.

How Trond Grizzell has been performing this spring.

Trond’s getting healthier. He was sick a little bit before spring break and just getting him back and rolling. He's starting to kind of hit stride of of where we need him to be. And then he knows and he's just going to continue developing in the weight room this offseason.

The challenge for him is the stronger he can be, I think the more physical he's going to be on the perimeter and and the better he'll be.

On when to run the ball

I know it depends a lot on the situation, but fair to say they got to run the ball more than you did last year.

I think that will all be dictated off our game plans week to week. Obviously, we'll always start our game plans with getting our run game installed.

But what we do in the run game, a lot of that is going to be dictated off numbers anyway. So, you know, when we have numbers conducive to run the ball, we're going to run the ball.

And when we don't, we're going to take advantage of the things on the perimeter. So that'll sometimes be dictated by the way that people are playing us.

How have the center and left guard spots evolved

I really like what Matthew [Wykoff]’s been doing at center. He played center at Texas A&M before he came here. Obviously last year with Cindo (Matthew Cindric) coming back and Brian [Driscoll] being a guy that had been here for a while.

We played Matthew at left guard. The first week, week and a half or so I started looking at [Bastian] Swinney. I need to develop Swinney and Wykoff in there, but Wykoff is obviously a really big body, does a really good job of going to handle and everything. He's super intelligent, so I've been really happy with the way that he's developed in there at center, just really in about a week.

How well is the starting five up front?

Based off of what we have, we'll have some guys coming in this summer and then we'll kind of see what happens movement wise of the portal. We're always going to be active and trying to improve our roster at any position. And so we're trying to see what that looks like over the next couple of months.

On RPO decision making between Fernando Mendoza and Chandler Rogers

I think those guys are doing a really good job. They're seeing the field well, and again, that comes with experience. But the challenge that we've presented those guys with throughout this spring is them truly understanding what we're doing in the run game and where we're running the ball, who the box fitter is, are we running away from their extra defender, are we running to their extra defender?

All of those things matter when you're talking about RPO football. So I would I would say that I've been very pleased with the way that they're seeing the field.

On quarterbacks wearing GoPros

Whenever we watch film after practice, we can hear what they're calling to the O-line, so we can make sure that they're calling the right protections in the right place. And then also we can track their eyes as they go through their progressions.

They're watching every angle, but I think it's good just for them to hear, for Coach Gilbert and for myself to hear the communication that's happening between them and the offensive line. And then also track in their eyes throughout different concepts.

So it's something that we saw the the Dolphins doing. Obviously they were on Hard Knocks and everybody watched that. And we saw some some of the video footage that was off of Tua’s helmet and we said, “Well, let's look at it and try it, try this spring and see if we like it.”

Not every play you're going to get great film out of that. But there's definitely been some times, especially seven on seven to drop back pass for progression concepts, where we can we feel like we're doing a pretty good job of tracking their eyes.

You're looking at whether he's looking off to safety or something. Just seeing where he's got to start in his progression, whether that's the boundary safety or the free safety. And then kind of as he's working his way back through it, how fast is he scanning the field.