Evans Hall: Cal's Florida State Memes Were Just Dreams
Game was gettable, but the thing about it is that you gotta get it
Yards and drives are nice. But as I have said before, they don’t win games. Hell, games aren’t won on a spreadsheet either, if so then Bill Connelly would be enshrined at the Oracle of Delphi and banned from most countries for mage-craft.
Just by reading how the stats shook up we had a 66.6% chance of winning. Nick covered it in his Monday piece so I won’t thread through the shoulda/woulda/couldas.
What I will look into is the more in-depth stats from the game.
Explosive and Success Rate By Down
We can see here that both FSU and Cal were right there next to each other during the game on a success rate (which is the ability to move the ball down the field to stay on schedule) with the only shining spot being the ability to produce explosive plays on 2nd down with the pass and rush. However, regardless of play type and down we struggled to be more than 50% success full overall.
FSU was overall held down especially through the air and on first downs. But we failed to take advantage of the 3rd downs we forced FSU into by allowing plenty of explosive plays as well as good efficient gains.
FSU’s Offense was struggling… but only needed 2 big plays to win.
Zooming into the defensive performance, we can see that overall FSU was struggling to move the ball down the field. With just 2 20+ big plays overall the defense did it’s job. Especially getting FSU into negative playscripts on 2nd downs where we got 3 sacks and a major TFL to force 3rd and longs that often went no where. You remove one of the big 3rd down plays and Cal likely wins the game 9-7. However, the big problem is the 9 points the offense scored.
Cal Offense failed to step-up in the redzone
PPA is basically EPA, which is a measure how many potential points an offense adds or subtracts per play. We see here that once Cal crosses the 30 yard line we only had 3 barely positive plays on 1st down and 1 positive run on 3rd down but overall had a negative performance in the red-zone.
We were most effective right within our own side of the field between the Cal 30 and the 50 only to falter as the field compressed.
This shows in the average PPA. Outside of the scoring area (40 yards or less to the endzone) Cal had an amazing PPA of 0.78 passing and a good 0.212 rushing. In the scoring area… it was very bad.
Outside of the scoring area Cal played like one of the best offenses in football. Inside of the scoring area Cal’s passing offense was one of the worst in the country. And that was how the game was lost by Cal.
Our defense played well enough to win. Our offense was another story. Our O-line continues to be a disaster and I'm convinced it's not the talent, its the schemes and assignments and play calling (when you have 7 in the box you don't run and you tell your QB to get rid of the ball quickly on a blitz beater). Our o-line had way to many offsides calls in very critical situations and one player in particular had 3 holding calls. This is all about technique and preparation, and it's clear we are deficient in both based on our performance against FSU. As Coach Wilcox says, the little things count when the margin between winning and losing is so small at the Power 4 level. On offense we weren't close to having the little things figured out by the 4th game. This worries me greatly. We have the horses, but is our OC up to the task? Our season, and probably Wilcox's job, depends on it.
From the SI - Louisville Cardinals site here are the ACC power rankings on Cal, which slipped to 8th from 6th.
"Here's your welcome to the ACC moment, Cal
Play a game in which you look better than your opponent in *most* facets of the game and still find a way to lose against a team you should beat. Just don't give up seven sacks and actually finish your drives next time." - Matthew McGavic