Post-Game Thoughts: NC State Football

Cal plays the same game two weeks in a row, and we're reminded of that famous quote about insanity and doing the same thing.

photo credit: @calfootball twitter

One by one, the rationalizations we make as fans to protect ourselves emotionally fall apart*.

“Auburn may not be as good as they usually are but they’re still an SEC team and we beat them on the road!”

Auburn is tied for last place in the SEC with Mississippi St. and has zero wins over power conference teams.

“Sure, Florida State had a rough start, but they’re really talented and they’re bound to turn it around!”

The Seminoles are now 1-6 and have been shellacked by both Clemson and SMU and just lost their first game to Duke EVER.

“It’s really tough to win games way out east but we’ll have the advantage when teams have to travel out to Berkeley!”

“Hey, the early ACC schedule is tough but the back half is full of teams that Cal should beat”

“All of these close games are random coin flips and it’s just a matter of time before luck is on our side!”

. . . And we just lost a game as double digit favorites at home to a team that was having a disastrous season, losing our 4th straight one-score game in a row.

*Lest you think I’m trying to insult people who have said things like this, please note that all of these thoughts have run through my head at some point in the last month.

Offense

Efficiency Report

13 drives: 2 touchdowns, 4 field goal attempts (3-4), 4 punts, 3 turnovers (1 fumble, 2 downs), 1.8 points/drive

One of the biggest questions I had over the last few weeks is how Cal’s offense would look if/when they faced a team that wasn’t going to be able to put guys into the backfield on half of their plays.

NC State had some success rushing the quarterback, particularly late. But Cal only allowed three sacks on 50 dropbacks and per PFF Mendoza enjoyed a clean pocket 80% of the time. This was the kind of pass blocking performance we’d been hoping for all season.

And Cal still only put up 5.5 yards/play and only managed two touchdowns against a defense that has struggled all season long. What gives?

Part of the explanation is that after an early 49 yard touchdown run from Jaivian Thomas, the running game managed just 75 yards on 21 carries, good for 3.6 yards a pop. Thus, the entirety of the offense was on the passing game. And while the passing game was reasonably efficient, there was zero explosiveness. The Bears were able to dink-and-dunk their way into NC State territory frequently (eight drives started in Cal territory and ended on the other side of the 50) but couldn’t get it done inside the red zone often enough.

When you’re not explosive, you can’t commit penalties

I’ll grant Cal’s coaches some amount of slack here - they were probably counting pretty heavily on Jaydn Ott, Tobias Merriweather, and Kyion Grayes to provide big play ability, and all three were out of the game due to injury. But it’s ultimately on the coaches to find a way to score points with the players who are healthy.

And to Cal’s credit, as noted above, they are okay at moving the ball into opponent territory. But the metrics after that get ugly, no matter how you look at it. Cal is 109th in the country in red zone touchdown percentage (50%). The FEI rankings note that Cal is a mediocre 62nd in the nation in the percentage of drives that end with either a field goal attempt or a touchdown, but a ghastly 92nd in percentage of drives that end in a touchdown.

In this game, Cal settled for four field goals, but one of those field goals was clock enforced on the final drive of the 2nd quarter, so we’re really focusing on the other three drives that stalled out in scoring position.

And I probably don’t need to tell you that all three drives were adversely affected by offensive line penalties. False starts and holding calls played a key role in preventing those drives from reaching the end zone.

I ultimately think it’s just a weird coincidence that Cal’s line penalties seemingly always pop up when the Bears are in scoring position, but the effect is clear. Converting long first downs is going to be hard for this team anywhere on the field and that effect is only amplified in the compressed field in the red zone.

Defense

Efficiency Report

11 drives: 3 touchdowns, 2 FGAs (1-2), 5 punts, 1 turnovers (fumble), 2.2 points/drive

NC State didn’t product much offense against Cal. Five of their 11 drives ended in three plays or less, the drives that were sustained tended to require lots of plays and lots of 3rd/4th down conversions. The problem here is twofold:

1. Cal fancies itself good enough on defense that even allowing 24 points isn’t good enough

2. Unfair though it may be, Cal’s offense is flawed enough that in order to win, the defense simply has to be better.

When Cal’s defense faded late against Miami, it made sense. The Bears had to defend a ton of plays, and chasing around Cam Ward and his band of dangerous WRs is plainly exhausting.

But against NC State, Cal’s defense collapsed late despite having to defend only 50 snaps in the game to that point, in beautiful weather on an October afternoon. This wasn’t tiredness that led to two 4th quarter touchdowns. It was simply an inability to execute when it mattered most, for reasons I can’t precisely fathom.

Special Teams

A plus day until, well . . .

Derek Morris is a freshman walk-on, and if you told me before a game that a freshman walk-on was Cal’s kicker and he would go 3-4 on his kicks, I would say two things:

1. Yeah, 3 out of 4 sounds about right.

2. Why are we kicking so many field goals? That’s bad!

Here’s hoping that Morris gets support rather than blame, because this game never should have come down to one kick anyway.

Meanwhile, Cal had a 4.5 yard/punt net advantage, and got a nice kickoff return from Nohl Williams that helped set up a field goal drive. NC State started 9 of their 11 drives from the 25 or further back, while Cal started six drives from better than their own 25. It was a massive field position advantage that should’ve translated into a comfortable win.

Coaching/Game Theory/Errata

One coach was pulling out the stops

Again, I feel somewhat hypocritical after criticizing Justin Wilcox’s decision to attempt a 2 point conversion last week. But this week, NC State attempted two trick plays - a flea flicker and a halfback pass - and one of them was a key play in a touchdown drive that helped win NC State the game.

And I must once again reflect on how, throughout the Wilcox tenure, trick plays have been almost entirely absent from the playbook despite the fact that Cal has largely possessed an offense desperate for manufactured big plays.

One coach didn’t

With 15:28 left in the game, Cal scores a touchdown to go up by 12 points. It is a textbook situation in which you should go for two.

The advantage is obvious: by converting the try, you go up 14 points and two touchdowns will only tie the game. Meanwhile, if you miss the damage is meaningless. The difference between a 12 and 13 point lead at that point in the game is irrelevant.

For reasons that I cannot possibly fathom, Justin Wilcox elects NOT to go for 2. Cal loses by one point.

It is a conclusion that pretty much every Cal fan has reached independently, but it must be stated: the reason Justin Wilcox loses lots of close games is because he makes decisions that create the opportunity to lose close games.

Big Picture

I had been consistent in my belief that Cal wouldn’t seriously consider making a change at head coach unless Justin Wilcox either missed a bowl game or lost to Stanford, and that it would maybe require both. This is after all an indebted, cash poor athletic department, and Cal’s donors have historically been forgiving as long as you beat Stanford and avoid any off-field controversy.

I do wonder if NC State changed that calculus, because of the confluence of circumstances. The fact that NC State is much worse than anticipated this year, and that the lose underscored the weaknesses that have been present both this year and largely throughout the Wilcox tenure. Additionally, losing this game means that it’s exceedingly unlikely that Cal do better than 7-5, which would require the Bears to win out, including a road win over an SMU team that looks like a legit ACC title contender.

In short, this was the game that confirms that this season isn’t going to be any different than any other season under Justin Wilcox. Never mind that the schedule this year is easier. Never mind that Cal provided NIL support that gave Wilcox talented contributors like Teddye Buchanan, Nohl Williams, and Marcus Harris, as well as the resources to retain key returners.

For various reasons, Cal gave Justin Wilcox a 2nd chance. Justin Wilcox, to his credit, recognized that he needed to change his roster construction strategy. Despite all of the time, effort, and money put into making Wilcox 2.0 a success, the on-field results are identical to Wilcox 1.0.

I am unable to construct an argument in favor of continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result.