Post-Game Thoughts: Cal v. Texas Tech Independence Bowl 2023

Cal misses out on a chance to end the season on a high note with a 34-14 loss to Texas Tech

As I watched Cal lose on Saturday night, I found myself thinking about the UCLA game. Not necessarily because it was a happy memory, but because the Independence Bowl was in many ways the inverse of Cal’s win over UCLA.

Cal and UCLA played a nearly dead heat football game on a per play basis - Cal gained 4.9 yards/play to UCLA’s 4.6. That’s a margin that might win you a football game, but it’s probably going to come down to the wire. But Cal won all of the game’s swing plays, which mostly meant turnovers and special teams, and that added up to a somewhat deceptive (and deeply satisfying) blowout.

To be clear, Cal was the better team. Just not 33-7 better.

On Saturday, Cal outgained Texas Tech by even more yards/play than they did UCLA. 5.5 to 4.8, which would typically be enough to win, or at least to stay competitive. But unlike the UCLA game, Cal lost nearly every single swing play from the game, which largely had to do with turnovers and special teams. And that turned what should have been a close game, if not a Cal win, into a blowout loss.

To be clear, Texas Tech was the better team. Just not 34-14 better.

Offense

Efficiency Report

14 drives: 2 touchdowns , 6 punts, 6 turnovers (3 interceptions, 1 fumble, 2 downs), 1 point/drive

I’ll just pet Piotr do the talking here:

Did Cal run out of scripted plays? Did Texas Tech make some kind of schematic shift? Did Tech just take over along the line? Whatever the reason, a game that looked like Cal would be able to score at will turned VERY quickly.

The biggest story of the game was that Cal’s offensive line got beaten

Tech managed a stunning 13 tackles for loss. I say stunning for two reasons. First, Tech isn’t a big tackles for loss defense; they have only managed more than 6 in one game, against Baylor’s broken offense. Meanwhile, Cal hadn’t allowed more than 6 tackles for loss in a game since Mendoza took over at QB, and never more than eight in any game.

There was no reason to believe, based on the prior 12 games’ worth of data for either team, that Cal’s line would be unable to deal with Tech’s defensive front. And yet that was the decisive battle that won and lost this game.

Bowl games are weird, dunno what to tell you.

Two swing plays that turned a close game into a blowout

2nd drive of the game, 4th and 2, a direct snap to Ott, and Tech blows up Cal’s line to force a turnover on downs

1st drive of the 3rd quarter, 2nd and 7 from midfield, Mendoza steps up and spots Grizzell on a crossing route with a step on his defender. If this pass is in stride it is at worst a first down around the 30 and at best a touchdown if Grizzell can outrun the Tech safety. Look at all that green grass!

Cal will be well poised to cut the deficit to 3 points. But Mendoza throws high and behind Grizzell, and the deflection falls into the arms of the defender who Grizzell beat with a professional shove the refs didn’t catch.

A plea to Cal’s offensive brain trust

Either find a way to teach better blocking technique to Cal’s WRs or cut 90% of those WR screens out of the offense. Like, I get that those plays protect a young QB by giving him easy throws and also keep a defense honest, but until Cal has skill position players that can block in space we’re just burning downs.

Defense

Efficiency Report

12 drives: 4 touchdowns, 2 FGA (1-2), 5 punts, 1 turnover (interception), 2.6 points/drive

Believe it or not, Cal allowed more yards/play to Idaho, ASU, Stanford, and UCLA than they did to Texas Tech. And yet, 34 points allowed when none of those other teams got past 21. The difference is that Cal’s defense was put behind the eight ball by turnovers and special teams play.

The problem is that three back-to-back-to-back touchdown drives in the first half were NOT particularly assisted by field position and turnovers, and those were the drives that kept Tech close when Cal’s offense was clicking, then built a lead.

From that point onward Cal held Tech to 150 yards on 50 plays and only gave up points when Tech started in plus territory.

So what went wrong on those three drives?

A whole bunch of mistakes across the entire defense, really. You’ve got some iffy tackling, though that’s Tahj Boyd’s whole deal so no surprise there. You’ve got a linebacker losing a tight end in coverage downfield. You’ve got a safety missing a coverage assignment in a deep zone. You have corners getting beaten for contested catches.

More than anything else, you have a pass rush that was generally ineffective.

This wasn’t a game where Tech found a play or a matchup that Cal couldn’t stop and exploited it all game long. I think in another universe where the other two phases play well, we’re talking about how the Cal defense weathered some early wobbles and then gave Cal a chance to win.

Special Teams

A punting disaster

In the 2nd and 3rd quarter, when the game was in the balance, Lachlan Wilson and the Cal punting unit gained 35, 33, 30, 35, and 10 net yards on 5 punts. Wilson would later get off a 48 yarder deep into garbage time that made the game average look a little better, but Texas Tech still gained 8 yards more net yards/punt than Cal as part of a massive field position advantage game.

And while Cal’s punting unit was obviously a sore point in this game, I think it’s worth pointing out that the Cal punt return unit is currently 125th in the country in yards/return, and 114th in the country in attempted returns/game. And that’s not an artifact of facing a bunch of teams that couldn’t kick it long enough to make space for a return - Cal’s opponents have averaged 42.5 yard/punt, well above the national average.

Remember when I said this after Cal’s incredible, unexpected special teams dominance against UCLA?

Enjoy this performance, celebrate this performance . . . but don’t let it cloud things: Cal must invest in improving special teams performance for next year if this program is going to take a step forward.

Well, the Independence Bowl should act as a clear reminder to everybody inside and outside of the program about a clear and obvious area for improvement in 2024.

Coaching/Game Theory

An illustration of why these decisions sometimes aren’t as important as we think

After the game, Justin Wilcox said that in retrospect, knowing what he knew about how the game ended up going, he wished he had kicked a field goal on 4th and 2 in the 1st quarter. I might argue that adding three points to the ledger when you lost by 20 is an indication that you needed to get 7 points there anyway, but I get his point that by falling further behind it changed how Cal approached the rest of the game.

But when I heard that quote my first thought was ‘who cares about that decision when Cal made a whole bunch of mistakes such that they lost by 20 points?’ Those in-game decision points? They only matter if you get the other stuff right.

Big Picture

I don’t ultimately think that the outcome of the Independence Bowl was going to meaningfully change the trajectory of this program. It certainly dampens the mood of the fanbase for the next eight months, but I can’t imagine that any current player considering the transfer portal or prospective player considering committing would be swayed by this game.

But for a fan base surprisingly drunk off of the bounty of wins over Stanford and UCLA and a 6-6 season, this performance is a reminder of Cal’s objective reality: a roughly .500 football team that cannot escape from the gravity of said .500 record.

For the first time since the pandemic there is a glimmer of hope for something more next year. The ACC is much more manageable than the dead Pac-12. Cal found some new coaches who helped fix their offense. They have a bona fide star running back. They might have a long term solution at QB and they have a really solid back-up option. Cal should continue to punch above its weight in the transfer portal.

But the challenges are equally clear. Can Justin Wilcox and Cal’s defensive staff halt five years of back sliding on defense? Can Cal find a new left tackle? Can Cal fix a special teams unit that has bounced between average and disastrous under Wilcox?

Cal desperately needs Justin Wilcox to prove the doubters - and seven years of objective, hard, on-field data - wrong. For the sake of the long term viability of Cal athletics, he must prove that he has figured out how to do more than eke out an appearance in a forgettable bowl game.