Post-Game Thoughts: Washington Football

Is outplaying UW and losing anyway better than getting trounced?

Cal Football @CalFootball

Brothers. 🤝

In the last four (real, full) seasons of Pac-12 football, Washington has finished 1st, 1st, 1st, and 2nd in the Pac-12 North. Washington may not be at their Chris-Petersen-led peak, but they still have a ton of talent and a really solid defense.

And Cal went up to Seattle and outplayed the Huskies. Cal had more yards/rush and more yards/pass attempt. Cal had more first downs. Cal had more scoring opportunities.

And Cal lost.

It wasn’t an overwhelming, dominating performance from the Bears, or it would have been a win. Like many Cal games of recent vintage, Cal’s per/play superiority was marginal, and that meant that if the swing plays (weird special teams, crushing turnovers) went against Cal, it would be enough to cost them the game. And those play very much went against the Bears.

Just like they did against Oregon State and Stanford last year. Just like they did against TCU (and to a lesser extent, Nevada) earlier this season.

Cal is 2-6 in their last 8 games, with one blowout win and one blowout loss, and a whole bunch of close losses in which the Bears make just enough errors to turn potential victory into bitter defeat.

It makes for plenty of drama, and it makes for plenty of heartbreak.

Offense

Efficiency Report

12 drives: 3 touchdowns, 3 FGA (1-3), 2 punts, 4 turnovers (2 interceptions, 1 fumble, 1 downs), 2 points/drive

Here’s an example of a game where drive finishing, special teams and game-state make points/drive a rough measure. In 11 drives before overtime, Cal entered Washington territory eight times. But thanks to a botched snap, a turnover on downs, and one odd 2 minute drill, Cal only turned those scoring opportunities into 24 points.

So, do you focus on the good (5.8 yards/play, a ton of sustained drives against a legitimately good defense on the road) or the bad (turnovers, failed drive finishing, the game ending in an L)? If Cal wins this game despite individual play errors, you can overlook them. But when you’re sitting at 1-3, it’s harder to be glass-half-full.

The best offense of the Wilcox Era?

We’re only four games into the season, so caution is still warranted, but honestly at this point it would be hard for this Cal offense not to hold the title. Hell, this might be the best Cal offense since Jared Goff was behind center. Consider the following yards/play on offense, with games against FCS competition removed:

Yards/play, 2015: 6.9 (6 in the nation)
Yards/play, 2016: 5.9
Yards/play, 2017: 5.0
Yards/play, 2018: 4.8 (119 in the nation)
Yards/play, 2019: 5.0
Yards/play, 2020: 4.5 (122 in the nation, if COVID year means anything)
Yards/play, 2021: 6.2 (35 in the nation)

In short, the Cal offense has been so much better than any prior Wilcox offense that even after only 3 games it would be hard for the offense to regress to the point where they’re producing worse results than 2019.

Letting Chase off the leash is a necessary net good, but there’s a downside

Cal ran 77 plays from scrimmage. 41 featured Chase throwing the ball, 16 featured Chase running the ball, and 20 were handoffs to a running back. That’s 74% of the offense running directly through Cal’s veteran quarterback. And I think it’s hard to look at the results of the game and not determine that this strategy gives Cal their best chance of winning. Hell, just compare the results:

57 plays with Chase doing something: 407 yards, 7.1 yards/play
20 plays doing anything else: 80 yards, 4 yards/play, long gain of 9

Against Washington specifically (and against probably any team that have a functional run defense) Cal’s offense is at its best when Chase can make plays and Cal mixes in the occasional run to keep the defense off balance.

And the downside that’s likely to come with that is the occasional bad decision that leads to an interception opportunity. And unfortunately for Cal, UW cashed in on two of those bad decisions.

The first was a combination of a bad read and a bad throw in Cal’s first drive, when Kyler Gordon had an inbreaking route dead to rights. The second was a sideline fade that wasn’t open. In slight defense of Chase, he was probably trying to make a back shoulder throw that only Jeremiah Hunter could try to catch, and Kyler Gordon had to make a bonkers athletic play to pull in the pick. But that wasn’t a good decision on any play, let alone a low percentage chance on 3rd and 3.

I don’t want to dwell on the turnovers too much, because it obscures what was otherwise a great day against the best secondary in the conference. But if Chase can cut those kinds of plays out it will take what appears to be a good Cal offense to the next level - the level at which the offense can maybe win a game without much defensive support.

Defense

Efficiency Report

11 drives: 4 touchdowns, 2 FGA (1-2), 4 punts, 1 turnover (fumble), 2.8 points/drive

Again, if you want to remove the OT drive that would change Cal’s points/drive allowed to 2.4, which is a more reasonable number and also a spectacular number considering that UW was averaging more than 5 points/drive in the first half.

Speaking of 1st half defense vs. 2nd half defense - Cal almost cut UW’s production in half, allowing 7.2 yards/play in the first half vs. 3.8 yards/play in the second. That improvement was all but entirely based on doing something better against UW’s passing game. Dylan Morris went 11-14 for 151 yards in the first half, then 8-18 for 83 yards in the second half and OT.

I’ll have more thoughts on Tuesday, but as best I can tell it was a combination of things. Morris was less accurate in the 2nd half, Cal got more pressure, and there seemed to be fewer easy options downfield.

Tackling still a major weakness

Here’s a free preview of this week’s PFF post: Cal currently ranks 116th out of 130 teams in the nation in PFF’s tackling metric. The scouting service has identified 50 missed tackles (in 301 total snaps defended) in just 4 games, which is obviously an alarming number. And I doubt any Cal fans who have watched the games will be arguing that the scouts are missing anything.

Missing a tackle isn’t ever a great thing, but I think it’s particularly damaging for a Cal defense that has generally been about keeping the play in front of them. If you’re trading away backfield havoc in favor of big-play prevention, getting runners stopped in space is a critical skill.

I don’t know what a team can do in the middle of the season to fix an issue like this. I also don’t know how much this is about iffy tackling technique vs. offenses having our defense off-balance and in poor tackling position. But it’s a big (maybe the biggest!) driver in Cal’s defensive regression.

Special Teams

Sigh

There’s obviously no way to be sure how the rest of the game plays out if Cal successfully executes a snap and hold midway through the 2nd quarter, and if Dario Longhetto hits the 29 yard field goal. But obviously, in a game that went to overtime, an extra three points would have been pretty darn valuable.

The snap wasn’t great - low and closer to Sheahan than it should be. But you also see holders turn snaps like that into a successful field goal with decent regularity. What more is there to say about it, other than that special teams errors continue to play direct roles in close Cal defeats?

Coaching/Game Theory

What’s the right risk/reward balance in late game ties?

With 1:16 left in a tie game, Cal is starting a drive on their own 20 yard line. Both teams have all three of their timeouts left.

If you’re Cal, you have the chance to drive to win the game. You also know that if you go 3-and-out, UW can use their timeouts to preserve time for a drive of their own. How do you balance aggression with risk management? How to you maximize the chance that you can score while minimizing the chance that UW scores?

On the first play of the drive, Cal gained 8 yards. Cool, fine. But Cal didn’t spend a timeout and didn’t exactly hustle to get another play off, and 28 seconds ran off before Cal snapped again. That seemed . . . bad.

And yet, one play later, it seemed like dumb luck, because a 15 yard face mask penalty put Cal back facing a 2nd and 16 from their own 14. Justin Wilcox then let the clock run after the penalty, to the point that there were only 20 seconds left after Cal’s 2nd down play.

(Note: When asked about the clock issues after the game, Jimmy Lake said “I will say this: it was not my mistake. It was someone else’s mistake, and they apologized.” I’m assuming the refs weren’t supposed to run the clock after a penalty but they couldn’t go back and add time for some reason?!)

But Cal converted the 3rd down, and all of a sudden those extra 21 seconds would have allowed Cal to get close than a 55 yard field goal that came up just a couple yards short.

In short, it didn’t feel like Cal played with the necessary urgency until there wasn’t quite enough time to get into reasonable field goal range.

Big Picture

Can I just quote myself from two weeks ago so that I don’t make the same point using slightly different words?

For me the problem is less that Cal is losing close games; it’s that Cal continues to play close games.

It’s easy to look at this game and pick out the individual plays that could have turned defeat into victory. A snap on a field goal. A fumble on the goal line. A wide open man deep, hit in stride rather than overthrown. A kick that sails another 5 feet or so. Two passes thrown to covered receivers, turned into interceptions.

Two or three years ago, it would be easier to argue that outplaying UW in Seattle and losing because all of the swing plays went against us counts as evidence of progress. Hell, if you beat Nevada and TCU, this loss would be easier to shrug off.

But when you’re in year 5 under a coach, and you keep playing close games week after week, and those swing plays keep going against you, it’s harder and harder to argue for optimism.

Objectively, if Cal is good enough to play UW into OT on the road, they are good enough to beat every single team left on the schedule with the exceptions of @Oregon and @UCLA. So, like, you could squint and imagine a world where Cal finishes the rest of the season 6-2.

But that would require Cal to cut out the frequent mistakes, and start putting teams away. All of the evidence we have suggests that Cal will continue to play close games with regularity, and we just have to hope that Cal maximizes our happiness by winning close games against the teams we most want to beat.