Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Daily Cal: Unsuccessful Debut of Spread Offense for Cal Football

BY Stephen Chen

Daily Cal Staff Writer

There was plenty of anticipation over how the No. 9 Cal football team would combine new offensive coordinator Mike Dunbar's spread offense with coach Jeff Tedford's prostyle formation.   As it turned out, the Bears used the shotgun snap over half the game against No. 23 Tennessee. However, the results were far from what Dunbar was accustomed to in the past four seasons as Northwestern's offensive coordinator.  Cal finished with 336 total yards for the game, though much of that came against the Volunteers' second-team defense. The Bears managed just 86 yards at halftime.

One of the main reasons Tedford decided to implement the spread offense was to fully utilize Cal's talented batch of skill players and give them more space in more open field. However, none of the Bears' standouts turned in notable performances against a traditionally strong and fast Tennessee defense.  "We're trying to complement the styles of play so we can be diverse and maximize our guys," Dunbar said. "We work really hard on this stuff. Maybe I gave them too much. That's my responsibility. Maybe there's too much new, that's something we have to evaluate."

Read the entire article here.

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