Tuesday, December 30, 2008

San Francisco Examiner: Examining Golden Bears Emerald Bowl Victory Raises Some Concerns

By Rob Calonge

Link.

Now that the dust has begun to settle and Bear Backers are still aglow from the win, it's time to take an objective look at some of the things that weren't so 'glowy' about the team's play on Saturday night. What's troubling, and should be troubling to Coach Tedford is that the following concerns were problems for most of the season as well. While the Bears allowed the Hurricanes to score, I don't think anyone seriously went into the game expecting the Cal to shut them out. While I'm sure that Bob Gregory has probably broken down every play and graded out players individually, as a unit the defense was the best Cal offered on bowl night. We won't be bothering the defense with this discussion, but it's interesting to note that Miami head coach Randy Shannon let go of his offensive coordinator on Monday. It must be more about the season and not the bowl, right?

On special teams, you have to wonder about the place kicking. Return teams and coverage units were solid and Bryan Anger punted well enough to show his promise, but what about the other kicker? More than one kicker operated as place-kicker, but getting good kickoffs with consistency was an issue during the season and one seen on Saturday night. Giorgio Tavecchio seems to have the leg strength to boot the ball in the endzone on every kickoff, but he's not doing it. He also missed a field goal during the game - one that was basically a chip shot and could have affected the outcome. I'm not saying that there's a problem with Tavecchio or his coach Pete Alamar, just that this is an issue that must be fixed for next year. Maybe we've been spoiled with a Cal offense that has always been the story, but this was the first year that Tedford wasn't working with the offense and it was also the first year that the offense was this inconsistent. While it's understandable that offensive coordinator Frank Cignetti would take time to get the offense on his page, let's focus on the Emerald Bowl which is more about play calling.

Why were the Bears calling plays suited for Kevin Riley and not Nate Longshore? Too often, they were asking Longshore to play in a West Coast style of gameplan. Longshore didn't play well, there's no question about that, but some of the playcalling was frustrating. Longshore is made to throw over the top of the defense, and his weakness is throwing curls and screens or throwing on the run, which brings us to...

At first you don't succeed, try something else - Why so many screens? Against a faster defense, you have to trick them. After the Bears had tried and failed to trick them four or five times with the screen pass, they should have tried something else. The one slant pattern they attempted worked, which is the right call when a fast defense is putting eight men in the box. When something does work - do it until it doesn't: It took over three quarters until Cignetti finally forced Miami to stop the run. They weren't able to. This begs the question: Why didn't he do that more often in the first three quarters? Jahvid Best was outstanding and the off tackle run around the right side was unstoppable against Miami, but the same was true when Shane Vereen was running the ball too. Running more in the first half would've opened the defense up in the second half and kept their own defense off of the field.

Kevin Daft served his first season as receivers coach. It didn't go well. Daft was a quarterback for UC Davis, and a good one. He was so good at quarterback that he played for the Titans in the NFL. Last season, he was the quarterbacks coach, and while he is probably best suited for that job, we're willing to give him a pass on this season as we saw Jeremy Ross and Nyan Boateng improve throughout the year. It would've been nice if we could've seen more of them in the Emerald Bowl. While these are complaints about Cal's performance on a national stage, this is not a call for anyone's head. The hope is that the Bears will continue to improve both in player performance and playcalling. Jim Michalczik's job with the line was not his finest, but since he has a proven track record, we wouldn't have made much out of that. It's easy to backseat drive or Monday morning quarterback, but when your offense passes for only 121 yards, and rushes for 217 in a game you should've dominated, something has to be said. Now that we have that out of the way....

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