There’s a little bit of down time during Sunday football and before the fUCLA game next week, so here’s a closer look at some of the plays Cal ran against Utah with one of their variants of the jailbreak screen involving Keenan Allen.  I noticed that Cal ran this play twice and a counter or two off of it in the first half yesterday so I’m going to take a look at that while keeping in mind AERose’s questions: "Wonder if it was just safe playcalling, something that the offensive staff identified ahead of time, or just a play that Tedford liked and wanted to go back to after the first try or two"

This week’s gameplan added a wrinkle in there to the WR screen game and I will show that with some groovy pics and vids after the jump.

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While thinking about what to write for the last installment of my previous series, I decided to scrap the final part and switch the focus to Cal’s 2010 Defense.  Cal’s Defense did not disappoint against UC Davis and appears to have made some changes in the way it goes about taking care of business.  One should not read too far into the results from this past Saturday because of the huge discrepancy in talent between the two teams but there are a few things we can take away from that game.  Let’s take a closer look at some of the new things Clancy Pendergast has brought to and changed with Cal’s defense that were on display during the first game of 2010.  After the jump, we will examine New Personnel Groupings (Pics), a Numerical Breakdown of Pressure Sent on Pass Plays, Pressure Schemes and Plays (Video), and other various observations.

above: Freshmen Outside Linebacker Dave Wilkerson going for the kill

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For this next installment, I am going to stray from the format of the first 3 posts in this series to spice things up a little bit.  Instead of subjecting loyal readers to a whole season of failures from a specific area of the defense, I will take a closer look at the failures for the first half of a game from 2009 in this post.  This defensive area fell well short of expectations.  In this next post, I decided to look into everyone’s favorite topic: Pressuring the Quarterback.

Pressuring the Quarterback

Contrary to popular belief, blitzing just to blitz in hopes of sacking or disrupting the quarterback is not effective.  Blitzing is most effective when sending specific pressure to attack the weak parts of protection schemes during certain down and distance situations.  Dialing up the right pressure at the right time is important to the success of the defensive playcall.  Equally important is having the personnel capable of executing the blitz, which means they must have a diverse set of moves, must know their assignments, and having extra athleticism to make up for a miscue always helps.

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The first 2 installments of this series can be found here and here.

Run Defense

When a defense has to guess if an offense is going to run or pass the ball, there is usually a 1 to 2 second hesitation by the linebackers and safeties (and sometimes cornerbacks if they are not covering a receiver) to make his post snap read before he reacts to the play.  Defensive linemen react "instantaneously" but even they are diagnosing run or pass when engaged with offensive linemen after the snap.  However, those split seconds give the offense a huge advantage over the defense.  To neutralize this advantage, the defense’s strategy is to win 1st down as much as possible thus forcing the offense into long distance situations (ideally, 2nd and 9+ and 3rd and 7+). 

When an offense is put into passing situations, they become easier to defend in theory since the chances of a run play being called decreases as distance to convert a 1st down increases.  Of course, there are plenty of exceptions to this theory.  Sometimes an offensive coordinator will call a run play to try to keep the defense off balance, catch them off guard, or because of the field position.  When a defense forces a team to pass, they make that offense "one-dimensional."   How does a defense make a team one-dimensional?  By successfully winning first down from causing incompletions, mixing up the blitz to create a loss of a yardage or no gain, or stopping the run.  The defensive game plan changes every week but a goal of Cal’s each game was to stop the run. 

More after the Jump

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In the first installment of this series, I touched upon mistackling and briefly mentioned field position .  In this installment, we will dive into why field position is so important in football.

Special Teams

Unless you were living under a rock last year or are completely new to Cal football, special teams heavily impacted the outcomes of some of Cal's games in 2009.  Special teams are the 3rd phase of the game of football that have a tendency to go unnoticed.  Although they only take up 10-15% of the total amount of plays during a game, each special teams play is crucial. 

Field goal and point after touchdown (PAT or Extra Point) attempts are the responsibility of the placekicking team and can be the difference between a 1 point loss or win (think Cal vs. Oregon 2004 when the Oregon placekicker missed a PAT attempt, which proved to be the difference in the game).  Special teams also consist of the kickoff return and coverage as well as the punt return and coverage units.  A kickoff return, punt return, or blocked punt score can result in 7 points for either team in less than 10 seconds and completely change the face of a game.  The chances of a touchdown being scored on special teams are an even smaller percentage of the total amount of special teams plays in a year.  Season and career performances like Desean Jackson’s on punt returns are rare and phenomenal to watch. 

More after the jump.

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Next week, the California Golden Bears will kickoff the 2010 season at home versus UC Davis. Fall camp is in full effect and the team is fired up for what will be a very entertaining Pac10 conference race and college football season altogether. After speaking with some of the CGB posters during Spring camp, a very good question was raised:

How could a [defense] with standouts at each level perform so poorly. With Tyson [Defensive Line], Mohammed [Linebacker], and Syd [Secondary], you think you’d be fairly solid or at least average. For instance, you’d think the Az and ’furd game would be more the norm instead of the exception.

This observation caught my attention since I had a few previous conversations discussing this topic of concern.  It seemed like there was enough interest for a few posts on this subject, so I began investigating and partaking in some shady backroom deals to uncover information about the struggles of Cal's defense and special teams throughout the 2009 campaign.  However, some unanticipated projects hit my desk like a Zack Follett collision from his Pop Warner days and deciding I was not removed far enough away from the season to look at things objectively without drinking heavily are the two convenient excuses I offer up for pushing these stories back four months. But alas, I had some free time recently and wrote a five part series. It will examine, with the help of YouTube clips, some areas of breakdowns that Cal's defense and special teams struggled with throughout 2009.

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