Cal Film Review

[Ryan Bridges]

Let's never play another 9:30 kickoff game. 

Here's what I gathered from the "highlights."

OFFENSE

Warren: Better Performance or Worse Competition?

At least on this play, it looks like the latter. But that's OK.



Left guard Patrick Vahe and center Zach Shackelford very suddenly push the nose tackle two yards off the ball, and with left tackle Connor Williams' block, it creates a hole wide enough for a Chris Warren. This, he can do. When the offensive line gets push like this, that's another step or two that the ballcarrier can take before he has to make decisions about what to do next, and Texas doesn't want Warren making decisions except which shoulder he wants to use to run over the first guy he meets.

Bonus action: Watch the Cal cornerback at the top of the screen. One moment he's sure he's going to be the superstar of this play; then he gets a good look at Warren and hops back in front of Collin Johnson, basically begging to be blocked; then he bends down, midplay, and starts messing with his shoes.

Buechele Bomber

On a night when Shane Buechele didn't have his best stuff (Does anyone really doubt that he was concussed and shouldn't have been playing? You don't get your helmet taken away for chest injuries.), this was a beauty.



Unlike his interception, this ball was not underthrown. It sails about 50 yards downfield, from the far hash to the bottom of the numbers. I think that's about the limit of Buechele's range, but it should be plenty most of the time. There isn't much to analyze in the play itself — it's just 3 Verticals with max protection against what seems off man coverage. But I did slow it down to point out (1) Buechele looks left initially to try to move the safety, and it helped; and (2) big whiff by Connor at left tackle but Vahe sacrificed himself to keep Buechele upright.

D'Onta Foreman, No Relation to Armanti Foreman

I loved this play call.



Cal was trying to play Cover 1 (man coverage with a deep safety), but with the jet motion they need a solution to the threat of jet sweep. If the nickel (#3) chases Jerrod Heard across the formation, he still don't be in a position to force the ball back inside to his help, so he's going to drop back while the deep safety rolls down to cut Heard off. The problem, though, is that those two players have to agree to disagree, and they both end up trying to cut off Heard. Once D'Onta Foreman masterfully clears the first and second levels, he finds there is no third level.

DEFENSE

The First Touchdown

This is a difficult one to break down without the all-22 or even a replay. 



Texas is in Cover 3, but it's difficult to show from this angle. The receiver who caught the pass is #15, lined up in the slot on the bottom of the screen. You can see that he started to break inside as he moves out of the frame, and based on the way Davis Webb drifts it may have been a fake screen. Or the receiver may have run a slant-and-go-type route. Either way, I'm assuming this was a double move, and somehow the slot got outside of Davante Davis, whose responsibility in Cover 3 was that deep third of the field. You have to give Webb credit for slinging that ball 50+ yards downfield (from the far hash), on target, while fading away. The ability to do that from so deep is part of the reason he had so much time to let the play develop.

Switch Release

For this play Cal overloaded the formation to the boundary with four receivers, which would normally get their best receiver, Chad Hansen, isolated with a corner on the other entire half of the field.



Texas, however, plays two-deep coverage, giving them a high-low bracket on him — it's going to be tough to get him the ball. The problem is that that weakens the coverage on the four-receiver side. The coverage is hard to draw up — and I'd have drawn it up like Cover 2 but once the routes develop it ends up playing out like man anyway — but the gist of it is that Holton Hill needed to run with the fade route by the slot receiver. I'm not sure that he knew that, but it also seemed like he got caught with his eyes in the backfield. I did get the sense that Texas spent a ton of time working on defending screens — which makes it even less forgivable that they failed to stop them — and that may have been on everyone's mind at times. At this point it's worth highlighting that Chris Nelson does a great job peeling off his rush to pick up the back in the flat.

Overestimating Ourselves or Underestimating Cal

So we highlighted how Texas wisely "doubled" Hansen on the previous touchdown. This time is not so good.



This offensive play should look familiar because it could have come straight out of Texas' playbook: basically max protect, three verticals. I drew a post-corner route for Hansen because I'm hopeful he did something to get past Sheroid Evans so easily.

Texas "rolled" the coverage to the boundary (the safeties' coverage zones shifted that way), which is pretty standard practice, especially when you want to take a specific receiver away with double coverage. The problem is the receiver Texas should want to take away is on the other side of the field, and they end up with Evans matched up with him one-on-one. The coaches probably saw something on film and had a reason to do this, but it clearly didn't work out this time.

How Are There So Many of These?

This one's pretty inexplicable.



Everyone seemed to know what coverage they were in except Kris Boyd, who, oh by the way, is matched up with Hansen. (I was concerned before the game about the fact that Evans was going to draw that assignment, and the only player I believe was capable of holding Hansen down alone happens to be in the doghouse.) From the live replay, it seemed like maybe Boyd thought he and Dylan Haines would switch off receivers, but I do not know why he would think that.

The Last One, Which Didn't Count

Yes, it should have been a touchback and Texas' ball. It's stupid and it will be nice to tell recruits about how we got hosed by the refs, but Texas never should have been in this situation in the first place, and they deserved to lose. Moving on, how did the back break lose for Cal's only nice run of the whole friggen game?



They isolated Malik Jefferson with their 310-pound "fullback." Jefferson had already banged up his shoulder earlier in the game, so that wasn't a bad decision — you wouldn't expect him to be eager to take on that block. It appears to me that he did what a lot of humans would do when confronted with this problem: He took the block on with his dominant side instead of the proper side. The result is a crease that the back shoots through for a derperrific finish to this game.

 

[North Texas Golfer]

Good stuff as usual Ryan. Thanks.

Quick question for you.

What have you seen in your analysis that might explain the reluctance of Gilbert to throw over the middle?

 

[Bear19]

Thanks Ryan.

In the most sarcastic voice I could muster what have you seen in the film that caused us to have excessive and mindless penalties and play like dog shit on special teams?

 

[J.B. TexasEx]

On a night when Shane Buechele didn't have his best stuff (Does anyone really doubt that he was concussed and shouldn't have been playing? You don't get your helmet taken away for chest injuries.), this was a beauty.

That's what I thought too, Ryan, after seeing Boo's head bounce off the turf.

I didn't see anything that made me believe it was a chest or shoulder injury. That was nonsense, IMO, but the announcers calling the game weren't very good. "Armanti, no relation to D'Vonta".....geez. How unprofessional.

 

[joeywa]

It was a 7:30 start for me.

 

[noonan05]

On the final play watch Jason Hall do a whole bunch of sweet f all. If the get a first down the games end ane we have guy 10 yards deep doing nothing blows my f##king mind.

Malik may have force spill or cutback im not willing to say he was wrong or right. Whichever shoulder he took we were done either way because Wheeler just played his gap.

The annoying part is our Line actually got push

 

[Ryan Bridges]

What have you seen in your analysis that might explain the reluctance of Gilbert to throw over the middle?

I think it's just the nature of the offense. Eventually we'll see seams to the tight ends/H-backs, and they've tried throwing a few slants, but it doesn't serve much purpose outside of that. They'd rather focus on stretching the defense horizontally and occasionally over the top than try to attack the levels in the middle. Besides, it's hard to run a lot of those concepts like crossing routes if your receivers start out so wide.

Shane's height may be an issue as well, but that's something I'm still debating, and I don't think it would change what the offense is trying to do if he were 6'4".

 

[Ryan Bridges]

Found the all-22 of the first touchdown.



The slot runs a sort of slant-corner and it seems like the secondary just fell asleep. Davante Davis picks him up late. He might still have been able to make a play if he'd used a "baseball turn" technique, spinning with his back to the quarterback in order to maintain his speed. He nearly made a play on the ball anyway. This was an execution error, not a schematic one.

 

[Ryan Bridges]

PJ Locke had a rough first series. After Malik broke up a screen pass on Cal's first play, Locke allowed a nine-yard completion to set up 3rd & 1.



Locke works too hard to slip up like this. He gave the receiver too much space when he could easily have closed the gap. It's not even a good throw, and with better technique it could have been a pick-six.

Here's what happened on the next play.



Cal runs a jet sweep to the field. Davis doesn't do a great job attacking the kick-out block and forcing the ballcarrier inside, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway because Locke had no idea where the ball was. I'm not putting either of these plays on the coaches.

 

[noonan05]

PJ Locke had a rough first series. After Malik broke up a screen pass on Cal's first play, Locke allowed a nine-yard completion to set up 3rd & 1.



Locke works too hard to slip up like this. He gave the receiver too much space when he could easily have closed the gap. It's not even a good throw, and with better technique it could have been a pick-six.

Here's what happened on the next play.



Cal runs a jet sweep to the field. Davis doesn't do a great job attacking the kick-out block and forcing the ballcarrier inside, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway because Locke had no idea where the ball was. I'm not putting either of these plays on the coaches.

Once again my mate Hall sitting back doing nothing on the jet sweep play. I don't see what the coaches see with him

 

[Ryan Bridges]

There's been some talk (including in this thread) about the lack of throws over the middle. This one isn't between the tackles, but it is an inside-breaking route, which we haven't seen much of this season.



Cal plays man coverage with no deep safety, while Texas is running an RPO — lead zone with a slant by the X receiver. Buechele reads the safety to determine whether to hand off or throw the slant. What we can't see from this angle is why he held onto the ball initially, and whether he was right to do so. That means we also can't be sure whether his height had anything to do with the decision, like if he couldn't see the receiver. Here's another view:



From here, it looks like Buechele is waiting for Foreman to clear the left tackle/defensive end. Maybe his height was an issue, maybe not. I wouldn't make much of the play except that I've noticed Buechele pump fake on similar throws in the past. It's not a big deal, but it's a potential limiting factor in the offense and something to watch. Complete this pass and the only person who can prevent a touchdown is the corner, trying to tackle a sprinting Armanti Foreman in space.

 

[Ryan Bridges]

This is interesting. On Texas' first 3rd down, they line up in a tackle over formation, with Connor Williams acting as a tight end next to Brandon Hodges, while Caleb Bluiett lines up in the left tackle spot. 



Equally interesting, they run it behind Vahe and Bluiett, not the side of the line with a guard and two tackles. And check out the "hole" they open up. Warren should be devastating behind blocking like this.

I'll be stunned if we don't see this formation again soon, except with Bluiett releasing up the seam for a long reception.

 

[Ryan Bridges]

Texas had run it only once coming into this game, but Dart (aka tackle power or tackle wrap) made appearances several times against Cal.



It's tough for a defense because it looks like inside zone except for the tackle pulling. It's even tougher for the defense when the back can read the tackle's block and hit the correct hole. Fortunately for Cal ...

 

[Ryan Bridges]

There's been some talk (including in this thread) about the lack of throws over the middle. This one isn't between the tackles, but it is an inside-breaking route, which we haven't seen much of this season.



Cal plays man coverage with no deep safety, while Texas is running an RPO — lead zone with a slant by the X receiver. Buechele reads the safety to determine whether to hand off or throw the slant. What we can't see from this angle is why he held onto the ball initially, and whether he was right to do so. That means we also can't be sure whether his height had anything to do with the decision, like if he couldn't see the receiver. Here's another view:



From here, it looks like Buechele is waiting for Foreman to clear the left tackle/defensive end. Maybe his height was an issue, maybe not. I wouldn't make much of the play except that I've noticed Buechele pump fake on similar throws in the past. It's not a big deal, but it's a potential limiting factor in the offense and something to watch. Complete this pass and the only person who can prevent a touchdown is the corner, trying to tackle a sprinting Armanti Foreman in space.

Same exact play with Swoopes running it. Cal is in Cover 0 (man, no deep safety). Swoopes gets the ball out but it's off target and/or Burt falls down to protect himself from the nonexistent safety, who would also be the only player who could stop Burt from scoring. 



Missing out on touchdowns in a game where you can score on any play isn't such a big deal, but it can't happen in other games.

 

[Ryan Bridges]

Texas had run it only once coming into this game, but Dart (aka tackle power or tackle wrap) made appearances several times against Cal.



It's tough for a defense because it looks like inside zone except for the tackle pulling. It's even tougher for the defense when the back can read the tackle's block and hit the correct hole. Fortunately for Cal ...

And again.

 

[Ryan Bridges]

This "defensive holding" penalty on 3rd & 8 set up Cal's touchdown to make it 17-14.

 

[North Texas Golfer]

This "defensive holding" penalty on 3rd & 8 set up Cal's touchdown to make it 17-14.

It's hard to tell for sure but it looks like Davis might have hooked him with his right arm just as they pass the 20 yard line. 

 

[Ryan Bridges]

The announcers said during the game that Texas' H-back would take defenses to the football, and that was accurate until this game.



Combining zone read with an arc block by the H-back prevents the defense from stopping zone read with gap exchanges. If the defensive end attacks the dive, the defender the defense expects to take away the quarterback will be blocked by the H-back.

 

[Ryan Bridges]

It's hard to tell for sure but it looks like Davis might have hooked him with his right arm just as they pass the 20 yard line. 

If that's a penalty, there's defensive holding on at least a third, maybe half, of all pass plays involving man coverage.