I agree that you have to keep the defense honest and make them stay back on their heels. But the disappointment this year was the way the offense ran with NL and KR. You know you don’t have a good QB, so why are you having them look down the field all the time to try to establish your mid-range passing game?

Get the ball out of your QB’s hands into those of your playmakers. How cool was the hook and ladder that Tucker and Best executed against Stanford? Or how about the trick pass against OSU? How involved was the QB in those 2 plays? Exactly!!

With Best as our strength, you obviously don’t run him up the gut every down (which by the way is what Tedford did with Lynch against Arizona 2 years ago and with Forsett against Oregon State last year). Line Best up as a WR, have him go out on a wheel route, just get him the ball. Who cares how many touches your other WR’s have or your TE. Then when the D locks on to Best, hopefully your QB will be able to figure it out and go to one of your other options.

The point you have to know what you have and don’t have, then structure your offense around it. I think this year he was trying much too hard to establish the QB, and as a result neither one got comfortable. Hopefully he gets things figured out for next year. We do play USC early and would love to see that coming out party for us if we hit on all cylinders from the get go!!!

I am also surprised that you did not mention Sweeney. I have heard that he is the most accurate passer that Cal has on the roster. I attended some practices and watched Mansion several times. In my opinion he has a strong arm but is not an accurate passer.
Sweeney is also a capable runner which is going to be very important this year unless the offensive line improves over last year.

Citing USC in the Rose Bowl is also a poor example. You open up the passing game by having a strong running game. If SC’s rushing attack weren’t as strong, Penn State would be able to drop more defenders back to defend against the passing attack. As it was, they had to respect USC’s running game. Once the passing game was opened for SC and it was obvious that Penn State’s secondary wouldn’t be able to defend it, there was no reason to go back.

If you look at Tedford’s record, Cal has been a more run-oriented program than past years. He’s had Adimchenobe, Arrington, Lynch, Forsett, and now Best. It’s pretty hard to argue with the results.

If you just keep doing something over and over, teams are going to shut it down. The reason Best ripped off all those runs vs. Miami was because each time, they came out of different looks, on different down/distances, at different times.

The balance you criticize is precisely the reason we run the ball so well every year. If we abandoned the pass completely, it would take teams about 10 plays to figure it out – remember Maryland?

You run the screens, the slants, and the play actions just enough to keep the defense honest, and then you kill them with the plays that you run best. This year, our best plays were zone rushes by Best. Some other year, it might be something else.

The play calling hasn’t been the problem. It’s the execution.

The decision to replace Riley at that point basically killed any chance that Cal had for a great season.