Comments on: Football: Tuesday night update

By: MoreNCsarecoming

MoreNCsarecoming — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 03:20:23 +0000

Daddy read your post and he said if Tedford stays much longer the program will revert right back to anonymity. Sad but true. USC was down; Washington was down; pucla was down; ASU was down; Stanford was down but your program wasted the opportunity.

By: Pug

Pug — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:55:35 +0000

Maybe people like Tedford for the simple reason that, before Tedford, people in other parts of the country would look at me when I mentioned Cal footbal and say, “I didn’t know Berkeley had a football team”.

By: nickle

nickle — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 08:48:33 +0000

For those comparing Riley 07 to Riley 09 (and 08 for that matter).

Our top 3 receivers in 07: desean jackson, lavelle hawkins, robert jordan.

Who are our top 3 receivers today?

I think we all took our receivers for granted in the past years. Hopefully this year they can step up, but it’s a huge dropoff in talent (not because these guys suck, but because those are pretty legit receivers in 07). Like Coach said…there’s a lot more than just riley making the pass (he absolutely should have made some passes the past weeks though), and it’s easy to blame riley, but there’s a lot of things that could help him. Did anyone see how many minutes Barkley had all game in the pocket? He could have taken a nap and thrown a completion after he woke up. It was sorta like the GB / Vikings game the other day. Farve killed, but he also had 0 sacks and I don’t think any hurries. Look up those stats on AR.

I’m still disappointed Riley doens’t seem to be the second coming of AR, but man, there’s a lot of other stuff we have to get better at.

By: abe

abe — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 08:31:43 +0000

I am sick and tired of people whose response to every criticism of Tedford is to acknowledge that without him we would be a mediocre team. First of all yes we all acknowledge that, heck even the squirrels on campus know that but at some point the honeymoon has to end. No athletic director in the nation hires a coach with the ultimate goal of building a middle of the road pedestrian program. Tedford was not hired to build such a program, he was hired to rebuild the program so that we could be contenders for conference championship. Period. At some point the honeymoon has to be over and we need to start to seriously question if he has what it takes to take us there and the response to such criticism is not to remind us that without him we wouldn’t even be in this discussion.

By: calbear

calbear — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:17:12 +0000

Riley said the quarterbacks and receivers had a meeting today to talk about “owning routes,” having some routes that they know can get them a completion most of the time.

If the team had aspirations to win the Pac-10 and the NC, why wasn’t this done before..Tedford seems detail oriented but this is a no-brainer…

Still waiting for a receiver to step up, and more big name receivers to sign.

The must frustrating thing is that these kids have talent. They just don’t show up for games. They’re clueless and have no execution. The kids deserve solid preparation and it seems pretty evident that they just don’t have it. We’ll see what the real team is like against UCLA…

By: C.J. Roses

C.J. Roses — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:54:27 +0000

“BUT the thing that makes college football so great is the emotional side of it all…”

“Tedford needs to harness the emotions of our guys…” It’s startling to me that some can’t see that this is Tedford’s failing, something he simply has not been able to do. You do not “harness the emotions of our guys” by kicking that field goal at the end of the half. In fact, he did just the opposite- deflating the emotional state of the team.

Tedford has some great qualities but he has his shortcomings. I don’t see him as the coach to get us to a Rose Bowl…

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:57:25 +0000

As I have repeatedly said before, since the 2004 Holiday Bowl, Cal has been a disappointing program. Not terrible, just disappointing. And it was in the 2004 Holiday Bowl where I first really questioned Tedford’s coaching, because in that game he repeatedly insisted on Rodgers throwing to inexperienced receivers (no Chase Lyman + additional injuries) even though he had an amazing offensive line and JJ Arrington. That played straight into the hands of Texas Tech, which simply tries to outscore the opponents – 3 and outs help teams like T Tech. I thought Tedford had learned his lesson when he publicly stated in the offseason that he should have ordered more running in the bowl game, and, at the time, I wasn’t going to question his coaching given the successes in 2002, 2003, and 2004. 2005, I simply wrote off because Ayoob was terrible and it was a shock to the collective system (though had Tedford gone with Levy earlier, we may have had more success). 2006 was a disappointment, not because of the Tennessee loss, but because of the Arizona loss, which, had Tedford again ordered more running, we would never had to worry about Longshore at the end of the game 9and, even on that last drive, we easily could have run more without risking running out of time). 2007 was the letdown, but I agree with Dan what Cal is now facing is far worse than 2007. 2007 was disaster because Tedford stuck with Longshore when he shouldn’t have, but I didn’t get the sense the entire team was falling apart 9see the game against U$C that year), except in the first quarter of the 2007 bowl game against Air Force. And one of things that has long bothered me about 2007 is that, while Riley certainly screwed up by trying to run at the end of the Oregon State game, he never should have been in that position. We should have kicked a FG to tie the game, force overtime, and get our running backs back on the field. Given the amazing job Riley had already done to get us in a position to tie, he shouldn’t have been positioned in that manner. My view.

By: jpf

jpf — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:54:54 +0000

Okay, all you Tedford detractors have a right to be pissed and are right in your criticism of the coaching staff’s philosophies. BUT you need to first acknowledge that without Tedford, Cal is a third-tier mediocre football team that would be down in the cellar with Washington State. With the exception of a few blips that has been the case for the last SIXTY FREAKING YEARS.

Cal fans owe Tedford nearly everything that Cal Football is right now. Half a BILLION DOLLAR ENDOWMENT??? Could anyone even pretend to dream about that in 2000??? NO WAY.

I’m not a Tedford apologist, in fact I’ve been VERY critical of his play calling for years. But you can’t just fire the guy for a couple of bad games. The man is still a genius and he is at CAL, where we LEARN from our mistakes and we grow. CAL is unique because EVERYONE has a shot that brings talent and passion. As a fanbase we need to support that passion not dampen it. We are NOT Tennessee, we are NOT Nebraska, we are NOT Michigan, we are NOT Penn State, or any variety of big schools with mediocre academics and only the desire to win at all costs.

No.

This is CAL. We do things right. And Tedford will find a way if we support him.

As far what needs to change…personally I think the talent is there, but it is all about the emotional side of the game. This team is fragile and tight because of the expectations. These are just kids, they don’t have the neurodevelopmental capacity to make perfect decisions under pressure. As a matter of fact they are in a range of ages where it is that exact thing that is so TERRIBLE. Tedford’s mistakes come in treating this team like a professional team (and I think he would end up having FAR more success in the NFL as a result).

BUT the thing that makes college football so great is the emotional side of it all. It’s the living on the edge, it’s the crazy sloppiness that produces rare moments of glory that live on forever (see “The Play” the greatest play of all college football).

Tedford needs to harness the emotions of our guys, keep them loose, let them have fun, and put it all out on the line. That’s why those teams in the early years won so handily with such inferior talent. They had fire. We lost that after 2004. As Cal alums and fans we need to help bring it back.

So Jeff Tedford haters, SHUT THE HELL UP!!

By: rollonubears

rollonubears — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:52:28 +0000

how many quarterbacks bounce back from a mental slump? i agree, riley was insanely awesome in 2007, and tedford put the screw to him by not letting him play, and not letting him play to his advantages when he did play. he’s got him all screwed up now, with this stupid cock-arm wind-up delivery garbage he forces everyone to do. it might work fine when you’ve got oklahoma’s line protecting you, but not when you’ve got the bears. tedford is the reason for our problems this year. he needs to fix them, or he needs to go. he’s been the reason for our problems every year, since 2004. you can say we got hosed by mack brown in 2004, but tedford refused to run up the score on opponents that year, brought a sleepy team to southern miss, and cost us a shot at a quasi-rose bowl berth as a result. that would have done WONDERS for the program. instead, it was the beginning of the end. his stubbornness has gotten worse every year. it’s starting to want this year, but it’s being replaced with stupidity. both are unacceptable. i will take all this back if we have a good showing against the teenage bears of socal next week, though.

By: abe

abe — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:16:14 +0000

I beg to differ with the notion that this is not a talented team because it is. We are no ‘SC but we have enough talent to do better that we did these past two games. To me ONE of the issues is the players, especially the QB Riley are under a lot of pressure this season. He knows the lofty expectations of the fans and that most of that depends on how the passing game clicks so I feel like we are putting a great deal of pressure on him. Anybody remember the Riley from ’07? He may have made some stupid decisions but his throwing was unbelievable. He was the back up, no pressure or expectations so he was playing fearlessly and you saw the productivity. Anybody read his scouting report on ESPN when he came out of high school? I believe it read something like, ‘this guy might be the most accurate passer in long throws in his class’. The point is the fact that he was not able to hit Vereen on the trick play was not due to lack of talent, becuause he is a much better QB than that but rather due to playing with a lot of nerves. The hope is the coaches will find a way to help him play relaxed and if they succeed you are in for a treat because I have a great deal of faith in this guy.