Justin Wilcox' Defense

Well Cal fans, we have a new HC. There's no more Bear Raid, and for the first time in a decade and a half Cal is led by a defense-minded coach. Justin Wilcox is a guy who's always been on Cal fans' radar, especially when everyone seemed to hate Bob Gregory in the third quarter of Tedford's tenure. Wilcox was the DC during Boise State's upset of Oklahoma just before Cal's defense started to show cracks, and he stayed on for many years as a part of Chris Petersen's stellar run there. This earned him an upgrade to some decent seasons on Derek Dooley's staff at Tennessee. From there, he helped out Sark after Nick Holts' disastrous defenses at UW, and then that whole staff fell upward to USC, where Wilcox was unceremoniously fired by Clay Helton at the end of 2015. Finally, after one very good season at Wisconsin, here we are. Wilcox' success seems to closely follow the HC's that he's working for. When his HC is good, he's good. When his HC is bad and/or drunk, he's not. Now he himself is the HC, so who knows what's going to happen? A lot of it will depend on his vision for Cal's defense.

Washington's Pass Rush

Washington is up next on our tour of PAC-12 pass rushes. In this post, we'll see how UW relied more heavily than other teams on straightforward, 4-man rushes to get production. We'll also see that, when they did blitz, they took advantage of their defensive ends' versatility and twisted them inside to the backside of their opponents' protection schemes, giving their rush a very different flavor from the relatively simple rush schemes that we saw from Colorado.

Colorado's Pass Rush

Now that I've talked about the basics of pass protection, it's time to look at our first PAC-12 pass rush. I'm going to start this series with Colorado, who led the conference both in overall sacks (35) and in sacks/game (2.7). In 2016 CU shot into the top-25 nationally in both of these metrics, and this improvement is partially responsible for their corresponding rise in the PAC-12 standings.

Pass Protection Scheme Basics

Cal's pass rush has been a major problem for three of the last four years, and is one of the most-discussed topics among the fan base. It would technically be possible to break down our pass rush and to talk about all of the things that we could be doing instead of what we actually do, but trying to predict the hypothetical results of such changes would be too speculative and abstract for my tastes. Instead, I'm going to defer to the actual DC's in the conference by writing a series of posts breaking down some of the best pass rushes in the PAC-12. As of right now, I'm planning a series of individual posts on Colorado, Utah, and Washington. In 2016, those teams were the three best in terms of sacks per game against PAC-12 competition. Depending on how things go with these posts, there's a second tier of ASU, Stanford, and UCLA that could be worth going into.

Before we get into the pass rush posts themselves, however, I'm going to say a few things about the basics of pass protection; the pass rush makes less sense if you don't know what it's designed to defeat, so this post will serve as a quick introduction and as a resource for my later posts on various rush schemes.

Cal Defense vs. OSU 2016

Once again, Cal's 2016 defense is historically bad and people want answers. I don't have them (if I did I'd be collecting half a million a year and saving Sonny's job), but there are a few things that can be added to the discussion that might be helpful for thinking about what we're watching week-in and week-out.

The biggest questions that people have are based around coverage. There seems to be a solid consensus that goes something like this: Art Kaufman is worried that our DB's will get burned if we play aggressive coverage schemes, and so we play off-coverage and don't put enough guys in the box, which also limits us in the pass rush. As a result, not only do we get killed in the run game, but we give up a ton of passing yards with a “Bend But Don't Break” coverage strategy. If we're going to get killed in the passing game as it is, why not play more aggressively with the DB's, load up the box, and get after the RB/QB?

Treggs' TD vs. UW

If you're interested in scheme, go back and watch Cal's offense vs. UW's defense right now. Do it twice. This game was awesome. Both sides had clearly scouted each other well, and both sides made great adjustments from those initial good gameplans. I've got a few aspects of our offense that I want to write posts on, so be on the lookout for a later post about what Brandon Jones has added to our run game (more lead blocking!), but for now I want to talk packaged plays, and particularly Treggs' 1^st half TD.

Introducing Oregon State's New Coaches

Later in the off-season I plan to put out some e-books on the other teams in the PAC-12. In most cases, the coaching staffs at other schools are staying the same, so the breakdowns are easier to do. Oregon State's new staff is cobbled together from several different places, however, and so my breakdown of them will be a little more complicated. As a result, I'm putting together a three part preview of what we can expect from Gary Andersen's Beavers. This post, on the coaching staff and its background, is installment one.