What do you want to see?

I'm taking recommendations for post ideas.  I've already posted and gotten a few ideas in the following BI thread, so if there's something you want to see, head over there and let me know.

http://bearinsider.com/forums/showthread.php?88765-Bear-Raid-Breakdown-What-do-you-all-want-to-see

Pick Plays and Cover-0: Caleb Coleman's 4th Down Stop

Every season there's some hot-button issue that gets the pundits talking. This year, for a stretch after the controversial finish to Notre Dame-FSU, that issue was the pick play. A little closer to home, a similar play gave Utah the victory over USC in the last minutes of that game. These are plays that everybody runs. Everyone complains about them when they're used against their team, and nobody notices them when their own team runs them. Until someone institutes a rule that no two receivers can pass within X yards of each other, these plays will have a legitimate place in football strategy, and that's OK. Although picks capitalize on a certain amount of “interference,” defenses have plenty of answers that can render them ineffective. Like every other play, it's about the coordinator having a sense for when these plays are coming, and making the right call to stop them. This post will break down three key plays involving picks from the OSU game in an effort to get inside the game-within-the-game behind compressed formations (formations where two or more receivers line up tight to each other). The ultimate point will be to understand Caleb Coleman's game-sealing tackle late in the game on 4^th and 2.

UCLA Defensive Gameplan

Up until the UCLA game, our defense had never given up more than 5 ypc against the rush, and had only given up more than 4 ypc twice. We'd only given up 150+ yards one time (to Colorado), and had held everyone else under 120. In the UCLA game we gave up 237 yards at 5.04 ypc. Why the sudden change? It's tempting to say that they're just better than the teams we'd played up to that point, but on the season they aren't that far ahead of UA. As always, it's a lot more complicated than the size, strength, and speed of your opponent.

Cal's Coverage Problems

Pass coverage is the hot-button issue for our team this season, so I want to keep chipping away at how it's supposed to work and the kinds of things that can go wrong.  This post will look more in depth at our Cover-4 package, the key responsibilities within it, and the things that can go wrong.

TD's TDs: Kick Return Edition

My girlfriend and I watched the WSU game with the fledgling CAA-Long Beach chapter at Coach's in Seal Beach (there's another viewing party this Saturday, for those who aren't going up for the game).  She's kind of marginally interested in all the stuff I talk about on here, so while watching the replays of Davis' TD returns she says to me "I kind of believe you when you say that all the stuff going on on offense and defense isn't just chaos, but you'll never convince me that there's any plan behind THAT [i.e. kick returns and coverage]."  Challenge accepted.  I know next to nothing about special teams, but we'll probably never see back-to-back TD returns again, so I'd be remiss not to talk about them.  After a little research, this is what I've come up with.

Art Kafuman's Defense: Arizona

This post is going to build toward talking about the UA game, but it's also going to be my first general introduction to some important concepts in defensive football. We're going to look at some defensive structures before getting into the problems that UA caused for them.

Defending Trips with Cover-4: Treggs' OT TD

I like to think of playbooks like tool boxes (creative, right?). Some coaches have a million plays, because they want to have the perfect play for every scenario and defensive look that they could possibly see. A guy like Tedford doesn't just have a tool box, he has an entire Home Depot. Our coaches make do with decidedly less, and they're happy to let you know it. From the sounds of things, you'd think that they're just really, really good at using a hammer and screw driver. Like, they've just sat down and hammered a bunch of things, so they're really really efficient at hammering. On this model, playcalling starts to sound really easy.

This is the trap, though. The party line is that we can complete whatever we want no matter what the defense does, because we've just practiced it more than they have. In reality, our coaches (and the Air Raid guys in general) have re-imagined the things that are possible with a few basic plays. They can take a hammer and screwdriver and produce a space shuttle. They can take any defensive look and come up with novel ways to apply our very few offensive plays to beat it. Treggs' overtime TD is a good example of exactly how much strategy goes into our playcalling.