You cannot punt in that situation

You just cant, there was no way Texas was getting the ball back or at best was going to get it in same place with no timeouts and about 30 seconds left on the clock. I really like Charlie and I really want him to succeed but over the past three years he has made some really bad in game decisions and that one is right there with the worst of them. Texas just flat gave this game away with two interceptions when the coaches should have been pounding the run, two missed field goals and a most of the time clueless defense. Bedford may be a great motivator but in three years he has yet to show he is minimally able to field a competent defense. This team has so much potential and the freshman are going to make freshman mistakes so it isnt shocking they lose their first big game on the road but this staff needs to put them in a better position to have a chance to win. Texas could have run on Cal all night but went away from it at critical times all night. This one hurts way more than last year because last years team was bad and bad things happen to bad teams, this years team is good but not good enough to overcome their own youth and coaching mistakes.

 

I agree 100%, the thing about this game that had me mad from the opening drive is how we forced the pass when we should have been run, run, run. If you know your D sucks, and I guess our coaches are the only ones who do not know this, then you run the ball to keep it away from their offense.

WRT the punt, what in the world made CS think we would get the ball back?

 

That decision to punt was completely unacceptable and falls squarely on Charlie Strong. I have no idea what the heck that decision was.

 

Indefensible decision. Surrendering the game to save face (unless he magically knew the dumbass Cal RB would throw the ball away) rather than giving his team the best chance possible to win.

 

That is all I can come up with for the decision.

 

It was a stupid decision in an insanely long line of stupid decisions

 

Yeah, it was a give up call.

 

I went to bed at the half simply because I saw the writing on the wall for the game. I planned to get up early and watch the debacle unfold with a night's sleep. My observations:

1) The coaching staff continues to make very poor in game decisions. Poor clock management, punting when they should not and abandoning a run game that could not be stopped with a QB (Swoopes) that simply cannot execute a passing strategy.

2) Bedford has yet to show improvement on defense. Strong needs to take quick action or he will ultimately fail as a result of not hiring and then holding them accountable for results. He cannot afford to allow Bedford to be the Shawn Watson of defense.

3) This team is loaded with talent. There are no more excuses with Charlie.

I am not back on the fire Charlie bandwagon. I see obvious improvements and I think next year will be a banner year. Way too much talent and good recruiting happening. However, Charlie needs to realize that there will be no more waiting and no more excuses. He needs 8 wins period - and that will not happen without changes on defense.

 

Could not have said it better. I just hope CS has the courage to make the obvious decision, and do it now, at the beginning of the bye week.

 

I wish I had gone to bed at the half. The defense looked clueless at too many important times and that is on the staff, I saw a quote this morning from Hager that it was an execution thing but that's on the coaches too. This defense has been a sieve for three years and in spite of the talent increase the performance continues to be sub par or worse.

 

I can be a bad coach for 1 million and save UT a lot of money.

 

Bedford, in his remarks to LHN after the game, said the defense practices great but can't execute in the games. He said it so incredulously, like he was at a loss for words on how to transfer good practice to good play in games. He looked totally defeated. I think he knows he is probably out of here. "We need to do a better job of coaching them and getting them ready to play." No ****.

 

Is it me or do our opponents always seem more prepared for what we run versus what they run?

Cal jumped on our passing early. They used the screen pass that killed us against ND. Yet we opted for more passing than running even though they give up more than 6 yards per carry.

I also read where we have yet to win in the Strong era when trailing at the half. Amazing.

 

0-12 when losing at halftime and 2-7 out of state (5 game losing streak with both wins coming in 2014 against Kansas and a completely injured Okie State) is troubling. We play Oklahoma State on the road next in a game that will probably see both teams score 40+ points. I think the Cowboys have a better defense and worse offense than Cal. Charlie Strong is 2-2 at Texas coming off of bye weeks.

 

No, it's not you.

 

I agree with all of the above. My high school coach used to tell me offenses win games, but defenses win championships.

 

The decision to punt there could be more excused if it was an isolated incident, but our staff has been pretty consistent in making poor decisions near the end of half, as if they have no awareness of how the clock interacts with the score and/or the situation on the field.

Against Oklahoma in 2014, down 11 with 6 minutes to go, it's obvious to everyone that if we score a TD then we'll go for 2. Except we didn't have a play ready for the 2 point attempt and had to burn a timeout. So we stopped OU and got the ball back with 18 seconds left rather than nearly a minute left. We very well could have won that game had anybody been ready to go for two. West Virginia 2015, down 14 with 9 minutes to go, we kick a FG to still leave ourselves 2 scores behind. It didn't end up mattering because we didn't score again anyway. Against Notre Dame this year we rushed like hell to prevent a delay of game on a frigging extra point kick. Do they not trust our kicker to make an extra point if the LOS is the 8 instead of the 3?

And in the Cal game, the punt decision was the most obvious error we made, but not the only one - we blew it big time in the first half too. On our final drive, Buchele scrambled and then slid too early, very clearly giving himself up before the first down marker. Nobody on the sidelines was paying attention to where Buchele slid OR to the clock, because we waited 7 seconds to call a timeout.

Then on the next play, we actually did make a first down but the clock erroneously kept running. The refs had to blow the whistle, confer, and then come out and say "the clock should have stopped at [time], please reset to [time] and then run the clock on the ready for play signal". This was - or should have been - a big break for us, as even when the clock stops for a first down, it starts up before the offense can line back up to snap the ball and so some time still runs off the clock. But since the refs had to stop, think it over, and then announce to move the clock back, we had all that extra time (a full half a minute) to do ... literally nothing at all. We should have gone ahead and lined up and gotten a play in, and snapped it the moment the ball was ready. Instead, we waited for the ref to start the clock again before doing anything, and burned an extra 9 seconds.

So, 16 total seconds wasted due to an inability to recognize the situation and think quickly on our feet from the coaching staff - in a situation where even a few yards closer on that FG attempt could have made the difference. And, FWIW, the refs did screw us a bit in the end, because they reset the clock wrong. They put it back at 23 when they should have reset it to 26. Still, the 3 seconds the dumb official screwed us out of pales in comparison to the 16 seconds we screwed ourselves out of - although it's pretty hilarious that Sonny Dykes looked disgusted at the officials for making a poor decision that actually ended up favoring his team.

 

A team needs every advantage possible in football. Why even do an opening coin toss if field position, clock management and in game adjustment/strategy was not important? In this game, we had an opportunity to put ourselves in a dominating position before the half. Blocked punt and safety set up a perfect scenario to drive down for a half ending score and get the ball to open the second half thus keeping their offense and our defense off the field. Instead, our staff managed to give Cal momentum and further expose our defense. Bad coaching just like the punt eliminated an opportunity to tie it up.

 

Granted, the opening coin toss is probably just because they had to have *some* way of figuring out who gets the ball first. Could go like baseball and make it by home and away teams, I guess? Having a faceoff or tipoff type deal doesn't really work ... although the XFL tried it.

 

So in the Cal game on our last possession 3:30 on clock
1st and 10 Screen pass to Heard loses 1 yd
2nd and 11 Coverage and Shane tucks and runs for 2 yd gain
3rd and 9 Coverage and Shane leaves pocket and rolls out to left is tackled for a loss.
4th down and 10+ with 2:33 left on the clock, two time outs, an injured gassed QB who just took 2 solid hits and a solid punter.
Isn't that the situation?

 

If you punt in that situation, the only way Cal does not score is if one of their players does something crazy, like drop the ball 1 yard short of the endzone.

 

Yep. Solid punter isn't super relevant, because we lose for sure if Cal gets a single first down. If they go 3 and out, then we get the ball with about 40 seconds left and no timeouts. This is several times worse than having 2:33 left and 2 timeouts.

So, the only reason to punt is if our odds of holding Cal without a first down are much greater than our chances of making 10 yards on a single play (if the odds are anywhere close to the same, going for it is clearly superior because of the extra 2 minutes and 2 timeouts).

 

I knew at that point our defense was not going to stop them.
I don't know what Charlie thought he saw that led him to believe otherwise.
Then again, it was also kind of obvious we were not going to move the ball. We were making that **** defense look like the 85 Bears at that time.
Still our offense was hands down the better bet.

 

I really did not feel we were about to make a first down there. I thought we had about a one in four chance, about the same as the sum of odds of stopping them w/out a first down (including all the possibilities: a holding call, a dumb dropped pass, a fumble, a muffed punt)--about 25%

Buechele and our OL looked beat right at that moment and he looked wobbly.

So , it was at least an okay decision for me.

I think the plan/hope was that Heard would get at least 4 or 5 on an easy pitch and catch, then run once to get closer (or break a long run) and take 2 shots if necessary from about 3rd and 3 if needed. To see Heard get creamed behind the line and the QB running for his life 2 times, our OC probably was willing to hand off the keys for a 25% chance the D could come through.

I completely agree with the end of half criticism. How can you not be ready to run a play; that's exactly what our offense is made for.

 

It might have been a more important decision if we had McCoy and Shipley in the huddle, who pulled off several two-minute drill successes. I didn't think it more likely the offense would march down the field than it would be to hope for a defensive miracle. Neither choice looked good.

 

So that means we have the following:

Option A: 25% chance of having to go 70-80 yards in 2+ minutes with 2 timeouts.
Option B: 25% chance of having to go 70-80 yards in half a minute with no timeouts.

 

well, with 3:20 or so, if you call 2 timeouts and then lose 45 seconds, you could get the ball back with 2:00 or so and no timeouts. Then, you would have a punt return and a first down. It could even be that if you stuff them twice and it's 3rd and 10 with 3:10, they feel compelled to try a pass and give you a full 3:00.

But I do see your point about the comparison. Which is that if we hit a 12-yard pass with our 25%, we are then in the better position. And the point about our defense being pretty leaky by then.

I'm mainly saying that the odds of the unknown outcomes may not be so vastly different that it was an obvious blunder. Charlie probably just isn't used to his new world, where the offense is better than the defense--the opposite of most of his experience.

 

Since early on in the CS era I have thought the coaching staff lacked some normal coaching smarts and made some poor game day coaching decisions or NO decision(s).

As many of you have pointed out we have witnessed: poor game condition anticipation / situational awareness, bad clock management, poor or no decisions, lack of proper adjustments / strategy during the game / at halftime.

After the Cal game it became clear to me this factor will very likely continue to plague this program and cost the Horns some future victories... just like a very winnable game vs. Cal last week.