I think I'd like to try to create a little perspective here on at least one topic: play-calling.
I think a lot of fans who have never played or coached football (I have done both) think that play-calling is as simple as picking the right play for a given formation on defense/defensive call and then things work out right. Being unpredictable and surprising are key aspects, and things generally work the way you call them. You call the right one, it works, the wrong one, and it doesn't.
I call this ideaology the "gamestation X" idea about play-calling. It's largely as a result of playing football simulators on whatever your system is, and isn't really very much like actual play-calling. It has a number of false assumptions built into it, and just to be sure no one is in fact making these assumptions, I thought I'd make them explicit.
If it doesn't apply to you, don't worry about it, I'm just making some implicit things explicit.
1. Play-calling is impacted largely by your gameplan going into the game, and adjustments made during the game.
For those of you who watched/listened to coach's recent press conference, you'd know that the gameplan was largely based on negating the speed outside rush of UCLA. I don't think anyone would argue with this goal. There are a number of ways to achieve this goal through play-calling, but all are dependent on who you have to run the plays.
2. Play-calling is dependent on your personnel and their capabilities.
You cannot simply call plays despite your personnel's strengths and weaknesses and expect things to work. A slow player will not regularly execute a play needing quickness. A small fast player will not regularly execute a play requiring power. Etc. I think you get the point.
3. Play-calling is not an exact science
Sometimes the defense just beats you. Sometimes it's individual battles, sometimes it's a perfect call, sometimes someone on your team makes a mistake. Just because a play fails, doesn't mean it was a bad play call. There are so many factors that go into a play working or not working, you could make a career out of figuring it out. This is what real coaches do.
So here's how I think that information affects how I see the play-calling last game.
Our game plan was to limit the effectiveness of their outside rush. Ways that we tried to do this were: leaving in extra blockers (TE's and RB's) to help the OLine, running screen plays, throwing quick out passes and swing passes, and trying to establish the run game. All of this is pretty vanilla, which is why so many people are upset and think the play-calling stunk. My view is somewhat different.
No one would call our OLine good. So our personnel affects what we can do. Things we could do last year: lining up in 5 wide formations, going no-huddle, etc. that worked so effectively are not really safe bets against a good defense. A new quarterback also limits our options (Evan or Jimmeh) because making reads requires experience when you have to do it fast and you have 5 recievers. So we leave more men in the box to block, seems like a good idea to me.
Then we try to establish the run, also makes sense, especially if our defense i playing well. But since we have extra guys in the box, so do they, so running is especially difficult, though not impossible. A good Oline would help, but our personnel limits what we can do here. Since they are stacking the box though, it means we can play-action and take a few shots deep, and when the corners back off a little we can throw quick outs. Both of those play-calling decisions make sense, and if they aren't very risky, well, do we really need to take more risks with our team desperate for confidence? Screen passes and swing passes can also take the steam out of an outside rush, and both calls are sensible as well.
So at least without looking at how the game turned out, you can say that the play-calling and the game plan made sense, was trying to be safe and prevent mistakes, and had a reasonable chance at achieving it's goal. If you then go back and watch the game again, you can see how many times the problem was not the play that was called, but that UCLA made a good play, either a single player or they made a good call. Or we had a breakdown somewhere in a one-on-one battle. Or our timing was a little off, the receiver broke wrong, the QB didn't pull the trigger, the OLinemen lost his block. A host of little problems, as well as many people doing good jobs as well, but it takes a whole team doing their job to get things done.
Its easy to look at a play that didn't work and say "Oh, that's the wrong play, I think they should have done this." But if you, sitting at home on your couch thought of it, don't you think the defensive coordinator for the other team did too? It's rather funny how people can criticize play-calling for being too obvious and in the same breath criticize them for not doing the obvious thing. I'd like these people to come up with other game plans and play-calls that fit our team and personnel and explain them to me in detail. I, for one, think our team right now is limited by enough weaknesses that the game plan was solid, rational, and a very solid choice. That it didn't work the way we wanted in no means diminishes this, but in fact goes a long way towards proving we couldn't have handled a more complicated and risky game plan.
