[Goose]

I don’t care how well you design plays. Or for that matter how great a play caller that you are. If you have an offensive line that can’t block, you’re not gonna succeed. Is that simplistic? Sure. It’s also true.

It’s not scheme. It’s not calls. It’s a lack of physical  ability, athleticism and talent at the key position group on the field. Focus all you want on skill position players. If you can’t block, forget it. Daniels was running for his life on damn near every pass. Add 4 first half holding penalties. All of which were easy calls cause a lineman got smoked and just reached out and grabbed. They couldn’t run at all. Got stuffed.  Constantly.  And Cal does not have a good defense. 

What do you expect an offense to be able to achieve under those circumstances? And this was not anything different from what we’ve seen all year. Solidify your offensive line. Once you do that, if they  still stink on offense, then yeah, you can blame the scheme and/or the play caller.

+1000. If you can't block, you will not have a good offense. End of story.

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I’m sorry but Stanford “just does not have the players”.  The effort they gave all year was admirable. But they are horrifically undermanned. Their offensive line is as bad as I’ve seen at Stanford.  Overmatched week in week  out.  RB?  Who stands out.  They have a couple nice WR’s.  And I give Daniels a lot of credit. He survived the season running for his life and looked pretty darn good at times. Hats off to him. He got the hell beat out of him. is he a top flight quarterback? Probably not. But pretty hard to tell under the circumstances he had to play.

Totally agree, except IMO Daniels has real accuracy and touch problems on short passes. There are several important examples where he threw the ball into the ground or over the head of the intended recipient. These often occurred when he was not under pressure. When he is under pressure, he adds throwing the ball behind/too far ahead of the intended receiver and therefore into coverage. He seems much better on the longer throws although (probably due to necessity) he throws lots of 50/50 balls (K.J. Costello II). Agree it is hard to evaluate how he might play if not constantly fearing protection failure, but not being able to reliably hit a swing pass isn't going to work going forward.

Defensively? Not physical. Slow. They gave up more yards passing than any team in the country. Not because of “scheme”.  Because they simply don’t have the horses.

It’s always easy to stick it on the couch. But no one wins without talent.

Taylor has his work cut out for him. At least as tough a  job as Harbaugh had. Unfortunately, the portal makes it that much tougher. Let’s  hope they don’t lose Ayomanor, for example.

Taylor’s will havevtomrecruit like mad. Keep your fingers crossed. Because they need a massive talent infusion.

True! Only if and when we "have the horses" can we fall back to criticizing how the coach uses them :-). Lets hope we have that opportunity.

[Goose]

I don’t care how well you design plays. Or for that matter how great a play caller that you are. If you have an offensive line that can’t block, you’re not gonna succeed. Is that simplistic? Sure. It’s also true.

It’s not scheme. It’s not calls. It’s a lack of physical  ability, athleticism and talent at the key position group on the field. Focus all you want on skill position players. If you can’t block, forget it. Daniels was running for his life on damn near every pass. Add 4 first half holding penalties. All of which were easy calls cause a lineman got smoked and just reached out and grabbed. They couldn’t run at all. Got stuffed.  Constantly.  And Cal does not have a good defense. 

What do you expect an offense to be able to achieve under those circumstances? And this was not anything different from what we’ve seen all year. Solidify your offensive line. Once you do that, if they  still stink on offense, then yeah, you can blame the scheme and/or the play caller.

+1000. If you can't block, you will not have a good offense. End of story.

---

I’m sorry but Stanford “just does not have the players”.  The effort they gave all year was admirable. But they are horrifically undermanned. Their offensive line is as bad as I’ve seen at Stanford.  Overmatched week in week  out.  RB?  Who stands out.  They have a couple nice WR’s.  And I give Daniels a lot of credit. He survived the season running for his life and looked pretty darn good at times. Hats off to him. He got the hell beat out of him. is he a top flight quarterback? Probably not. But pretty hard to tell under the circumstances he had to play.

Totally agree, except IMO Daniels has real accuracy and touch problems on short passes. There are several important examples where he threw the ball into the ground or over the head of the intended recipient. These often occurred when he was not under pressure. When he is under pressure, he adds throwing the ball behind/too far ahead of the intended receiver and therefore into coverage. He seems much better on the longer throws although (probably due to necessity) he throws lots of 50/50 balls (K.J. Costello II). Agree it is hard to evaluate how he might play if not constantly fearing protection failure, but not being able to reliably hit a swing pass isn't going to work going forward.

Defensively? Not physical. Slow. They gave up more yards passing than any team in the country. Not because of “scheme”.  Because they simply don’t have the horses.

It’s always easy to stick it on the couch. But no one wins without talent.

Taylor has his work cut out for him. At least as tough a  job as Harbaugh had. Unfortunately, the portal makes it that much tougher. Let’s  hope they don’t lose Ayomanor, for example.

Taylor’s will havevtomrecruit like mad. Keep your fingers crossed. Because they need a massive talent infusion.

True! Only if and when we "have the horses" can we fall back to criticizing how the coach uses them :-). Lets hope we have that opportunity.