More Big Game Kvetching

I’m pretty well obsessed with what happened in Big Game on Saturday, so here’s another point, on the offense. There’s been a narrative that’s sprung up that Harbaugh should’ve entrusted the game to Toby Gerhart’s broad shoulders in the red zone on the final drive, and should’ve run Gerhart even more throughout the game; I don’t disagree with the logic, but it ignores a crucial point: Gerhart wasn’t really all that great yesterday. Set aside his 61 yard gallup—he had 75 yards on 16 carries, for a 3.9 yards per carry. Make no mistake, for whatever reason, Gerhart wasn’t that spectacular.

So the offense was forced to go to the air. When Luck connected, he was fine—he averaged 15.7 yards per completion, which is right in line with his previous averages; it was his yards per attempt that showed the rot at 5.2. The Stanford game does not, as of yet, have a very diversified offense. As far as I can tell, this is the flowchart for the Stanford offense.

1) ARE THERE EIGHT MEN (OR MORE) IN THE BOX?
2) IF NO, RUN.
3) IF YES, THEN: a) THROW DEEP or B) RUN ANYWAY.

This is plenty effective, as we’ve been a witness to. There’s nothing wrong with it necessarily; it depends, as everything does, on execution. But if you can stop the run, or, more importantly, stop the run on first down? You’ve done a lot of good work for yourself and the simplicity of the Stanford offense goes from benefit to liability. The defense can then stack the deck the other way and assume the pass is more likely. So first-down success against a team like Stanford, which only seems to want to throw deep, is critically important. In fact, let’s review first-down performance against Cal.
(Note to understanding this table: the first number is the quarter, the second is the Stanford possession within it, and the third is the number of first downs in the possession. So 1,2,3 would indicate the third first down on the second possession of the first quarter. If a possession stretches across quarters, it will remain under the same name.).

First-down performance in Big Game

Possession	Type of Play	Yardage
1,1,1	Pass	3
1,2,1	Run	2
1,2,2	Pass	0
1,3,1	Run	2
1,3,2	Run	-1
1,4,1	Run	11
1,4,2	Run	-1
2,1,1	Pass	11
2,1,2	Pass	0
2,2,1	Run	7
2,2,2	Run	-7
3,1,1	Run	-1
3,2,1	Pass	9
3,2,2	Pass	31
3,2,3	Run	4
3,2,4	Run	0
4,1,1	Pass	0
4,2,1	Pass	37
4,2,2	Pass	12
4,2,3	Pass	12
4,2,4	Pass	5
4,2,5	Run	5
4,3,1	Pass	0
4,4,1	Run	12
4,4,2	Run	4
4,4,3	Pass	0

OK, so what’s this data show. Let me provide the important conclusions right here: Luck threw 13 passes on first down for 115 yards, or roughly 8.8 yards per attempt. (He threw 152 yards total at 5.2 yards per attempt total, meaning that on his 17 other passes, he had a paltry 37 yards). Meanwhile, of the 13 rushing attempts on first down, only 37 yards were gained (i.e. 2.8 yards per carry). The rushing statistics are somewhat skewed in both directions: it counts scrambles on one end and goal-line rushes on the other. On the other hand, it’s worthwhile to note the performance on other downs: all of the big carries (Toby’s 61, 21 yarders and Tyler Gaffney’s 21 yarder) were after second down. So yes, there was a flaw with the play-calling…there should have been more passing on first down. Cal punished the predictability of the Stanford offense; when Stanford went against type, it frequently did so for big gains.