Beau Knows: A Look at OC Baldwin's Offense and How He Got Here

Rebuilding the Cal defense has been the focus of the spring and the fall so far. That’s why Justin Wilcox was hired. Wilcox has noted in the past that he’ll have a macro-involvement in the offense, so his focus was to bring in someone who could build an offense in compliment to the defense. That’s where Beau Baldwin came in. Not long after he was hired, Wilcox reached out to the Eastern Washington head coach to gauge his interest in coming down to Cal.

“When he reached out to me,” Baldwin said about his initial conversation with Wilcox, “he just talked to me about it, and I was extremely excited from the get-go, because ultimately there were a number of reasons. One of the things that excited me right away was just how much I respected coach Wilcox. Who he was as a person, everything I knew about him from the people that I knew and trusted, the product he had put on the field, there were just a laundry list of things that were exciting from my standpoint.”

That respect is one reason that brought Baldwin out of the FCS powerhouse he’d built in Cheney, Washington, where he’d been the head coach since 2008, but it was more than that. Wilcox had plans for the staff he wanted to hire, including offensive line coach Steve Greatwood, and more importantly, there were opportunities in the Bay Area for his family that he couldn’t pass up.

“That was another reason that was exciting about this opportunity, is coach Wilcox talked about a few of the guys that he was looking at that made sense for him to hire, and when he talked about coach Greatwood, knowing him, I never got to spend time with him, but knowing about him I’d known what he’s done with his guys.” Baldwin noted.

“And then, the Bay Area, the people in the Bay Area, what the Bay Area has to offer, that was exciting, just from a standpoint of all the different opportunities that are here, the opportunities for my daughters to grow.”

Those made up some of the reasons why Baldwin made the 850-mile journey from Cheney to Berkeley, but the reasoning for wanting Baldwin as offensive coordinator is much more apparent. Baldwin has done more with less. He’s upset a couple of ranked Pac-12 teams in recent years, beating Washington State a year ago and Oregon State in 2013. He’s won an FCS national championship at Eastern, and he’s consistently made the FCS playoffs while retooling his offense with different threats, which brought him to the attention of Wilcox

“I’ve obviously watched his teams and knew about what he had done at Eastern and also on offense,” Wilcox said, “so I had a ton of respect for him and had a chance to visit with him as the process moved forward. It was a great fit for us.”

While they’d just missed squaring off against each other, as Baldwin’s squads played Washington in 2011 and 2014, right before and after Wilcox’s tenure there, Baldwin’s offensive prowess brought him to the forefront. “Fit” is the right word to describe that offense, though Baldwin calls it multiple. As he explained at the beginning of the spring, the offense draws from a variety of sources.

“I mean, my whole tree goes back to one-back, if you really want to go all the way back, it goes to Mike Price, Dennis Erickson, the WSU,” Baldwin said, “and my quarterback coach was a guy who came from that tree and he's now been in the NFL at different times, so it all started with that one-back philosophy, and that singleback. And a lot of what we do is very similar to what I was doing 20 years ago and even playing in 20 plus years ago. Then, you evolve, and you take advantage of certain situations where 'hey, I can involve some more play action by involving tight ends. Shoot, I can take advantage of this RPO' and what that gives you. If you ever find yourself feeling like you're a finished product, I just think you're done. None of us are. I just believe that you can continue to grow in what you're doing offensively, it's gonna give you a great shot to put more of a bind on a defense.”

Running back Tre Watson explained it a bit more concisely during Pac-12 Media Days.

“Coach Baldwin plays to win,” Watson said“so he’s gonna go with what’s working. He doesn’t have a certain mindset, ‘oh we’re going to run the ball a certain amount of times.’ It’s whatever he’s going with, and he’s going to keep on going with the flow, and change things up to keep the defense on their toes.”

What that has entailed is a shift from a more rigid Air Raid system, to a more dynamic system that’s adaptive. Three tight end sets are back. Two tight end sets are back. The tight end is back. There’ll be four and five wide sets thrown in as well, with tight ends and running backs splitting out. It’s a lot of figuring out what players are good at and putting them in positions to succeed, while taking ideas from other coaches into account.

An example of this was using WR Cooper Kupp as a wildcat QB in the offense at Eastern, where the idea was a collaborative work.

“Coach (and former Cal QB Troy) Taylor brought some of those ideas. Coach Edwards talked about it some weeks. He was just a guy that we wanted to utilize, and he was such a great football player, that’s ultimately what he is. He was such a great, and still is, football player at Eastern, I would watch him in practice when they were just messing around as a receiver group, whatever they were doing, and he would throw ball accurately down the field on the run. He just had that type of mind. He had a natural accuracy, so we thought, man that’s an advantage. They’re going to be so worried about him and when he’s running a reverse or whatever he might be doing, he’s also gonna make some tough throws when need be.”

There were other plays, like this one below where the wideout lines up between the split of the right tackle and guard and runs an out, where Baldwin welcomed in the concept, something that he’d never seen before.

“It was something that, actually, Troy Taylor brought to the table,” Baldwin said, “So, it was something that I had never seen before, but he brought it to the table, and I loved it. I thought it was unique, I thought it was different, and it gave us some sort of advantage, something that the defense isn’t used to seeing and playing against.”

While Baldwin’s approach to offensive design is collaborative, one area where he has a specific focus in mind is in the recruiting game. When recruits have come in for visits this spring, he’s detailed where he sees them fitting in, with specific clips taken from Cal’s spring game, or from his time at Eastern

“What I really liked about that part is he showed me where he envisioned me in that position,” 2018 running back target Richard Newton noted about his visit in July, “he showed me where I would be and how I would do things.”

“Coach Baldwin, I sat with him for about an hour and a half,” 2019 QB target Hank Bachmeier added about his visit, “just watching film of Eastern Washington, some Cal spring game stuff and how I fit in, just learning some concepts, learning what his gameplan is as well.”

The approach of putting players in a position where they’ll be most effective echoes the ethos that Justin Wilcox put forward in his opening press conference. The willingness to take in outside ideas cements that, and his track record speaks for itself. He’s certainly earned the respect of one of his senior leaders.

“We’re excited about it,” Watson said, “he’s a great coach and I love him.”