Advertisement
football Edit

Tedford defends handling of QB situation

SOCIAL: Follow on Twitter | Like on Facebook
BERKELEY -- On Thursday night, California quarterback Zach Maynard told younger brother Keenan Allen that he would not be starting as quarterback for the season opener due to a missed tutoring session in June.
Advertisement
On Friday, head coach Jeff Tedford told the rest of the wide receivers in a team meeting. The decision, he said, had been reached early in the summer, after Maynard missed the tutoring appointment.
Instead of Maynard, the Bears started junior Allan Bridgford, who went 1-for-8 for eight yards with several mistimed passes over the first three series of the game, while Nevada sprinted out to a 14-0 first-quarter lead.
[ANALYSIS: Losing Containment
]
On Sunday, Tedford defended his handling of the situation, and maintained that the wide receivers should have been able to sync up their timing with Bridgford.
"They've been working with him all week, though," Tedford said. "They found out on Friday, but he was taking reps with the ones all week and he throws with them every day. There was not a timing, you know -- the first play we missed, that would have been -- we had him beat there, and there was another one he threw to Keenan that Keenan dropped, but if he led him inside a little bit more, that's a touchdown, too. But, he throws to those guys every day. He worked, through the week, he worked with the ones all the time, and then they throw routes on air every day to each other in individual drills.
"The (number of practice) reps were the same. We practiced the way we wanted to practice. I didn't want to get a bunch of distraction going on, didn't feel like it was something our opponent needed to know."
[RELATED: QB-WR Communication Issues
]
Tedford elaborated that Bridgford did indeed have more first-team reps in practice than he normally would. However, on Saturday, both Allen and Chris Harper said that it did not seem that way at all.
Harper, for his part, said that he had no inkling that Maynard may not start based on the number of practice reps each signal-caller had with the first team. Allen echoed that in his post-game remarks.
"He did take some snaps, but he didn't, like, start," Allen said. "He took snaps in mid practice with the ones, stuff like that."
Allen said that he would have liked to have known sooner.
"Yeah, I think it definitely would have helped us," Allen said Saturday. "Bridg probably would have taken the first reps of snaps in practice all week, but it's something we had to go with. It was coach's call, we just have to be out there, executing."
[ANALYSIS: Handing Out the Hardware
]
Allen also acknowledged that the sudden change affected the team for the first quarter.
"To an extent, yes, I do. All week, all camp, Zach's pretty much been with the ones. We took a lot of reps with Bridge, but it's a different thing for us. We still could have got going, we still could have made some plays."
More Notes From Sunday
Tedford said that right tackle Matt Summers-Gavin will have an MRI on Tuesday on his injured knee. Summers-Gavin was heavily limping after Sunday's walk-through.
Tedford also said that no starting positions are being re-evaluated in wake of Saturday's loss. Tedford said he did not know if Summers-Gavin would play this weekend until the results came back.
On the topic of inside linebacker Khairi Fortt possibly practicing in pads or shells this week, Tedford said: "We'll have to find out how he feels."
Advertisement