If there has been a consistent theme throughout the beginning of the 2020 football season, both college and pro, it has been sloppiness. That has shown up in penalties, more special teams errors, and on defense in tackling.
The tackling aspect is the biggest one that I've been thinking about as Cal gets closer to their 2020 season. Watching teams like Texas and Oklahoma, who have plenty of defensive talent, miss tackle after tackle, seems ludicrous. It's happening in the NFL as well, with the biggest example from this last weekend being missed tackles on a screen play to San Francisco WR Brandon Aiyuk that allowed him to get downfield, hurdle a Philadelphia defender, and score a touchdown.
The defensive sloppiness so far can partially be attributed to a lack of preparation time, something Peter Sirmon hit on when I talked to him a couple weeks ago. Development is the most important piece of the picture for the Cal defensive coordinator.
"Football is a developmental sport," Sirmon noted, "football in my opinion is not a talent sport, and what I mean by that is you’re consistently and constantly getting better, you’re fighting against your own physical deterioration. Even as an NFL player, you’re continuing to get better, that’s why you see guys who continue to get better into their late 20s, it’s not that they’re physically better, they’ve developed a better skill, better technique, better mental approach to attacking the game. Football is that, and I can’t imagine seeing a better product with less development and less practice with anything we do in life. Football is gonna be no different in my opinion with that."
For this season, that puts a premium on elusiveness at the skill positions, mainly at running back for Cal, but also in the passing game to a certain extent.
I have to go back to something former Cal WR coach and current Texas State offensive coordinator Jacob Peeler once told me, and that's that you can't really teach elusiveness. You can work drills to help build agility, you can do certain stretches to open up the hips that can help build flexibility that can make a player more elusive, but you can't build on what isn't there. Guys either have it or they don't.
Elusiveness isn't straight-line speed either, it's the ability to break tackles with either strength or agility, and Cal has one of the best in the conference in that metric in Christopher Brown Jr.
Brown Jr rushed for 914 yards on 208 carries in 2019, with 8 touchdowns, but the biggest stat from Pro Football Focus was his avoided tackles. Brown ranked 3rd in the Pac-12 in the metric in 2019 (behind Utah's Zach Moss and ASU's Eno Benjamin), with 57 on the ground and 10 on receptions. In PFF's 'Elusive Rate' metric, Brown ranked second (among starting RBs) in the Pac-12 behind Moss.
Brown's not a breakaway runner at 6'2" and 230 lbs, but he's tough to bring down once he gets going. He has a strong lower body and has developed a great stiff arm, something you can see in this highlight from the UCLA game and in his full 2019 highlights on numerous occasions.
Brown did have some struggles with health a year ago, with a shoulder injury hampering from the North Texas game onward, but the hope is that the junior running back can stay healthy for a shortened schedule.
Behind Brown is a running back who's seen as 'elusive' in the traditional sense, in Marcel Dancy. In the elusive rating metric, Dancy was around the middle of the pack a year ago, in the same range as Benjamin and USC's Vavae Malepeai. For his career, Dancy has 25 avoided tackles in 71 rushing attempts (for comparison, Brown has 63 in 245 carries). That was something on display against Washington a year ago where Dancy spun off of tackles for the first multi-touchdown game of his career (1:09 mark for Dancy's first TD, which saw him break a handful of arm tackles on his way to the end zone).
Admittedly Cal's offense will be different this year, with more under center formations and power running schemes that may lessen the need for Brown to break a tackle in order to gain five yards. Cal's offensive line returns experience and has the hopes of remaining healthy and the hope is that Brown's median carry won't be around 1 or 2 yards, as it was in many of Cal's games a year ago.
That said, this is a year where the small margin of error that determines winners and losers in college football is more apparent. It is a challenge for teams to develop as tacklers with limited prep time, and Cal has to take advantage of that in order to have success in a shortened season.
Other RBs who should see time for Cal this year.
Bradrick Shaw 33 avoided tackles in 202 attempts
