Yesterday in my comments to O's great post, I wrote how the Huskies coaches seemed to have tweaked their defesnive scheme by moving their DBs up and not only taking away our running game, but breaking up the rhythm of our short passing game through most of first three quarters. Put it simply, until DO got his groove back, our passing game which often seems to primarily feature a horizontal attack using our TEs, backs, and wide receivers in short-medium range, was in disarray. Lot of it had to do with DO simply not being in rhythm but also a lot of pressure the Washington defense put on our young receivers.
I would have to think the Cal staff will be watching a lot of the tape from Saturday's game and may take in or implement some of the defensive strategies Willingham's staff effectively used in our last game. Which brings me to this EDSBS post on stopping Urban Meyer's passing scheme, which is heavily dependent on a horizontal passing scheme. Orson and co, who are still recovering from their TTown funk, wrote about how the Tide defense effectively stopped the Gators short yardage passing game:
Urban Meyer's system produced many long plays from scrimmage last year, but not typically with a vertical attack. The offense puts alot of horizontal pressure on a defense, making it imperative that the first man make the tackle because the defense is stretched thin. Thus, a short play often became a long play following a missed tackle. Tennessee and Alabama did not miss many tackles which turned an offense which is explosive in the stat book a year ago into one Woody Hayes would have been proud of... except Woody Hayes would find a way to protect his quarterback.