Maybe Tedford knows what he's doing

On Saturday, PhantomBear was a little irate about our kickoff coverage. We've had some problems with this in the past and Minnesota's Davis is not Reggie Bush or Maurice Drew-Jones. Phantom Bear wondered why Schneider was directionally kicking to #2 every single time, and why he wasn't just putting it out of the endzone (especially when on two kickoffs with 15 yarders tacked on {and thus from mid-field}, he didn't send it out of the endzone).

Jay Heater, in his new Contra Costa Times Cal blog, notes,

Someone had asked about Cal's kickoff that was returned for a touchdown by Minnesota. Yes, indeed, it was supposed to go exactly where it went. Place-kicker Tom Schneider was told to kick it there and he did his job. As coach Tedford said, when you can pin a team into the corner, you don't have to cover the entire field. Tedford explained that one of his defenders got knocked off his line and Minnesota simply did a great job of moving a couple other tacklers out of the way. Tedford said the scheme was sound, and he had to tip his cap to Minnesota for a big play.

Good to know it was just crappy execution, rather than really bad gameplanning.