Jeff Tedford

Year	School	Record	Bowl
2002	California	7-5
2003	California	8-6	Insight
2004	California	10-2	Holiday
2005	California	8-4	Las Vegas
2006	California	10-3	Holiday
2007	California	7-6	Armed Forces
Career		50-26	.658
	California	50-26	.658

2008 SCHEDULE

Date	Opponent	Location	2008 CHS Prediction
8/30/08	Michigan State	Berkeley, CA	W
9/06/08	at Washington State	Pullman, WA	W
9/13/08	at Maryland	College Park, MD	W
9/27/08	Colorado State	Berkeley, CA	W
10/04/08	Arizona State	Berkeley, CA	W
10/18/08	at Arizona	Tucson, AZ	W
10/25/08	UCLA	Berkeley, CA	W
11/01/08	Oregon	Berkeley, CA	W
11/08/08	at USC	Los Angeles, CA	L
11/15/08	at Oregon State	Corvallis, OR	L
11/22/08	Stanford	Berkeley, CA	W
12/06/08	Washington	Berkeley, CA	W

	Coaches Hot Seat Prediction		10-2

Coaches Hot Seat Analysis

Jeff Tedford committed the cardinal mistake of a head coach in 2007 when he did not fully realize how big of an impact the injury to one key player, QB Nate Longshore, was having on the entire Cal team. The back-up QB Kevin Riley, played great in a comeback against Oregon State, but a critical error at the end of the game near the endzone cost Cal a shot of taking the game into overtime, and that mistake seemed to deep-six Riley's playing time until the bowl game. What seemed obvious to anyone that was watching Nate Longshore warm-up and play in the games, was that he could not plant his leg to throw the ball, which was causing havoc with Tedford's precise/attacking passing game. With Longshore playing hurt, opposing teams were able to focus on the Cal running game, and Cal's offense and personnel are not suited to generate a lot of yards on the ground, which just led to more pressure on the QB. With Tedford sticking by Longshore, Cal stumbled to a 6-6 regular season record, but by the time of the Armed Forces Bowl rolled around it was obvious that the QB job was open to be won by the best man, and Kevin Riley got the Bears offense back on track against a very good Air Force team. Now with a healthy Longshore back for his senior year and Kevin Riley determined to take the starting job, the Cal offense should be back on track, but there is now a wildcard thrown into the mix with Tedford hiring Frank Cignetti to call the offensive plays in '08. Cignetti was set to be fired by the San Francisco 49ers with the rest of the offensive staff, so he was fortunate that Cal had an opening, and the important question will be if Tedford will be comfortable in totally ceding offensive playcalling duties to a new member of his staff. Mark Richt at Georgia made a successful transition last season from playcaller to full-time head coach, and these coaching staff moves by Tedford are important for Jeff to fully become a head football coach, and after the disaster of 2007, Cal will need a head coach at the helm in case things start spiraling out of control again. Another minor but very important item that must be corrected by the Cal coaching staff is that the team, and especially the offensive and defensive front lines need to get some of their nastiness back that they had in previous seasons. At times in the games last season the Cal "O" and "D" lines seemed to get pushed around, and after seeing the two lines in practice and warm-up a few times we had a running conversation last year that we thought a member of Coaches Hot Seat could walk up to a Cal lineman and push him to the ground, and the lineman wouldn't react at all. Our beliefs were confirmed in the Stanford game last season, when a severely undermanned Cardinal football team pushed Cal around and controlled the line of scrimmage for most of the game. Maybe someone at Cal will get the lines' attention this year.

Coaches Hot Seat Bottom Line

We predict that Jeff Tedford and California will have a 10-2 record in 2008.

With 7 home games, and 5 of 8 Pac-10 games in Berkeley, Tedford and Cal have a great opportunity to right the ship in 2008. The season opens with a very tough game with Michigan State traveling across the country to play in the "city of tree-sitters" and we saw last year in the Tennessee game that playing and winning in Berkeley is no easy task for a team from the East. Cal then plays another great intersectional game with a trip to College Park to play Maryland, which will be a very important game to win for both schools. After a visit by Colorado State, the Pac-10 schedule begins in earnest with Dennis Erickson and the Sun Devils coming to town, and then Neuheisel arrives with the Bruins in late October. The schedule gets really tough in November with road trips to Southern Cal and Oregon State, the Big Game with Stanford, and the finish of the regular season with a very odd early December home game against Washington. Although we do have some trepidation about some of these games, we believe Tedford and Cal will bounce back in 2008 with 10 wins. It has been proven in past years that if Tedford gets competent quarterback play, Cal wins a lot of football games, and it will be interesting to see how Tedford handles the playing time of his senior QB Longshore and the sophomore QB Riley. If one of those QBs takes the reins and runs with it, Cal could have a very good season in '08.

2008 Coaches Hot Seat Prediction: 10-2

Will Tedford be back for the 2009 season? YES