I heard he just kept telling Herman/Warinner to "try again" and would then call his own play occasionally when they didn't come up with anything he liked.
As for the defense, I still think it falls 99% on the players. Schematically they were fine all day. On a few of those drives where Cal moved the ball well without big fluke plays, it was obvious that Cal was just winning the chess match, calling every offensive play almost 100% accurately to counter the defense. The rest of the game was nothing more than missed tackles and blown coverages.