BREAKING: UNLV cornerbacks coach Tre Watson to reportedly join Cal coaching staff
And no, it's not that Tre Watson.
Justin Wilcox has a deep defensive coaching network from his decade and a half coaching across Pac-12 football fields. So despite having his coaching staff poached year-after-year by bluebloods, by promotions, by the pros, he finds a way to slot in another talented coach to fill in the gaps.
Wilcox has dug into his network to find another potential up-and-comer for their secondary coach. UNLV cornerbacks coach Tre Watson reportedly is joining the staff! FootballScoop with the report.
Sources tell FootballScoop that Wilcox is working to finalize a deal for UNLV cornerbacks coach Tre Watson to join the Golden Bears’ defensive staff.
Watson will work with Cal’s secondary.
Watson started his college career at Central Washington. Watson wanted to play college football with his hometown Washington Huskies, so he enrolled at the university and showing up to practice every day until Steve Sarkisian invited him onto the team as a walk-on. He’d eventually earn a scholarship, where he’d play under Wilcox as an occasional defensive back starter in the 2012 season.
Watson then got his first big coaching break with the Oregon Ducks, as his former position coach Donte Williams brought him on as a graduate assistant. More from Ray Brewer at the Las Vegas Sun.
“The greatest thing about coaches is they see something in you that you don’t see about yourself,” Watson said. “(Williams) would always tell me, ‘You should coach, you should coach.’”
From 2018 to 2019 Watson helped coach up the Oregon secondary to become one of the fiercest pass defensive groups in the country. 247Sports highlighted Watson as one of the top 30 coaches under the age of 30, noting that Watson’s work with the secondary was reportedly instrumental to their success as a unit. Four of the Ducks secondary (safety Jevon Holland, cornerback Thomas Graham, safety Brady Breeze, cornerback Deommodore Lenoir) got 2021 NFL Combine invites.
Watson then joined then Oregon offensive coordinator Marcus Arroyo at UNLV in his first positional role in 2020. It’s hard to draw too many inferences from Watson’s one year at UNLV in an inaugural season. On one hand, they were hapless, going 0-6 and struggling to score in the Mountain West. On the other, the Rebels have had one winning season in the last 20 years.
Watson also overlapped at Oregon with new Cal outside linebackers coach Keith Heyward, who was the co-defensive coordinator/safeties coach at Oregon when Watson was a graduate assistant. With Heyward’s and Wilcox’s mentorship, it’s very likely Watson will be able to grow more quickly into a fully-fledged defensive backs coach to go with the energy he can bring on the recruiting trail.
Welcome to Cal Tre!
Great hire imho. He comes in as a first-time bonafide DB coach and it's not like he's being dropped into hot water, he has an abundance of support from Wilcox, Heyward, and Conry when it comes to coaching, he's young, already got a strong track-record with the Oregon secondary and be a boon in recruiting due to his age and story as a walk-on. 10/10
One of the great limiting factors is money. We have a small budget due to Cal-specific dynamics. We can't pay assistants a lot of money.
Cal's 2020 assistant coach base salary pool totalled $3.655m (average 365.5k/per 10 assistant coach). This is compared to:
$5.2m for Washington,
$5.1m for Oregon
$4.3m UCLA
$4.3m Utah
$3.9m WSU
$3.7m ASU
$3.655 Cal
$3.5m OSU
$3.4m Colorado
$3.4m Arizona
n/a: Stanfurd
After adjusting for the cost of living, Cal pays the lowest salary in the Pac-12 (albeit with some great perks of being in the Bay Area).
So if we're looking to hire a new coach, we can't offer a lot of money. We have to offer other opportunities - a pathway to DC by giving a position coach a new assignment (Heyward), a chance (Browning, Watson, Thompson, Tosh Lupoi), or a place to rebound after a recent flop/purge (DeRuyter, Sirmon, Ragle, Yates, Greatwood).
Anybody can ask why we can't get a great, experienced, proven coach and the answer is because we can't afford them. Although this is amateur sports, it's still a business and we're the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in the uneven, unfair world of college football.