Cal is bad and boring, the deadly college football sin
Cal plays yet another dull football game in their fourth straight loss to Oregon.
When Cal was grinding out ugly win after ugly win after ugly win in the early years of Justin Wilcox, there was a hopeful sentiment that the Bears would be able to use that to springboard to the next level of excellence. To undo the psychic damage of the defensively absent Sonny Dykes era would take time. Adjusting to this new brand of football seemed like the right strategy to win at Cal in the short-term to set up the long.
But there was another worrisome strand of thinking—that this style of play, unique as it was, would not be appealing to most players to sign up for. And if Cal didn’t improve themselves either talent or coaching-wise, regression would flip not only the results, but our feelings on the program.
Three years later, here we are.
Ugly wins are now ugly losses. The talent hasn’t meaningfully improved. The coaching has regressed.
And the Bears have simply become dull Saturday viewing.
You might say Cal competed well against a top ten team, given the Bears finished only 18 points behind Oregon, but Cal was trailing 35-10 before backups came in on both sides, and could’ve been behind by way more. Oregon flubbed three red zone opportunities—credit to the Cal defense for the stops—that could’ve pushed that 42 point final total anywhere from 51 to 63.
The final score reflects a much closer game than what we actually watched. The Ducks were in complete control after Jack Plummer threw his second interception to set up Oregon’s third touchdown, and the Bears did nothing meaningful for the rest of the meaningful part of the game.
And that has become a pattern for the Bears this season. Cal simply does NOTHING for long stretches of the game.
Cal didn't score for a 35 minute, 30 second stretch vs Oregon, between taking a 10-7 lead with 13:08 left in the 2nd quarter & 7:38 left in the 4th quarter after the Ducks went up 35-10. The stadium emptied steadily after Oregon went up 28-10, one painful drive at a time.
That is Cal's 8th ~20 minute scoring drought this season, and it’s now 46% of Cal's season spent in ~20 minute scoring droughts.
Cal actually scoring points in the first half against Oregon was a marked improvement over the status quo. Cal’s three points in the first quarter was their first and only first quarter points in October. Cal’s ten points in the first half brought their October first half totals from three to a grand 13.
Often Cal drags their opponent down to doing nothing too. Leading to fun box scores like:
Washington State 7, Cal 3, halftime (Washington State’s lone Pac-12 win is to Cal. 0-4 against everyone else.)
Cal 7, Colorado 3, start of 4th quarter (fun fact! Arizona State put up another 40+ against Colorado. Every team Colorado has faced has put up 38+ on them, except for Cal, who put up 13. Wazzu and Colorado are 2-0 against Cal and 0-8 against the Pac-12.)
Washington 6, Cal 0, halftime (Cal’s 21 points against UW are still the lowest by any Power 5 team this year.)
This is eons of football inside Cal games this season where NOTHING is happening.
Doing this once in awhile is fine. Doing this week after week after week is boring, and that is where even the most diehard of diehards are leaning toward, if not sitting on it.
The Bay Area is not a market where you can afford to be boring and bad. There’s way too much to do for Cal students and alum to do. You can find plentiful other sporting or non-sporting options to spend a Saturday on to find greater entertainment. Hell, any entertainment.
Losing four games in a row where Cal spends an entire half of play searching for points is not exciting, or compelling, or interesting. For the first time in a long time, after the third or fourth stalled Cal drive in a row, even I basically stopped paying much attention to what was happening on the field, because the Bears were not going to have enough to keep up with the Ducks.
If Cal was still grinding out wins, this would be acceptable. But Cal hasn’t won a one-score game against a Power 5 team in front of football fans since the 2019 Big Game. We can’t point to goal-line stands against middling UNLV as the mark of a resilient team.
Cal is simply bad and boring now, and no amount of competitiveness or fight the players will show will draw attention back. By the third quarter the majority of Cal fans left were on their phones, deciding to spend time on things more interesting than the game they spent money watching. This is a bad place to be.
Perhaps an offensive coaching reboot is all that’s needed to change the fortunes of this program. Cal is choosing to run the clock out on the Bill Musgrave and Angus McClure experiment, and then changes will likely come after the season ends, because Cal does not fire assistants in-season apparently ever for poor on-field performance ever, it seems.
But it’s hard not to look at the overall decision-making of Justin Wilcox and shake your head.
With Cal in the red zone early, the Bears chose to kick a field goal. Knowing Oregon has scored 40 points in every game and Cal has trouble hitting 20, why would you not go for the touchdown? You’re underdogs! Your defense is fine but it’s not stopping the Ducks from doing their thing.
Down 28-10 in the 3rd quarter and facing 4th down in the red zone, Cal chose to kick a field goal, again. This one is even more inexcusable, because you now have plenty of evidence Oregon is going to keep scoring! You’re still six field goals away from victory!
At the end of the first half after Oregon scored, Cal got the ball back down 21-10, and then went short pass, run, penalty, run! You’re down 11! Oregon gets the ball back to start the second half! You need to score!
Wilcox continues to operate in a defensive-oriented prism—that as long as the offense performs better, everything will be alright because the defense will do the rest.
But Peter Sirmon’s defense is far from the gangbusters unit it was at the end of last year. Cal is conceding 5.9 yards per play, bottom 35 in FBS, and the 7.8 yards per play they conceded against Oregon would be the worst mark in college football. If not for three red zone turnovers, the Ducks would have easily crossed 50, and this loss would look far worse than it does right now. USC and UCLA are not likely to be as forgiving.
Finally, player management. Jack Plummer played hurt against Oregon, after getting hurt against Washington State, after playing hurt against Colorado, after getting hurt against Oregon. And he was allowed to stay in the game and keep playing!
Plummer’s second game-deciding interception was almost certainly the result of a banged-up shoulder hitting the ground, and he proceeded to stay down on the ground after multiple hits conceded from a beleaguered Cal offensive line. Not until Oregon went up 35-10 did Kai Millner finally come in, and lead some nice garbage-time drives.
And yet Wilcox still seems steadfast to bring his very hurt quarterback to start next week against top-10 USC because he gives Cal the best chance to win. Perhaps this talk ends when Cal finally is eliminated from bowl eligibility.
Cal is not beating USC regardless of which quarterback starts. Cal will beat USC if the Trojans stumble and fumble all over themselves, like Oregon did for a quarter and a half before locking in.
All the above speaks to a program that isn’t really figuring out the big things or the little things. And everyone—fans, recruits, players—can see these things too. What we’re seeing isn’t enough to compel anyone to commit to Cal football full-time. It’s just too much tedium.
In college football you can be good and exciting. You can be good and steady/boring. You can be bad and exciting.
You cannot be bad and boring. It’s a dead end in fandom. It’s a dead end in recruiting. It’s a dead end for coaches.
Throw out the headless teams and look at the Pac-12.
Good and exciting: Oregon, USC, UCLA. All talented teams that mirror each other, all well-coached squads that put up the points.
Good and steady: Oregon State, Washington. The Beavers have had some really fun wins and then some total lockdowns. Ditto the Huskies, digging out from the mess of Jimmy Lake.
Good and boring: Utah. General pound and ground dominance week-to-week, married with an outstanding win against USC.
Bad and exciting: Arizona. The Wildcats just score and give up points. A lot is happening, even if it generally leads to a looss.
Bad and steady: Washington State. Basically Cal a few years ago—a really good defense married with a really haphazard offense.
Bad and boring: Cal, Stanford. Dead zone. You can’t really point to anything interesting or exciting because all the life is squeezed out by the overall results. The Big Game has all the makings of a very painful experience.
Wilcox simply has to nail his next offensive hires. And maybe he needs to reboot even more systematically beyond just the offense, and overhaul his entire identity as a coach. Cal has had five straight years of a bottom-tier offense paired with a good to great defense, and now that the defense slid a notch, it’s no longer treading water. It just hasn’t proven to work beyond .500 results in a down Pac-12, and with the rest of the conference treading up, Cal has not been able to keep pace.
Cal cannot afford to keep playing this way and losing this way. One Jaydn Ott explosion aside and some nice skill play from wideouts like J.Michael Sturdivant and Jeremiah Hunter, there is nothing the Bears are doing that you can show to anyone outside the program as moving in a positive trajectory.
Wilcox is at a place where he can still potentially right the ship. It doesn’t feel likely, but it can be done. He’ll need to think deeply and strategically about what can make the Bears a better team, or figure out how to make them exciting enough to push them through the hard times. It’ll be difficult and require a significant level of diligence.
Because Cal fans sure don’t want to think about it. Three hours a week is more than enough.
Playing football without a defensive and offensive line seems like a difficult hill to climb.
Great write up. The rhetorical tone is perfect. I realized yesterday that I don't know what I'm going to do about the Big Game. I'm coming out to the Bay Area for it, but I'm seriously thinking of sitting up on Tightwad Hill. This write up captures exactly why-I DO NOT WANT TO PAY $50 (or more!) to watch Cal football. Every bone in my body rebels against it, even though I can probably sit wherever I want to given what is likely to be not great attendance. TBH, every game I've been able to sit where I want every game of the Wilcox era I've attended. It IS one thing to be bad but exciting and zany, as some of the Dykes era games were but it is deadly to be boring and bad. You just want to turn away, so you don't see the car crash.