Cal Football 2024 Season Preview Part 3: The Defense

Can the Bears bounce back on defense after the worst year on that side of the ball under Justin Wilcox?

Photo via @calfootball twitter

Part 1: Back from the Dead? Part 2: The Offense

Can the Cal defense bounce back? In 2023, a bevy of portal additions weren’t enough for Cal to stand up to an historically difficult slate of offenses. In 2024, we add another bevy of portal additions, but presumably WITHOUT a schedule full of NFL level arms.

2023 Defense, revisited

Again, I’ll be linking back to my post breaking down how the 2023 defense performed, so go check that out if you need a refresher.

I do think one thing is important to re-state, even though I’ve probably beaten this point into the ground: There is some level of disagreement from the advanced stats regarding how much Cal’s defense regressed, and it depends on the extent to which you factor in strength of opponents faced. One advanced rating saw Cal’s defense as solidly average, while the other saw Cal as clearly below average. The difference, as best I can tell, is how to factor in turnovers (Cal forced and recovered a ton of fumbles, which might be random) and how much to adjust for strength of schedule, which was a pretty massive factor last year.

Unit Summaries

Note: All class designations are based on what Cal’s roster says and may have little if anything to do with how much eligibility a player has left, which is still a nightmare to track thanks to COVID. All presumed starters are semi-educated guesses from me and you are encouraged to throw it back in my face when I’m inevitably wrong.

Defensive line

Presumed starters:
Defensive Tackle: senior Ricky Correia
Defensive Tackle: junior Nate Burrell

Depth: junior Akili Calhoun, junior Derek Wilkins, junior Stanley Saole-McKenzie, junior Aidan Keanaaina, junior T.J. Bollers

I’m assuming that Cal will still largely run a base 2-4-5 defense, though admittedly I don’t know if ACC offenses will be as pass happy (and as pass effective) as last year’s Pac-12, so maybe Cal will go more base 3-4 than I’d anticipate. Still, I would largely expect that Cal will continue to rotate HEAVILY along the defensive line, just like last year, as I don’t think there’s a clear difference maker on this line who would demand the lion’s share of the playing time.

Linebackers

Presumed starters:
Outside linebacker: senior Xavier Carlton
Inside linebacker: sophomore Cade Uluave
Inside linebacker: senior Teddye Buchanan
Outside linebacker: senior David Reese

Depth: Myles Williams, Ryan McCulloch, Hunter Barth, Liam Johnson

The good news: Cal has three returning starters who were all factors at times last year, and a fourth safe option arriving in UC Davis ILB transfer Teddye Buchanan, who played at an all-conference level in FCS ball. Reese and Uluave both stepped up with major game winning plays in the later half of last year, and their ability to play at that level all season long in 2024 may well decide how far this defense can go.

The bad news: This group appears to have the least amount of depth of maybe any position unit on the team, with very little on-field experience available on the bench. Hunter Barth had 21 tackles with lots of special teams play last year, and Williams and McCulloch have both seen brief action in back-up roles, but it’s not clear if there are guys who would be ready to step up should any of the four presumed starters run into any issues. If you’re wondering about potential transfer impact guys, there’s Eastern Kentucky OLB transfer Cheikhsaliou Fall and Princeton ILB transfer Liam Johnson, and although the Ivy-League-to-Power-Conference leap is a big one, Johnson did win Ivy League defensive player of the year so I can’t discount the possibility that he’s a contributor.

Secondary

Presumed starters:
Cornerback: senior Marcus Harris
Cornerback: senior Nohl Williams
Nickleback: senior Matthew Littlejohn
Safety: senior Miles Williams
Safety: senior Craig Woodson

Depth: junior CB Lu-Magia Hearns, sophomore CB Jasiah Wagoner, sophomore S Ryan Yaites, junior CB Collin Gamble,

Craig Woodson and Nohl Williams are the two nail-on starters here, and Matthew Littlejohn is pretty likely to be the starting nickleback after gradually winning the spot last year. That leaves one CB and one safety spot open.

The last CB spot has plenty of options in terms of guys that have seen the field or have high end recruiting bona-fides. As best I can tell the battle for playing time is between Lu-Magia Hearns and incoming transfers Marcus Harris (Idaho) and Jasiah Wagoner (Oklahoma), though Collin Gamble is a solid option as well. Based on camp reports I’m going with Harris as the starter but my guess is that we’ll see all of them at different points in the season.

There’s not as much depth at safety, and my guess is the 2nd slot (and rotational snaps) is a battle between Williams and LSU transfer Yaites.

Defining questions

Can the David Reese that nearly beat Washington State and UCLA by himself play like that for a full season?

Cal has lacked a consistent edge rush presence for . . . maybe the entire Wilcox era? That’s a little unfair to Cam Goode and a couple of other players who have flashed disruption, but there hasn’t ever been a guy that the opposing team would game plan around, and that was the case for MOST of last year.

So: Was the David Reese that we saw abuse UCLA and Washington State merely a match-up thing? Did he abuse a pair of overmatched tackles and two QBs with iffy pocket awareness in two games, and would it be unwise to assume he can do that more frequently this year? Or did he turn the metaphorical corner as a pass rusher late in the season such that he’s ready to do it all year long now? If you watched Cal’s fall camp documentary, you could be excused for thinking the latter based on Reese’s practice intensity.

For Cal to reach the high end of their ceiling, they need a big season from their most dangerous edge rusher.

Can Cade Uluave keep his big play instinct with improved down-to-down play?

Last year Cal entered a world of hurt at ILB when Femi Oladejo transferred out and Jackson Sirmon was lost for the season with an injury. The depth chart was so bare that they had to turn to a true freshman in Cade Uluave.

Uluave had to learn on the job, and he made up for some freshman jitters with a penchant for game changing plays. He racked up 6.5 tackles for loss, forced two fumbles, recovered two others, and had two picks.

If that nose for the ball isn’t a small sample size fluke, and if he takes a step forward in his ability to read and react, Cal just might have their next great ILB, which has been a gap in the defense since Evan Weaver graduated.

Can Cal’s DBs bounce back?

By pretty much any metric, Cal’s passing defense struggled badly last year. Completion percentage, passer rating, success rate, yards/attempt . . . Cal was in the bottom quartile of the nation in all of it.

Now, that’s not entirely on Cal’s DBs, and I think suggesting that Cal’s secondary was a bottom 25% unit last year is a stretch. The numbers are absolutely impacted by the quality of the opposition Cal faced, and the DBs were done few favors by a pass rush that didn’t do much until late in the season.

The pre-season ACC QB 1st teamer this year is Miami’s Cam Ward, a player we are all familiar with, and who was probably the . . . 5th best QB on Cal’s schedule last year? So the difficulty level is plummeting. But even then, Cal could really benefit from tighter play in the secondary, and more interceptions and havoc specifically.

Final Outlook

You might notice that the three questions above come from three different levels of the defense. That’s because, to be frank, Cal’s defense had struggles and personnel challenges at all three levels last year. Lack of pass rush, lack of experience at ILB, and a secondary that played well below the level that has been generally established under Justin Wilcox.

Let’s take each position group one by one:

Front 4 (DTs and OLBs): All major contributers are back minus Brett Johnson, but there are no high impact portal additions. I’d expect a slight improvement with most of the rotation back and given another year to develop, but unless David Reese goes ham for a full season the gains are likely marginal

ILB: Last season’s day 1 staters, Jackson Sirmon and Kaleb Elarms-Orr, are gone, They’re replaced by Buchanan and Uluave. That’s probably a slight downgrade, though where we are right now is probably an upgrade on where we were at the end of the year. Consider this a push overall.

DBs: Most of last year’s contributors are back, minus safety Patrick McMorris rotational nickleback Kaylin Moore, and rotational CB Jeremiah Earby. Cal has brought in some intriguing portal transfers in Wagoner, Yaltes and Harris, but none of them are clear starters. This is probably a push, talent-wise.

In short, I don’t see this year’s defense as notably different in terms of talent level or depth than last year’s defense, which struggled as discussed above and in the 2023 defense review linked here and above. But I also don’t think this year’s defense is notably different in terms of talent level or depth than Cal’s 2022 defense that was mostly pretty solid.

So what gives? Why did last year’s defense struggle so badly in comparison?

I honestly think that for the past two years, Cal has had a roughly average power conference defense, and in 2022 they produced roughly average power conference defense results, and then in 2023 they got torched by the toughest schedule of offenses I have ever seen in my history as a Cal fan, and we fans AND the advanced stats don’t know exactly how to adjust for that either in our minds or mathematically.

And so, I expect the 2024 Bears to return to roughly average power conference defensive performance and results, because frankly Cal won’t face many (any?) elite offenses. Miami should have a top 20 offense, but unless Florida State and SMU improve on their week 1 performance, that’s probably it.

Pitt? SDSU? Wake? Syracuse? Stanford? Those schools are projected to have below average offenses nationally, including non-power teams.

Which is to say that the defense will probably look VASTLY better without actually being vastly better. Remember when we thought the defense was going to be really good because we stonewalled Auburn? Well, the schedule is mostly Auburn type teams this year.

I think the defense settles somewhere in the 40s nationally by the advanced metrics, which would probably place them about 8th, middle of the pack in the ACC (which, for what it’s worth, is a better defensive conference than an offensive conference).