Cal Football 2025 Season Preview Part 4: Special Teams and Schedule

Can the Bears improve on their most vexing phase of the game? And can they take advantage of a kind schedule?

Can UNLV transfer David De Jesus create big plays as a kick returner? photo via @Calfootball twitter

Part 1: Last Chance Saloon Part 2: The Offense Part 3: The Defense

Special Teams

Punting

Punter: sophomore Michael Kern, junior Brook Honoré

The assumption is that Kern will win the starting punter job based on a year of experience punting for Texas last year, as Honoré hasn’t attempted a live punt in three years as a back-up. Still, it’s worth noting that Texas was only 111th in the nation in net punting last year, so I don’t think that Kern will get the job by default.

Cal was 48th in net punting last year with Lachlan Wilson, so unless Kern takes a big jump between his freshman and sophomore seasons or Honoré is a diamond in the rough , I’d bet on a little bit of regression from the punting unit this year.

Return units

Returner: Jacob De Jesus? Isaiah Crosby?

Jacob de Jesus was the primary returner on both punts and kickoffs for UNLV, and every single player but one who returned a kick or a punt last year is no longer on Cal’s roster, so my guess is that he’s going to get the gig. That guess is based on no real inside information, but Isiah Crosby (3 punt returns) is the only player still on the roster who was involved in returns last year.

Crosby did have Cal’s longest punt return of the year, of 24 yards. Still, De Jesus’s 10 yard average on 25 returns last year is pretty solid and would be a clear improvement on last year’s typical production, when Cal averaged just 5.7 yards/return on just 19 total attempted returns for the year.

Kickoffs/Field Goals

Placekicker: junior Chase Meyer, freshman Abram Murray, freshman Erik Peters

And here’s where we get to the unit that will have all the attention. After a season in which Cal lost three games as a direct result of missed field goals, Cal will look for massive improvement to the kicking unit via three newcomers.

Chase Meyer is the assumed starter after a very solid 2023 season as a kicker when he went 17-20 for Tulsa. On the downside, his career long is only 47 and he’s 3-5 from 40+ yards, so the evidence from 2023 doesn’t show a massive leg. On the other hand, he’s 14-15 from inside 40 yards. He did miss a 33 yarder . . . and then later in the same game, nailed a kick as time expired to send the game to OT, which perhaps speaks well of his mental toughness.

Meyer left Tulsa for Penn State, but wasn’t able to win the job and left after a year. If he can replicate his form for Tulsa and reliably hit inside 40, Cal will be extraordinarily grateful.

Murray does have brief live experience after redshirting at Miami last year, hitting a 38 yarder and 4 extra points. I’m sure he’ll be given every opportunity to prove his ability in an open competition this fall. Erik Peters comes in as a high school recruit this year, and while I assume he’s much more likely to redshirt, it’s also true that after last year, Cal will have no choice but to play the very best kicker on the roster regardless of experience. Still, that’s probably Meyer.

The Schedule

It’s difficult to find neutral projections that just go beyond gut-feeling power rankings. Vegas sports books would probably be the best source, but they don’t give you much beyond win total lines (where you can wager against Cal’s 5.5 win line).

Bill Connelly’s SP+ is currently the closest thing to Vegas, with a system that has calibrated weighted inputs (returning talent, recruiting rankings, prior performance, etc.) that are tested each year explicitly against Vegas lines. Here are his pre-season rankings for teams we care about. Listed below are ACC teams Cal isn’t playing (white), ACC teams Cal is playing (orange) and non-conference opponents (blue). Note that the implied line provides 2.5 points in favor of the home team, per the SP+ formula.

Cal is the underdog in six games, the favorite in five games, and one game is a virtual toss-up (UNC) . . . which matches up quite perfectly with a 5.5 season win total over/under, doesn’t it?

But the magnitude matters here, so I’d split Cal’s schedule into the following categories:

1. Virtual guarantees

Texas Southern. This is not the season to fear an FCS upset - the Tigers are a low end FCS team who have lost to Rice by 50+ two years in a row.

2. Likely wins

SDSU. Cal fans who are old enough get hives thinking about playing road games in San Diego, but the Aztecs were really bad last year and so Cal should be a solid favorite even away from home.

3. Coin flip range

Here is where you will find more than half of Cal’s schedule, because the bulk of the schedule are games where the betting line is within a possession. Oregon State, Minnesota, Boston College, Duke, North Carolina, Virginia, and Stanford all make this list.

4. Likely losses

Louisville and SMU are the two teams on Cal’s schedule who are getting serious consideration as pre-season top 25 teams, and the two teams who get dark horse ACC title considerations after Clemson and Miami. SMU is probably the better team, but Cal gets them at home, so Louisville is probably the tougher game.

Virginia Tech is also in this category, but barely. If you think that SP+ is overrating a team that went 6-7 last year and want to slide them up into the coin flip range, I wouldn’t blame you, but I do think the Hokies are a step better than either Boston College or Stanford, Cal’s other ACC road games.

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As has been noted by virtually everybody, this is a very soft schedule. Cal isn’t projected to be a heavy underdog all season long - Louisville is probably the toughest game, and underdogs in that range win games 20% of the time. It’s pretty good news when every game on the schedule is winnable, and that’s what happens when you don’t have anybody on the schedule from the national elite.

The bad news is that outside of Cal’s FCS game, there isn’t a single game on the schedule that Cal couldn’t lose. Based on those odds, you should expect Cal to beat SDSU about 75% of the time, and that’s Cal’s easiest FBS game.

Only one question ultimately matters: How good, actually, is Cal? Because most of Cal’s opponents are peer programs with similar pre-season ratings, Cal doesn’t have to be significantly better (or worse!) than their pre-season projection to shift the season in one direction or the other.

For example, if the 2025 Bears ended up having the same SP+ rankings as the 2024 Bears, they would only be underdogs in three games, so if you think this team is likely to be as good or better than last year, then the soft schedule gives you reasons for optimism. SP+ (and Vegas) sees regression from last year based on the production Cal lost, but Cal has brought in enough transfer portal talent that there is a high degree of uncertainty, and a wider range of potential outcomes.

Then you can get into random chance. If you mark every game where Cal is favored by more than 7 as a win, and underdogs by more than 7 as a loss, that starts you at 2-3. If Cal wins every coin toss game, that’s a 9-3 season! If Cal loses every coin toss game, that’s a 2-10 season! Of course, the odds of flipping heads 7 times in a row is 1/128, but what is August if not for dreaming of the season where everything finally comes up Milhouse?

What do I think? Well, that’s next week’s topic. Until then, enjoy Farmageddon and Stanford at Hawaii. Week zero football is almost here!