Cal Football 2026 Season Preview Part 4: Special Teams and Schedule

A glance at Cal’s specialists, and the road ahead

Is Chase Hendricks the heir to Jacob DeJesus at more than one position? via @calfootball on twitter

Part 1: Finally Something New Under the Sun
Part 2: The Offense
Part 3: The Defense

First, a correction/addition from last week’s preview of the defense. I listed seven transfers on defense who are young, high end high school recruits looking to break through at Cal . . . and I missed one. Sophomore Kingston Lopa is a former 4 star entering his 3rd year of college after playing in 13 games as a back up last year, behind (among others) a safety drafted with the 25th overall pick. He’s absolutely a contender to break into the starting lineup even though Cal has solid returning talent at safety.

Now it’s time to talk about special teams, which are led by Zach Tinker. No, not the heartthrob from the Young and the Restless, I’m talking about the west coast CFB lifer who worked his way through Western Washington, Southern Oregon, Eastern Oregon, South Dakota Mines, and Central Washington. What can we expect from his units? That’s hard to say because much of his experience isn’t directly with special teams.

Here’s what we can say about Cal’s likely specialists:

Special Teams

Punting

Punter: Senior Angus Davies

Cal lost their punters from 2025 to the portal, with Michael Kern heading to New Mexico and Brook Honore off to South Dakota. To replace them, the Bears grabbed Angus Davies from Tulsa. Davies is an Aussie who was Tulsa’s starter for three years and has been a consistently average-to-slightly-above-average FBS punter in that stretch. He’s not likely to be a massive difference maker at the position, but the 41.5 net punting he put up last year was good for 30th nationally and if he brings that production to Berkeley then punting will be the least of Cal’s concerns.

Return units

Punt Returner: Senior Chase Hendricks

Kickoff Returner: Junior Adam Mohammed or Sophomore Carter Vargas

Chase Hendricks had an excellent year returning punts with Ohio last year, averaging 18 yards/return, and with the departure of Jacob DeJesus I would expect Cal’s new slot receiver to step into the role.

Similarly, Adam Mohammed was Washington’s primary kickoff returner last year and would be an obvious option for the role. If Cal doesn’t want to risk injury or tire out their starter, Carter Vargas returned 3 kickoffs last year for UC Davis and popped one for 52 yards.

Kickoffs/Field Goals

Placekicker: junior Chase Meyer, sophomore Towns McGough

This is going to be a camp battle, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if the result is that Meyer is Cal’s short field goal specialist and McGough attempts longer kicks. That was the case for McGough at Auburn in 2024, although those long kicks didn’t go well as he missed all four of his 50+ yard kicks. FWIW, McGough was a top ranked prep kicker in the high school class of 2024, and he’s more likely to be on kickoffs with the bigger leg.

Meyer can generally be trusted inside 40 yards (21-22 for his career) but only 6-11 from 40-49 yards, and no attempts from 50+.

Frankly, with JKS behind center and no proven long range kickers, I will be HEAVILY on team go-for-it in plus territory, but that’s a conversation for a different day.

The Schedule

Each year, I start with Bill Connelly’s SP+ rankings as a baseline to inform my thinking about Cal and Cal’s opponents. And this year, Bill gave Cal fans a free (terrifying) preview of the season:

Bill called this category his “Pepto-Bismol All-Stars” and when you look at Cal’s place within the ACC, it’s not hard to understand why:

If you add up win expectancy based on these lines, you get 6 wins, which is pretty close to the 6.5 projection you get from Vegas right now.

Now, I think you’re all asking similar forms of the same question: “13th place out of 17 teams in the ACC? Projected favorites in only 4 games out of 12? Why do the computers hate Cal?!?” I’m going to take a stab at explaining why:

1. Cal has been the ~60th best college football team for 15 years. These rating systems default to assuming that a team that has been consistently mediocre for more than a decade will continue to play at that level. We Cal fans are aware of the institutional investment made into the program, but until that investment translates into wins, the computers don’t really care.

2. A lot of the talent Tosh Lupoi brought into the program has no history of on-field production. As noted last week when talking about the defense, Cal’s two-deep is littered with guys who have an exciting high school recruiting profile but haven’t managed to translate that into bankable production and snaps. UCLA was a worse team than Cal last year, but SP+ likes the proven production of the portal adds Bob Chesney brought with him from JMU more than Cal’s bets on recruiting talent.

3. Cal is a rounding error away from being the 8th best ACC team in these rankings. The ACC rankings are sobering but it’s worth noting that the middle of the ACC is a crab bucket and if Cal exceeds their pre-season projections by a very tiny amount, they are a bang-on average ACC team. If they exceed their pre-season rating by even more, they could easily be the 5th best team in the ACC. If they exceed their pre-season ranking by as much as Virginia did last year, they will have an outside path to the ACC title game, because SP+ only sees one notably good team in the ACC this year and Cal doesn’t play Miami.

   
   Let’s not talk about what things look like if Cal plays worse than their computer projections.

So, let’s split the schedule into tiers:

1. Virtual guaranteed wins

Wagner. I wasn’t able to find a precise SP+ rating for Cal’s annual FCS opponent, but Bill C. has the Wagner as a clearly below average FCS program. That makes sense, as they’re coming off a 5-7 season in one of FCS’s weakest conferences, and that 5-7 mark actually stands as the best season Wagner has had in about a decade. There are scary FCS teams - this is not one of them.

2. Likely wins

Stanford. The Cardinal are starting Davis Warren, who put up the following stats while playing for MICHIGAN:

• 134-209, 5.7 yards/attempt, 7 TDs, 9 INTs, 17 carries for -22 yards

He’s a statue with accuracy and decision making issues, and those numbers were put up with a Michigan-level supporting caste rather than a rebuilding Stanford team.

This would be an emotional must-win even if it wasn’t our archrivals who humiliated us last year.

3. Coin flip range

This category includes (takes a deep breath) UCLA, Syracuse, UNLV, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, NC State, and Pitt. 7 out of 12 games! 7 out of 11 FBS vs. FBS games on the schedule!

SP+ (and Vegas, which increasingly matches SP+ in their projections) says that each of these games has a favorite that would win 50%-58% of the time.

All of these teams have intriguing plusses (Bob Chesney’s JMU transfers! Syracuse has their QB healthy! James Franklin! Wake Forest’s defense should be nasty [complimentary]! Pitt somehow retained Mason Heintschel!) and obvious minuses (UCLA, Syracuse and V. Tech were terrible last year and they probably haven’t patched every roster hole! Wake Forest’s offense should be nasty [derogatory]! Pitt has no NIL and their portal class ranked 90s!). It allows you to see what you want to see in almost every game. More than anything else, prepare for stress.

By the way, the reason you don’t schedule road games against non-power teams like UNLV is because you run the risk of visiting them when they’re on the upswing. When Cal announced the scheduling agreement in 2017 UNLV hadn’t made a bowl in a few years and hadn’t been a threat in the Mountain West in years. Now they’re the consensus pre-season favorite.

4. Likely losses

An important caveat here: Clemson and Virginia are both projected 7.5 point favorites over Cal in the pre-season, but teams favored by that much actually win games ~68% of the time. While Cal is a meaningful underdog in those two games and their road trip to ACC title contender SMU, Cal is more likely than not to upset at least one of these three teams. Projections are not destiny.

And we should know that from recent experience! Last year Cal was handed one of easiest slates of ACC games they could possibly receive. Did it matter? Hardly - Cal ended up losing to two of the four worst teams on their schedule (Virginia Tech and Stanford) and coming within inches of losing to the other two (BC and UNC). Meanwhile, Cal upset two of the best on the schedule (SMU and Louisville) and was within three points of ACC-title-game-participant Virginia deep into the 4th quarter.

We’ll be back next week with best case and worst case scenarios, and final predictions. Congrats on making it to college football season, and please enjoy a shockingly relevant Week Zero. If rubber-necking at Sonny Dykes and Bill Belichick going at it in Ireland wasn’t enough, we also get early looks at FOUR different future opponents. Check it out:

• NC State at Virginia, 12:30, ESPN

• Hawaii at Stanford, 4:00, ACC Network

• Memphis at UNLV, 7:00, Fox

Plop your rear on the couch, grab a drink, and ignore your responsibilities. Football is back!