You ever have one of those years where nothing really worked out for you?
You went on a diet and ended up gaining weight; you promised you’d be out of the office by 5 pm and instead became best friends with the cleaners; you promised to start cleaning up your life and instead argued with randoms on Twitter about your football team.
But enough about my last decade on Earth. Let’s discuss the California Golden Bears, who also haven’t been able to catch many breaks in that time.
Clearly, things have gotten lost in the sauce for Tosh Lupoi in Year 1.
The Bears stand at 3-5, with two of the worst back-to-back losses in recent memory for a first-year head coach. It doesn’t help that both Wake Forest and SMU are well-oiled machines with playoff aspirations who are catching us at our most vulnerable time, but getting outscored 83-0 to start and end both games is an intensely tough pill to swallow. There were times where Cal did not look like they belonged on the same football field, as the coaching staff lacked both the personnel and experience to make the proper adjustments before events avalanched (and it’s happened all year).
So what now?
Let’s move from depression to acceptance (or maybe this is bargaining, you all let me know).
We can start with the uncontrollables. Some of the unravelling for the Bears has been due to the worst injury luck a Cal team has experienced in over a decade.
Injuries have come at Cal’s most critical positions, completely disrupting gameplanning and overall strategy.
Starting quarterback Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele: Missed the second half of UNLV, sat Virginia Tech, returned in the 4th quarter vs. Wake Forest.
Starting running back Adam Mohammed: Out since the Clemson game, return uncertain.
Backup running back Carter Vargas: Has not been played since the UCLA season-opener.
Backup running back Ashten Emory: Has had to be helped off the field in the last two games.
Backup running back Carson Perry-Smith: Also injured and missed Wake Forest.
Center Bastian Swinney: Injured twice now this season, missed multiple games.
Offensive guard Sioape Vatikani: Also banged up at multiple points this year.
Offensive tackle Jimothy Lewis: Had a good start to 2026 but has not been seen for over a month-plus.
Tight end Dorian Thomas: Fall camp injury has taken him off the two-deep for most of the season.
Wide receivers Ian Strong, Jordan King, Cooper Perry, Mark Hamper: Have now all missed at least one or multiple games this year.
Defensive back Kingston Lopa was concussed at UNLV and has struggled since his return.
Defensive lineman Nate Burrell has missed most of the season. Jericho Johnson has also missed time.
Defenders Justin Beadles and Kamar Mothudi have also missed time.
That is, in essence, the core of the offense that Lupoi was planning to carry this team all season to wins. It is also nearly the entire running back room, meaning one half of Cal’s offense has been reduced from ineffective to non-functional. Cal had to put in freshman defensive back Niles Davis in the backfield yesterday just to get some level of movement. Compounding the SMU game was injuries to half the receiving corps, meaning we got Kingston Lopa taking screens. Eventually, the Mustangs figured out all the gadgetry, and that was that.
Blaming injuries would be a cop-out to all that’s occurred this season; they’re a part of the game, and it’s next man up. But it’s safe to say going into 2026, that Cal having an above-average season required a fairly healthy team, and definitely not “next offense up”.
That vision has not come close to materializing. The Cal offense has not been close to healthy for a month, and has at times played mostly its second unit. That is not a recipe for success for many teams, and particularly this team, and definitely not our last two opponents.
On the bright side, while it might be patchwork likely through the end of this season, the worst is likely over as some players start to become available and the schedule eases up.
Now, the controllables. Some of this is self-inflicted. The coaching has been well below average on gameday, if I’m being charitable.
Enough has been said about demoted offensive coordinator Jordan Somerville. The system he implemented did not work past the first drive of a half, and his in-game adjustments violated basic coaching fundamentals like “Don’t run the same play twice” or “Try to throw toward the first down marker on 3rd and long”. It was too much for him, and a grave error for Lupoi to stake his bona fides with his most important offseason hire.
His replacement, pass game coordinator Pat McCann, has shown more mettle, and did throw out a nice first half of gameplanning that threw SMU off its axis for awhile. But the lack of available personnel made it difficult for him to go beyond that. You can only hope to accomplish so much when Dominic Ingrassia is your most effective rusher, and you’re having to design tight end sneaks for Mason Mini. It does give us something to work with for the more manageable part of our end schedule.
For SMU, let’s focus on the healthy unit. Defensive coordinator Michael Hutchings has proven himself to be a bit more capable, but the last two weeks have been trying on the soul. Whatever in-game adjustments he tried to implement against Wake and SMU had ephemeral impacts, as the Cal defense was either caught flat-footed or completely run off the field.
The Cal defense blitzes heavy, but lacks the edge talent to generate consistent pressure. It continues to make fundamental mistakes in not holding gaps, biting on fakes or play action, and conceding explosives. It averages the most penalties of nearly any unit in college football, as you can now safely predict at least two scoring drives a game will be assisted by personal fouls. And already that undisciplined approach has cost us, with AJ Tuitele targeting calls leading to his first half absence against Wake in that derby demolition, and ejections to Daniel Harris and Cam Sidney crippling Cal’s defense vs. UNLV.
SMU let the Cal defense play aggressively and fast to the ball in the first half. Then in the second half they just kept running, got up quick to the line, ran again, eventually got a touchdown, the Cal offense started going 3-and-out, and in the heat and the tempo, the defense was run ragged.
This can also be brought on Lupoi, as he focused primarily on young defensive talents with limited reps to rebuild this roster. And there are some incredible talents on this team, who will hopefully return and be part of the wider rebuild. But the strategy of getting upside folks comes with costs; even if we have some emerging talents, there are others that are clearly not performing at a level that is P4-worthy; combined with their lack of experience, they just make basic mistakes. The result is a unit with clear growing pains that isn’t ready for elite competition.
Position-wise, the wide receiver drops have improved, but stopped so many drives in the first crucial month. The offensive line continues to grade out as one of the weaker groups in the nation, as the unit can’t give their running backs space, or give their quarterbacks more than three seconds of comfort. Edge pressure continues to be non-existent, with Cal generating under two sacks a game despite blitzing being a core part of the team’s identity. And the backside defense, once so reliable, has just made a host of busted coverage mistakes.
Ron Rivera can’t be omitted. At the end of the day, he signed off on a very junior staff leading this program, with only a handful of lead coaches like Nick Rolovich with significant collegiate experience. And there are times this staff has looked very young. Rivera seemed to be mostly okay with this group, and now they are learning in real-time for the full country to see. It’s not ideal, and you’d expect Rivera to be more involved in the second set of hires he makes in 2027.
And then there’s the head man. Lupoi continues to make strange decisions in his first year. The end-of-first-half decision to stall at midfield to play for the field goal at SMU? Weird. The inability to call a timeout in crucial situations in-game (like the early 4th down on their own side of the field)? Costly. Deciding to ride with Somerville in a must-win UNLV game? Oh boy. We’ve already discussed the word salad of the quarterback competition, which caused confusion and bewilderment and could’ve easily been peppered over by “Jaron is hurt, and Jackson Brousseau is starting until he heals”. It’s best not to talk even further about the press conferences, where Lupoi tries not to reveal anything of significance, but his constant urge to sell leads him to unintentional contradictions.
Lupoi has made a lot of mistakes; the good news is most of these mistakes are fixable (and Lupoi has already fixed one with the OC pivot). But the goodwill will be quickly exhausted if the wins don’t come. We need to find stability, soon.
Now, the silver linings.
Despite all of the mayhem of the last two weeks, Cal can still turn it around and finish 2026 on the right note. The Bears will end the season facing the basement of the ACC, along with Pitt cycling through backup quarterbacks. It won’t be easy to win 3 of 4 and get to a bowl, especially the way Cal has played all year, but if mistakes are learned from, it is very much possible.
There is the recruiting aspect. Despite the mayhem, Tosh Lupoi has mostly kept this group intact. Charles Davis wavered in his commitment, but then decided to lock back down with Cal nearly a week later. There have been two flips in Alius Mayo (Georgia) and Rahzario Edwards (Ole Miss), but those were some of the higher-profile players out there, and always at risk. Cal still holds a borderline top 25 recruiting class for 2027, with several players likely to come in and contribute immediately. If this class can be mainly retained, and we bring in another top 25 portal class, we will have a more talented team next season.
This is the biggest reason why Lupoi was brought here—to bring talented players at every position, and raise our ceiling. This did not materialize in one year as we’d hoped, but this happens when you’re relying on the portal to rebuild, and there is a significant exodus of talent to the portal and the draft. The hope is Lupoi will have a better hit rate next season, with both a recruiting and portal class entirely of his own making. And if there’s anyone who can sell players on that vision, it’s him.
Cal won seven games in 2025, but it was a very fragile seven wins—the Bears were bottom 50 in the nation by most advanced metrics, but managed four of their seven wins on goal-line stands and last-minute drives (and sometimes both). In talent profile, the Bears had more in common with a four-to-five-win team, and it’s starting to show this year. So we will have to sign ourselves up for the conventional rebuild.
There will have to be staff pivots in certain places. The Cal offensive braintrust needs to be more cohesive next year, with a better in-game identity that can handle setbacks and adjust to what defenses do to them in-game. On defense, there might have to be some tinkering to get better technique out of the players, so they don’t look out of place all the time, but more talent needs to come in as well.
There is one staff pivot that will not be occurring. Tosh Lupoi is almost certainly going to be the Cal head coach in 2027. Lupoi’s contract was officially inked earlier this month, with $22.6 million over 5 years and a buyout nearing $20 million if he were to be released this year. It is slightly cheaper than I initially thought, but it is cost-prohibitive, with buyouts to Justin Wilcox and Jim Knowlton still being paid out of their buyouts. Hiring Lupoi was the decision most Cal donors and leadership aligned on, and while there might be some buyer’s remorse at the moment, they likely will stay the course, with some hints from that group to hire for more experience and strategic thinking.
Ultimately, Cal fans hoped beyond hope that everything could go right this year to put the Bears on the right path of realignment. The opposite has happened, and now Cal will likely have to pivot for the longer-term rebuild.
The Bears still have a head coach who wants to win here, is trying to figure out what he can do with what he has, and we all know he has the requisite ability to bring the talent and donor buy-in to eventually make it work. If Lupoi can still continue to be the best version of himself on the recruiting and portal front, then there is always hope to sell that the team is moving upward starting every season. Then a reboot with a more experienced coaching staff could reset the vibes going into next season.
Obviously, looking around college football, we see the Bob Chesneys and Will Steins of the world immediately succeeding in a one-year rebuild, and it is a far more bitter pill to swallow. But there are other coaches out there, like Mario Cristobal and Kalani Sitake, who took significant lumps early before eventually rebuilding their programs back to national relevance. Not all coaches can be immediate Jeff Tedford success stories. We can hope Lupoi will figure it out as he grows into the role, and in the coming year or two will have Cal back to the place they need to be.
A lot of factors could potentially change in the coming months, and Lupoi is the coach who will be responsible for overseeing them. Controllables and uncontrollables aside, the wins must eventually come. A good way to start winning the fans back and getting buy-in is to finish a manageable schedule right.
So it goes without saying the next three months are very critical for Tosh Lupoi’s Cal era before it even really gets going. Turning things around and getting us to bowl eligibility could at least give us signs of growth and improvement, and could propel us into closing on our recruiting class and a more thorough portal evaluation.
There’s still time to fix this before the damage is irreparable. But the clock is ticking, and college football is moving faster than ever. Your move Tosh.
A proper rebuild is going to require recruiting and portal emphasis on O and D line play. Put a large portion of your cash there and build a real foundation. Get a better O line coach. Get an alpha OC. Ron babysits Tosh on the defensive side of the ball. Make ST a point of emphasis and find a kicker.
As always, thank you Avinash. It seems there are two narratives emerging from the fanbase here and in the other place, formerly known as twitteringdom, or something.
One, a braying for Tosh's head, irrespective of all the factors you articulate, and without a serious examination of the real world consequences of such an unprecedented move. The second is the one you outline. In a nutshell, our expectations were sky high, reality in a number of incarnations has arrived and we realistically have little choice but to double down and rebuild.
The first narrative legitimately comes from our long suffering and offers immediate, if highly unlikely, gratification. Some may feel a righteous obligation to hold to this position, and they are of course free to do so. But as it simply will not happen, in my judgement, the second is the only realistic choice we have as Cal fans. Go Bears Forever, even, and perhaps particularly, when it's hard.