Cal Football 2025: How's the Offense Looking? Pt. 3
Since the midway point of the season, Cal has fought three ugly games and emerged 1-2. At this point, we know what kind of team we have, and it would appear that our realistic expectation for the final three games of 2025 should be another 1-2. Three quarters of the way through the season, how does our offense compare to last year’s?
The Data
Question: What proportion of play calls are rushes/passes?
Here are the play calls so far with the 2024 offense in blue and the 2025 offense in gold:
Since my last analysis, we are adding in data from games against NC State (L), Oregon State (W), and Wake Forest (W) in 2024 and games against UNC (W), Virginia Tech (L), and Virginia (L) in 2025. In 2024, this bumps up the percentage of passing plays called compared to when we last took a look. In 2025, we’ve thrown the ball slightly more in the last three games, further skewing our pass:run ratio. Questions not part of this analysis: Is this increase due to our inability to run the ball, the fact that we are often in situations where we need to get downfield quickly, or a combination of both?
Question: How distributed is our passing game among the receiver room?
We have the same nine players from the 2024 team and the same six players from the 2025 team on this graphic compared to three games ago. We have seen some movement in where the players are listed: Jack Endries previously had the fourth highest number of catches across both squads but has jumped to second place just behind Jacob De Jesus; Trond Grizzell (2025) and Mason Mini have switched places as the #2 and #3 receivers this year; and on the bottom of the graph, Mark Hamper has lost the #6 receiver spot to RB Kendrick Raphael.
This plot of team receiving yards by season remains uninteresting! Not much change between the mid-season version and today’s. Median yards per catch have not changed in either the 2024 or 2025 data.
Disaggregating the data by game, we see that Virginia Tech takes the prize as the game with the most catches for Cal in 2025. Despite throwing the ball more this season, four games from last year saw more catches than any from 2025: Wake Forest, Pitt, Oregon State, and Auburn.
Question: How distributed is our run game?
Similar to the receiving graphic, we have the same names on the rushing boxplots compared to last time we checked in. Some movement: Nando has leapfrogged over LJ Johnson, and JKS has overtaken Brandon High in total carries. Raphael’s increased volume has helped him move up his median yards per carry ever so slightly in the last three games. (But having one real running threat on the depth chart has made me anxious about the possibility that injury could happen at any time).
Here are the team box plots:
Remarkably, the running games look quite similar across seasons when viewed at the team level. (Though again, much of that 2025 volume comes from ONE player).
Virginia saw the fewest carries in a game across both seasons, and Virginia Tech is fifth from the bottom. Another way to illustrate the point I made up top that we’re throwing the ball a lot more in 2025.
Conclusion and Questions
I concluded my piece six weeks ago this way: “Barring a revelation during the bye week, we can expect one of two kinds of plays for the rest of the season. Either JKS will throw the ball to Jacob De Jesus, Mason Mini, or Trond Grizzell, or he will hand off the ball to Kendrick Raphael, LJ Johnson Jr., or Brandon High Jr. for a somewhat reliable 4 yards.” My assessment of the receivers was correct! But in terms of rushing, it really has been Kendrick Raphael’s job to carry the run game.
As we close out this season, I do not expect to be surprised by anything that happens in the final three games against Louisville, Stanford, and SMU. Lots of passes to the same three guys (hopefully completed passes), and Kendrick Raphael churning out four yards per carry.
Why does Cal fall apart mid season?
Any stats on the offensive line performance, I feel like outside of snaps and penalties they've been a lot better than last season. Although that is not saying much.