Cal football spring practice news, updates: Alex Mack showed up last Saturday!

That and more updates from Cal head coach Justin Wilcox.

Credit: Cal Football

Justin Wilcox talked with Cal reporters after last Saturday’s spring practice before the team adjourned for spring break in the last week of March. And there were special guests last week!

You had some big names in the house this week with Alex Mack and Ron Rivera. Can you talk a little bit about their interaction with the players and what it means to have guys like them associated with the program?

What a great day yesterday to have Coach Rivera, Alex, come visit us. Coach Rivera, we have a coaches clinic going on, had a great turnout. Local coaches and even guys from Southern California visiting and coach Rivera was here all day and talked to the team yesterday morning.

He was fantastic and spent time here at practice, spent time with us coaches and then the talk to the high school coaches last night. Really just an amazing guy, as you all know. He's been through a lot, really it was just great having him around and interacting with everybody.

And then Alex came up and spent the day with us as well. Alex Mack is one of the best centers that's played the game. I was here when Alex got here. I remember his freshman year and when he got here, coming in as a pretty unheralded recruit, just incredibly hard-working, smart, tough guy, very talented as well.

But he just talked to the guys, talked to the O-line about what it takes to be a great player, what it means to be a Cal student-athlete.

It's just when you get guys like that coming around, spending time with our players, that's part of the reason we come here is to experience interactions like that. So it was really cool.

He may well join your dad in the Hall of Fame, too.

Yeah, I mean, statistically, when you look at what he did and the level he played at and the consistency. I think he was a seven-time Pro Bowler. I don't think he missed a game in his first five years playing. The model of consistency and playing, playing at such a high level so consistently, like people can have a good game or a great season.

But to do it over and over and over again takes a special guy. You understand that not only the talent, but just the approach and how he worked at it.

Do you have a sense for how the players soaked up this time with those guys?

Well, I think it'd be great for you to ask them that. They are all eyes and ears when those guys are talking. So, again, to have them come around, it means a lot to the program.

They're doing it not for themselves. They don't get anything out of it other than helping out and being visible and interacting with the team because they care about Cal and they care about the program and the players.

Are there some general areas you can talk about after four practices.

Well, I mean, you've really got to go through each group and talk about the growth that's been made. You need to have significant growth. Day one can't be the highlight of spring ball.

So today was very competitive, which I appreciated. Spring break is about to start. So the conventional wisdom is to say, guys are going to have one foot out the door.

Not at all like that. It was competitive. Guys were plugged in. They practiced extremely hard.

Some great individual plays both sides of the ball today. That's what we need to see. We need to see good contested football throughout spring and watch the individuals compete with each other and get better.

It seems that most positions are fairly stacked with guys. You've got a lot of portal guys that are in there and JC transfers and a ton of them are flashing. It's got to be good to see.

It is. College football in this era we had 22 or 23 newcomers in January. You didn't have that many traditionally in the past.

So you have more people in spring ball, as you mentioned, multiple positions if you're healthy, you got bodies, and we expect those guys that we brought in here out of the transfer portal to compete and help us. That's why we brought them in, but it is good to see them.

Marcus Harris today made a play down there, I don't know if you guys saw that, that was an unbelievable interception. It wasn't like it was a bad throw or anything by the offense. He just made a really fantastic play. A couple of the other DB's like Ja'ir [Smith] has shown.

The receivers. Mikey Matthews has shown up. J.B. [Jonathan Brady], Tobias [Merriweather]. Like there's a bunch of guys who are new to the program that have flashed. It doesn't mean they are there yet, but it's good to see them show up in these competitive situations.

Would you assess the quarterback play for this practice?

Fernando just comes out here and works to get better, which he does. He's throwing the ball with authority. I think he's got good comfort with the offense, but he's still a young player. He played one year and he takes every opportunity to get better, whether it's a one-on-one rep, seven-on-seven, team. So as long as he continues to do that, he's going to improve.

And Chandler, just even from day one, you can see him feeling a little bit more comfortable each and every day because he's played a lot of football, but the language, the timing, the concepts, it might be a little bit different getting used to that. He's very calm out there. Like I said, he's played a lot of football, so I think he's done a really nice job in week one as well.

How would you say the team has adjusted to a new offensive coordinator?

Yeah, I think it's been seamless. I mean, Coach Bloesch is a really good football coach. Coach Gilbert has been awesome for that room as well. So it's been as seamless as it could possibly be. They're really good coaches, they're great communicators, they're good people, guys like being around them, so it's gone really well.

Would you say there's overlap from last year system?

Yeah, there's a lot of similarities. We didn't change any words that we didn't need to change. But there was, there were some adjustment, like every year you're going to get better. And especially when there's a new playcaller you got some new ideas in the building, there's going to be some tweaks.

Overall it was very comfortable for the returners, a couple new concepts or maybe how you package things or what you call it might have been adjusted a little bit, but for the most part a lot of carryover.

We’ll cover the rest of Wilcox’s press conference in a follow-up post!