Rugbear and I were texting back and forth last night during the game. I made the observation that it's remarkable how competitive we when we simply play clean football. Great fundamentals on both sides of the ball, good clock management, great play calling, and even special teams did well enough. Against #15, with what was touted as one of the best defenses in the country. Glorious...Go Bears Forever!
Well, no team plays perfectly clean. And relative to recent performances, this was pretty clean in my judgment. They corrected the rash of false starts due to crowd noise, which was also good to see… I pump sunshine. Go Bears
Fair point re penalties, but the eye test for me said there were fewer than usual and not as consequential. But I’ll leave that to the statisticians amongst us.
Following a chaotic late offseason that saw the Golden Bears stripped of nearly their entire RB and WR rooms, the QB1 plucked by a natty contender, their DC flee for the NFL and their returning sack leader lost for the year, this squad’s respectable showing (culminated by last night’s gutty win) after losing an additional half dozen top starters during the season on defense, is impressive. I picked the Bears to go 5-7 this year back in August. The Bear will not quit, the Bear will not die.
A friend of mine who is on the AD Board of one of the ACC powerhouse schools, sent me a note yesterday. Noting that he had expected Cal to be near the bottom of the ACC this year given how much talent we lost through the portal and to the NFL. Starting a true freshman QB and so many new players. Hard to win in the ACC on the road. He had penciled in Cal to win 2 ACC games this season. His comment "your coaches deserve a lot of credit for pulling together a competitive team that might not have the talent or depth of the top ACC schools". Hope we can keep up the momentum against Stanford.
Hee's won this year with a talent deficit. He lost last year with a talent ADvantage. I honestly think his biggest problem in the past has been talent evaluation particularly at QB. Luckily, Rivera is now in charge of personnel.. We will see how things play out.
Successful organizations build upon the model that wins, and correct or upgrade the weak link. Wilcox is now the weak link. We have most things in place. Chancellor, Facilities, School, Alums, NIL, Portal and recruiting. Weak link is the head coach.
Compelling exhibits, for sure. Seeing the team chant “Wilcox” adds perspective and context that makes it hard for me to think canning Wilcox results in better outcomes rather than a total rebuild with lots of uncertainty. Particularly so in such a competitive market for coaches and where doing so would seem to all but usher JKS out the door. Not saying RR shouldn’t be brave about this decision but seeing that chant symbolizes a team that is 100% in on their coach and makes the equation for RR quite challenging.
Clearly the calls for Wilcox's head made it back to the players, and if thats what was needed to motivate them to show out.. that's great and I hope they can keep it up throughout the final stretch.
JKS is the lynchpin right now. As Lyons himself said, if we don't have a "special" season in the next 3 years, we could find ourselves in a very difficult position.
With JKS's generational talent, I trust Ron to be able to engineer that special season.
If it's a full rebuild, I think our odds drop precipitously and much is left chance. That makes Wilcox such a tricky situation.
I am hoping we win the next two games. Much better situation to have the incoming recruiting class and JKS to build on as opposed to starting all over again with a new staff.
If we can't win 1 of the last 2...errrr, different story maybe.
I think you have to toss any pre-Xmas bowl game because they simply don’t mean much anymore. Kid’s will opt out in preparation of draft or portal, so that leaves the last 2. Just my 2-cents, but that LA Bowl was a farce last year and I felt bad for my buddies that traveled for it.
2-0 is 8 wins and absolute progress.
0-2 is 6-wins and an L to Stanford - which would seal his fate.
1-1 is the gray area that we knew about going into the year - 7 wins, perhaps an L v ‘Furd…that’s where the future JW situation is, and was always going to be, murky.
So let’s just win out in regular season….post-Xmas bowl seems a different animal too.
If JKS stays we need to go ALL IN on the NIL, transfers and bringing in high level college talent, especially at the skill positions. If he leaves this is a COMPLETE rebuild and we should focus on high school recruiting and basically starting a program from the ground up.
I don't think rebuilds actually drop odds that much. Look at Dykes and TCU. If you get a good coach that fits the current mold, you don't always see a huge group of players leaving. Hell, look at UCLA -- I think we all expected a bunch more of them to enter that initial transfer window but Skipper held the fort down.
It just requires the next coach be a thoughtful hire that can realistically take all the potential of the last 15 years of Cal football and turn it into a reality, especially assuming that we now have a friendly administration at Cal.
I did not watch the game; I was enjoying a Saturday night out. I wrote yesterday that there was a part of me that hoped we were beaten so badly that it provided no more excuses for Wilcox.
I am not changing my mind on Wilcox as a head coach (if we win the next two games and JKS makes a public announcement he is staying because Wilcox is still his head coach, I reserve the right to change my mind). Too many maddening losses this season of the easiest schedule we have ever seen, building off maddening losses every year. A roster that is the result of poor coaching and player management for years. Mendoza was a diamond in the rough Cal found and yet left (and easily could win the Heisman and be the top QB off the draft board next year) and to me that screams that lack of coaching.
But he deserves a win like this and the players deserve a win like this, so credit to where credit is due.
Yep, I didn’t even watch this game but was pleasantly surprised when we won.
This doesn’t change my opinion on Wilcox at all. It just further proves that it’s the same old Wilcox, a coach so inconsistent he can occasionally win games like this but also can lose 1-2 games against terrible teams each season
I readily admit I was completely blindsided by the resilience of this team that I have repeatedly picked to go 5-7 based on their previous play this season. After losing original game 1 starters on both sides of the ball, the bench rose up and played above expectations last night. JKS finally got the protection he needed from the OL, Rafael provided balance, and the little short guy who was not recruited by anyone out of HS, showed that he could repeatedly get open and actually catch the bullets only JKS is capable of throwing. We all know that the team that showed up in Louisville is not at all the same team that has been playing in all the previous games this season. The brilliant game plan begged the question of “where the hell did this come from?” since it bore no resemblance to the uninspired game plans, adjustments or play calling we’ve been forced to endure for most of this season. If this same team shows up and beats Stanford (handily, I hope, with no 4th qtr mercy) followed by a win over a very good SMU team in what I hope will be a packed and very loud crowd in Memorial Stadium, and then goes on to win a bowl game, ending the season at 9-5, I do not know what Ron will do, especially if JKS says he will stay to play for Wilcox. Cal has to avoid sending another Heisman QB contender through the portal to lead some other team to a potential national championship à la Mendoza. JKS staying at Cal will allow coaches to recruit top players at every position, both high school and via the portal, who will want to play with someone who has Heisman Trophy and NFL #1 draft pick potential written all over him. Need better WRs? Done! Need bigger and faster RBs? Done! Need agile, refrigerator-size lineman on both sides of the ball? Done! Keeping JKS at Cal has the potential of a literally once in a lifetime opportunity for Cal football to put together a nationally ranked top 10 (5?) team, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the days of Pappy Waldorf! This is our moment and the ball is now deep in RR’s court to make it happen. And I’m out of making any predictions on Wilcox’s future, at least for now. We know for sure, as the old joke goes, that Cal won’t lose this week. Let’s just hope for a huge win in Palo Alto that keeps the axe in Berkeley, followed by an even bigger and far more significant win against SMU the following week.
The unit that takes the most time to develop is the offensive line. To me, that was the key difference yesterday. Hopefully we are seeing our new offensive line coach’s abilities beginning to bear fruit.
I was absolutely floored at their performance. By far the best they've played all season against one of the best opposing D Lines. Fingers crossed they can keep the improvement up into next year, because only one starter graduates.
This feels like a borderline abusive relationship (are we the abusers in that story?) but I’m gonna say it: as long as JKS supports Wilcox being the head coach, I will support Wilcox being the head coach. If we keep him and the locker room, we could see success under Wilcox.
I know I will sputter to take back these words if we lose the next 2 + bowl, but I think if JKS wants to stay it would even be worth it then.
Love JKS, he probably will be the number one pick in 2027 and he should be richly compensated to convince him to stay. However letting a 19 year old kid who will be gone in 2+ years (at best) have ANY say in who the head coach should be is absurd.
I really think that this is not just a 19 year old kid. I watched Goff play all 3 years here, we all watched the current Heisman favorite play for us last year with a far better supporting cast than Jaron sports (At least on paper). JKS is something else entirely. I legitimately think he is a future NFL MVP and whoever holds him these next 2 years will be an automatic contender. Call me crazy.
Not crazy at all. The kid is throwing into the type of windows you only see from good NFL quarterbacks on Sundays. I will say this for Mendoza though, while he had WAY better receivers to work with than JKS he got the worst pass protection I’ve ever seen a college QB get and still played well.
I agree, because I cannot remember seeing any QB this good in his first year of college football, honestly not ever. I want him to stay because when he is protected, his passing is superlative. Why not build around him? You saw Saturday what happens when his receivers catch the ball and he has a bit of protection to throw. Hell, we even had a run game. Going forward, I don't think Cal knows how to build a team without him. It's always lacking in at least one of the three fundamentals, offense, defense, or special teams. That's probably on the Head Coach, I know that. But none of the selections made by the traditional decision makers have come up with anything outstanding around here in a long time. What could be more absurd and futile as to leaving the decision making the same as always? Getting the talent we need to build a really fully complementary team that wins its games nine times out of ten means keeping Jaron Keawa Sagapolutele. I kinda think we ought to give him what he wants. As difficult as that may be in regard to JW. And while I am on this little rant, keep Harsin and Rolovich too.
It's clear how much the players like JW. JKS's comment that Wilcox deserves all the credit, together with comments from HS recruits on how much they've liked the Cal players AND coaches on their visits, does cause pause. The reshuffling of the OL also provides some encouragement. If things contine to improve over the last few games (perhaps it's just taken time for all the new players to jell, and for JKS to mature with each game) AND JKS commits to staying, considerabion will have to be given to keeping JW and major emphasis given to selling the opportunities JKS provides for potential transfers (and recruits). That's a lot of "IF's", but just perhaps.... Time will tell if this is false optimism (hope?) or just another mirage...
Great win, no doubt, but LOU was missing their top offensive weapon, and Cal played largely a similar game they’ve played over a dozen or more times the past few years.
They made the plays needed to win the coin toss, as they did at BC & v UNC. They didn’t 2 weeks back at Va Tech and last week.
Again, nice win…happy for the kids and for Wilcox. But let’s see the next 2 games - a blow out L either of the past 2 weeks and word is JW was maybe out over the Bye.
How many games have a we convincingly won against bad teams in the ACC? None. BC is terrible and we barely won. UNC is terrible and we barely won. Both those wins came down to fortunate turn overs on potential game winning drives by BC and UNC. Even if we had beaten VaTech, it would have been a close win.
Duke is a good team but UConn just beat them! Perhaps Ron should call Jim Mora Jr after this season? Mora has really turned things around at UConn.
Yeah, this was the first game in which Wagoner wore it. Wondering if maybe he got his bell rung recently and decided its a no-brainer: add some extra protection. Surprised more players don’t reach the same conclusion.
Exhibit C strong indeed- how many teams chanting their coach’s name like that? Definitely not any of Brian Kelly’s.
Happy for Wilcox and the team.
Rugbear and I were texting back and forth last night during the game. I made the observation that it's remarkable how competitive we when we simply play clean football. Great fundamentals on both sides of the ball, good clock management, great play calling, and even special teams did well enough. Against #15, with what was touted as one of the best defenses in the country. Glorious...Go Bears Forever!
You guys didn’t think there were still a few too many drops, procedure penalties and personal foul flags to say that game was all that clean?
A great win nonetheless. No TO’s was nice.
Well, no team plays perfectly clean. And relative to recent performances, this was pretty clean in my judgment. They corrected the rash of false starts due to crowd noise, which was also good to see… I pump sunshine. Go Bears
No arguments that when viewed against previous efforts, this was definitely their best all around game.
I just think they left some meat on the bone and despite the injuries, they can still play better.
Hope we see it.
The penalties were not clean football, though. Happy with the outcome and a lot looked great, but the penalty situation was ugly
Fair point re penalties, but the eye test for me said there were fewer than usual and not as consequential. But I’ll leave that to the statisticians amongst us.
Following a chaotic late offseason that saw the Golden Bears stripped of nearly their entire RB and WR rooms, the QB1 plucked by a natty contender, their DC flee for the NFL and their returning sack leader lost for the year, this squad’s respectable showing (culminated by last night’s gutty win) after losing an additional half dozen top starters during the season on defense, is impressive. I picked the Bears to go 5-7 this year back in August. The Bear will not quit, the Bear will not die.
Well said!
A friend of mine who is on the AD Board of one of the ACC powerhouse schools, sent me a note yesterday. Noting that he had expected Cal to be near the bottom of the ACC this year given how much talent we lost through the portal and to the NFL. Starting a true freshman QB and so many new players. Hard to win in the ACC on the road. He had penciled in Cal to win 2 ACC games this season. His comment "your coaches deserve a lot of credit for pulling together a competitive team that might not have the talent or depth of the top ACC schools". Hope we can keep up the momentum against Stanford.
Hee's won this year with a talent deficit. He lost last year with a talent ADvantage. I honestly think his biggest problem in the past has been talent evaluation particularly at QB. Luckily, Rivera is now in charge of personnel.. We will see how things play out.
Not going to rain on his parade nor change my opinion based on one game. I still want a new head coach. But congratulations to the team for the win.
I've said it all year long too. Let's win every game, enjoy the wins, and fire Wilcox.
Successful organizations build upon the model that wins, and correct or upgrade the weak link. Wilcox is now the weak link. We have most things in place. Chancellor, Facilities, School, Alums, NIL, Portal and recruiting. Weak link is the head coach.
Once again,
The Bears have won!
There will be no extra point!
Compelling exhibits, for sure. Seeing the team chant “Wilcox” adds perspective and context that makes it hard for me to think canning Wilcox results in better outcomes rather than a total rebuild with lots of uncertainty. Particularly so in such a competitive market for coaches and where doing so would seem to all but usher JKS out the door. Not saying RR shouldn’t be brave about this decision but seeing that chant symbolizes a team that is 100% in on their coach and makes the equation for RR quite challenging.
Top notch execution by everyone yesterday. It’s amazing how much changed over a week - can’t believe this is the same team we’ve had all season
Clearly the calls for Wilcox's head made it back to the players, and if thats what was needed to motivate them to show out.. that's great and I hope they can keep it up throughout the final stretch.
JKS is the lynchpin right now. As Lyons himself said, if we don't have a "special" season in the next 3 years, we could find ourselves in a very difficult position.
With JKS's generational talent, I trust Ron to be able to engineer that special season.
If it's a full rebuild, I think our odds drop precipitously and much is left chance. That makes Wilcox such a tricky situation.
I am hoping we win the next two games. Much better situation to have the incoming recruiting class and JKS to build on as opposed to starting all over again with a new staff.
If we can't win 1 of the last 2...errrr, different story maybe.
I think you have to toss any pre-Xmas bowl game because they simply don’t mean much anymore. Kid’s will opt out in preparation of draft or portal, so that leaves the last 2. Just my 2-cents, but that LA Bowl was a farce last year and I felt bad for my buddies that traveled for it.
2-0 is 8 wins and absolute progress.
0-2 is 6-wins and an L to Stanford - which would seal his fate.
1-1 is the gray area that we knew about going into the year - 7 wins, perhaps an L v ‘Furd…that’s where the future JW situation is, and was always going to be, murky.
So let’s just win out in regular season….post-Xmas bowl seems a different animal too.
On a selfish note, GIMME THE F-ING SUN!!!
If JKS stays we need to go ALL IN on the NIL, transfers and bringing in high level college talent, especially at the skill positions. If he leaves this is a COMPLETE rebuild and we should focus on high school recruiting and basically starting a program from the ground up.
I don't think rebuilds actually drop odds that much. Look at Dykes and TCU. If you get a good coach that fits the current mold, you don't always see a huge group of players leaving. Hell, look at UCLA -- I think we all expected a bunch more of them to enter that initial transfer window but Skipper held the fort down.
It just requires the next coach be a thoughtful hire that can realistically take all the potential of the last 15 years of Cal football and turn it into a reality, especially assuming that we now have a friendly administration at Cal.
I did not watch the game; I was enjoying a Saturday night out. I wrote yesterday that there was a part of me that hoped we were beaten so badly that it provided no more excuses for Wilcox.
I am not changing my mind on Wilcox as a head coach (if we win the next two games and JKS makes a public announcement he is staying because Wilcox is still his head coach, I reserve the right to change my mind). Too many maddening losses this season of the easiest schedule we have ever seen, building off maddening losses every year. A roster that is the result of poor coaching and player management for years. Mendoza was a diamond in the rough Cal found and yet left (and easily could win the Heisman and be the top QB off the draft board next year) and to me that screams that lack of coaching.
But he deserves a win like this and the players deserve a win like this, so credit to where credit is due.
Now on to crushing Furd.
Yeah, we've had games like this in the past too. Wilcox can occasionally win games like this. It's nothing new. Wilcox is still the same Wilcox.
Yep, I didn’t even watch this game but was pleasantly surprised when we won.
This doesn’t change my opinion on Wilcox at all. It just further proves that it’s the same old Wilcox, a coach so inconsistent he can occasionally win games like this but also can lose 1-2 games against terrible teams each season
I readily admit I was completely blindsided by the resilience of this team that I have repeatedly picked to go 5-7 based on their previous play this season. After losing original game 1 starters on both sides of the ball, the bench rose up and played above expectations last night. JKS finally got the protection he needed from the OL, Rafael provided balance, and the little short guy who was not recruited by anyone out of HS, showed that he could repeatedly get open and actually catch the bullets only JKS is capable of throwing. We all know that the team that showed up in Louisville is not at all the same team that has been playing in all the previous games this season. The brilliant game plan begged the question of “where the hell did this come from?” since it bore no resemblance to the uninspired game plans, adjustments or play calling we’ve been forced to endure for most of this season. If this same team shows up and beats Stanford (handily, I hope, with no 4th qtr mercy) followed by a win over a very good SMU team in what I hope will be a packed and very loud crowd in Memorial Stadium, and then goes on to win a bowl game, ending the season at 9-5, I do not know what Ron will do, especially if JKS says he will stay to play for Wilcox. Cal has to avoid sending another Heisman QB contender through the portal to lead some other team to a potential national championship à la Mendoza. JKS staying at Cal will allow coaches to recruit top players at every position, both high school and via the portal, who will want to play with someone who has Heisman Trophy and NFL #1 draft pick potential written all over him. Need better WRs? Done! Need bigger and faster RBs? Done! Need agile, refrigerator-size lineman on both sides of the ball? Done! Keeping JKS at Cal has the potential of a literally once in a lifetime opportunity for Cal football to put together a nationally ranked top 10 (5?) team, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the days of Pappy Waldorf! This is our moment and the ball is now deep in RR’s court to make it happen. And I’m out of making any predictions on Wilcox’s future, at least for now. We know for sure, as the old joke goes, that Cal won’t lose this week. Let’s just hope for a huge win in Palo Alto that keeps the axe in Berkeley, followed by an even bigger and far more significant win against SMU the following week.
100%. I'd only add that Tedford took us to the top 5...for one glorious week we were #2!
And for one quarter we were technically #1!
I know...I was there! Uggggh!
Me too…….so let’s get back there
LOL! Yeah, let's do go back there, it was one hell of a ride. Tedford's clipboard was never the same after that.
The unit that takes the most time to develop is the offensive line. To me, that was the key difference yesterday. Hopefully we are seeing our new offensive line coach’s abilities beginning to bear fruit.
I was absolutely floored at their performance. By far the best they've played all season against one of the best opposing D Lines. Fingers crossed they can keep the improvement up into next year, because only one starter graduates.
Hope so
This feels like a borderline abusive relationship (are we the abusers in that story?) but I’m gonna say it: as long as JKS supports Wilcox being the head coach, I will support Wilcox being the head coach. If we keep him and the locker room, we could see success under Wilcox.
I know I will sputter to take back these words if we lose the next 2 + bowl, but I think if JKS wants to stay it would even be worth it then.
Love JKS, he probably will be the number one pick in 2027 and he should be richly compensated to convince him to stay. However letting a 19 year old kid who will be gone in 2+ years (at best) have ANY say in who the head coach should be is absurd.
I really think that this is not just a 19 year old kid. I watched Goff play all 3 years here, we all watched the current Heisman favorite play for us last year with a far better supporting cast than Jaron sports (At least on paper). JKS is something else entirely. I legitimately think he is a future NFL MVP and whoever holds him these next 2 years will be an automatic contender. Call me crazy.
Not crazy at all. The kid is throwing into the type of windows you only see from good NFL quarterbacks on Sundays. I will say this for Mendoza though, while he had WAY better receivers to work with than JKS he got the worst pass protection I’ve ever seen a college QB get and still played well.
I agree, because I cannot remember seeing any QB this good in his first year of college football, honestly not ever. I want him to stay because when he is protected, his passing is superlative. Why not build around him? You saw Saturday what happens when his receivers catch the ball and he has a bit of protection to throw. Hell, we even had a run game. Going forward, I don't think Cal knows how to build a team without him. It's always lacking in at least one of the three fundamentals, offense, defense, or special teams. That's probably on the Head Coach, I know that. But none of the selections made by the traditional decision makers have come up with anything outstanding around here in a long time. What could be more absurd and futile as to leaving the decision making the same as always? Getting the talent we need to build a really fully complementary team that wins its games nine times out of ten means keeping Jaron Keawa Sagapolutele. I kinda think we ought to give him what he wants. As difficult as that may be in regard to JW. And while I am on this little rant, keep Harsin and Rolovich too.
It's clear how much the players like JW. JKS's comment that Wilcox deserves all the credit, together with comments from HS recruits on how much they've liked the Cal players AND coaches on their visits, does cause pause. The reshuffling of the OL also provides some encouragement. If things contine to improve over the last few games (perhaps it's just taken time for all the new players to jell, and for JKS to mature with each game) AND JKS commits to staying, considerabion will have to be given to keeping JW and major emphasis given to selling the opportunities JKS provides for potential transfers (and recruits). That's a lot of "IF's", but just perhaps.... Time will tell if this is false optimism (hope?) or just another mirage...
Are we back?
Unlikely, but we’ll see…maybe?
Great win, no doubt, but LOU was missing their top offensive weapon, and Cal played largely a similar game they’ve played over a dozen or more times the past few years.
They made the plays needed to win the coin toss, as they did at BC & v UNC. They didn’t 2 weeks back at Va Tech and last week.
Again, nice win…happy for the kids and for Wilcox. But let’s see the next 2 games - a blow out L either of the past 2 weeks and word is JW was maybe out over the Bye.
But they win the next 2, then……
How many games have a we convincingly won against bad teams in the ACC? None. BC is terrible and we barely won. UNC is terrible and we barely won. Both those wins came down to fortunate turn overs on potential game winning drives by BC and UNC. Even if we had beaten VaTech, it would have been a close win.
Duke is a good team but UConn just beat them! Perhaps Ron should call Jim Mora Jr after this season? Mora has really turned things around at UConn.
Trivia…From watching the replays….
When DeJesus makes the OT catch right in front of the Louisville cheerleaders—take a look at their expressions!
Cal’s number 8 wears an extra padded helmet. Interesting. Probably he’s not the only one.
Yeah, this was the first game in which Wagoner wore it. Wondering if maybe he got his bell rung recently and decided its a no-brainer: add some extra protection. Surprised more players don’t reach the same conclusion.
Supposedly there are some NFL players using them, but I haven't noticed this yet.