I went to tonight's game as a guest of my older son. I had a great time with him and my younger son. It was great spending time with both of them. The game was a farce, however. Not since 2001 have I seen a team play so badly as this team. And the coaching decision to start Brusseau over Sagapolutele is incomprehensible.
I don't think there's any leadership in the program. Chancellor Lyons needs to fire both Rivera and Lupoi.
Tosh and his staff are overmatched and outclassed. Tosh in particular is beyond clueless when it comes to game management and critical decisionmaking.
Completely unnecessary QB controversy was clearly a team morale killer. Beyond embarrassing, disgusting performance - and Tosh better own it 100%.
Lyons better be meeting with Ron ASAP next week and start looking to raise funds for another buyout. Need to pull the plug sooner rather than later, before further damage is done to the program.
The optics of Headset Ron next to deer-in-the-headlights Tosh, looking over his shoulder on the Cal sidelines do not inspire any confidence to say the least.
Ron Rivera was successful as a coach with the Carolina Panthers. He was given football decision making authority when he was with the Washington Commanders. He made lots of bad draft picks and free agent signings. While he was there, the defense regressed to the worst in the NFL. This did not bode well for him being made a GM at Cal, and you can see where we are now.
No disagreement there - Coach Rivera did great in the league, both as a DC then as a HC. NFL GM Rivera was objectively a bust, which led to him taking a sabbatical after getting fired from WFT and eventually getting hired as Cal's inaugural GM/football AD.
Making draft picks and signing free agents based on 'vibes' & 'moxie' rather than detailed evaluations is a recipe for failure in the NFL. Similar situation with assistant coaching hires & staff management, which reportedly were a big reason for Ron's failed tenure at Washington - see e.g. the awful Bienemy hire as his OC.
Looks like we're seeing a reprise of that same scenario at Cal with Ron vis-a-vis Tosh & his clearly inexperienced staff. Lyons has some tough decisions to make soon, and time may be of the essence already.
Ron Rivera seems like a really cool guy. Did great in the league is pushing it though. He rode Cam Newton’s stardom to the Super Bowl and is a solid defensive coach, but over the course of his thirteen seasons as an NFL head coach, he had only three winning seasons.
In what universe does Cal have funds for a buyout? And are Rivera and Lupoi even on the same page? It is crazy how unprepared and overmatched we are out there. We can hang with the other bad teams and even get lucky once in a while, but we get soundly spanked by a quality team.
Tosh & RR raised over $160M in AD donations over two years. Take some from that. At least that way it wasn't a grift and would benefit that Cal athletic department.
$80m/year…is actually embarrassing. That number should have a 0 at the end of it to start puffy-chesting. Northwestern, NORTHWESTERN…had a $550M donation this year from ONE DONOR. Cal ranks a palty 86th in Athletics donations. The Databricks field naming deal, was invented, brokered and closed by LearField, a sports marketing firm out of Dallas. Meaning, Cal, had NOTHING to do with the deal…instead, it took a relatively small, outside, professional firm, to essentially scoop Cal, who obviously, had terrible to zero outreach happening with Databricks, the most obvious target for corporate sponsorship like, EVER…literally. Seriously. Embarrassing. We’ll never be serious nor have a serious chance to compete, with a non-serious, unprofessional, approach to fundraising.
This all sadly [if not predictably] said, this is a fundraising massive, gaping hole we’ve dug. This is not a new injury, rather a self-inflicted wound, resulting from years of neglect and missed opportunities. Fundamentally, we need an entirely new plan & approach, to crawl out of our #86th rankings in athletics fundraising. Reclaim Cal’s brand of excellence in T25,,,now we’re in the conversation. This conversation is: recruiting great coaching staff; best-in-class support staff; real-world, competitive, funded, ready NIL fund; fueled by a reimagined, T10 player recruitment coverage plan & team. A fundraising overhaul which will be reimplemented, reinvigorated, repaired, and essentially, reborn, is entirely possible. And if we’re serious, required in today’s landscape and forward next 30+ years. Then maybe, just maybe, I can attend a Cal headlining Rose Bowl, in my lifetime…
Cal HAD to know what they were getting especially with Tosh on game day and Rivera in overall strategy, and presumably accepted the trade off for fund raising and recruiting. The last couple of weeks of mad swings is the anti-Wilcox Cal was wanting.
Jericho, Ian strong, jks all didn’t play any meaningful minutes despite not being on the injury report. They need to explain themselves to the fans that attended the game
Frustration does not begin to describe how I feel. CAL fired a good coach with promises that the new coach and his staff would bring a new day of success to CAL Football. The hype was huge, but reality hit. We hired a first time HC who in turn hired a first time OC and DC. The product that was put on the field was disorganized, poorly coached, emotional and not indicative of the talent on the team. We spent a fortune on talent and a large coaching staff, a fortune of which Justin WIlcox was never a beneficiary. I don't think there is anyone on this site that would say that Justin Wilcox teams weren't far better coached than this Tosh Lupoi team.
Then there is the issue of game management. How do we not gain a half yard on third down? How do we go for it on fourth and a half yard in our end, early in the game, behind 7-0 and run a pass play that looked like it had never been practiced? How do we run a play later with the third string QB where he ends up throwing up his hands looking at the QB, as if what are you doing?
Why didn't JKS start? JKS had only played when Somerville was calling plays. He never had a chance to play for McCann until CAL was down 41-0
Having played at CAL I understand when players get frustrated with stupid coaching decisions. Not playing JKS and then having him come in and look good after we were down 41 points will make players question the coaching decisions. The disastrous outcome of the game will make them question coaching decisions. The super aggressive high risk play calling on defense where we were burned multiple times on pass plays will make players question the game plan and ultimately the coaches as a result. When this happens, players lose confidence in their coaches.
The long and short is that when Wilcox was fired we were promised and thus expected big things. At a minimum we should not have regressed. But at this point our team is a shit show clusterf--k. I don't see how Tosh owns the 'room' anymore after last night. It's only 6 games in, but the writing is in bright neon. We need a HC that has a track record of building winning programs.
When I think about the three most impactful head coach hires in the last 6 years, they were: 1. Kalen DeBoer at UW, Kurt Cignetti at Indiana, and Bob Chesney at UCLA. They all three have something in common: they started as HC's in small school programs and moved up division by division and had great winning programs. In Bob Chesney's first year at UCLA, they are undefeated and will be in the top 10 today, maybe top 5. Meanwhile the stone wheels just fell off our Fred Flintstone car. We are at the bottom of the FBS pile. If we are serious about building a winning program, we have to be real about ending our time as the Learing center for new HC's, OC's and DC's. (misspelling intended).
Personally, I wanted Tosh to succeed and I liked his plan. But the execution is lacking and I don't see it changing fast enough for us to get to where we want to be in the time we want to get there. Sadly, it's time to rip the band aid off, stop pretending and get real about doing what it takes to build a winning program. We all know what that means.
This exactly --> How do we run a play later with the third string QB where he ends up throwing up his hands looking at the QB, as if what are you doing?
That was a first. I was convinced it was some gadget/trickeration until it was ... NOT!
I think starting JB was reasonable. But the sequence that followed (by not moving back to JKS at halftime, and then absurdly putting him in for mop up duty later), that was perhaps the final blow, for anyone that was holding out hope for the process and his ability to manage a game let alone the program. Tosh is a pilot in the fog right now who has lost his bearings. Nevertheless, all we can do now is hope he gets the help he needs.
Agree. Go with the hot hand until it shows you it's no longer hot. I have two problems: 1. Broussard should have been replaced much earlier, 2. Did anyone take into account that JKS had never run a play under McCann? Really poor coaching decisions in my book and I know armchair quarterbacking is always easier.
"Frustration does not begin to describe how I feel. CAL fired a good coach." What "good" coach? Wilcox had a losing record over the course of nine seasons, his best season was his third, he never had a winning conference record. If that's "good" the bar at the University of California is way too low for success in football.
Well, consider this. What if Wilcox got the coaching staff and budget that Tosh got? Wilcox actually pulled some talented players on offense but we just became a feeder program to other teams (Jaydn Ott, Sturdivant, Hunter, Mikey Matthews, Nyziah).
We talk about talent acquisition but Tosh is doing it because we've given him a piggy bank.
And how much has the staff grown under Tosh while Wilcox barely scratched the surface on bringing more coaching into the program? Even in his early years, it was clear that he had to cut corners on certain coaches to try to make his dollar go as far as he could.
Why are people trying to rehabilitate Wilcox? Do people not remember the San Diego State or Stanfurd games from last season? Has everyone forgotten is OC hires? Would he really have been the second coming of Andy Smith with a few more bucks? Gimme a break.
Every coaching tenure that ends in a fire has the wheels fall off at the end. To your point, do you think it's fair to characterize Wilcox's 9 years at Cal by the final few games before he was fired?
Perhaps I'm not rehabilitating him but you're characterizing Wilcox by his worst performances. You seem to be conveniently overlooking his strong track record from the first half of his time here. And that, in particular, is what I'm using when juxtaposing Tosh's current performance.
A few more bucks? I don't have specific but it's not hard to see that the amount of resources and support Tosh has now is significantly more than what Wilcox had. Were you even a fan then? I seriously don't see how you can't understand this.
This was very noticeable during his first few years where his coaching staff hires were either coaches that were fired and coaches from much smaller programs. We were lucky that TdR was looking to rehabilitate his image after failing at Fresno State. Or that he had connections with highly talented unknowns like Gerald Alexander.
And then, as I mentioned in my prior comment, we had a ton of 4 star talent on the offensive side of the ball that were left once they could demand more via the portal. If you can't retain talent, how can you build anything? The biggest knock people have against Wilcox was that he couldn't recruit. Well, he did recruit -- we just couldn't afford to keep them.
You think Tosh is bringing these star recruits for free? Do you think they're taking 50% less in packages to play at Cal instead of LSU? They aren't. You have to pay market rate to even compete.
All true, but any of his teams looked better than what Tosh has put on the field. And Wilcox never had the talent, the NIL budget, the assistant coaches budget and many more things. Was it time for a change? Certainly. But Wilcox put better coached teams on the field than Tosh, and not by a little bit. Why didn't we pursue Bob Chesney?
Wilcox, weirdly enough, was a better prepared, more capable HC than Tosh. That doesn't make him "good."
Justin Wilcox was thoroughly mediocre, full stop.
He led Cal for 9 seasons. Only 3 of those 9 seasons ended over .500, Rugbear. I'd go so far as to say he had a single "good" season - his third, in 2019, when Cal went a very satisfying 8-4.
He went on to lead Cal to 1-3 (Covid-truncated), 5-7, 4-8, 6-7, 6-7, and 6-5 seasons (the last of which ended 7-6 under Rolovich. It wasn't an abysmal tenure, but it was utterly stagnant - the ceiling was ever present, and frankly low.
Don't get me wrong: at this point, I'd take him back if that meant getting rid of Tosh. Wilcox's predictably flat, unimpressive teams weren't good - and neither was he - but they were preferable to the chaotic dumpster fire we've got now.
The bright side for me (on the east coast) is I turned the game off in the 1st quarter, a couple bourbons in, and went to sleep early and peacefully, instead of the typical being up until 3-4am after an emotional roller coaster.
Good for you. I was out bowling with my son, and watched the first 10 minutes Sunday morning. That was enough for me to check the score. The outcome was worse than I could have imagined, but not surprising.
Ron Rivera said two years ago that he had a plan with no explanation as to what his plan was. They lost Mendoza to Indiana and fired Wilcox. Seems more like a tsunami then a plan.
I mean, in fairness some of the message board geniuses here were saying we should roll with Brousseau as the starter after he played one decent game. I didn't for a second think that this kind of thinking would infect the actual coaching staff. Completely stupid decision by them.
I was okay with Brousseau if coaches really determined he gives us the best chance to win this game. Talent wise there's no question that JKS is better but the coaches know the most about other factors such as JKS's familiarity with the new offense or his conditions. So when JB started I was surprised but believed in coaches. However it was obvious JB did not give us any chance to win after two or three drives. Tosh needed to put JKS in the game at that point, not after 41-0.
Not that I'm saying we would have won. Still would have been hard with the defense getting shredded like that. But rolling with Brousseau for that long was clearly not putting the team in the best position to win.
Sure but this was mop up duty where you put a developing player to get them some reps. They should have put JKS in at halftime when they still had a shot to come back and Wake still had starters in the game.
JKS deserves better than this disasterclass program. He'll for sure ball out somewhere else with competent coaches that know how to showcase his strengths and help him develop to his full potential. Unlike Tosh's clownshow mishmash offense and overmatched outclassed staff.
At this point Rich Lyons or RR needs to do a business review of Cal football and make a business call. Maybe during the bye week.
CFB is a business now and we’ve spent $30MM in our roster with very little signals that we will improve at a rate needed for Cal in 2 years.
Lyons was Haas Dean before he became our chancellor. He knows full well the consequences of chasing after bad decision and the heavy costs one pays for the inability to make a hard call when your business is regressing against your competition.
I’ve never been an advocate of not giving a new coach some runway to succeed. But Tosh has sold the doner base on our willingness to financially support this football program and we’ve stepped up. But we cannot accept this team’s slow rate of growth, when majority of the first year coaches in CFB this years have comparatively delivered better results.
This WF game gave us the counter evidence that we are trending upward fast enough. It is time Lyons and RR do a serious re-evaluation of Tosh as our turn around leader.
Well that was bad last night - maybe even a watershed moment for the program. We looked more like Wagner, or some other bad FCS team, rather than a P4 program. Prior to yesterday, the ACC power rankings had us between 9 and 13. After last night's debacle where our players looked outclassed and out coached, we are 16, only better than FURD - and sadly RR, Tosh and the coaching staff have earned that ranking. This upcoming off season is going to be brutal on talent loss, and we will find ourselves in the PAC 12 or MWC in 2 years. Wrong hire when there were proven winning head coaches available (see UCLA). Very bad time for the program, no matter what happens for the rest of 2026.
He said it to the sideline reporter BEFORE the game. Even if that is true, you don't tell reporters this, but keep it inside the locker room. What the TV announcers talked about in the 2nd half was their side trip to Alcatraz and playing tennis with Cal tennis players. The game was THAT VAD!
Look: I'm not an alarmist. I can appreciate a "let's wait and see" or "let's give things a chance to play out" mentality as readily as the next guy. As a longtime Cal fan, my standards for success are mercifully low, and my tolerance for pain, really, really high.
But let's go ahead and call it. Tosh isn't good at this. The consensus prediction that his skill as a recruiter and defensive coordinator would transfer to competency in the HC role was wrong. He's not competent in this role. His staff isn't competent in their roles or as a unit. The team, stocked with talent though it may be, is a mess.
The Bears are a chaotic, poorly coached mess, as erratic and funky and confusing to watch as any Cal team in memory.
Anyway, see you in Dallas. I'll be there. Go Bears.
Let's go ahead and call it! I love it and couldn't agree more. You gotta first ask yourself the question...putting aside $$ considerations would you move on from Lupoi at this point in time? If the answer is yes, then you need to start looking at the contract and figuring out how to make it happen asap. And I hate to say it but is Rivera qualified to be the GM? Rich?
There's something about this team that feels wrong. I don't know if it's the way they practice, lack of cohesion, lack of respect for the HC, or what but it just feels off.
This was a disastrous game for Cal if there ever was one. The offense again simply could not score and missed on multiple short yardage situations which on fourth downs gave WF good field position — not that it mattered since they could score at will. And the defense pretty much didn’t show up, so got to spend lots of time on the field watching WF score uncovered TD’s and blasting through our DL for long yardage.
Might I suggest that there are several tight ends on the roster (a couple of freshmen, John Tofi and Taimane Purcell and a senior, Rico Walker) who are sitting on the bench and who are all in the 240-250 lb range and all 6’4” tall, one of whom could be converted to a fullback for use on 3rd or 4th downs in short yardage situations since Emory clearly doesn’t have the size necessary to bulldoze through DLs to pick up short yardage
That suggestion aside, we are about to be crushed on the road by SMU this week and likely lose to NC State and Virginia before playing Stanford at home in late November. Just be thankful that Miami isn’t on the schedule this year. Other than possibly Stanford, I think the likelihood is we are looking at a 4-8 or 5-7 season at best and certainly no 3rd rate bowl game.
We as fans must unfortunately face the facts that this coaching staff is not sufficiently experienced to make much of anything out of the players they have to work with. I have to agree that last night’s pathetic performance was worse than what we were served up last year by JW. We have a QB with generational talent who was benched for a QB who is not in the same league. Not that it matters since JKS is surrounded by players who either have insufficient talent or are poorly coached. And it doesn’t help that we have no running game without Mohammed.
I’m not sure that firing Lopoi at this point would change the trajectory of the next several games, which means it’s too late to salvage this season. That said, admitting that hiring Lopoi was a huge mistake by firing him now might have the strategic effect of signaling to the big donor base that this situation will not be allowed to continue. And certainly if Lopoi tops this performance by losing to a really lousy Stanford team, he should immediately be shown the door before the season actually ends.
With the current coaching staff this situation is unsalvageable. It’s been a while since we’ve heard booing from the fans at CMS but that is definitely symptomatic of the train wreck inside a dumpster fire we are currently witnessing. What can I say but that THIS IS AWFUL! And I’ve been watching Cal football for 60 years!!
The booing was mostly at the end of the first half when the stands were still half full. It is SO EVIDENT that a this team is just plain POORLY COACHED and thief morale is in the dumps. The hiring of Lupoi was a terrible mistake. The hiring SHOULD have been opened up to find a QUALIFIED head coach and interviewed by an unbiased board of retired coaches.
When Saban's critique was that Tosh had "marbles in his mouth", that should have been a disqualifier. Imagine a head coach who can't communicate. I wonder what a team under a coach like that would look like.
holy shit, I just read about it... Tosh was basically like Somerville at Bama. Stripped of play-calling duties during his first year as DC. Difference being his obvious passion and recruiting prowess (which is less of a thing now with NIL).
For those of you who don’t know, JKS suffered a mild concussion last week and they hoped to give him the week off. Perhaps they should have played QB3 and not JKS for that reason.
It will be interesting to see the character of the team—and staff—after this.
His concussion was two weeks ago. He was cleared to play against UNLV but the coaches felt it was too early. I respect that decision. He was ready for WF. If not then why did they finally put him in when we were down 41-0?
If they were holding him out for his safety, putting him down 41-0 in is a terrible look. If they just wanted to give him a week to learn the offense before throwing him in and felt they could trust JB for a bit, that might be excusable but seems indecisive.
But nope, he comes out and just says JB earned the right to compete for the start when JKS never got to play on the field with McCann calling plays. It's absolutely boneheaded. He indirectly gave JKS some blame for the performance despite it being so bad that Somerville got demoted. If it was Somerville's fault, JKS shouldn't be penalized for being a good student and playing for the coordinator his coach gave him.
Throwing your top QB under the bus for a bad hiring decision is not the way to endear your players. But, as much as I hate to say it, Tosh had character issues in the past that I though were behind him. I guess not.
The fraud I felt during the UCLA game is only getting worse each game. Even last week’s win feels like a joke being played out.
I believe this will be the single most disappointing and dispiriting season since I stepped foot on campus in 1992 as a freshman. Worse than Holmoe. Certainly worse than Dykes’ first year.
We may be seeing the utter and complete destruction of Cal as D-1 football program that will not be fixed for years.
I went to tonight's game as a guest of my older son. I had a great time with him and my younger son. It was great spending time with both of them. The game was a farce, however. Not since 2001 have I seen a team play so badly as this team. And the coaching decision to start Brusseau over Sagapolutele is incomprehensible.
I don't think there's any leadership in the program. Chancellor Lyons needs to fire both Rivera and Lupoi.
Tosh and his staff are overmatched and outclassed. Tosh in particular is beyond clueless when it comes to game management and critical decisionmaking.
Completely unnecessary QB controversy was clearly a team morale killer. Beyond embarrassing, disgusting performance - and Tosh better own it 100%.
Lyons better be meeting with Ron ASAP next week and start looking to raise funds for another buyout. Need to pull the plug sooner rather than later, before further damage is done to the program.
The optics of Headset Ron next to deer-in-the-headlights Tosh, looking over his shoulder on the Cal sidelines do not inspire any confidence to say the least.
Ron Rivera was successful as a coach with the Carolina Panthers. He was given football decision making authority when he was with the Washington Commanders. He made lots of bad draft picks and free agent signings. While he was there, the defense regressed to the worst in the NFL. This did not bode well for him being made a GM at Cal, and you can see where we are now.
No disagreement there - Coach Rivera did great in the league, both as a DC then as a HC. NFL GM Rivera was objectively a bust, which led to him taking a sabbatical after getting fired from WFT and eventually getting hired as Cal's inaugural GM/football AD.
Making draft picks and signing free agents based on 'vibes' & 'moxie' rather than detailed evaluations is a recipe for failure in the NFL. Similar situation with assistant coaching hires & staff management, which reportedly were a big reason for Ron's failed tenure at Washington - see e.g. the awful Bienemy hire as his OC.
Looks like we're seeing a reprise of that same scenario at Cal with Ron vis-a-vis Tosh & his clearly inexperienced staff. Lyons has some tough decisions to make soon, and time may be of the essence already.
Ron Rivera seems like a really cool guy. Did great in the league is pushing it though. He rode Cam Newton’s stardom to the Super Bowl and is a solid defensive coach, but over the course of his thirteen seasons as an NFL head coach, he had only three winning seasons.
from what I heard (on here), it was the big donors who wanted Tosh in the first place.
hopefully they don't just abandon us now.
so it would seem Ron is only good at raising money and being a Yes Man to the boosters, and Lyons put his faith in all of them.
what a fine mess we're in.
In what universe does Cal have funds for a buyout? And are Rivera and Lupoi even on the same page? It is crazy how unprepared and overmatched we are out there. We can hang with the other bad teams and even get lucky once in a while, but we get soundly spanked by a quality team.
Tosh & RR raised over $160M in AD donations over two years. Take some from that. At least that way it wasn't a grift and would benefit that Cal athletic department.
$80m/year…is actually embarrassing. That number should have a 0 at the end of it to start puffy-chesting. Northwestern, NORTHWESTERN…had a $550M donation this year from ONE DONOR. Cal ranks a palty 86th in Athletics donations. The Databricks field naming deal, was invented, brokered and closed by LearField, a sports marketing firm out of Dallas. Meaning, Cal, had NOTHING to do with the deal…instead, it took a relatively small, outside, professional firm, to essentially scoop Cal, who obviously, had terrible to zero outreach happening with Databricks, the most obvious target for corporate sponsorship like, EVER…literally. Seriously. Embarrassing. We’ll never be serious nor have a serious chance to compete, with a non-serious, unprofessional, approach to fundraising.
This all sadly [if not predictably] said, this is a fundraising massive, gaping hole we’ve dug. This is not a new injury, rather a self-inflicted wound, resulting from years of neglect and missed opportunities. Fundamentally, we need an entirely new plan & approach, to crawl out of our #86th rankings in athletics fundraising. Reclaim Cal’s brand of excellence in T25,,,now we’re in the conversation. This conversation is: recruiting great coaching staff; best-in-class support staff; real-world, competitive, funded, ready NIL fund; fueled by a reimagined, T10 player recruitment coverage plan & team. A fundraising overhaul which will be reimplemented, reinvigorated, repaired, and essentially, reborn, is entirely possible. And if we’re serious, required in today’s landscape and forward next 30+ years. Then maybe, just maybe, I can attend a Cal headlining Rose Bowl, in my lifetime…
Cal HAD to know what they were getting especially with Tosh on game day and Rivera in overall strategy, and presumably accepted the trade off for fund raising and recruiting. The last couple of weeks of mad swings is the anti-Wilcox Cal was wanting.
Jericho, Ian strong, jks all didn’t play any meaningful minutes despite not being on the injury report. They need to explain themselves to the fans that attended the game
Frustration does not begin to describe how I feel. CAL fired a good coach with promises that the new coach and his staff would bring a new day of success to CAL Football. The hype was huge, but reality hit. We hired a first time HC who in turn hired a first time OC and DC. The product that was put on the field was disorganized, poorly coached, emotional and not indicative of the talent on the team. We spent a fortune on talent and a large coaching staff, a fortune of which Justin WIlcox was never a beneficiary. I don't think there is anyone on this site that would say that Justin Wilcox teams weren't far better coached than this Tosh Lupoi team.
Then there is the issue of game management. How do we not gain a half yard on third down? How do we go for it on fourth and a half yard in our end, early in the game, behind 7-0 and run a pass play that looked like it had never been practiced? How do we run a play later with the third string QB where he ends up throwing up his hands looking at the QB, as if what are you doing?
Why didn't JKS start? JKS had only played when Somerville was calling plays. He never had a chance to play for McCann until CAL was down 41-0
Having played at CAL I understand when players get frustrated with stupid coaching decisions. Not playing JKS and then having him come in and look good after we were down 41 points will make players question the coaching decisions. The disastrous outcome of the game will make them question coaching decisions. The super aggressive high risk play calling on defense where we were burned multiple times on pass plays will make players question the game plan and ultimately the coaches as a result. When this happens, players lose confidence in their coaches.
The long and short is that when Wilcox was fired we were promised and thus expected big things. At a minimum we should not have regressed. But at this point our team is a shit show clusterf--k. I don't see how Tosh owns the 'room' anymore after last night. It's only 6 games in, but the writing is in bright neon. We need a HC that has a track record of building winning programs.
When I think about the three most impactful head coach hires in the last 6 years, they were: 1. Kalen DeBoer at UW, Kurt Cignetti at Indiana, and Bob Chesney at UCLA. They all three have something in common: they started as HC's in small school programs and moved up division by division and had great winning programs. In Bob Chesney's first year at UCLA, they are undefeated and will be in the top 10 today, maybe top 5. Meanwhile the stone wheels just fell off our Fred Flintstone car. We are at the bottom of the FBS pile. If we are serious about building a winning program, we have to be real about ending our time as the Learing center for new HC's, OC's and DC's. (misspelling intended).
Personally, I wanted Tosh to succeed and I liked his plan. But the execution is lacking and I don't see it changing fast enough for us to get to where we want to be in the time we want to get there. Sadly, it's time to rip the band aid off, stop pretending and get real about doing what it takes to build a winning program. We all know what that means.
Is this loss worse than @ SDSU last year?
Worse than Stanfurd…
This exactly --> How do we run a play later with the third string QB where he ends up throwing up his hands looking at the QB, as if what are you doing?
That was a first. I was convinced it was some gadget/trickeration until it was ... NOT!
It wasn't a trick play? 0_o
Well, it had me fooled. ;-)
I think starting JB was reasonable. But the sequence that followed (by not moving back to JKS at halftime, and then absurdly putting him in for mop up duty later), that was perhaps the final blow, for anyone that was holding out hope for the process and his ability to manage a game let alone the program. Tosh is a pilot in the fog right now who has lost his bearings. Nevertheless, all we can do now is hope he gets the help he needs.
Agree. Go with the hot hand until it shows you it's no longer hot. I have two problems: 1. Broussard should have been replaced much earlier, 2. Did anyone take into account that JKS had never run a play under McCann? Really poor coaching decisions in my book and I know armchair quarterbacking is always easier.
"Frustration does not begin to describe how I feel. CAL fired a good coach." What "good" coach? Wilcox had a losing record over the course of nine seasons, his best season was his third, he never had a winning conference record. If that's "good" the bar at the University of California is way too low for success in football.
Well, consider this. What if Wilcox got the coaching staff and budget that Tosh got? Wilcox actually pulled some talented players on offense but we just became a feeder program to other teams (Jaydn Ott, Sturdivant, Hunter, Mikey Matthews, Nyziah).
We talk about talent acquisition but Tosh is doing it because we've given him a piggy bank.
And how much has the staff grown under Tosh while Wilcox barely scratched the surface on bringing more coaching into the program? Even in his early years, it was clear that he had to cut corners on certain coaches to try to make his dollar go as far as he could.
Why are people trying to rehabilitate Wilcox? Do people not remember the San Diego State or Stanfurd games from last season? Has everyone forgotten is OC hires? Would he really have been the second coming of Andy Smith with a few more bucks? Gimme a break.
Every coaching tenure that ends in a fire has the wheels fall off at the end. To your point, do you think it's fair to characterize Wilcox's 9 years at Cal by the final few games before he was fired?
Perhaps I'm not rehabilitating him but you're characterizing Wilcox by his worst performances. You seem to be conveniently overlooking his strong track record from the first half of his time here. And that, in particular, is what I'm using when juxtaposing Tosh's current performance.
A few more bucks? I don't have specific but it's not hard to see that the amount of resources and support Tosh has now is significantly more than what Wilcox had. Were you even a fan then? I seriously don't see how you can't understand this.
This was very noticeable during his first few years where his coaching staff hires were either coaches that were fired and coaches from much smaller programs. We were lucky that TdR was looking to rehabilitate his image after failing at Fresno State. Or that he had connections with highly talented unknowns like Gerald Alexander.
And then, as I mentioned in my prior comment, we had a ton of 4 star talent on the offensive side of the ball that were left once they could demand more via the portal. If you can't retain talent, how can you build anything? The biggest knock people have against Wilcox was that he couldn't recruit. Well, he did recruit -- we just couldn't afford to keep them.
You think Tosh is bringing these star recruits for free? Do you think they're taking 50% less in packages to play at Cal instead of LSU? They aren't. You have to pay market rate to even compete.
No one is trying to ‘rehabilitate’ Wilcox, but any of his teams, even the worst ones, are better than Tosh’s team.
Agreed. Yes Lupoi is not looking good so far but moving on from Wilcox was long overdue.
All true, but any of his teams looked better than what Tosh has put on the field. And Wilcox never had the talent, the NIL budget, the assistant coaches budget and many more things. Was it time for a change? Certainly. But Wilcox put better coached teams on the field than Tosh, and not by a little bit. Why didn't we pursue Bob Chesney?
Wilcox, weirdly enough, was a better prepared, more capable HC than Tosh. That doesn't make him "good."
Justin Wilcox was thoroughly mediocre, full stop.
He led Cal for 9 seasons. Only 3 of those 9 seasons ended over .500, Rugbear. I'd go so far as to say he had a single "good" season - his third, in 2019, when Cal went a very satisfying 8-4.
He went on to lead Cal to 1-3 (Covid-truncated), 5-7, 4-8, 6-7, 6-7, and 6-5 seasons (the last of which ended 7-6 under Rolovich. It wasn't an abysmal tenure, but it was utterly stagnant - the ceiling was ever present, and frankly low.
Don't get me wrong: at this point, I'd take him back if that meant getting rid of Tosh. Wilcox's predictably flat, unimpressive teams weren't good - and neither was he - but they were preferable to the chaotic dumpster fire we've got now.
Sigh
The bright side for me (on the east coast) is I turned the game off in the 1st quarter, a couple bourbons in, and went to sleep early and peacefully, instead of the typical being up until 3-4am after an emotional roller coaster.
Good for you. I was out bowling with my son, and watched the first 10 minutes Sunday morning. That was enough for me to check the score. The outcome was worse than I could have imagined, but not surprising.
Ron Rivera said two years ago that he had a plan with no explanation as to what his plan was. They lost Mendoza to Indiana and fired Wilcox. Seems more like a tsunami then a plan.
Wait.he pit jks in down 41-0?! At the same time Wake out in their backup? Malpractice.
41-0 is a good time to put in a backup QB. Why JKS is a backups QB is a big question
I mean, in fairness some of the message board geniuses here were saying we should roll with Brousseau as the starter after he played one decent game. I didn't for a second think that this kind of thinking would infect the actual coaching staff. Completely stupid decision by them.
I was okay with Brousseau if coaches really determined he gives us the best chance to win this game. Talent wise there's no question that JKS is better but the coaches know the most about other factors such as JKS's familiarity with the new offense or his conditions. So when JB started I was surprised but believed in coaches. However it was obvious JB did not give us any chance to win after two or three drives. Tosh needed to put JKS in the game at that point, not after 41-0.
The whole sequence of decisions is baffling.
Not that I'm saying we would have won. Still would have been hard with the defense getting shredded like that. But rolling with Brousseau for that long was clearly not putting the team in the best position to win.
JKS threw for more yards and had more TD than Jackson. Like I've been saying all season.
he should've put in QB3 at that point. this was pretty ridiculous.
I kept saying Put Caminong in. It was a complete surprise to see JKS. Made no sense at all.
I'd also like to see Lopes (freshman QB from HI) get some reps.
Sure but this was mop up duty where you put a developing player to get them some reps. They should have put JKS in at halftime when they still had a shot to come back and Wake still had starters in the game.
The way our defense was playing we had no chance of winning that game no matter who was at QB
Or even earlier
Yeah shows how good our HC is at making game time decisions
JKS deserves better than this disasterclass program. He'll for sure ball out somewhere else with competent coaches that know how to showcase his strengths and help him develop to his full potential. Unlike Tosh's clownshow mishmash offense and overmatched outclassed staff.
At this point Rich Lyons or RR needs to do a business review of Cal football and make a business call. Maybe during the bye week.
CFB is a business now and we’ve spent $30MM in our roster with very little signals that we will improve at a rate needed for Cal in 2 years.
Lyons was Haas Dean before he became our chancellor. He knows full well the consequences of chasing after bad decision and the heavy costs one pays for the inability to make a hard call when your business is regressing against your competition.
I’ve never been an advocate of not giving a new coach some runway to succeed. But Tosh has sold the doner base on our willingness to financially support this football program and we’ve stepped up. But we cannot accept this team’s slow rate of growth, when majority of the first year coaches in CFB this years have comparatively delivered better results.
This WF game gave us the counter evidence that we are trending upward fast enough. It is time Lyons and RR do a serious re-evaluation of Tosh as our turn around leader.
Well that was bad last night - maybe even a watershed moment for the program. We looked more like Wagner, or some other bad FCS team, rather than a P4 program. Prior to yesterday, the ACC power rankings had us between 9 and 13. After last night's debacle where our players looked outclassed and out coached, we are 16, only better than FURD - and sadly RR, Tosh and the coaching staff have earned that ranking. This upcoming off season is going to be brutal on talent loss, and we will find ourselves in the PAC 12 or MWC in 2 years. Wrong hire when there were proven winning head coaches available (see UCLA). Very bad time for the program, no matter what happens for the rest of 2026.
I forgot to add that telling a sideline reporter that 7 weeks into a 12 game season you "have an open competition at QB" is the sign of a terrible HC.
Lupoi said that during the game? I didn’t see game.
He said it to the sideline reporter BEFORE the game. Even if that is true, you don't tell reporters this, but keep it inside the locker room. What the TV announcers talked about in the 2nd half was their side trip to Alcatraz and playing tennis with Cal tennis players. The game was THAT VAD!
Sorry, THAT BAD!
Look: I'm not an alarmist. I can appreciate a "let's wait and see" or "let's give things a chance to play out" mentality as readily as the next guy. As a longtime Cal fan, my standards for success are mercifully low, and my tolerance for pain, really, really high.
But let's go ahead and call it. Tosh isn't good at this. The consensus prediction that his skill as a recruiter and defensive coordinator would transfer to competency in the HC role was wrong. He's not competent in this role. His staff isn't competent in their roles or as a unit. The team, stocked with talent though it may be, is a mess.
The Bears are a chaotic, poorly coached mess, as erratic and funky and confusing to watch as any Cal team in memory.
Anyway, see you in Dallas. I'll be there. Go Bears.
Let's go ahead and call it! I love it and couldn't agree more. You gotta first ask yourself the question...putting aside $$ considerations would you move on from Lupoi at this point in time? If the answer is yes, then you need to start looking at the contract and figuring out how to make it happen asap. And I hate to say it but is Rivera qualified to be the GM? Rich?
There's something about this team that feels wrong. I don't know if it's the way they practice, lack of cohesion, lack of respect for the HC, or what but it just feels off.
it feels very thin and superficial
Lack for respect for the HC makes sense, especially after this game.
This was a disastrous game for Cal if there ever was one. The offense again simply could not score and missed on multiple short yardage situations which on fourth downs gave WF good field position — not that it mattered since they could score at will. And the defense pretty much didn’t show up, so got to spend lots of time on the field watching WF score uncovered TD’s and blasting through our DL for long yardage.
Might I suggest that there are several tight ends on the roster (a couple of freshmen, John Tofi and Taimane Purcell and a senior, Rico Walker) who are sitting on the bench and who are all in the 240-250 lb range and all 6’4” tall, one of whom could be converted to a fullback for use on 3rd or 4th downs in short yardage situations since Emory clearly doesn’t have the size necessary to bulldoze through DLs to pick up short yardage
That suggestion aside, we are about to be crushed on the road by SMU this week and likely lose to NC State and Virginia before playing Stanford at home in late November. Just be thankful that Miami isn’t on the schedule this year. Other than possibly Stanford, I think the likelihood is we are looking at a 4-8 or 5-7 season at best and certainly no 3rd rate bowl game.
We as fans must unfortunately face the facts that this coaching staff is not sufficiently experienced to make much of anything out of the players they have to work with. I have to agree that last night’s pathetic performance was worse than what we were served up last year by JW. We have a QB with generational talent who was benched for a QB who is not in the same league. Not that it matters since JKS is surrounded by players who either have insufficient talent or are poorly coached. And it doesn’t help that we have no running game without Mohammed.
I’m not sure that firing Lopoi at this point would change the trajectory of the next several games, which means it’s too late to salvage this season. That said, admitting that hiring Lopoi was a huge mistake by firing him now might have the strategic effect of signaling to the big donor base that this situation will not be allowed to continue. And certainly if Lopoi tops this performance by losing to a really lousy Stanford team, he should immediately be shown the door before the season actually ends.
With the current coaching staff this situation is unsalvageable. It’s been a while since we’ve heard booing from the fans at CMS but that is definitely symptomatic of the train wreck inside a dumpster fire we are currently witnessing. What can I say but that THIS IS AWFUL! And I’ve been watching Cal football for 60 years!!
truth.
were there any fans at the game to boo??
The booing was mostly at the end of the first half when the stands were still half full. It is SO EVIDENT that a this team is just plain POORLY COACHED and thief morale is in the dumps. The hiring of Lupoi was a terrible mistake. The hiring SHOULD have been opened up to find a QUALIFIED head coach and interviewed by an unbiased board of retired coaches.
Traitors don’t become saviors!
Meanwhile, UCLA is on their way to the CFP with their first year head coach. We have to be better.
That head coach was in the CFP last year as a head coach, and brought his program with him, hehe. so UCLA isnt a fair comparison.
BUT, just look at fellow first timer Will Stein (Tosh's OC counterpart at Oregon), who has Kentucky rolling similarly to UCLA.
When Saban's critique was that Tosh had "marbles in his mouth", that should have been a disqualifier. Imagine a head coach who can't communicate. I wonder what a team under a coach like that would look like.
holy shit, I just read about it... Tosh was basically like Somerville at Bama. Stripped of play-calling duties during his first year as DC. Difference being his obvious passion and recruiting prowess (which is less of a thing now with NIL).
holy shit, I didn't hear about that
well uhhh, this isn't gonna reflect well on Ron Rivera either that's for sure.
I'm just so sad that the one time we actually got on top of the hype, we missed.
I’m the biggest optimist ever but I said this was a mistake from the get-go. I was a Cal student under Holmoe and this is weirdly similar.
It's unbelievable that they would bench JKS.
Not even give him an in-game opportunity with the new OC.
Apparently the decision was made on Monday.
I don't understand how you can bench a star QB when you haven't even given him a chance with the new OC.
For those of you who don’t know, JKS suffered a mild concussion last week and they hoped to give him the week off. Perhaps they should have played QB3 and not JKS for that reason.
It will be interesting to see the character of the team—and staff—after this.
His concussion was two weeks ago. He was cleared to play against UNLV but the coaches felt it was too early. I respect that decision. He was ready for WF. If not then why did they finally put him in when we were down 41-0?
If they were holding him out for his safety, putting him down 41-0 in is a terrible look. If they just wanted to give him a week to learn the offense before throwing him in and felt they could trust JB for a bit, that might be excusable but seems indecisive.
But nope, he comes out and just says JB earned the right to compete for the start when JKS never got to play on the field with McCann calling plays. It's absolutely boneheaded. He indirectly gave JKS some blame for the performance despite it being so bad that Somerville got demoted. If it was Somerville's fault, JKS shouldn't be penalized for being a good student and playing for the coordinator his coach gave him.
Throwing your top QB under the bus for a bad hiring decision is not the way to endear your players. But, as much as I hate to say it, Tosh had character issues in the past that I though were behind him. I guess not.
The fraud I felt during the UCLA game is only getting worse each game. Even last week’s win feels like a joke being played out.
I believe this will be the single most disappointing and dispiriting season since I stepped foot on campus in 1992 as a freshman. Worse than Holmoe. Certainly worse than Dykes’ first year.
We may be seeing the utter and complete destruction of Cal as D-1 football program that will not be fixed for years.
last week's game should be an omen for VT fans, who sooner or later will know what Penn State fans were on about.