Cal Football Delivers Messy Win against Bill Belichick's North Carolina Tar Heels
5-2 with work to do
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Cal is facing a hapless, lost at sea power four team. Said floundering team sticks with Cal all game, even in spurts trying to give the game to the Bears to which they frustratingly decline. 2022 Colorado, 2024 Florida State and now an ugly win against the 2025 North Carolina Tar Heels.
Cal once again danced with the devil from Tobacco Road but pulled out a measley 21-18 win against UNC on Friday night in Berkeley.
Cal continues to Cal around and almost finds out…..again
After NC State and Pitt last season, I wrote about the way Cal continued to flirt with disaster before they ultimately met a dark reality in the face. Nothing about this North Carolina team is similar to those two opponents but the Bears did not take care of business against a team that is not on their level.
Maybe its a continued referendum on what the 2025 Cal Bears are, an inconsistent team that has equally encouraging and disheartening spurts of football.
They say to never apologize about winning and I totally understand that perspective, but this was an ultimately ugly win where individuals stepped up right when the team needed it. Cal simply had to be better coming off a bye and they weren’t. The Bears played an uninspiring first half and almost let it slip away by inches in the second.
It is indeed the best start for the Bears under Justin Wilcox through seven games at 5-2. They are winning close affairs. It’s a nice development from last season but there’s still meat on the bone. I believe this meme accurately represents some of the thoughts of the fanbase to this point in the season.
It goes without saying that if Cal wants to be 6-2 coming out of Virginia Tech, they’ll need to be exponentially better than that on all sides of the football.
Jacob de Jesus continues to make himself available
Manteca's own and UNLV transfer WR Jacob de Jesus racked up 13 receptions for 105 yards and a touchdown against North Carolina. Those marks are good enough for a tie for the 6th most receptions in a single game in Cal history and the most catches by a Cal receiver in a game since Chad Hansen in 2016 (14).
The wide receiver room has had a bit of a roller coaster over the course of the season but with Trond Grizzell taken out of action by the UNC secondary, someone else was going to have to step up.
De Jesus played that role and then some, working well within space and putting together nice conversions as the main target for Jaron Keawe Sagapolutele. Similarly, Jordan King continues to earn his flowers and “mailman” moniker that Justin Wilcox bestowed on him along with Mark Hamper, who has had a much maligned start to his year but had a nice catch to move the chains.
With his solid start to the 2025 season on special teams, a night like De Jesus had gives Cal more options down the line, which is all they can ask for given some of the constraints offensively.
The individuals rise to the occasion
As a team, there were some times where the cohesion against North Carolina left some to be desired. A sequence to open the game where Cam Sidney forced the fumble and the Bears subsequently ran it through the Tar Heels face was a great start.
Over the next two quarters, Cal would fiddle around with its transmission as they tried to find the right gear to close out their media ridden opponent. Ultimately, that knockout punch came from players who stepped up to win at all costs, especially in situations where the game could have slipped away. Chief among them, the man who saved the day for the Bears, Paco Austin. A picture perfect peanut punch on Nathan Leacock that gave the Bears the chance to drain the clock and put the game away for good.
The defensive back duo will get a lot of shine and rightfully so, but there are others who deserved to be recognized for different imprints across 60 minutes. Cade Uluave reset himself well out of the bye week, playing aggressive but not reckless. Kendrick Raphael, capitalizing on his 22 carries against his former rival, started and ended the game with effective runs that resulted in first downs. Finally, the aforementioned wide receiver pair of De Jesus and King capped off a night where Cal quite simply had to have it.
Conclusions
I think a lot of us expected more and I’m no different. Justin Wilcox directly stated that all sides of the football have to be better if this team wants to contend. They certainly didn’t get any help from some wretched, incompetent ACC officiating against the Heels. Normally, the burden of expectation is on the team when you’re spatting with refs (and still is!), but that was quite possibly the worst half I’ve ever seen in my lifetime down the stretch.
And yet despite all the gremlins, confusing sequences and befuddling moments, there’s a feel good reality that Cal faces.
The Bears are 5-2 through week eight of the season, tied with Tennessee, LSU, Notre Dame and Texas in the record department. Pretty darn good.
However, that doesn’t let Cal off the hook in any of these remaining games. There is a race against time and as Ron Rivera laid out, success isn’t achieved without a minimum of eight regular season wins. With the remaining schedule, Cal has seize the opportunity in front of them.
You can listen to my podcast thoughts here.
Oh please. Did we watch the same game? To put Cal in the same sentence with Tennessee, LSU, Notre Dame and Texas is quite frankly laughable. Cal is heading for at the very best another 6-6 season to hold off a 5-7 by having to beat Stanford in Palo Alto. This team, with occasional bright spots as you rightly point out, is following in the same Wilcox tradition or perhaps better stated, the same tired Cal tradition, of fielding a representative team that can’t win crucial games and ends even a slightly winning season in some no-name bowl game. Frankly, after watching this for the most part uninspired football for 65 years since Cal’s 1959 Rose Bowl appearance, I’d really like to see a winning program put in place that complements the winning education provided by the finest public university in the world. Can we not find a big Chuck Muncie style back who can actually convert a fourth and one by crashing through the line behind a big OL? And maybe a few WR who can actually catch the ball more consistently than this crew? I’m not a coach so am not going to go on about what this program needs, but I am a VERY long suffering Cal fan who, truth be known, actually did play a small part in this tradition during the Craig Morton/Ray Willsey years when high school players were confined to the frosh team (we beat Stanford). My hope is that Ron and the Chancellor will put together an effective NIL syndicate and go out and buy the best coach and players that money can buy in this completely money-corrupted D1 Power4 game that we’ve managed to get ourselves into. If not, let’s just pack it in and move back to a reconstituted PAC12. At least the players won’t have to travel 2500 miles for the privilege of traveling home following yet another dismal performance.
Yesterday, Ott did not get off the bench. Endries had 1 catch for a negative 1 yard. They both made very bad decisions to leave Cal too late to fit themselves into another quality program. Too bad. They would have thrived with JKS behind the wheel. And we’d be scoring a lot more points.