Cal football has the looks of a good team, but they need to keep proving it

The Bears have to keep playing like they did on Saturday, or expected performance won't matter.

Credit: Rob Hwang

By all advanced metrics, this is the best Cal football team Justin Wilcox has ever had.

Cal has a top 50 offense (49th) and a top 50 defense (30th), ranking them 34th overall through nine weeks, according to SP+. Before this season, their best ranking was 57th. This type of performance by a Cal team hasn’t happened in over a decade, since Cal was ranked 28th in 2015.

Cal has played two undefeated top 25 teams. In one game, they had a 35-10 lead in the 3rd quarter. In the other, they shut out their opponent on the road for the final 40 minutes, and had a makeable field goal late for victory.

Cal has a +74 point differential on the season (+9.2 margin of victory), which would rank them 33rd in the nation.

Cal is putting up their normal great defensive metrics up: They’re 14th in scoring defense, second in turnover margin, 3rd in interceptions, 22nd in yards per play allowed, 23rd in sacks, and 10th in red zone opportunities allowed.

And their offense isn’t a stick in the mud. Despite our obvious run struggles, the passing game gets going (18th in completion percentage, 40th in yards per pass attempt). Most impressively, they take care of the football, with only five turnovers on the season, good for a tie for sixth.

And thus Cal has had a 4th quarter lead in seven of its eight games. Take it a step further, and Cal has had a double digit lead in the 4th quarter in SIX of its eight games.

Yet, because of our interminable closing woes, here Cal stands, with a very Justin Wilcox result of 4-4, at the second midterm point of 2024.

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Aside from the poor fourth quarter efforts, we can point to the obvious:

• Cal has fallen to 119th in the nation in rushing yards per attempt. Whether it be poor offensive line play due to a shuffling rotation from performance/health, bad scheme design, and a not 100% Jaydn Ott, this is a formula that stresses a team that wasn’t built to pass 40 times a game, but is now forced to do so.

• To add onto the poor offensive line performance, Cal is 128th in the nation in sacks allowed, undoing a lot of the good work of a competent pass attack and the good moments from the running back corps.

• The bulk of Cal’s penalties come from offensive woes—the Bears are committing 8.5 penalties per game (126th) for an average of 66 penalty yards per game (110th).

• Cal’s third down numbers have been woeful throughout the Justin Wilcox era. This year is no different: The Bears are 106th in the nation on 3rd down conversion rate, and that number drops to 127th of 129 teams in conference play.

• Cal has matriculated the ball to the red zone at a top 20 rate, but are converting those efforts into touchdowns 50% of the time (17 of 34), situating our offense at 113th in the nation.

• Cal’s reliable pass defense falls apart late, conceding 7 touchdowns, three fourth quarter leads and a 119th-ranked fourth quarter pass rating.

• And the kicking. We all know about the kicking.

Saturday’s result was encouraging, but expected. Their opponent was overmatched and undermanned and outtalented at every position. While it was nice to see Cal take care of business quickly and succinctly after an entire season of not clicking for four quarters, it’s unlikely to have any bearing on future performance. It was our easiest game of the season, one a team like Cal should take care of.

However, barring a massive improvement in health post-bye week, Cal is likely the team that they are, and we cannot exactly count on them to just show up and win. They will shoot themselves in the foot as much as they stomp on another team with it. The one glaring weakness of poor offensive line play is not going away, putting all games up for grabs. That will lead to surprising wins like Auburn, but losses against a 1-7 Florida State team and a previously “winless in conference” NC State at home.

This is a results-oriented business. Cal has improved, but it has barely registered a difference in the win loss column. Last place in the ACC, at the end of October, behind even woeful Stanford, is unacceptable. The results have to change.

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So Cal stands at 4-4, in the unluckiest universe of the spectrum. They are one or two plays from standing at the expected 5-3, and another handful of plays from a much more exciting 6-2, and so on and so forth. We will have to live with that knowledge and have it torture us, like so many other seasons previous.

But it’s just another small page in our long vault of sad “what-ifs” in Cal football lore. All we can do is look forward.

Cal has had teams under Wilcox that didn’t perform as well, play-to-play, but still managed to crawl to seven regular season wins by sheer effort and grit. They don’t need to do that this time, with three games the Bears should win ahead of them, but the results have to be better. If Cal plays up to its potential, they can and should win all of these games, setting up a season defining matchup with SMU.

There’s still time for Cal to even truly attain the goals we set out as achievable before the season. Cal hasn’t won eight games in a regular season in 15 years. The Bears have to return to reality and forget about what could’ve been, and think about the very achievable goal ahead of them.

Win out, and set the wheels turning for 2025. Hope isn’t good enough anymore. Our fans need results, before everyone starts thinking about what’s next.