Cal football is in the nightmare scenario
This is the last place we wanted to be. This is the last place we needed to be.
This was the nightmare.
Everything was shaping up for Cal to level up. They had more talent. They had an easier schedule. They turned out to have a game quarterback. Their defense had returned to form. The fans were all in on NIL and had provided a great transfer portal class on the fly to rebuild the team. They got off to a good enough start that the community rallied to become a national phenomenon, and then earn a national spotlight. Our community, beaten down so many times, were ready to root for the Bears in every which way.
It has all gone wrong.
Jaydn Ott got hurt in the first game of the season. Despite fighting through it with some nice moments, he has never been the same.
Two of Cal’s projected top two wideouts missed nearly the entire season. They have played a total of a few dozen snaps with the wide receiver unit they wanted to have. That has ruined spacing and put players in uncomfortable positions.
With Cal’s top three explosive playmakers limited, it has all fallen on Fernando Mendoza to produce, and although he has proven he is capable, this was not the plan by any stretch. Saturday, he finally was gameplanned out.
In several losses, Cal kickers have missed crucial field goals that could’ve ended up making a difference in the final statline. And we’ve seen quizzical decisions on when and where and how to go for two or kick extra points.
The Cal defense is better, but thin. The starters have proven to be solid, but they are relied on too heavily because of depth concerns, and eventually wear out. Any crucial injury (like Cade Uluave against Syracuse or Ryan McCollough against Miami) exposes depth issues, and by the 4th quarter you have a defense running on fumes (130th in FBS in passing yards conceded in the 4th quarter).
And the Cal offensive line has not produced. Beset by injuries, by inexperience, by skill issues, the unit has not been able to play consistently as a unit all season. The Bears started yet another different offensive line grouping on Saturday, and aside from a handful of plays, left the run game in neutral.
Offensive line is the most important unit in college football, and all other units have to play over their heads to make up for this if it’s not there. I had to accept against Wake Forest that it didn’t matter how good we look on paper. A bad offensive line brings everything back to Earth.
On Saturday, the rest of the team did not play well, and the result felt inevitable by halftime. And it leaves us staring up at the man in charge yet again.
Justin Wilcox has been given ample opportunity, with multiple coaching staffs, to prove that he is the coach for this occasion, for this moment.
He has saved some of his greatest disappointments for this season, aggregating every little aspect of his coaching idiosyncrasies that has lost him nearly all faith from this fanbase to lead this program.
He has likely handed Florida State its only FBS win. He has allowed this to happen three times to winless teams in the last four years.
The team turtled against top-ten Miami with a three/four-score lead, blowing an incredible opportunity for the program to sell itself.
The defense played over its head against Pitt, only to see the offense bumble and stumble and play for a field goal with minutes left.
After seemingly taking control against a limited NC State team, the defense got outschemed to concede a two touchdown 4th quarter lead.
And with bowl eligibility on the line at home on Saturday, the team came out flat, again, and didn’t recover it was too late.
Cal is now sitting in last place in its own conference with a -7 point differential. That point differential indicates a team with promise and quality. That record indicates a coaching staff getting worked at the margins.
Wilcox has lost all his ACC home games, to three teams who trekked a combined 10,000 miles. All three times, Cal has looked like the more exhausted team. Yikes.
From a staff perspective, there is just not enough consistency. Mike Bloesch did his job well last year in re-engaging the pass attack, but now juggling the responsibilities of the two most important positions on offense hasn’t generated better performance. Peter Sirmon’s defenses are better this year, until when they absolutely need to be, and Saturday was the first 60 minute crack in the armor.
We can go down the units and find similar fundamental issues. The RBs and WRs have trouble blocking in pass protection and on short passes. The front seven struggles to finish its first tackle at contact. The defensive backs blow huge coverages at the worst time. Strength and conditioning is going to have to be a point of concern regarding stamina. The kicking, the kicking, the kicking…
All that leads to the same rolodex of hideous statistics.
Wilcox is now 2-20 since COVID against FBS teams with a winning record.
At his time at Cal, he is 7-34 against winning FBS teams.
In Berkeley, at home games in front of fans, he is 3-15 against winning FBS teams, and has lost seven straight and 12 of his last 13.
Wilcox has lost five of his last seven games outright when Cal was two-score favorites or more.
Wilcox is now 3-9 in his last 12 home games against Power 4 competition.
Cal falls to 6-19 in one-score games since 2020.
Wilcox clinched Cal’s 15th straight conference losing season, which is currently the longest such streak in Power college football (Rutgers is at 11, Vanderbilt 10, but both have opportunities to snap those streaks this year).
Wilcox is now 22-42 in conference play. Dan Lanning, Lane Kiffin, Steve Sarkisian, Josh Heupel and Rhett Lashlee have all passed him, or are on pace to pass him in conference wins at their current stops in the next year. All of them were hired three or more years after Wilcox.
He has been given so many chances to prove himself. He has come up short too many times. He has been outcoached, on the regular, by veterans and newbies. He has squandered an enormous amount of goodwill in a record amount of time.
Everyone who is not a Cal fan will look at the final score, see Cal has lost five one-score games, and presume we are the unluckiest team in college football.
Everyone who is a Cal fan? Well, we know better than that by now.
So this is where we reset and reboot, like a hundred other college football programs should?
Nope. Not Cal.
As we’ve discussed before, thanks to being caught on the flat foot by realignment by a complacent university, thanks to a still baffling contract extension handed to our coach by an overwhelmed athletic director, and thanks to an even more baffling contract extension to that same overwhelmed AD by a chancellor who wasn’t as concerned with on-field results, we are cash-strapped. Cal has almost zero money to afford any coaching buyout for this year, probably next year, and maybe even 2026. It would take a complete donor and fanbase revolt for anything to change on this front.
The Bears are seeing a significant reduction in ACC revenue for the next seven years that will require a significant cash flow from UCLA Calimony, plus assistance from our aging donor class, plus central campus stepping in with a cash inflow to covery any remaining gaps. On top of that, the House NIL settlement is likely finalizing this spring, where Cal will need to come up with an additional $20+ million to distribute to its athletes. It seems as if Cal will be able to procure enough funds for this cause, but it will be close.
So the program has three choices, barring some miraculous resignations.
Pay an enormous buyout for Justin Wilcox and Jim Knowlton (another $20 million+), spend a lot of money to hire a good coach, reduce NIL payments to near zero, and see a host of players depart via the transfer portal with no mechanism to replace them. We’d be in rebuild mode for a long time.
Go all in on NIL, not renew some of the assistant coaching staff in search of new blood, and hope Wilcox can exasperatingly figure it out with an even more talented squad and new staff that patches up a lot of our deficiencies.
Find a mega donor (or a consortium of new major donors) willing to do both.
At this time, I do not want (1) to happen. This season has not been great, but I will take it a thousand times over a 2022 or a 2013. Those are multi-year rebuilds, and we do not have the time for that. (3) has shown no signs of happening, or it would’ve been announced by now.
So I’m back at (2), again, in the most grumpy and depressing place possible.
Without (3), our community will have to rely on the oldheads who are happy with 6-6, an Axe and a bowl, the long-timers who shrug and enjoy the weekends with old friends in Berkeley, the donors who prioritize their alma mater, the sickos who will return next fall, believing things will be better this time.
I adore these people very much, many of whom read our writing. I will always have their back for their optimism, their love and faith. They have saved this program from relegation many times. We owe them our gratitude.
But as the last few years have proven, in the national college football environment, this is not enough to save our program. We need all our people invested. It will take more than a village to thrive.
Which is why this is the nightmare scenario. Cal could not afford this type of season. And I’m at a loss at how to sell this program to anyone.
College GameDay proved out Cal fans are here, present and ready. But thanks to incompetent athletic department leadership, misaligned priorities from the university, a history of terrible football destroying fan continuinty, they are stuck with a coach who has produced no meaningful results, no interesting outcomes, and slightly below-average .500 football.
After 90 games of this same leadership, it leaves you with half-empty stadiums, no energy, no momentum, and plenty of negative recruiting talking points for our competitors, TV executives, and the wider college football community.
Why would top players and normal fans sign up for this? Why would anyone believe this university is committed to competing at the highest level?
Now it’s Big Game Week, the one thing Wilcox has proven himself to be consistently good at, and all of us will throw ourselves into the festivities, and Cal is heavily favored, and there will be hoopla and memes and bonfires and reunions, and hopefully a field rush and an Axe and a bowl.
It will save him for a week, likely a year, and we will run it all back. Defeat elevates the situation from nightmarish to apocalyptic.
But in the back of my head, I know Cal football cannot survive long-term on just beating Stanford. That is a sentence I never thought I’d utter, but somehow being a Cal fan can produce all sorts of nightmares you couldn’t really conceive.
All else being the same, if we had made all of our field goals this season, Cal would be 7-2 and Wilcox would be awesome.
Good summation Avi, similar in many ways to your, Cal football loses everything at Colorado, October 16, 2022, summation. Nothing improves until we have a different head coach and crew. That change will not happen, too expensive. One more game at home this season. Watch the rest on tv. I still love this team; these guys have played hard all year. Gotta beat Stanford.